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/ 

THE 


CHURCH CYCLOPAEDIA. 

' /J22 

Q.03O 

DICTIONARY 


CHURCH DOCTRINE, HISTORY, 


ORGANIZATION AND RITUAL, 


AND CONTAINING ORIGINAL ARTICLES ON SPECIAL TOPICS, WRITTEN EXPRESSLY 
FOR THIS WORK BY BISHOPS, PRESBYTERS, AND LAYMEN. 


DESIGNED ESPECIALLY FOR THE USE OF 

THE LAITY OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH 





IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 


EDITED BY 

REV. A. A. BENTON, M.A., 

0 0 ' 1 

PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS IN DELAWARE COLLEGE. 



* > 

•> #. 
)H 



PHILADELPHIA: 

L. R. HAMERSLY & CO. 
18 84 . 







« 








Copyright, 3883, by L. R. Hamerrly & Co. 




PREFACE. 


This Cyclopaedia is designed to fill a void which still exists in our 
general literature. It is especially intended to give the Laity, in a condensed 
and handy form, a great variety of information, culled from many elabo¬ 
rate volumes, and written by a great diversity of men, as to the constitution, 
nature, and practical working of the Church of Christ. It is to enable them 
to judge for themselves, upon the many questions of fact, and doctrine, and 
government, in our Communion, furnishing them the materials for forming 
such judgments, and for holding correct views thereon. 

The importance of having the Laity intelligently taught concerning 
these things, cannot be overrated in our Church, where the Lay element is so 
conspicuous and powerful. 

Nor would we wish it less prominent. The Church gains largely by 
the wisdom and sound counsel of its Laity. Hence the more accessible 
ecclesiastical information is made to them, the wiser will be their action, 
the more loyal their support, and the more conservative their influence. 

While this Cyclopaedia will be of much use to the Clergy who have not 
the advantage of libraries, yet it was not prepared for them, as they are 
supposed to have already a certain basis of information on these topics, and 
also opportunities of prosecuting their researches in any special line of his¬ 
tory or doctrine. # 

Hence, only the outside, as it were, of many questions is shown here; 
for many of the subjects here introduced require volumes, rather than pages, 
and many minds, rather than one mind, to do them justice. As furnishing 
heads and data of thought and fact concerning the large circle of topics here 
introduced, this volume, then, will be of the greatest service to all Lay 
people, as well as furnish a convenient reference book for the Clergy. 

In preparing this volume, the Editor, himself a scholar of much ripe¬ 
ness and breadth, has called to his aid writers of varying shades of opinion, 
so as to reflect, as far as possible, the many-sidedness of the Church’s views 
on some of the practical questions of ritual and discipline. It does not 



4 


PREFACE. 


represent one party or school, but gives fair and candid expression to many 
different minds and opinions, which are tolerated within the wideness of the 
outstretched arms of the Church of the living God. It is well that it 
should be so. In an age when no asserted truth goes unchallenged, and no 
opinion is uttered without subjecting it to the crucible of heated criticism, 
we want to know how these points are viewed by divergent, yet representa¬ 
tive, minds, in the several departments of sacred learning. The names of 
the contributors show the range of minds, as the number of the different 
subjects treated show the range of topics embraced in the volume. The 
plan has been to let each man speak for himself, and so be responsible alone 
for his opinions. 

Whatever will enlarge the area of knowledge, or give shape and defi¬ 
niteness to floating opinions, or throw light upon obscure points, or stimulate 
deeper investigation in this broad department of learning, cannot but prove a 
great blessing to all thinking and Christian men. This Cyclopaedia will, it 
is hoped, fulfill all, or nearly all, these conditions, and it ought, therefore, to 
be hailed with favor, especially by the Laity, as a marked help to them in 
seeking after a deeper knowledge and wider views of the person and glory 
of Christ our Lord, as seen in “the Church which is His body, the fullness 
of Him that filleth all in all.” 


WILLIAM BACON STEVENS. 






THE 


CHURCH CYCLOPAEDIA. 

- 4 ■»■■■»- 


A. 


A and ft (Rev. i. 8, xxi. 6, xxii. 13; cf. 
Is. xii. 4, xliv. 6). The first and last letters 
of the Greek alphabet, used to express the 
eternity of God. Its form belongs to St. 
John’s Revelation, but its meaning is found 
already in Isaiah. It was used by the Jews 
later to express the comprehensive nature 
of God. The symbol is generally assigned 
to our Lord. In the first passage, the 
symbol may refer to the Trinity, but it is 
better (in view of the fact that in xxii. 13, 
our Lord gives this title to Himself) to hold 
that it is one of our Lord’s titles, implying 
for Him all the attributes of the Godhead, 
as being the Source, Upholder, and End of 
all things. These two letters passed into 
early Christian use, being found in the 
catacombs; and into ecclesiastical Latin 
poetry (vide Prudentius, Cathem. ix. 10), 
and so into liturgical use. It is often 

used as a monogram f/jj in church deco¬ 
rations. (Vide Bishop Wordsworth ’s 

New Testament, Archbishop 

Trench’s Commentary on the Epistles to the 
Seven Churches, for thorough discussion of 
the meaning of Aft in the Revelation.) 

Aaron, the brother of Moses and the first 
High-Priest, under the Law. His father was 
Amram, and his mother was Jochebed ; his 
wife was Elisheba, daughter of Nahshon, of 
the tribe of Judah. He was three years 
older than Moses, and apparently, since 
God Himself called him “ the Levite,” 
he was of priestly dignity in his family. 
His was a far weaker character than his 
brother’s. Able to speak well, ready, and not 
wanting in courage, he was given to Moses 
to be his mouth-piece, as Moses was the 
mouth-piece of God, i.e., the Prophet. In 
then his being first the Prophet and then 
the High-Priest Aaron becomes a type of 
Christ. He went willingly with Moses 
upon the mission. They twain went to the 
people and gathered their elders. Aaron 
apparently does the evidential signs before 


them instead of Moses, and after they had 
been acknowledged by the people, the two 
brothers go before Pharaoh. Throughout 
the first part Aaron acts for Moses : Aaron 
casts down the rod that becomes a serpent; 
he smites the Nile, stretches the rod over 
the streams, smites the dust. The two 
sprinkle the ashes of the furnace. Thence 
till the last stroke Moses acts. He stretches 
the rod toward heaven, for the storm of 
hail; over the land, for swarms of locusts. 
But the Lord reserved to Himself without 
stroke of rod or word of prophet the two 
death-plagues at the set time : the murrain 
wasted the herds of Egypt; at midnight there 
was the great cry. Aaron is withdrawn 
from the prominent place in the narrative 
till the Israelites reach the wilderness of Sin. 
Moses bids him prepare the people for the 
miracle of the manna. Aaron bears up 
Moses’ hand with the rod till Amalek is 
discomfited. He draws near with Moses to 
the summit of Sinai, but does not enter the 
Fire and the Cloud. Now left to himself, 
he shows the weakness of his character. The 
murmuring of the people upon the long 
absence of Moses, and their cry for some 
god to go up before them, led him to collect 
the offerings of their golden ear-rings and 
to cast the molten calf. It shows him to be 
a facile and popular leader rather than a 
deeply-principled master of men. The 
worship of the molten calf with the rites 
due to the Lord perversely offered before 
it led to the sin of licentiousness. The end 
of it was the shame and shrinking on 
Aaron’s part, the indignant discipline in¬ 
flicted by Moses, and then his wonderful, 
loving intercession for the sinning people 
and his erring brother. The forgiveness 
was complete, for Aaron was immediately 
consecrated to the High-Priesthood, and it 
was conferred by a perpetual grant to his 
family alone. Here we have to call atten¬ 
tion to the typical character of his office. It 




AARON 


ABBOT 




was his right to enter into the Holy of 
Holies once in the year, on the great Day of 
Atonement, with the blood of the goat and 
the bullock. He made the atonement when 
he stood between the living and the dead, 
and stayed the fire that burst from the 
Lord’s anger. It was his right to offer 
asylum for his lifetime to the manslayer fled 
to the city of refuge. He could not share 
in funeral rites. The intercessory, expiatory, 
and ever-living work of our Lord are typi¬ 
fied in these rites. Whatever defects in his 
private character marred its evenness, in his 
official character he was between Jehovah 
and Jehovah’s people. Aaron appears 
again when he murmured against his brother. 
His commission, its grandeur, and its awful 
duties dazzled him. His sister presuming 
upon her office as prophetess showed herself 
jealous of Moses also. In fact, Miriam was 
the chief in the resistance to the Lawgiver’s 
authority. Its vindication by God Himself 
was a severe lesson. Again, when Korah’s 
rebellion ended in his destruction and Aaron 
had used his priestly function of making an 
atonement, then, as a further attestation to 
his office, the Lord chose to give the people 
the sign of his rod, with buds, blooms, and 
fruit,—a sign that was laid up together with 
the pot of manna before the ark testimony. 
Then God gave a special charge to Aaron 
that he and his sons, and his father’s house, 
should “ bear the iniquity” of the sanctuary, 
and he and his sons should “ bear the in¬ 
iquity” of the priesthood (c/. Ps. lxxxix. 50, 
51, and the Agony in the Garden). His were 
to be the tithes, the peace-offerings, the wave- 
offerings, the first fruits, the devoted, the re¬ 
demption-money of the first-born, of man 
and beast, for he and his sons were to have 
no inheritance in the land, but to be sepa¬ 
rate to the Lord. Aaron’s character appears 
again markedly in sharing his brother’s im- 
atience at the rock, when he smote when 
e should have only spoken. Miriam by 
this time was dead, and the weary journey¬ 
ing was drawing to a close ; now at the very 
end when the longed-for land was almost in 
sight, to be forbidden. He seems to have 
acquiesced in the decree. And when the 
command came for him to climb the Mount 
Hor, and there upon its top to have his 
priestly garments taken from him and put 
upon his son, and then to lie down and die 
there, in the sight of the congregation, his 
submission did not fail him. The Lawgiver, 
the faithful servant, despoiled his loved 
brother of the sacred vestments with which 
he had, at the outset of their journeyings 
so many years before, adorned him, “ And 
Aaron died then in the top of the mount, 
and Moses and Eleazarcame down from the 
mount.” The real greatness of Aaron’s 
character is overshadowed by the splendor 
of his brother’s, but he was, with all the 
weaknesses so faithfully recorded in Holy 
Scripture, a far more perfect man than 
many others who are in their careers more 
prominently, not more really, types of 


Christ. His own shortcomings may have 
taught him that compassion which our Great 
High-Priest had learned, not from taint of 
sin, but by contact with and suffering from 
its loathsome effects. In Aaron’s descend¬ 
ants flowed the blood of their mother, a 
daughter of the tribe from which our Lord 
took His Flesh. 

Abaddon (Job xxxi. 12, Destruction). 
In Job xxvi. 6, the Chaldee paraphrast 
makes it mean the “house of destruction 
in Job xxviii. 22, its Chaldee equivalent is 
the angel of Death. It was also applied 
later by the Jews to the Christian schools 
Be’Abidan. In Rev. ix. 11 it is a title of 
the “Angel of the bottomless pit,” whose 
name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but 
in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon 
( i.e ., destroyer). There is much Jewish 
trifling upon the name. It is, however, one 
of the titles of Satan. The woe in Rev. ix., 
where Abaddon is spoken of, is interpreted 
usually of the Saracens, and he is named as 
their king. 

Abba (Syriac). A peculiarly tender form 
of Father. Our Lord (Mark xiv. 36) 
uses it in His Prayer in the Garden. St. 
Paul uses it twice (Rom. viii. 15; Gal. iv. 
6), in referring to our adoption as Sons 
through the Holy Ghost (vide Confirma¬ 
tion). Selden and other writers say that 
the Jew's had a law which forbade bond- 
servants to use the term father to their mas¬ 
ters, so Paul used a term tender and expres¬ 
sive of filial reverence. In the Palestinian 
and Egyptian Churches it became an eccle¬ 
siastical title, and so probably passed into 
the West as Abbot. 

Abbess. The Mother or Superior of an 
abbey of nuns, or female persons living un¬ 
der religious vows and discipline. 

Abbey. The building in which a society 
devoted to religion dwelt; a monastery 
whose head was an Abbot or Abbess. They 
were quite numerous in England before the 
Reformation, and the title still clings to 
some of the churches. Westminster is better 
known as Westminster Abbey than as St. 
Peter’s. In Cathedral Abbeys the Bishop 
was the Abbot, and the presbyteral Superiors 
of these establishments were styled Priors. 
Cranmer and Latimer tried hard, at the dis¬ 
solution of the monasteries, to save some of 
the abbeys from confiscation to put them to 
reformed use, but did not succeed. 

Abbot. The Father or Superior of a body 
of men living under religious vows. The 
derivation of the word is from Abba (Med. 
Lat. Abbas). The word Father, in its forms 
Abbas, Papa, Father, has been ever applied 
to the Christian presbyter as a title of re¬ 
spect, except in the later history of the Eng¬ 
lish Church. An Abbot was elected either 
by all the members of the monastery, or by 
a part of them as a chapter. Abbots were 
divided into two ranks, Abbots and Mitred 
Abbots. There were in England twenty- 
five Mitred Abbots, who sat and voted in the 
House of Lords. Abbots were subject to 





ABJURATION 


7 


ABRAHAM 


their diocesan ; but special exemptions were 
granted, for favors or by purchase, to many 
monasteries,—some owning obedience to the 
See of Rome, others to the Crown, and so 
exempted from episcopal visitation and ref¬ 
ormation. The Abbot received confirmation 
of his office and benediction from his dioce¬ 
san, and vowed canonical obedience to him. 
(Dugdale’s Monasticon, Willis’s Mitred Ab¬ 
bots, Encyclopedia Britannica, sub voce.) 

Abjuration. A solemn act of renouncing 
all false or heretical doctrines which a person 
had formerly held. There is no authorized 
form in use in the English Church, though 
public abjuration has been made by persons 
at different times. A form was put forth by 
one of the houses of Convocation, 1714, but 
it did not receive royal sanction. 

Ablution. A liturgical term for any cere¬ 
monial washing of the person or of sacred 
vessels. I. Person .—The washings of the 
priests in the Mosaic Law previous to con¬ 
secration, and after it frequently in their 
ministration. The washing of the feet, after 
our Lord’s example, and according to St. 
Paul’s question as to the character of a widow 
needing church aid if she have washed the 
feet of strangers ; also the early ritual use of 
washing the hands before and after the cele¬ 
bration of the Holy Communion. II. Things. 
—So the ablutions in the ceremonial of the 
law. In early liturgic use a reverent ablu¬ 
tion of the vessels with a little water for the 
consumption of every portion of the conse¬ 
crated elements. 

Abraham. The Father of the Faithful 
(Rom. iv. 16). The Friend of God (Is. xli. 
8). The Heir of the World (Rom. iv. 13). 
The Solitary in the religion and worship of 
Jehovah. The grandest of the men of 
the Old Testament save his great descendant, 
Moses. The man through whose faith the 
world has received the blessings of Christ 
the Lord. The man whose name was 
changed by God as a sign of His blessing. 
He in his life and conduct stands forth as 
almost unapproached in true courtesy, noble 
loftiness, and simplicity. The patriarchal 
life he led is accurately portrayed in Holy 
Scripture, and can be, even yet, verified in 
the customs and habits of the Arabs, some 
of whom are his descendants. 

He was the son of Terah, an idolater. 
Though Abram’s name is first in the list, he 
was probably the second son. The sons of 
Terah were Haran, who died before the mi¬ 
gration, Abram, and Nahor, who remained 
in Ur. Terah died in Haran, and Abram 
became the head of the family. The life of 
the patriarch is divided into four chief eras : 

I. The migration from Ur to Haran 
(Charran, Gen. xi. 31; cf. Acts vii. 2-4). 
Here Terah died, and then (Gen. xii.) the 
command was given to Abram to remove 
from Haran to a land God would show him, 
and then he would be blessed, and of his de¬ 
scendants should be made a great nation, and 
a solemn promise of protection was added. 
He obeyed, and removed with Lot, his 


nephew. He first settled near Bethel, and 
there built an altar to the Lord ; thence he 
went down to Egypt. It is strange as we 
read it, but in reality it was most natural, 
that he should have unconsciously distrusted 
the full meaning of the promise of protec¬ 
tion. He was afraid that his wife would be 
taken from him, and he framed a deceit by 
having her say she was his sister. Sarah 
was taken from him, but Pharaoh was 
plagued of the Lord because of her, and re¬ 
stored her to him, and he was dismissed. From 
Egypt he returned to Bethel, and there upon 
the altar he had built he renewed his worship 
of Jehovah (Gen. xiii. 1-4). A wealthy, 
prospering man, with a large retinue, and a 
kinsman with him who also was wealthy, he 
was sufficiently strong to be safe from attack. 
But this very wealth, and the need of room, 
caused a strife between their followers, and 
they found it prudent to separate. Lot chose 
the plain of Jordan, near Sodom, and Abram 
remained in the hilly region. Here he re¬ 
ceived a renewal of the promise, which was 
a little more clearly and fully expressed, and 
he was directed to walk through the length 
and breadth of the land, for it should be his. 
Upon this command he removed to Mamre 
(Hebron), and there built an altar and wor¬ 
shipped. At this point occurs one of the 
most vivid of the incidents of his life. 
While crushing the revolt of the subject 
Sodomites Chedorlaomer carried off Lot and 
his family. Abram, with his three hundred 
and eighteen servants, planned a night sur¬ 
prise, which was completely successful. He 
apparently slew the king in the fight. Upon 
his victorious return, Melchizedec, the mys¬ 
terious king of Salem, priest of the Most 
High God, met him with bread and wine, 
and blessed him. Abram paid him tithes 
and received his blessing as from a superior. 
Abram’s refusal to receive any part of the 
spoil was a nobly proud act on his part. 

II. The second period of his life is from 
this event and the renewed promise which 
followed till the third covenanted promise 
with direct promise of Isaac. This second 
renewal was still more full, and was sealed 
with a sacrifice and a solemn sign of a 
horror of great darkness in his sleep. He 
was told of the servitude in Egypt, of the 
deliverance and the establishment of his 
descendants in the land God promised him. 
To accomplish this promise Sarah persuaded 
him to take her Egyptian maid as a concu¬ 
bine; but the act was both a proof of his yet 
defective trust and of the evil of taking ac¬ 
complishments into his hands. Hagar’s 
insolence and Sarah’s jealousy drove the 
concubine to run away from her mistress. 
Hagar was ordered to return and to submit 
to Sarah. She became the mother of Ish- 
mael. 

III. And yet again the promise was re¬ 
newed when Abram was ninety-nine years 
old. God appeared to him, promised that 
Sarah should bear him a son, changed his 
name to Abraham, and gave him the cove- 






ABRAHAM 


8 


ABSOLUTION 


nant sign of circumcision. Still its fulfil¬ 
ment was delayed. Here occurred the touch¬ 
ing visit of the Jehovah Angel with two 
attendants to Abraham, their warning him 
of the impending destruction of Sodom, 
and his earnest, persistent plea in its 
behalf. It was a proof of his growth in 
faith and in a trusting confidence. Again, 
however, he shows his distrust when among 
the Philistines. Afraid of being deprived 
of her (despite God’s promise that Sarah 
should give him a son), he called her his 
sister, and King Abimelech sent and took 
her. God protected her, and warned the 
king of his error, who restored Sarah, with 
a just reproach to Abraham for his deceit. 
After this Sarah bore Abraham a son, and 
she called him Isaac, or Laughter, in refer¬ 
ence to Sarah’s laugh of joy when she heard 
the promise that she in her old age should 
have a son and also to his own happiness. 

IV. The last main period begins with the 
great trial of faith to which Abraham was 
subjected. He was tempted, was proved in 
the highest form in the command to offer up 
Isaac. How could the promise be fulfilled if 
Isaac was offered, and how could a human 
sacrifice be acceptable to the God of Life ? 
The command was couched in words which 
showed how precious Isaac must be: “ Take 
now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom 
thou lovest.” The Patriarch had learned 
that nothing could fail of all that Jeho¬ 
vah had promised, and he obeyed. His 
obedience and its result were thenceforth 
the very crown of faith and of the truth of 
God’s promises, and became the type of 
the sacrifice of His sinless Son upon the 
Cross. It was so wonderful a proof of His 
trust that the gift was given him that the 
spiritual blessing he had should be given to 
all nations upon earth, and the Son of 
Abraham is the heir of the world, by that 
act in verity upon the Cross, which was 
done by figure upon the altar in the Mount 
Moriah. It was done, it is well to note, 
when Isaac could understand what was to 
be transacted, and his obedience, therefore, 
must not be overlooked. Was it now that 
Abraham saw the day of Christ and was 
glad? 

Sarah died at an advanced age at Kerjath 
Arba, to which Abraham, removed from 
Beersheba, some time after the offering of 
Isaac. The whole account of the death, 
the purchase of a burying-place in the land 
which had all been given to him, his court¬ 
esy and stately mode of preferring his re¬ 
quest, and the high respect paid to him by 
the Hittites, and the simplicity of the whole 
narrative, make it one of the most touching 
passages in the record of his life. 

He lived nearly thirty years longer, and 
married Keturah. It was, perhaps, not, we 
should suppose, fit for so holy and exalted a 
ersonage,—one so blessed and prospered,— 
ut Abraham was living at a different era, 
with ideas current around him far other than 
those we are habitually using and living in. 


He is a person, to us, so conjoined to the 
faith that he displayed that we cannot think 
of him as a man who, in that Eastern life r 
needed the care of some woman’s hand to^ 
minister to him. At the age of a hundred 
and seventy-five years he died, and was 
buried by his sons, Isaac and Ishmael. 
Abraham is for us the type of the solitari¬ 
ness of the man of faith. Others, as Job, as 
Melchizedec, were servants of God and of 
great holiness, but he had still greater and 
more enduring blessings because of his faith. 
And this faith grew ; it was disciplined and 
developed. The clash between this faith 
and his conduct that occurs in his career 
was rather the result of not seeing how 
trustfulness must penetrate the lower planes 
of our daily life and work. He believed 
that God would not forsake him; still, the 
emergencies seemed so pressing that he 
deemed he must do something, and he acted 
as he did. The consequences bore evil fruit 
for him and his children in the first in¬ 
stance, as the Egyptian maid gave him so 
much trouble, and a thousand years later 
Ishmael sorely distressed Israel. And, too, 
the daily life and authority of a man of 
lordly means, while it was a constant proof 
of God’s blessing, tended to withdraw him 
from the finer, subtler interconnection of his 
religious life with the slightest parts of his 
daily life. But this he evidently outgrew. 
Again, to him we owe our salvation. To 
him, more than to any one man, we owe our 
Christian privileges. The children of Abra¬ 
ham (according the faith he had, before cir¬ 
cumcision) we are heirs with him of the 
world, not only of this visible, but of the 
world unseen. Erom him came the Lord 
Jesus Christ, through whom he, as well 
as we, received all the promises, and in whom 
they are fulfilled. 

The more Abraham’s life and conduct are 
studied the more thoroughly human do they 
appear. He was a great man, endowed with 
large capacities, with deeply religious and 
meditative characteristics, with power of 
will to rise to the height of the demands 
made upon him, and with a loving and a 
sympathetic strain throughout. His abili¬ 
ties and weight were early acknowledged by 
the peoples in whose neighborhood he dwelt. 
It was only by deep pondering and prayer 
that he could have been strengthened to 
meet the discipline God put upon him. The 
influence Sarah had over him and his deep 
affection for Isaac are proof enough of that 
best of all domestic bonds,—a loving nature. 

Absolute. In theology, a perfect unalter¬ 
able condition, e.g., Divine goodness is abso¬ 
lute ; so Divine justice and mercy, without 
imperfection or defect. The absolute gift 
of redemption will be at the resurrection. 
Its gift is conditional here and now. 

Absolution. The authoritative act of 
declaring God’s forgiveness of a penitent. 
Cf. P. B., “Hath given power and com¬ 
mandment to His ministers to declare and 
pronounce to His people being penitent the 






ABSOLUTION 


9 


ABSOLUTION 


absolution and remission of their sins. He 
pardoneth and absolveth all those who truly 
repent and unfeignedly believe His Holy 
Word.” The use of this authority is con¬ 
fined only to the bishops and the priests. It 
is formed upon the authority our Lord gave 
His Church (St. Matt. xvi. 19, xviii. 18; 
St. John xx. 23). A charge thrice repeated 
at different times, first while preparing the 
Apostles for their work and then immedi¬ 
ately after His resurrection. It is an inte¬ 
gral part of the ministry of the Church 
to men, as it is involved in the sacraments 
of Baptism and the Eucharist. But its 
practical use was also long before involved 
in all sacrifices in the Levitical dispensation ; 
and a notable instance of the declaration of 
absolution is in Nathan’s reply to King 
David,—“The Lord also hath put away 
thy sin” (2 Sam. xii. 13). Our Lord mak¬ 
ing all forgiveness flow from His own person 
pronounced His absolution authoritatively. 
“Son, thy sins be forgiven thee. . . . That 
ye may know that the Son of man hath power 
on earth to forgive sins.” So to the sinful 
woman, “ Thy sins are forgiven.” Then it 
was a development into Christian use of the 
germ which lay in the Mosaic dispensation, 
and was ordained by our Lord for the 
comfort of His own. As all power is His 
in heaven and in earth, and as He is ever 
with His Church to the end of the world, 
and has by a direct gift of the Holy 
Ghost for that end endowed the Apos- 
tolate with the Commission, it must be of 
continuous and continual use in His Church. 

“ The special acts or ways in which the 
ministers of Christ are commissioned or 
authorized to exemplify this their power of 
retaining or remitting sins appear to be four 
acts of the ministry whereby the benefit of 
absolution is ordinarily dispensed unto men. 

“ The power of administering the two sac¬ 
raments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper 
to all such as are qualified to receive them, 
which is, therefore, called £ sacramental 
absolution.’ 

“ The power of declaring or publishing the 
terms or conditions upon which the Gospel 
promises pardon and remission of sins, 
which is called the ‘ declaratory absolution 
of the word and doctrine.’ 

“ The power of interceding with God for 
pardon of sins through the merits of Christ, 
which is the ‘ absolution of prayer.’ 

“ The power of executing Church disci¬ 
pline and censures upon delinquents, which 
consists in excluding flagitious and scan¬ 
dalous sinners from the communion of the 
Church, and receiving penitents again into 
her communion when they have given just 
evidence of a sincere repentance. 

“ In these four acts, regularly exercised, 
consists the ministerial power of retaining 
or remitting sins, so far as the delegated 
authority of man can be concerned in it.” 
(Bingh. Chr. Ant., bk. viii.) 

“ The minister can only lend his mouth or 
his hand toward the external act of absolu¬ 


tion ; but he cannot absolve internally, much 
less the unqualified sinner. Christ Him¬ 
self has assured us, that unless men repent, 
they must inevitably perish ; and that unless 
they forgive men their trespasses, their 
heavenly Father will not forgive them 
their trespasses. Now, it would be absurd 
to think, after this, that a sinner who per¬ 
forms neither of these conditions should, 
notwithstanding, be pardoned by God, con¬ 
tinuing impenitent still; and only because 
he chances surreptitiously to be loosed on 
earth by some error or fraud, that, therefore, 
he should be also most certainly loosed in 
heaven. This were to imagine one of the 
vainest things in the world, that Christ, 
to make His priests’ words true, would make 
His own words false, as they must needs be 
if any outward absolution, given by a falli¬ 
ble and mistaken man, could translate an 
impenitent sinner into the kingdom of 
heaven.” (Bingh. Chr. Ant., bk. iii.) 

The very formal words which our Church 
requires to be used in the ordination of 
a minister are these: “Whose sins thou 
dost forgive, they are forgiven ; and whose 
sins thou dost retain, they are retained.” 
(The Form of Ordering of Priests.) We ac¬ 
knowledge most willingly that the principal 
part of the priest’s ministry is exercised in 
the matter Df “forgiveness of sins,”—the 
question only is of the manner, how this part 
of their function is executed by them, and 
of the bounds and limits thereof. 

That we may therefore give unto the 
priest the things that are the priest’s, and to 
God the things that are God’s, and not 
communicate unto any creature the power 
that properly belongs to the Creator, who 
“ will not give His glory unto another” 
(Isaiah xlviii. 11), we must, in the first 
place, lay this down for a sure ground, that 
to forgive sins properly, directly, and abso¬ 
lutely, is a privilege only appertaining unto 
the Most High. “ I, even I, am He that 
blotteth out any transgressions for mine 
own sake, and will not remember thy sins” 
(Isaiah xliii. 25). “ Who is a God like 

unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity ?” says 
the prophet Micah (vii. 18); which in effect 
is the same with that of the scribes (Mark 
ii. 7, and Luke v. 21).: “ Who can for¬ 

give sins but God alone?” And there¬ 
fore, when David says unto God, “Thou 
forgavest the iniquity of my sins” (Ps. 
xxxii. 5), Gregory, surnamed the Great, 
the first Bishop of Rome of that name, 
thought this to be a sound paraphrase of 
his words: “Thou, who alone sparest, who 
alone forgivest sins. For who can forgive 
sins but God alone ?” (Gregor. Exposit. 
xi., Ps. Poenit.) Irenaeus tells us that our 
Saviour in this place, “forgiving sins, 
did both cure the man and manifestly dis¬ 
cover who He was. For if none,” says 
he, “ can forgive sins but God alone, and 
our Lord did forgive them, and cured 
them, it is manifest that He was the Word 
of God made the Son of man; and that, as 





ABSOLUTION 


10 


ABSOLUTION 


man, He was touched with compassion of us, 
as God He hath mercy on us, and for- 
giveth us our debts which we do owe unto 
our Maker” (Irenaeus, adv. Hasres., lib. v. 
cap. 17). Tertullian (lib. iv. adv. Marcion, 
cap. 10) says, that “ when the Jews, be¬ 
holding only His humanity, and not being 
yet certain of His deity, did deservedly rea¬ 
son that a man could not forgive sins, but 
God alone, He, by answering of them, that 
‘the Son of man had authority to forgive 
sins/ would by this remission of sins have 
them call to mind that He was ‘that only 
Son of man prophesied of in Daniel, who 
received power of judging, and thereby also 
of forgiving sins’” (Dan. vii. 13,14). St. 
Ambrose also observes, upon the history of 
the woman taken in adultery (John viii. 9), 
that “Jesus being about to pardon sin, 
remaineth alone. For it is not the ambas¬ 
sador,” says he, “ nor the messenger, but 
the Lord Himself that hath saved His 
people. He remaineth alone, because it can¬ 
not be common to any man with Christ 
to forgive sins. This is the office of Christ 
alone, who ‘ taketh away the sin of the 
world’ ” (Ambros. Epist. Ixxvi., ad. Stu- 
dium). So, too, St. Chrysostom is careful 
to preserve God’s privilege entire, by often 
interposing such sentences as these: “ None 
can forgive sins but God alone” (Chrys- 
ost. in 2 Cor. iii., Horn. vi.). “To forgive 
sins belongeth to no other” ( Id. in John 
viii., Horn, liv., ed. Graec., vel liii., Latin). 
“ To forgive sins is possible to God only” 
(Id. in 1 Cor. xv , Horn. xl.). “ God alone 

doth this; which also He worketh in the 
washing of the new birth” (Id. ib.). Whence 
it is seen that the work of cleansing the soul 
is wholly God’s, and the minister hath no 
hand at all in effecting any part of it. 
Having thus, therefore, reserved unto God 
His sacred rights, we give unto His under¬ 
officers their due, when we “account of 
them as of the ministers of Christ, and 
stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Cor. 

iv. 1, 2), not as lords, that have power to 
dispose of spiritual graces as they please 
(Chrysost. in 1 Cor. iv., Horn, x.), but as 
servants that are bid to follow their master’s 
prescriptions therein (Id. in 2 Cor. iv., Horn, 
viii. circa init.) ; and in following thereof 
do but bring their external ministry, for 
which itself also they are beholden to God’s 
mercy and goodness, God conferring the 
inward blessing of His Spirit thereupon, 
when and where He will. “ Who then is 
Paul ?” says St. Paul, “ and who is Apollos, 
but ministers by whom ye believed, even 
as the Lord gave to every man?” (1 Cor. 
iii. 5.) “Therefore,” says Optatus (lib. 

v. ), “in all the servants there is no do¬ 
minion but a ministry.” “ It is He who is 
believed that giveth the things which is be¬ 
lieved, not he by whom we do believe” 
(Id. ib. Similiter et Chrysost. in 1 Cor. iii., 
Horn. viii.). Whereas our Saviour then 
said unto His apostles, “ Receive the Holy 
Ghost ; whose sins you forgive shall be 


forgiven” (John xx.). St. Bazil (lib. v. 
adv. Eunom, p. 113, ea. Graeco-Latin), Am¬ 
brose (de Spir. Sanct., lib. iii. cap. 19), Au¬ 
gustine (contra Epist. Parmenian, lib. ii. 
cap. ii. et Horn, xxiii. Ex. 50), Chrysostom 
(in 2 Cor. iii., Horn, vi.), and Cyril. Alex- 
and. (in Joh., lib. xii. cap. 56), make this 
observation thereupon : that this is not their 
work properly, but the work of the Holy 
Ghost, who remitteth by them, and therein 
performeth the work of the true God. “ For, 
indeed,” says St. Cyril (Id. ib.), “it be¬ 
longeth to the true God alone to be able to 
loose men from their sins. For who else 
can free the transgressors - of the law from 
sin but He who is the author of the law 
itself?” “The Lord,” says St. Augus¬ 
tine (Horn, xxiii. Ex. 50), “ was to give 
unto men the Holy Ghost ; and He 
would have it to be understood, that by 
the Holy Ghost Himself sins should be 
forgiven to the faithful, and not that by the 
merits of men’s sins should be forgiven. 
For what art thou, O man, but a sick man 
that hast need to be healed ? Wilt thou be 
a physician to me? Seek the physician 
together with me.” So St. Ambrose (de 
Spir. Sanct., lib. iii. cap. 19), “ Behold, that 
by the Holy Ghost sins are forgiven. But 
men to the remission of sins bring their 
ministry; they exercise not the authority 
of any power.” St. Chrysostom, though he 
makes this to be the exercise of a great 
power, yet in the main accords fully with 
St. Ambrose, that “ it remains in God 
alone to bestow the things wherein the 
priest’s service is employed” (Id. in Joh. 
xx. Horn, lxxxvi., ed. G-rsec., vol. lxxxv. 
Latin). “And what speak I of priests?” 
says he (Id. ib.). “ Neither angel nor arch¬ 

angel can do aught in those things which 
are given by God ; but the Father and 
the Son and the Holy Ghost do dispense 
all. The priest lendeth his tongue, and 
putteth to his hand.” “ His part only is 
to open his mouth; but it is God that 
worketh all” (Id. in 2 Tim., cap. i. Horn, 
xi.). And the reasons whereby both he and 
Theophylact (Id. in Joh. viii., Horn, liv., 
Grsec., vel liii., Latin) after him do prove 
that the priests of the law had no power to 
forgive sins, are of as great force to take the 
same power from the ministers of the Gospel. 
First, because (Theophylact in Joh. viii.) it 
is God’s part only to forgive sins, which is 
the moral that Haymo (Halberstat in Evang. 
Domin., xv., post Pentecost) makes of that 
part of the history of the Gospel, wherein 
the lepers are cleansed by our Saviour 
before they be commanded to show them¬ 
selves unto the priest, “because (Theophy¬ 
lact in Joh. viii.) the priests were servants, 
yea, servants of sin, and therefore had no 
power to forgive sins unto others ; but the 
Son is the Lord of the house, who was 
manifested to take away our sins, says St. 
John (1 John iii. 5).” Upon which saying 
of his, St. Augustine writes: “It is He in 
whom there is no sin that came to take away 






ABSOLUTION 


11 


ABSOLUTION 


sin. For if there had been sin in Him too, 
it must have been taken away from Him; 
He could not take it away Himself” (Au¬ 
gust., Tract, iv., in 1 John iii.). There then 
follows another part of the ministry of rec¬ 
onciliation, consisting in the due adminis¬ 
tration of the sacraments, which being the 
proper seals of the promises of the Gospel, 
as the censures are of the threats, must there¬ 
fore necessarily also have reference to the 
“remission of sins” (Acts ii. 38; Matt, 
xxvi. 28). And so we see the ancient fathers 
held that (Cyprian, Epist. lxxvi. sec. 4, ed. 
Pamelii, 8 Goulartii; Cyril. Alexand., in 
Joh., lib. xii. c. 56; Ambros. de Poenit. lib. 
i. c. 7 ; Chrysost. de Sacerdot., lib. iii. tom. 
vi., ed. Savil., p. 17, lin. 25 ; vide et tom. vii. 
p. 268, lin. 37) the commission, “ Whosoever 
sins remit, they are remitted unto them” 
(John xx. 23), is executed by the ministers 
of Christ, as well in the conferring of 
baptism as in the reconciling of peni¬ 
tents ; yet so in both these, and in all 
the sacraments likewise of both the tes¬ 
taments, that (August. Quaest. in Levit. 
clxxxiv.; Optat. lib. v. contra Donat.; Chrys¬ 
ost. in Matt, xxvi., Horn, lxxvii., edit. Graec., 
vel lxxxiii., Latin ; in 1 Cor. iii., Horn. viii.; 
et in 2 Tim. i., Horn. ii. circa finem) the 
ministry only is to be accounted man’s, but 
the power God’s. “For,” as St. Augus¬ 
tine observes, “ it is one thing to baptize by 
way of ministry, another thing to baptize 
by way of power” (Aug. in Evang. Joh., 
Tract, v.): “the power of baptizing the 
Lord retaineth to Himself, the ministry 
He hath given to His servants” ( Id . ib.): 
“ the power of the Lord’s baptism was to 
pass from the Lord to no man, but the 
ministr}’ was; the power was to be trans¬ 
ferred from the Lord unto none of His 
ministers; the ministry was both unto the 
good and unto the bad” {Id. ib.). And the 
reason which he assigns is, “ that the hope 
of the baptized might be in Him by whom 
they did acknowledge themselves to have 
been baptized. The Lord, therefore, would 
not have a servant to put his hope in a ser¬ 
vant” {Id. ib.). And therefore those school¬ 
men argued, “ It is a matter of equal power 
to baptize inwardly, and to absolve from 
mortal sin; but it was not fit that God 
should communicate the power of baptizing 
unto any, lest our hope should be reposed in 
man. Therefore, by the same reason, it was 
not fit that He should communicate the 
power of absolving from actual sin unto 
any” (Alexand. de Hales, Summ., part iv. 
quaest. xxi. Memb. i.). Our Saviour, 
therefore, must still have the privilege re¬ 
served unto Him of being the absolute Lord 
over His own house. It is sufficient for His 
officers that they be esteemed, as Moses was, 
“faithful in all His house as servants” (Heb. 
x. 5, 6). The place wherein they serve is a 
steward’s place ; and the Apostle tells them 
that “ it is required in stewards, that a man 
be found faithful” (Cor. iv. 2).. They may 
not, therefore, carry themselves in their office 


as the unjust steward did, and presume to 
strike out their Master’s debt without His 
direction, and contrary to His liking (Luke 
xvi. 6-8). But our Lord has given no au¬ 
thority unto His stewards to grant an acquit¬ 
tance unto any of His debtors that bring not 
unfeigned faith and repentance with them. 
“ Neither angel nor archangel” can; “ neither 
yet the Lord Himself (who alone can say, 

‘ I am with you’) when we have sinned, doth 
release us, unless we bring repentance with 
us,” writes St. Ambrose (Epist. xxviii. ad 
Theodosium Imp.); and Eligius, Bishop of 
hJoyon, in his sermon unto the penitents, 
“ Before all things, it is necessary you should 
know that howsoever you desire to receive 
the imposition of our hands, yet you cannot 
obtain the absolution of your sins before 
the divine piety shall vouchsafe to absolve 
you by the grace of compunction” (Eligius 
Noviamens, Horn. xi. tom. vii., Biblioth. 
Partr., p. 248, ed. Colon). To think, there¬ 
fore, that it lies in the power of any priest 
truly to absolve a man from his sins, with¬ 
out implying the condition of his “ believing 
and repenting as he ought to do,” is both 
presumption and madness in the highest de¬ 
gree. 

And Cardinal Bellarmine, who censures 
this conditional absolution in us for idle and 
superfluous, is driven to confess that when 
the priest (Bellarmin, de Pcenitent., lib. ii. c. 

4, sect, penult.) says, “ I absolve thee,” he 
“ doth not affirm that he doth absolve abso¬ 
lutely, as not being ignorant that it may 
many ways come to pass that he doth not 
absolve, although he pronounce those words; 
namely, if he who seemeth to receive this 
sacrament” (for so they call it) “ peradven- 
ture hath no intention to receive it, or is not 
rightly disposed, or putteth some block in the 
way. Therefore the minister,” says he, “ sig¬ 
nified nothing else by those words but that 
he, as much as in him lieth, conferred the 
sacrament of reconciliation or absolution, 
which, in a man rightly disposed, hath vir¬ 
tue to forgive all his sins.” 

“ Evil and wicked, carnal, natural, and 
devilish men,” says St. Augustine (de Bap¬ 
tism, contra Donatist., lib. iii. cap. ult.), 
“ imagine those things to be given unto 
them by their seducers, which are only the 
gifts of God, whether sacraments or any 
other spiritual works concerning their pres¬ 
ent salvation.” But such as are thus de¬ 
ceived ought to listen to this grave admo¬ 
nition of St. Cyprian (de Laps., sec. 7, ed. 
Pamel, 14 Goulart): “ Let no man deceive, 
let no man beguile himself; it is the Lord 
alone that can show mercy. He alone can 
grant pardon to the sins committed against 
Him, who did Himself bear our sins, who 
suffered grief for us, whom God did deliver 
for our sins. Man cannot be greater than 
God, neither can the servant by his indul¬ 
gence remit or pardon that which by heinous 
trespass is committed against the Lord ; 
lest to him that is fallen this yet be added as 
a further crime, if he be ignorant of that 




ABSTINENCE 


12 


ACROSTIC TSALMS 


which is said, ‘ Cursed is the man that put- 
teth his trust in man.’ ” Whereupon St. 
Augustine (in Evang. Joh., Tract, y.) writes, 
that good ministers do consider that “they 
are but ministers; they would not he held 
forjudges; they abhor that any trust should 
he put in them; and that the power of re¬ 
mitting and retaining sins is committed unto 
the Church, to he dispensed therein, “hut 
according to the arbitrament of God” (Id. 
de Baptism, contra Donatist., lib. iii. c. 18). 
Repentance from dead works is one of the 
foundations and principles of the doctrine 
of Christ (Ileb. vi. 1). “ Nothing maketh 

repentance certain hut the hatred of sin 
and the love of God” (August. Serm. vii., 
de Tempore). And without true repent¬ 
ance all the priests under heaven are not able 
to give us a discharge from our sins and de¬ 
liver us from the wrath to come. “ Except 
ye be converted, ye shall not enter into the 
kingdom of heaven” (Matt, xviii. 3). “Ex¬ 
cept ye repent, ye shall all perish” (Luke 
xiii. 3,5), is the Lord’s saying in the New 
Testament. And in the Old, “ Repent, and 
turn from all your transgressions; so iniquity 
shall not be your ruin. Cast away from you 
all your transgressions, whereby ye have 
transgressed, and make you a new heart and 
a new spirit; for why will ye die, O house 
of Israel?” (Ezek. xviii. 30, 31). (Dr. 
Stephens’s Notes to Book of Common 
Prayer.) 

Abstinence. A reduction of food for the 
sake of self-discipline. It implies a certain 
degree of voluntariness on the part of him 
who practices it, and also a power to deter¬ 
mine how far he will or will not abstain. It 
is not to be confounded with fasting, though 
it is so often. As for total abstinence, i.e. 
from “alcoholic liquids,” no Christian can 
take the vow in its fullest sense, as he must 
receive for his soul’s health the Holy Com¬ 
munion. But St. Paul gives us the only 
true principle in, “It is good neither to 
eat flesh nor to drink wine, nor anything 
whereby thy brother stumbleth or is offended 
or is made weak.” 

Accidents. This term of ancient philos¬ 
ophy, which referred to the changeable parts 
of matter, as form, color, taste, as opposed to 
substance, proper, and the immutable prop¬ 
erties of matter, was appropriated by later 
mediaeval theologians to the alleged change 
in the elements after consecration at the 
Eucharist. The “species,” or “accidents,” 
were said to remain of bread and wine, but 
the substance was transubstantiated. It was 
a mere subterfuge for a logical difficulty in 
endeavoring to explain what is given us as a 
mystery. 

Accommodation. A word used to express 
the manner in which Divine teachings con¬ 
vey and adapt Divine truths to our compre¬ 
hension. These, it is evident, must be fitted 
to the capacity, development, and circum- ( 
stances of those receiving these truths. 
Abraham, with his surroundings, could not 
receive what was given to David, or Isaiah, 


or Daniel, though he was the Father of the 
Faithful. So, again, the use of parables is 
an instance of accommodation. But, again, 
it is an accommodation to our limited power 
to speak to us of God’s anger or jealousy, or 
that His Eye is upon us, His Hand upholds 
us. It would be impossible for us to under¬ 
stand many things revealed to us of God 
without some such accommodation from 
Him. But while fitted to our dwarfed power, 
yet they are themselves truths, which we are 
gradually enabled to understand better and 
to throw aside grosser, materialistic concep¬ 
tions which the mere words would teach. 
Another form of accommodation is in the 
gradual additions to the fundamental ele¬ 
mentary truths first revealed. Eve received 
a prophecy of Christ, but a fuller one 
was given to Abraham, and a still fuller to 
David, and so on. We practice this mode, 
rather of development than of accommoda¬ 
tion, in teaching children. So St. Paul gave 
the Corinthians milk rather than meat. But 
a positive accommodation perverts the truth 
and therefore it -.is inadmissible, and any 
attempt to explain difficult passages upon 
such a principle must be condemned. 

Acephali (without ahead). Certain here¬ 
tics who separated from the Church, follow¬ 
ing Nestorius, or who held Eutychian prin¬ 
ciples and were condemned by the Synod at 
Constantinople 536 a.d. The Church in 
Cyprus was acephalous, not being under the 
jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Antioch. 
So, too, priests who refused to be under a 
bishop were said to be acephali. 

Acolyte. A sub-officer assisting in Divine 
service in the Latin and Greek Churches. 
His duty is to light the candles, hand the 
bread and wine, the water, etc., to the priest. 
In the Greek Church it is another name for 
a sub-deacon. In the English Church, before 
the Reformation, the name was corrupted 
into Collet. 

Acrostic Psalms. Certain Psalms in 
Holy Scripture begin with the several suc¬ 
cessive letters of the alphabet, each stanza 
beginning with each letter in its order. 
There are twelve such poems in the Old 
Testament: Psalms xxv., xxxiv., xxxvii., 
cxi., cxii., cxix., cxlv., a part of Prov. xxxi., 
Lamentations i.-iv. But Psalm cxix. is 
the most remarkable of these compositions. 
It is divided into twenty-two sections, of 
eight couplets each; each division begin¬ 
ning with that letter of the alphabet in its 
order, and every couplet in the division be¬ 
ginning with the letter of its division, e.g. y 
the first division begins with Ashre , etc., 
and each couplet begins with the letter A. 
Psalms xxv., xxxiv., and cxv. are of twenty- 
two stanzas each, the first line only of each 
couplet being acrostical. Psalm xxxvii. is 
in twenty quatrains, the first line of each 
quatrain being acrostical. Psalms cxi. and 
cxii. are of twenty-two lines each, and each 
line begins with a new letter in alphabetical 
order. But Proverbs xxxi. is in twenty- 
two couplets; Lamentations chs. i. ii. in 





ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 


13 


ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 


twenty-two triplets, the first line of each 
triplet being acrostical. Lamentations ch. 
iii. is in twenty-two triplets, each triplet being 
in each line acrostical, while Lamentations 
ch. iv. is in twenty-two couplets, each couplet, 
in its first line, being acrostical. These re¬ 
markable poems exhibit well the rhythmical 
and antithetical character of Hebrew poetry, 
and its peculiar style of parallelisms. 

Acts of the Apostles (The). Probably St. 
Luke did not give any title to his work fur¬ 
ther than would be implied in the term b} T 
which he designates this gospel,—“ the for¬ 
mer treatise” (Acts i. 1). In this, then, as 
in nearly all the other books of the Bible, 
there was no title or name supplied or pre¬ 
fixed by the writer. And as the heading 
Acts of the Apostles does not literally con¬ 
form to the contents of the history, it would 
be better to give it its truer meaning, “ Prac¬ 
tice of the Apostles,” which is probably 
nearer the idea intended by those who sup¬ 
plied the title. For the treatise only records, 
and, too, partially records, the Acts and the 
Practice of four Apostles, SS. Peter, John, 
Paul, and Barnabas, with scarcely more than 
a reference to St. James. In fact, SS. John 
and Barnabas appear only in connection 
with, or in relation to, SS. Peter and Paul. 
The history, then, may be considered as 
the inspired record of what should be the 
Apostolic policy and practice historically 
illustrated by the actions of these represen¬ 
tative Apostles; also as unfolding the ex¬ 
pansion of the Gospel from Jerusalem to 
Samaria, and thence to the Gentiles ; as be¬ 
side in a peculiar way declaring the control¬ 
ling power of the ascended Lord Jesus. 

It is no lessening of the authenticity and 
inspired accuracy of St. Luke to suppose 
that he may have used written documents, 
easily accessible to one so situated as him¬ 
self, for his earlier facts, and to have re¬ 
corded what came within his own personal 
knowledge later in his attendance on St. 
Paul. But the whole tone of the Acts im¬ 
plies that though he may not have taken an 
active part, yet he was not only an eye-wit¬ 
ness of the general course of the events he rec¬ 
ords, but had intimate relations with some of 
the principal actors. The minute touches in 
his narrative prove this, e.g., the description 
of St. Stephen before the.Sanhedrim, and the 
spirited condensation of his speech ; the men¬ 
tion of significant surnames ; the detailed 
account of St. Peter’s deliverance from 
prison, and his reception at the house of 
Mary, the mother of Mark, whose surname 
is John. Even the narrative of the conver¬ 
sion of Cornelius renders it probable that he 
was one of the brethren who went with St. 
Peter from Joppa to Caesarea. Of course 
in the journeys of St. Paul we have the 
record of an actual companionship, though 
St. Luke was often separated from the Apos¬ 
tle by the exigencies of the mission work, as 
is clearly marked by the pronoun “ we ” used 
in many places, and then (when St. Luke 
was away) dropped for “ they.” 


The plan of the book, while the narrative 
passes on in a perfectly natural way from 
event to event, is not always evident to ordi¬ 
nary readers. But when we remember that 
the Holy Spirit caused certain facts to be 
set down, and others seemingly even more 
important to be omitted, and that there is no 
waste or uncertainty in His purposes, His 
purpose, we may reverently say, is to record 
the work given to the Church to do, not the 
achievements of His servants. With this 
clue we can well see that it is an outline, 
sufficient, clear, definite, but very concise, 
of the work to be done, of the lines upon 
which the future officers in the Church were 
to move forward. It contains in its history 
the true solution of the problems which can 
be presented to the Church in the several 
epochs of her career. It is (to borrow the 
illustration of Bishop Wordsworth) the jour¬ 
nal of the movements, directed by the Cap¬ 
tain of our Salvation, of His officers leading 
His army to its final victory. The Apostles 
had much the same difficulties to encounter. 
And their mode of surmounting obstacles and 
their strategy and tactics are lessons to us in 
the present day. The plan of the Acts is 
simply a development of our Lord’s direc¬ 
tion, “ But ye shall receive power, after that 
the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and ye 
shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jeru¬ 
salem and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and 
unto the uttermost part of the earth.” 

Beginning with the Ascension (ch. i. 1-12), 
St. Luke goes on to record the continuance 
of the company of the one hundred and 
twenty faithful in prayer and supplication 
(vs. 13, 14), and the election of Matthias into 
the place of Judas (vs. 15-26); then the 
wondrous outpouring of the Holy Ghost 
(ch. ii. 1-4), and the attention it attracted, 
and the resulting conversion of the three 
thousand (vs. 5-41). Thereupon he describes 
the practice of the new community (vs. 42- 
47). Chapter iii. narrates the miracle of 
healing the lame beggar at Solomon’s Gate, 
and St. Peter’s appeal, and ch. iv. the arrest 
and imprisonment by “ the priests, the Cap¬ 
tain of the Temple, and the Sadducees,” with 
St. Peter’s manly boldness, and their dis¬ 
missal (vs. 1-22), and the thanksgiving, and 
their renewed courage by the grace of the 
Holy Ghost (vs. 23-31). Then the commu¬ 
nity life is described (vs. 32-37), with the 
stern retribution that fell upon Ananias and 
Sapphira (ch. v. 1-11); the continued growth 
of the Church through the signs and wonders 
wrought by the Apostles (vs. 12-16); the in¬ 
dignation this produced in the Jewish rulers; 
the arrest of the Apostles and their defense ; 
the private consultation and the counsel 
given by Gamaliel; their illegal stripes and 
release (vs. 17-42). 

Then the narrative relates for us another 
step in the Church’s development. It has 
nearly outgrown the swathing-bands of a 
mere community life. The increase of their 
number demanded a new arrangement for 
the government of the rapidly-growing 





ADMONITION 


16 


ADMONITION 


conformity to the doctrine, discipline, and 
worship of the Protestant Episcopal Church. 

It is not meant that a godly admonition 
or a godly judgment should be a perfectly 
holy and perfectly just admonition or judg¬ 
ment such as God Himself would give, be¬ 
cause the admonition and judgment, being 
human, must necessarily partake of human 
infirmity and imperfection. Neither does it 
mean that such an admonition or judgment 
will be such as shall be sustained by process 
of law, because decisions of law are ever 
varying both in time and place, and the 
conflict of laws is a fact recognized by the 
most eminent jurists. 

Neither does it mean that such an ad¬ 
monition and judgment shall always be 
wise and productive, for as “ to err is 
human,” so Bishops are not exempt from 
such errancy, and with the most devout 
aspirations and earnest endeavors to do 
right they may yet miss the marks of wis¬ 
dom and prudence. But it does mean that 
when a Bishop under the realizing sense of 
his consecration vows to “banish and drive 
away from the Church all erroneous and 
strange doctrine contrary to God’s Word,” 
and “both privately and openly call upon 
and encourage others to do the same,” and 
“ diligently exercise such discipline as by the 
authority of God’s Word and by the order of 
this Church is commended to Him does, on 
questions of conduct which he believes to be 
reprehensible or on points of ritual of doubt¬ 
ful interpretation and authority, give his 
official admonition and judgment touching 
these things, it is the duty of the clergy to 
reverently obey such godly admonition and 
submit themselves to such godly judgment. 
Yet this submission to obedience does not 
debar them the privilege or weaken the duty 
of testing the right of the clergy to their 
course and views by the process of Canon 
Law. For such admonition and judgment 
but takes the place of a temporary injunc¬ 
tion in civil law, whereby a course of con¬ 
duct is arrested and made stationary until 
judicial decision shall be had in the premises. 
So in these cases, if the clergyman feels ag¬ 
grieved by the admonition of the Bishop or 
that he has been wronged by the judgment, 
he has redress in law. The ecclesiastical 
courts are open to him, and questions of fact, 
of interpretation, of issue, can be then and 
there settled. 

Bishop Mant, in his “ Discourses upon the 
Church and Her Ministrations,” says in 
reference to these words: “The rule and 
limits of the respect and deference due may 
be judged to be that in all matters of 
spiritual or ecclesiastical concern, in all 
matters which affect the welfare of religion 
or of the Church, it is the duty of the- clergy 
to comply with the advice and to acquiesce 
in the. decision of their Ordinary, unless his 
authority be suspended by a paramount or 
superior power. If the Law of God or 
the law of the country clearly and indis¬ 
putably prescribe a different course, their 


authority surpasses that of the Bishop and 
ought to be preferred. If neither of these 
authorities clearly interferes with it, then I 
apprehend they concur in sustaining and 
supporting it, and it becomes the duty of 
the clergy to follow with a glad mind and 
will the admonition of their lawful governor, 
though abstractedly their inclinations may 
lead them in a different course, and to sub¬ 
mit their judgment to the judgment of their 
official superior, though abstractedly they 
may not be convinced of the correctness of 
his decision.” (The Church and Her Minis¬ 
trations, p. 236.) “ It may be noted also,” 

says Dean Comber, “that the candidates 
promise gladly to obey ) that is, readily and 
willingly, without murmuring or too nice 
disputing, unless the thing enjoined be 
notoriously evil; for to be very scrupulous 
proceeds from the pride of inferiors and 
tends to overthrow the superior’s authority. 
Yet this doth not give superiors any un¬ 
limited powers to command anything that 
is evil, for they only promise to obey their 
godly admonitions , so that such as govern 
in the Church must take heed they do not 
enjoin anything but that which is either 
good in itself or apparently tends to pro¬ 
mote piety and virtue and is not evil.” (On 
the Ordination Offices, p. 214.) Canon James 
(Comment on the Ordination Services, p. 
270) says “ The Episcopal admonition which 
the clergy are to follow, and the like judg¬ 
ments to which they are to’submit them¬ 
selves, must be ‘godly admonitions’ and 
‘ godly judgments.’ Now this caution by 
which the vow is accompanied, like every 
other cautionary counsel and guarded com¬ 
mand given by the Church, is used not as 
doubting either the godliness of the Bishop 
or the due obedience of his clergy, but be¬ 
cause this or any other vow is required to 
be solemnly made, and because all the ser¬ 
vices, and particularly the ordination ser¬ 
vices, are written as unto fallible men, and 
there can be no sound legislation either in 
Church or State where all is not based on this 
principle. The framers, therefore, of these 
services wisely so acted. They remembered 
that St. Paul scrupled not to avow of himself 
that he was a man of like passions, as well 
with those he ordained as with those among 
whom he ministered. A frank avowal this 
that he was liable to error. It is only in 
this view of the case that the term can be 
considered appropriate, for to suppose that 
the admonitions of a Bishop to be other than 
godly would appear impossible, and it is 
equally impossible to conceive otherwise of 
his judgment in matters of religion than 
that it should be godly according to the 
written Word of God declared in His Gos¬ 
pel and adopted by the Church.” 

The venerable BishopWhite, in his “Com¬ 
ment on the Ordination Offices,” a book 
unanimously approved by the whole House 
of Bishops in 1833, speaking of these prom¬ 
ises, after stating that these “ godly admoni¬ 
tions must have respect to some standard by 






ADONAI 


17 


ADOPTION 1ST 


which they are directed, and that this"stand¬ 
ard must be the various established institu¬ 
tions of the Church and not the private 
opinions of the Bishop,” he adds, “ that in¬ 
judicious or even impertinent interference 
is possible ought not to be denied, and can¬ 
not be justified.” But there are two de¬ 
scriptions of cases in which no such censure 
is applicable. One is where an offense against 
morals, the other where an offense against 
order is the subject. In either of these cases 
indeed the admonition of the Bishop would 
be unseasonable unless the offense were no¬ 
torious and admitted, because he would be 
in danger of making himself an accuser 
when he is appointed to be a judge. But 
if either of the species of offense is acknowl¬ 
edged by the offending party, and especially 
if it be justified and persevered in, then is 
here claimed to the Bishop the right in ques¬ 
tion, not only on the ground of ecclesias¬ 
tical Jaw, but on that of the consent of the 
party in the answer to the question last read, 
which may be considered as a personal con¬ 
tract binding him to submission under re¬ 
proof for past fault, and to amendment 
under exhortation relative to the time to 
come. 

When, therefore, a Bishop acting as a 
Father in God of a family over which 
the Holy Ghost has made him overseer, 
moved by an honest and zealous love for 
God’s truth, and sustained by the specific 
decisions of the established and recognized 
Ecclesiastical tribunals of the Church of 
England, a Church from which ours has not 
departed “in any essential point of Doc¬ 
trine, Discipline, or Worship,” and by the 
decisions and Canons of our own Church, 
issues his admonition and gives his judg¬ 
ment upon questions of usage and ritual, es¬ 
pecially when the points objected to are in¬ 
novations upon the established services of 
this Church, as carried on since its founda¬ 
tion nearly a century ago, such admoni¬ 
tions and judgment are those recognized by 
the Ordinal as godly. They proceed from 
godly motives, are directed to godly ends, 
and concern things pertaining to the worship 
of God in His Holy Temple. 

To disobey, then, is an act of self-will and 
subversive of all authority. In the case of 
a Deacon, we see at once that subordination 
to the Presbyter which makes that Presbyter, 
specially the one under whom he serves, one 
of the chief ministers set over him, to whose 
admonitions and judgment he must conform 
himself as a true Diaconos ; and if to a Pres¬ 
byter set over him in a particular parish or 
missionary station, much more to his Bishop, 
to whose direction and authority he is canon¬ 
ically bound. 

Rt. Rev. Wm. Bacon Stevens, D.D., 

Bishop of Pennsylvania. 

Adonai. One of the titles of God ( q . u.) ; 
My Lord. It was pronounced by the 
Jews for the word Jehovah, which was 
only uttered by the priests in the sanctuary 
when blessing the people (Numb. vi. 22), 
2 


and by the High-Priest, on the Day of Atone¬ 
ment when before the mercy-seat. The true 
pronunciation was said to be lost. The Jews 
refuse, generally, to utter the “ Incommu¬ 
nicable Name,” and for it substituted the 
phrase Shem Hammephorash, i.e., the name 
of four letters, Yod He Yav He. The Alex¬ 
andrian translators of the Scriptures into 
Greek (Septuagint) used the word Kyrios as 
its equivalent, and thus it passed into the 
New Testament as the title of our Lord. 
The word Adon, Lord, is found in many 
names, as in Adonijah, Adonizebek, Nebuch- 
adon-ezer, and in Greek mythology the 
Syrian Adon is Adonis. 

Adoption. A term of Roman law which 
St. Paul used to express the relation of the 
Christian to his heavenly Father. The 
Roman law ran thus: “ When aliens were to 
be taken into a family or into the place of 
children, the ceremony was either before a 
praetor or before the people. If it were done 
through the praetor it was called adoption.” 
The parallel is accurate. Our adoption is 
not created by our will or choice, but is by 
the gift of God. We may choose whether 
we shall accept it, but it is still His gift, and 
not ours by any claim or merit. It is granted 
to us in and through our Lord Jesus 
Christ, therefore by His incarnation and 
the grace thereby accruing to the human 
race from Him. It is conveyed in baptism, 
and reversing the order of the verses, “ As 
many of you as have been baptized into 
Christ have put on Christ” (v. 27); 
“ For ye are all the children of God by 
faith in Christ Jesus” (v. 26), and then 
“ And if ye be Christ’s then are ye Abra¬ 
ham’s seed, and heirs according to the prom¬ 
ise” (Gal. iii. 29); and the Apostle proceeds 
in his argument (ch. iv. 4-7): “ But when 
the fulness of the time was come, God sent 
forth His Son, made of a woman, made under 
the law to redeem them that were under the 
law, that we might receive the adoption of 
sons. And because ye are sons, God hath 
sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your 
hearts, crying Abba, Father. Wherefore 
thou art no more a servant, but a son ; and 
if a son, then an heir of God through 
Christ.” So, too, in the Apostle’s argument 
in the eighth chapter of Romans. St. Paul 
uses the word adoption in Rom. viii. 15, 23, 
ix. 4; Gal. iv. 5; and Ephesians i. 5. 

Adoptionist. Heresy. A heresy which 
taught that Christ was not the Son of 
God by His eternal generation, but by 
adoption. It was broached as early as the 
later Arian controversies, 380 a.d., but did 
not take a distinct shape, though combated 
by the early fathers (as Ambrose, Gregory, 
Naz. Ep. ad Cled., i.), till the eighth century, 
and in Spain, Elipandus, Archbishop of 
Toledo, and Felix, Bishop of Urgel. It 
was probably hit upon by Elipandus as a the¬ 
ory to conciliate the Mohammedans among 
whom his province was placed. Felix was 
a subject of Charlemagne. They taught 
that Christ Jesus as man was adopted, 





ADORATION 


18 


ADUOWSON 


though as the Word of God eternally be¬ 
gotten, thus practically dividing the Person 
of Christ, for they denied that the man 
Christ Jesus from the beginning of His 
Incarnation perfectly united with the Word 
the eternal and only-begotten Son of God. 
It was but another form of Nestorianism. 
Several theologians at once combated it, as 
Beatus and Bishop Etherius, of Osma, but 
Charlemagne sent for Alcuin, who refuted 
the heresy in several works and letters 
written both to Eelix and to Elipandus, 
founding his argument not only upon the 
opposing silence of Scripture, but upon the 
contradiction in the nature of the Unity of 
Person in Christ, that He could be the Son 
of God by nature and the Son of God by 
adoption. His two natures cannot make 
Him two Sons, for they are perfectly con¬ 
joined in His one Person. 

Eelix recanted his heresy at the Council 
at Ratisbon, 792 a.d., but was sent to Rome 
by Charlemagne, where he had to make 
a second still more formal abjuration of his 
error in full orthodox terms, but when he 
regained his diocese he relapsed. Being 
summoned anew, and his tenets condemned 
at Frankfort (796 a.d.), he sought refuge 
with Elipandus within the Mohammedan 
rule. Adoptionism was again condemned at 
Friule (796 a.d.). 

The heresy was condemned again at Aix- 
la-Chapelle, 799 a.d., and was abjured bv 
Eelix, but Elipandus steadily adhered to it 
to the last. They sought in vain to prove 
their error by appeals to the Liturgy, which 
appeals are valuable to us now as settling 
the date of parts of the Mozarabic Liturgy. 

Adoration. A synonym for devout, rev¬ 
erent worship. Its origin is from the Latin 
manus ad os mittere , to put the hand to 
the mouth in token of silent awe. It is used 
exclusively to mean the worship paid to 
God, and is in act both outward and in¬ 
ward; outward in such kneeling or bowing 
and singing or speaking words of praise ; 
interior, of the heart and mind in such de¬ 
vout affections as raise the soul in adoring 
thought. The outward is empty form if it 
be not conjoined and informed by the inter¬ 
ior adoration, which make it acceptable as a 
personal offering to God. 

Adultery. Criminal intercourse of a mar¬ 
ried person of either sex with another of the 
other sex, whether married or not. The 
liioral sin of adultery is implied in the in¬ 
spired words with which Adam received 
Eve, and is set forth in the Seventh Com¬ 
mandment. Christ confirmed the binding 
force of Adam’s declaration in emphatic 
terms (Mark x. 6-9), and expounded the 
force of the Commandment in His Sermon 
on the Mount (Matt. v. 27-32). In all 
countries the crime has been branded as a 
heinous one, and often and earlier was pun¬ 
ishable with death, and if the injured hus¬ 
band should slay the guilty parties flagrante 
delictu even now, the homicide does not 
receive the condemnation it should. Our 


Lord’s forgiveness of -the guilty woman 
(John viii. 11) is taken as a mitigation of 
the death-sentence under the Mosaic dispen¬ 
sation ; but the guilt of it, both as to the 
moral and spiritual death of the sinning ones, 
and as to the sin against society, is not there¬ 
by extenuated, and the severest enactments 
have always stood upon the Church’s Canon 
Law against the guilty parties. This and 
fornication are the only causes allowed by 
our Lord to justify divorce. It is a sin 
that is absolutely heinous in the sight of 
God and in His Law. But moral theolo¬ 
gians sometimes distinguish between degrees 
of heirrousness in reference to the destructive 
results to society. A petition against the 
sin stands in the English Prayer-book in the 
Litany, which petition has been softened by 
hardly equivalent phrases in the American 
form. 

Advent. There is no certainty of the 
date when the season of Advent was ap¬ 
pointed. The early Sacramentary of Leo I. 
does not mention any Sundays in Advent. 
The Comes of St. Jerome, and later the Sac¬ 
ramentary of Gelasius I. (496 a.d.), as¬ 
cribe Collects, Epistles, and Gospels to five 
Sundays in Advent. These documents are 
probably much interpolated. But Maximus 
of Tours (450 a.d.) makes the earliest cer¬ 
tain mention of Advent, and Csesarius of 
Arles (501-42 a.d.) has left the first set of 
Advent sermons we have (those ascribed to 
St. Ambrose and St. Augustine are spu¬ 
rious). In the Ambrosian and Mozarabic 
Liturgies the Advent season dates from St. 
Martin’s day (November 11), and includes 
forty days, which were accounted as a lesser 
fast among the religious. But the first of 
these five Sundays was really counted as pre¬ 
ceding the Sundays in Advent, so that there 
were only four Sundays counted. The Gal- 
lican Church (Maqon, 581 a.d.) ordered 
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to be ob¬ 
served as fasts in Advent, but the rule was 
disregarded. In the Prereformed English 
Uses, as in the Gallican and Mozarabic 
Rites, we find special Epistles and Gospels for 
these days. The observance of Advent in 
the Greek Church was probably much later, 
for Balsamon (1200 a.d.) says “the others 
(besides the Lenten fast), as the fast of the 
Nativity, are each of seven days only. Those 
monks who fast forty days, viz., from St. 
Philip (September 14), are bound to this by 
their rule. Such laics as do the like are to 
be praised therefor.” 

Advowson. The right, in England, of 
patronage to a church or an ecclesiastical 
benefice, and he who has the right of Advow¬ 
son is called the Patron of the Church, 
from his obligation to defend the rights of 
the Church from oppression and violence. 
For when lords of manors first built 
churches upon their own demesnes and ap¬ 
pointed the tithes of these manors to be paid 
to the officiating ministers which were before 
given to the clergy in common, the lord 
who thus built a church and endowed it 




JEON 


19 


AGENDA 


with glebe or land had, of common right, a 
power annexed of nominating such minister 
as he pleased (provided he were canonically 
qualified) to officiate in that church of 
which he was the founder, endower, main¬ 
tains, or, in one word, the patron. This 
patronage is heritable, and is subject to many 
curious and intricate rules. (Vide Burr s 
Ecclesiastical Law.) 

JEon. This is a word which has two sepa¬ 
rate uses; the true one, in connection with 
the future life and eternity, and the other, 
in which the Gnostics used it, personifying 
and deifying their imagined succession of 
ages. Borrowing some phrases from Chris¬ 
tian .Revelation and adding to them the 
wildest imaginings, the Gnostics, who were 
either Orientals or Egyptians, pretended to a 
deeper Gnosis than that the Apostles taught. 
Their origin must have been in the years 
nearly contemporary with the close of the 
Apostolic century, for we find Ignatius al¬ 
luding to this word shortly after the death 
of St. John. 

Aerians. A small sect, founded by 
Aerius, a Presbyter of Sebaste, about 355 
a.d. Aerius, it is said, was disappointed in 
not obtaining the Episcopate, and in conse¬ 
quence seceded from the Church and denied 
that there was any difference between the 
office of a Bishop and that of a Presbyter. 
In contrast to the care that all other schis- 
matical or heretical bodies had taken to 
procure at the outset Episcopal consecration 
for their ministers, Aerius, by this, gave 
the best proof possible that hitherto an un¬ 
broken succession from the Apostles was 
ever deemed essential to a true ministry, 
even by those who were attacking that very 
authority of the ministry itself. The sect 
did not last very long. 

Affections. The Affections, as love, joy, 
grief, anger, jealousy, are also called the 
Feelings. In later religious teaching they 
are made the basis of theologic systems to a 
much larger extent than the New Testament 
warrants. Feeling cannot be called into 
proper activity without a use (rightly or 
wrongly) of the Reason. As then reason 
must precede, to base religion upon feeling, 
which may or may not have any true depth 
in separate individual natures, is to build 
upon the shifting sand. The value of the 
Affections or Feelings cannot be overesti¬ 
mated in their true place, but they must be 
subordinated to the reason, and must not 
warp the free action of conscience, a danger 
which is very imminent in all enthusiastic 
forms of religion. The inspired teachers 
never appealed in the first instance to the 
Affections; nay, they speak verj^ strongly 
upon the need of controlling them. The 
popular confusion of the principles and doc¬ 
trines of Christianity, and the enthused 
reception of them, leads to a false compre¬ 
hension of the true Christian state. Ac¬ 
cording to a very common confusion, a per¬ 
son is not a true Christian unless he has 
certain experiences or feelings overlooking 


the true basis in the gifts and adoption by 
God in the Church. A German school of 
Pietism has endeavored to shelter religion 
from the attacks of opponents by withdraw¬ 
ing it into the province of Feeling. The 
folly of making Religion wholly a state of 
experience or spiritual judgment is evident 
by instituting the slightest comparison be¬ 
tween the dogmas and history of the New 
Testament and the fanciful notions of the 
Pietist. 

Affinity. The relationship contracted be¬ 
tween a husband and his wife’s blood rela¬ 
tions. By the old Canons illicit intercourse 
also resulted in affinity. Within certain de¬ 
grees the Divine Law (in the 18th ch. of Le¬ 
viticus) has forbidden marriage with a wife’s 
relations. The Table of Kindred and Affin¬ 
ity, which is Canon Law in England, does 
not bind the Church in America, though va¬ 
rious efforts have been made to make it so, and 
the House of Bishops declared (General Con¬ 
vention of 1808) that it ought to be observed. 
By the old Law (Just. Cod.) a kind of spir¬ 
itual affinity was created between the spon¬ 
sors and the adult or the infant baptized, 
and marriage was consequently forbidden. 

Affusion. Vide Baptism. 

Agapae. The feasts of charity, St. Jude 
v. 12; St. Peter ii. 13. They had their rise 
in the community of goods mentioned in 
Acts ii. 44, and as the sharing of all things 
in common could not be continued when 
the -society became too numerous, such a 
feast for the poorer members would become 
a substitute which could express well the 
fellowship and love between Christians of 
all ranks. St. Paul describes but does not 
so designate a feast of this kind. It became 
very popular and spread throughout the 
Church. Pliny may refer to it in his famous 
letter to Trajan . . . “ that they, later in the 
day, partook in common of a simple and in¬ 
nocent meal.” Ignatius speaks of it. Ter- 
tullian also, in the next century ; Clement 
(192 a.d.) -also speaks of the luxury which 
was introduced into the feasts which were 
intended to be for the poor, and as simple 
and temperate as became Christians. Meat, 
wine, fish, cheese, bread, milk, poultry, made 
up the articles usually furnished by the richer 
for the poorer brethren. The real use of the 
feast was not the relief to the needy, for 
that could be and was attained by other 
agencies, but as a living proof of the com¬ 
mon brotherhood. This common bond was 
lost sight of as the Church grew in wealth 
and drew into it the wealthy upper classes. 
Ascetic ideas, too, and the practice of fasting 
before. Communion, and the abuses readily 
growing up about these Feasts of Charity, 
would lead to their disuse and abolishment. 
When they finally disappeared is not prob¬ 
ably to be ascertained now, but traces of the 
practice survived in Egypt till near the close 
of the fifth century, and the Council in 
Trullo (692 a.d.) forbids them, though no 
other notice of them at that date is found. 

Agenda. A term meaning Things to be 





AGNOSTICISM 


20 


ALABAMA 


done, in distinction from Things to be be¬ 
lieved. It usually means the divine offices, 
as in the Council of Carthage (390 a.d.) and 
Innocent I. (Ep ad Decentium, though its 
genuineness is now questioned.) Latterly, 
as in Bede, it meant specially commemora¬ 
tion of the dead. 

Agnosticism (from the negative particle 
a and -yiyvd>oiao, I know) is a modern word 
representing a form of philosophy which has 
attained a wide acceptance with some men 
of cultivated intellect. It is fairly described 
in the following sentences taken from Pre¬ 
bendary Row’s'“ Revelation and Modern 
Theology Contrasted,” London, 1883, p. 338 : 
“ This philosophy maintains that while be¬ 
lief in the existence of a first cause of the 
universe, which it designates God, is a ne¬ 
cessity of thought, yet this first cause, or 
God, owing to the limitations of the human 
intellect, must forever remain unknown and 
unknowable to man. In other words, that 
it is impossible to affirm of it a single attri¬ 
bute ; and that to assert that it possesses 
personality, volition, intelligence, or a moral 
character is nothing else than anthropomor¬ 
phism, by which is meant that to ascribe 
such conceptions, being purely human, to the 
first cause of the universe is simply to manu¬ 
facture a God after our own likeness. The 
God of this system, therefore, while the as¬ 
sumption of this existence satisfies an intel¬ 
lectual necessity, is precisely the same for 
all moral purposes as if He existed not. (Vide 
Atheism.) For anything that we can know, 
He is incapable of caring for us or regarding 
our conduct, and we, in like manner, may 
both live and die without any regard for 
Him.” While this subtle philosophy is ap¬ 
parently more modest than atheism, and to 
that degree less offensive to the cultivated 
taste of intellectual men, it is plain from the 
above description that it is absolutely anti- 
Christian. ( Vide Atheism. See also “ Ag¬ 
nosticism : A Doctrine of Despair,” by Pres¬ 
ident Porter, of Yale College, in the series 
of “Present-Day Tracts.” London, The 
Religious Tract Society.) 

Rev. ^Hall Harrison. 

Agnus Dei. I. The words with which 
St. John Baptist pointed out Jesus to His 
disciples—“ Behold the Lamb of God which 
taketh away the sin of the world”—was 
very naturally and devoutly used in the 
liturgic worship. It was incorporated into 
the glorious hymn “Gloria in Excelsis,” 
found at the end of St. Clement of Alexan¬ 
dria’s works (192 a.d.), and now in our 
Prayer-Book. It was also used as a versicle 
during the celebration of the Holy Com¬ 
munion, at the time of consecrating the 
elements, and became common during 
the mediasval ages. But the English Use 
dropped it, though it is being revived in 
many places. 

II. A. medallion of wax stamped with the 
effigy of a lamb. It was an ancient custom 
to distribute to worshipers on the first Sun¬ 
day after Easter particles of wax taken from 


the Paschal taper, which had been solemnly 
blessed on the Easter-eve of the previous 
year. These particles were burned in houses, 
fields, or vineyards to secure them against 
evil influence or thunder-strokes. In Rome 
itself, however, instead of a Paschal taper, 
the archdeacon was accustomed to pronounce 
a benediction over a mixture of oil and wax, 
from which small medallions were made 
bearing the figure of a lamb, to be distrib¬ 
uted to the people on the first Sunday after 
Easter, especially to the newly baptized. In 
modern times this benediction of the Agnus 
Dei is reserved to the Pope himself, and 
takes place in the first year of his pontifi¬ 
cate and every seventh year following. 

Alabama, Diocese of. On Mondaj 7- , Jan¬ 
uary 25, 1830, a meeting of the members 
and friends of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church in the State of Alabama was held 
in the city of Mobile, for “ the purpose ot 
giving a more efficient and permanent char¬ 
acter to its institutions, and for the better 
administration of its rites and ordinances.” 
This seems to have been the first step taken 
towards organizing the Diocese. Two cler¬ 
gymen of the Church were then living in 
the State,—the Rev. Mr. Shaw in Mobile, 
and the Rev. Mr. Muller in Tuskaloosa,—and 
both were present at this meeting. It also 
appears that the Rt. : Rev. Bishop Brownell, 
of Connecticut,, and the Rev. William Rich¬ 
mond, of New York, were in Mobile at tha* 
time, and were invited to be present. Bishop 
Brownell, by special request, presided ovei 
the meeting. 

The Diocese was formally organized by 
the adoption of a constitution, which recog¬ 
nized the authority of the Church in the 
United States. After this was done, a reso¬ 
lution was passed looking to the formation 
of a Southwestern Diocese, to be composed 
of the Dioceses of Mississippi, Louisiana, 
and Alabama. After correspondence be¬ 
tween the parties interested in this, a num¬ 
ber of clergy and laity, duly elected to rep¬ 
resent these several States, assembled in 
Christ Church, New Orleans, on the 4th of 
March, 1835. Their object was to secure 
the privilege granted by a Canon of the 
General Convention of 1832, which Canon 
was expressed in the following words : “ The 
Dioceses of Mississippi and Alabama, and 
the Clergy and Churches in the State of 
Louisiana, are hereby authorized to associate 
and join in the election of a Bishop, any¬ 
thing in the Canons of* this Church to the 
contrary notwithstanding ; the said associa¬ 
tion to be dissolved on the demise of the 
Bishop, and not before, unless by the consent 
of General Convention.” Acting under the 
authority of such Canon, this Convention 
unanimously elected the Rev. Francis L. 
Hawks, D.D., of St. Thomas’ Church, New 
York, Bishop of this Southwestern Diocese ; 
but, in consequence of the repeal of said 
Canon by a succeeding General Convention, 
this plan was abandoned. 

The Convention of Alabama which 








ALABAMA 


21 


ALABAMA 


met in Tuskaloosa, on the 3d of January, 
1831, invited Bishop Brownell to take 
charge of parishes in this State, under the 
provisions of Canon 20 of the Church in the 
United States, and to perform such Episco¬ 
pal services as might be required. This 
invitation was accepted, and the Bishop, 
remained in official charge of this Diocese 
until 1840, at which time he requested to be 
relieved. Between 1831 and 1840 Bishop 
Brownell paid at least two visits to Alabama. 
He presided at the Convention which met 
in Tuskaloosa in 1835, confirmed several 
persons, and consecrated the church in that 
city ; and again in 1837, administered con¬ 
firmation in the city of Mobile. 

In 1836, Bishop Otey, of Tennessee, acting 
for Bishop Brownell, visited the State ; and 
in 1838, Bishop Kemper, at the invitation of 
Bishop Otey, performed several Episcopal 
acts in the Diocese. 

In 1840 the Diocese was placed under the 
official charge of the Rt. Rev. Bishop Polk, 
who made two visits to the Diocese, and 
presided at the Convention of 1843. 

In the year 1842 the Rev. Martin P. 
Parks, of Virginia, at that time Chaplain 
at the Military Academy at West Point, 
was elected Bishop, but declined to take 
charge of the Diocese. In 1843 the Rev. 
James T. Johnston, of Virginia, was duly 
elected Bishop, but declined to accept the 
position. 

At a Convention held in Greensboro’, 
Alabama, in 1844, the Rev. N. H. Cobbs, 
D.D., of the Diocese of Ohio, was elected 
Bishop of Alabama. The Rev. Dr. Cobbs 
accepted the election, was consecrated in 
October, 1844, and came at once to his work 
in the Diocese. 

At the Convention of 1845, the first one 
held after Bishop Cobbs took charge of the 
Diocese, the number of clergy entitled to 
seats was 17 ; at the Convention of 1860, the 
last one at which this Bishop was present, 
the number canonically connected with the 
Diocese was 32. The labors of this Bishop 
were very greatly blessed; the number of 
his clergy rapidly increased, and his Diocese 
was always a household at unity with itself. 

Bishop Cobbs died in January, 1861, and 
on May 2, 1861, the Annual Convention of 
the Diocese assembled in St. John’s Church, 
Montgomery. Failing to agree in the choice 
of a Bishop the Convention adjourned to 
meet in Selma, on Thursday, November 21, 
1861; and reassembling at the time and place 
appointed, the Rev. Richard Hooker Wilmer, 
D.D., of the Diocese of Virginia, was unani¬ 
mously elected Bishop of Alabama. The 
Rev. Dr. Wilmer accepted this election, 
and was consecrated in St. Paul’s Church, 
Richmond, Ya., March 6, 1862, the Rt. Rev. 
Wdlliam Meade, D.D., Bishop of Virginia, 
the Rt. Rev. John Johns, Assistant Bishop 
of Virginia, and the Rt. Rev. Stephen Elliott, 
D.D., Bishop of Georgia, uniting in this 
consecration. When the war ended this 
consecration was fully recognized by the 


Protestant Episcopal Church in the United 
States, and the Bishop of Alabama took his 
seat with his brethren in the House of 
Bishops. 

Bishop Wilmer came at once to his Dio¬ 
cese, and in God’s providence has been 
spared to labor continuously in this portion 
of the Master’s vineyard. 

In 1857 the subject of a Diocesan School 
for Girls was brought before the Convention 
in the Bishop’s address, and the action which 
then began resulted in the purchase of a lot 
near the city of Montgomery, and the erec¬ 
tion of a suitable building, called Hamner 
Hall. This property was managed for a 
time by a separate board of trustees, then 
by St. John’s Parish, Montgomery, and 
finally came into the possession of the Dio¬ 
cese. The school is now in a very flourish¬ 
ing condition, under the charge of Rev. 
George M. Everhart, D.D. 

On the same lot is a large and handsome 
brick house, known formerly as the Bishop 
Cobbs Home for Orphans, which house is 
also the property of the Diocese, and is re¬ 
served as the residence of the future Bishops 
of Alabama. 

In 1864, Bishop Wilmer issued a Pastoral 
Letter urging upon the Diocese the estab¬ 
lishment of a Home for Widows and Or¬ 
phans, which should be under the care of a 
Sisterhood of Deaconesses. The plan was 
approved by the Convention, and steps were 
taken to carry it into effect. A few orphans 
were collected at Tuskaloosa, but they were 
soon removed to Mobile, and to this number 
were added the inmates of the Bishop Cobbs 
Home at Montgomery. A building was 
purchased in which were placed a number 
of orphan girls. As necessity required it, a 
similar Home was furnished for boys, both 
Homes being under the care of the Dea¬ 
conesses. The liberality of Church people, 
almost exclusively of Mobile, has enabled 
the managers not only to provide comfort¬ 
ably for these orphans from day to day, but 
also to lay up funds for future use; the 
property of the Home amounting, in 1883, 
to $15,769.29. 

In 1846 there was formed a Society for the 
Relief of Disabled Clergymen, and of the 
Widows and Orphans of Deceased Clergy¬ 
men. This society has preserved its exist¬ 
ence under several changes of constitution, 
and seems destined to be the means of do¬ 
ing much good. It holds property to the 
amount of $13,108.42. 

In 1836 an effort was made to secure a 
Bishop’s Fund. Three trustees were ap¬ 
pointed to receive a gift of land offered by 
Jacob Lorillard, Esq., of New York City, 
for the benefit of a fund whose annual in¬ 
terest would in time be sufficient to support 
the Bishop of the Diocese. This fund is 
managed by three trustees, who are elected 
annually by the Convention, and its prop¬ 
erty now amounts to $29,862. 

From 1830 to 1844 the various reports 
show the following statistics : baptisms, 836 ; 





ALABAMA 


22 


ALBANY 


confirmations, 168; marriages, 194 ; funer¬ 
als, 814. 

From 1844 to 1861, baptisms, 6493; con¬ 
firmations, 2851; marriages, 1082 ; funerals, 
2287. 


From 1861 to 1883, baptisms, 10,739 ; con¬ 
firmations, 6768 ; marriages, 2558 ; funerals, 
5134. 

Total baptisms, 18,068; confirmations, 
9287 ; marriages, 3834 ; funerals, 7735. 
Deacons ordained from 1845 to 1861, 


1861 to 1883, 


28. 

26. 

14. 

26. 

17. 

19. 


Priests “ “ 

Churches consecrated “ 

Deacons ordained “ 

Priests “ “ (( 

Churches consecrated “ 41 

Total deacons ordained, 54. 

11 priests “ 43. 

“ churches consecrated, 33. 

The present condition of the Diocese is 
"best explained by citing some words from 
the address of Bishop Wilmer to the Con¬ 
vention of 1882 : 

“We have passed through a grand revo¬ 
lution, socially and politically. In view of 
all that has taken place during the last 
twenty years, the wonder with me is that so 
much has been accomplished by our people, 
under every possible disadvantage and dis¬ 
couragement. We have lost a large number 
of our people by emigration to more fertile 
territories. Compare the number of con¬ 
firmations reported for the last twenty years 
with the number of communicants at pres¬ 
ent reported, and it will be seen how large 
a number must have emigrated from the 
State. And the clergy, finding no sufficient 
maintenance, have followed the tide of pop¬ 
ulation. 

“ The statement following will show, at a 
glance, how the clergy have been affected by 
the fluctuations of the times : 


No. of clei'gy canonically resident in the Diocese 


March 6,1862. 34 

No. of clergy since added by transfer from other 

Dioceses. 49 

No. of clergy since added by Ordination to Dea- 
conate. 22 

— 71 

No. of clergy at any time connected with Diocese - 

since above date. 105 

No. of clergy died whilst resident in Diocese.... 8 

No. of clergy transferred to other Dioceses since 

date. . 66 

No. of clergy deposed since above date..-. 3 

— 77 

28 

One under suspension, name not reported. 1 

Present number reported. 27” 


There has been a strong tendency on the 
part of the people to leave the country 
and make their homes in the cities, and in 
consequence, while the city parishes have 
rapidly increased in numbers, the country 
parishes have languished, and, in some in¬ 
stances, died. But there seems to be a bright 
future in store for this Diocese. The rich 
soil and mineral wealth of the State are be¬ 
ginning to attract attention, and with the 
return of prosperity the Church will go for¬ 


ward, with fresh vigor, in the discharge ol 
her work. Richard H. Cobbs, D.D. 

Alb. Vide Vestments. 

Albany, Diocese of. History .—The Dio¬ 
cese of Albany, forming a part of the State 
of New York, consists of nineteen counties, 
which comprised the old Northern Convo¬ 
cation. These counties are Albany, Clin¬ 
ton,. Columbia, Delaware, Essex, Franklin, 
Fulton, Greene, Hamilton, Herkimer, Mont¬ 
gomery, Otsego, Kensselaer, Saratoga, Sche¬ 
nectady, Schoharie, St. Lawrence, Warren, 
and Washington. It embraces within its 
limits 20,888 square miles, and, according 
to the census of 1880, has a population ot 
949,545 souls. Its territory is diversified 
by lake and river, mountain and valley, 
forest and plain ; while the great Adiron¬ 
dack Wilderness, with its wonderful re¬ 
sources, lies in its bosom. It has also such 
famous summer resorts as Lebanon and 
Richfield Springs, Luzerne and Scharon, 
Lake George and Saratoga. The Diocese 
takes its name from the capital of the State, 
which is also the residence of the Bishop. 
It was carved out of the Diocese of New 
York, together with Long Island, in the year 
1868, by act of the General Convention. Its 
primary Convention, pursuant to the call of 
the Rt. Rev. Horatio Potter, D.D., LL.D., 
D.C.L., Bishop of New York, met in the 
city of Albany, in St. Peter’s Church, on 
December 2, 1868. The Bishop of New 
York presided and preached the sermon. 
Among the visiting clergy was the Rt. Rev. 
Henry Lascelles Jenner, D.D., Lord Bishop 
of Dunedin, New Zealand. On the second 
day of the Convention, December 3, the 
Rev. William Croswell Doane, S.T.D., Rec¬ 
tor of St. Peter’s Church, Albany, was 
chosen Bishop. His consecration took place 
in the same church on the Feast of the Pu¬ 
rification in 1869, the preacher being Rt. 
Rev. W. H. Odenheimer, D.D , Bishop of 
New Jersey. The Bishop of New York 
was the Consecrator, and was assisted by 
the Bishops of New Jersey, Maine, Mis¬ 
souri, and Long Island. Under the wise 
management of Bishop Doane the Diocese 
of Albany has been steadily increasing in 
strength and influence. At the time of its 
organization in 1868 there were 78 clergy¬ 
men belonging to it. In 1878 there were 
117, and in 1883 there were 123. In 1868 
there were 95 churches, in 1878 there were 
113, and in 1883 there were 122. 

There were reported from 75 churches : 

Baptisms. Confirmations. Communicants. 

In 1868. 1137 795 6561 

In 1878. 1800 1356 10,617 

In 1883. 1799 937 13,018 

In 1868 the offerings were $118,433.87; 
in 1878, $236,400.05; and in 1883 they were 
$296,928.52. In some parishes new churches 
have taken the place of old ones, while 
in others the old have been renovated. 
Church property also of great value has 
been acquired for mission work and other 
religious purposes. Offerings are made for 

















ALBANY 


23 


ALEXANDRIA 


the following objects, as required by Canon : 
Diocesan Fund, Missions of the Diocese, 
Aged and Infirm Clergy, Widows and Or¬ 
phans of Deceased Clergymen, Bible and 
Common Prayer-Book Society of Albany, 
Episcopal Fund, salary of the Bishop, 
Education of Young Men for the Ministry, 
Orphan House of the Holy Saviour, Do¬ 
mestic Missions, Foreign Missions. Offer¬ 
ings are also presented by the Sunday- 
schools of the Diocese for the Child’s 
Hospital. 

Missions .—The chief glory of the Diocese 
is its mission work. Under the energetic 
leadership of the Bishop, who must be the 
great missionary, the Church is extended far 
and wide, and the things that remain are 
strengthened. There are about ninety mis¬ 
sion stations receiving aid from the Board 
of Missions, and the sum of $10,000 is appro- 
‘priated annually for this work. The Board 
is composed of the Bishop, ex-officio presi¬ 
dent, and five other clergymen, and five 
laymen chosen by the Convention. 

Convention .—The Convention meets an¬ 
nually on the first Tuesday after the first 
Sunday after the Epiphany. Where, the 
Bishop determines. Hitherto the cities of 
Albany and Troy have shared the honors of 
the meetings. This body is composed, first, 
of the Bishop; secondly, of all clergymen 
qanonically resident within the Diocese for 
six months previous to Convention, restric¬ 
tion of time not to apply to rectors duly 
elected, or missionaries duly appointed ; and, 
thirdly, to three lay delegates from the 
Cathedral and three lay delegates from each 
Church in union with the Convention. The 
delegates must be, in all cases, communi¬ 
cants. The sessions usually last two days. 
The permanent officers of the Diocese are 
the Bishop, a Standing Committee, a Secre¬ 
tary, a Treasurer, and a Registrar. 

Convocations. —The Diocese is divided into 
districts called Convocations, the titles and 
limits of which are as follows : The Convo¬ 
cation of Albany comprises the counties of 
Albany, Greene, Columbia, Schenectady, 
Montgomery, Fulton, Hamilton, and Her¬ 
kimer ; the Convocation of Troy, the coun¬ 
ties of Rensselaer, Saratoga, Washington, 
Warren, Clinton, and Essex; the Convoca¬ 
tion of Susquehanna, the counties of Dela¬ 
ware, Otsego, and Schoharie; the Convoca¬ 
tion of Ogdensburg, the counties of St. 
Lawrence and Franklin. The Bishop is 
head of each Convocation ex-officio , and the 
executive officer is an Archdeacon, appointed 
annually by the Bishop, on the nomination 
of the Convocation, from among its clergy. 
Two meetings are required each year by 
Canon. Others may be held by order of 
Convocation. The work of the Convoca¬ 
tions is specially missionary in its character. 

Other Institutions of the Diocese are the 
Bible and Common Prayer-Book Society of 
Albany and its vicinity, incorporated in 
1820. St. Agnes’ School for Girls, located 
in Albany, with the Bishop as Rector, and 


twenty-six teachers and officers ; the Child’s 
Hospital, Albany, with branch Home for 
Convalescents at Saratoga in the summer; 
the Orphan House of the Holy Saviour, 
Cooperstown; St. John’s Clergy House, 
East Line, incorporated in 1881 ; Home of 
the Good Shepherd, Saratoga Springs, incor¬ 
porated in 1869 ; the Church Home, Troy. 

The Sisterhood of the Holy Child Jesus 
has its headquarters at Albany, and is under 
the direction of the Bishop of Albany. The 
Sisters are at work in St. Agnes’ School, 
and in charge of the Child’s Hospital, 
Albany, and the Child’s Convalescent 
Home, Saratoga Springs. The Cathedral 
Building of All-Saints, which has been 
the dream of the Bishop for years, will 
soon crown the commanding site chosen 
for it. A large lot has been secured in the 
city of Albany, north of the Capitol, and 
near St. Agnes’ School and the old chapel, 
which has done good service. About $75,000 
are in hand, and the work is to be diligently 
prosecuted. The grand edifice, which will 
be built of stone, will be an enduring mon¬ 
ument of the zeal and labors of the first 
Bishop of Albany. Bishop Doane, on 
whom has fallen the mantle-spirit of his 
sainted father, a former Bishop of New 
Jersey, is in his vigor and manly prime, 
and is noted for his ripe scholarship, his 
facile pen, his gifts as a presiding officer, 
his eloquence as a preacher, and his large¬ 
ness of heart. He received the degree of 
Doctor of Laws a few years ago from Union 
University,—a just recognition of his ability 
and superior talents. 

Sources of Information. —Journals of Gen¬ 
eral Convention, Journals of Convention of 
the Diocese of Albany, Constitution and 
Canons of the Diocese of Albany, Year- 
Books of the Church, and personal knowl¬ 
edge. Rev. Joseph Carey, D.D. 

Albate. A sort of Christian hermits, so 
called from the white linen they wore. 

Alexandria. Vide Eastern Churches. 

Alexandria, School of. Every church 
had its catechetical school, somewhat corre¬ 
sponding to our confirmation classes, but 
with more definiteness of organization, and 
some provision was made for the education of 
Christian children, but no church ever pos¬ 
sessed as famous a school as that at Alexan¬ 
dria. Its foundation is obscure, though as¬ 
cribed to St. Mark, and the list of its earliest 
masters is very doubtful till we reach Pantas- 
nus, who was at its head about 179 a.d. He 
was as a heathen an eclectic, but brought his 
philosophical studies to the service of the 
Church. In such a city as Alexandria his 
ability would be very useful in attracting 
many to his lectures. When he was sent on 
his mission to the Indians (probably to 
Lybia), Clement, who was most likely of 
Roman extraction, himself in early life an 
enthusiastic student of philosophy, and later 
a devout Christian, succeeded him. His 
works, the “ Cohortatio,” “Psedagogus,” and 
the “ Stromata,” discursive collections of his 







ALIENATION 


24 


ALL-SAINTS 


lectures, probably based upon a loose outline 
of the Apostolic constitutions, are a valu¬ 
able picture of how far a public lecturer 
upon Christian topics could go before a 
mixed audience. The administrative ability 
of the Bishop Demetrius used both Pantse- 
nus and his two successors with great wis¬ 
dom till Demetrius fell out with Origen. It 
is said that before Demetrius’s time the 
Church of Alexandria had no dependencies, 
but from the date of Pantsenus’s mission, and 
from the fame and success of the school, 
soon Sees were added upon Sees, till Alexan¬ 
dria was at the head of a large province. 
Origen, who succeeded to Pantaenus, who 
resumed his post upon his return, brought, 
perhaps, the loftiest abilities yet used for 
the task. Adamantine in endurance, with a 
mind capacious of all instruction, a master 
of the Scriptures, no mean critic, he was de¬ 
voted to his school. His peculiar notions, 
probably more speculatively held than other¬ 
wise, gave a notoriety that pained him, since 
they were rather questions for debate in his 
school than formulated dogmas. At any 
rate, they were fastened upon him. In an 
hour of enthused fear for himself and his 
influence in the school he mutilated him¬ 
self, giving a wrong interpretation to our 
Lord’s words (Matt. xix. 12). The act 
disabled him from ordination. When, then, 
he received ordination on a visit to Pales¬ 
tine, contrary to the Canons, his Bishop took 
his office as catechist from him. The school 
became of less importance later as the adults 
to be prepared for baptism and confirmation 
grew rarer, but it nurtured a spirit of dis¬ 
pute which produced Arias, the famous here¬ 
tic, who, however, had received his dialectic 
training from Lucian, of Antioch. The 
school was finally closed by becoming a mere 
nursing-school for the young to be prepared 
for baptism and confirmation. It is not 
worth the while to give the names of its 
later masters save one, Didymus, who was 
totally blind (340-395 a.d.). 

Alienation is, in church matters, the im¬ 
proper disposal of such lands or goods as 
have been given to the Church for sacred 
and devout uses. It has always been deemed 
sinful to apply such means or property to 
other than direct Church needs. It was 
hardly an alienation in this sense, when, for 
the ransom of Christian captives, Bishops 
sold the Church’s plate, or lands even. The 
like was done in cases of severe famine. But 
this does not justify the act under other cir¬ 
cumstances. The Bishops were only the 
stewards, and not the owners, and many 
Canons were necessary throughout the his¬ 
tory of every part of the Church restraining 
them from wasting and for private purposes 
parting with Church property. 

Alienation in Mortmain. The conveying 
of real estate to any corporate body; in this 
case, for religious purposes. 

Allegory (Gal. iv. 24). An allegory 
sums up in itself the separate purposes of the 
Type, Parable, or Metaphor, using either 


one of these three as a leading form at vary¬ 
ing times. The Canticles are filled with 
types of Christ and Ilis Church, but the 
whole is allegorical. It expresses one thing 
under words that, upon the surface, are the 
expression of another. So Ps. Ixxx. 8-16, 
are an allegory. But the same imagery in 
Is. v. is there a parable. St. Paul uses the 
allegory in 1 Cor. x. 4, and in Gal. iv. 16- 
21. The use of allegories is peculiarly 
Oriental. It is a form adapted to the con¬ 
veyance of religious truth in very attractive 
shapes. Allegorical interpretations became 
a favorite mode of explaining the obscurities 
in Holy Scripture. The example of St. 
Paul, as above quoted, was imitated, and a 
devout spirit, seeing Christ everywhere 
in the Scripture, was tempted to drag into 
line many texts which could not possibly 
contain any direct reference to Him. Theo¬ 
logians claimed for the interpretation of 
Scripture several modes of treating the text, 
some of them enumerating sixteen, but 
three were generally admitted,—the Moral, 
the Allegorical, and the Mystical Sense, 
apart from the historical or grammatical 
sense. But the striving to torture new sig¬ 
nifications and to find new allegories soon 
brought on a reaction. However, these 
methods of interpretation held precedence 
till the Reformation, when the reaction went 
too far, producing a temper which empties 
Holy Scripture of much of its true meaning. 

Alleluia. A formula, or proclamation, 
“ Praise ye the Lord,” found in Ps. cxvii., 
and as a heading to several other Psalms, 
especially cxiii.-cxviii., the great Hallel. 
Psalms sung at all the greater Jewish festi¬ 
vals. The word has been transferred into 
all languages. It was recorded by St. John, 
as used by the Angel Host (Rev. xix. 6, 7). 
Of course it passed immediately into Chris¬ 
tian usage. There is the story of the Halle¬ 
lujah victory by the Christian Britons over 
the pagan Piets and Scots (429 a.d.). It 
was used as a watch-cry of encouragement. 
It was introduced into the Liturgy in both 
East and West. It is in the Liturgy of St. 
James, as the earliest instance. In the 
West, the Mozarabic (which is of Eastern 
parentage, however), it was freely used; but 
in the other Western Churches it was very 
sparingly used, being used most freely dur¬ 
ing the Easter and Whitsun feasts. Our 
own Church bears as one of the marks of 
Eastern influence the use of the Hallelujah 
in the Yersicles, “ Praise ye the Lord, the 
Lord’s name be praised,” in the Morning 
and Evening Prayers. 

All-Saints. In the Eastern Church this 
was a very ancient feast, St. Chrysostom 
speaking of it under the name All-Martyrs. 
It falls upon our Trinity Sunday, crowning 
the Church’s year with a joyful commemo¬ 
ration of all saints of God. 

In the Western Church this feast had its 
rise much later, in the consecration into 
Christian Churches of heathen temples. This 
practice began in the latter part of Pope 




ALL-SOULS 


25 


ALTAR 


Gregory’s life, and when (607 a.d.) Boni¬ 
face III. procured from the emperor a recog¬ 
nition of his supremacy, his successor, Boni¬ 
face IV., consecrated the Pantheon to the 
Virgin and all martyrs (May 13). It is 
not certain when the commemoration was 
transferred to November 1. It was not ob¬ 
served in Gaul till later ; in England, Bede 
speaks of it; nor was it general till Louis 
the Pious, under advice from Gregory IV., 
ordered it. The Collect, Epistle, and Gospel 
were of later date. 

All-Souls. A festival falling on the next 
day after All-Saints’ Day. It had its origin 
in the continuous commemoration at the 
Holy Communion of “ the souls of all those 
who have died in the communion of the 
body and blood of our Lord.” But beside 
this Eucharistic commemoration, there were 
anniversary observances, probably by the 
surviving relatives. In 837, Amalarius of 
Metz writes of the annual commemoration 
of the dead. The festival was at once very 
popular, after an ordinance by Odilo, Abbot 
of Clugny, for the abbacies under him. 

«. Almighty. Synonymous with Hebrew 
Lord God of Hosts; the Mighty God ; 
Omnipotent. A title which God gives 
Himself in His covenant with Abraham 
(Gen. xvii. 1). It is continuously used 
afterwards adown the stream of Revela¬ 
tion. It was taken at once into the Creed, 
and has maintained its place there ever since 
as an integral part of the first clause. It is 
a most important title, for it may be con¬ 
sidered (a) as Comprehensive, containing all 
things; ( b ) Originative, as creating all 
things; (c) Preservative of all things. It is' 
fitly used, therefore, by the Church in her 
Creed, in her Prayers, at the Holy Com¬ 
munion, and in her Hymns, the “ Te Deum” 
and the “Gloria in Excelsis.” But this power 
being of the essential attributes of the Divine 
Nature belongs equally to the Three Per¬ 
sons of the Trinity, and so the Athanasian 
Hymn, “ So, likewise, the Father is Al¬ 
mighty, the Son is Almighty, the Holy 
Ghost is Almighty, and yet there are not 
Three Almighties but One Almighty.” 

Alms. In Job's solemn protestation of 
his integrity he places the sharing of his 
bread with the poor as one of his righteous 
customs (Job xxxi. 17). From the earliest 
ages almsgiving and relief of the poor and 
needy has had a special promise and pledge 
attached. The Israelite when given the 
land was ordered to leave the gleaning. 
He was to share the tithe of his produce 
every third year with not only the Levite, 
but also the stranger, the fatherless, and the 
widow. From the Law the Israelite had 
this enjoined upon him, and he received the 
promises of prosperity (Prov. xix. 17; Ps. 
xii. 1). Our Lord assumes it as a right 
and duty in His Sermon on the Mount, and 
Himself, though ministered to by others, was 
a Giver of alms. It was the first popular 
duty in the Church, and it grew so rapidly 
that the Deaconate was established to super¬ 


intend the work. When St. Peter and St. 
Paul arranged their missionary jurisdictions, 
St. Paul was enjoined to be mindful of the 
poor. And it received from him much at¬ 
tention, as we gather from his directions to 
the Corinthians and elsewhere. He went up 
to Jerusalem with the collections made for 
the saints there. When there was a famine 
threatened in Judaea, alms were sent to the 
poor from other parts of Syria. In the 
course of time this almsgiving took more 
systematic shape. The offertory included 
food as well as money, and it was shared by 
the ministers with the poor. The moneys 
gathered into the treasury were divided into 
three parts,—one for the ministry, one for 
the repairing and building churches, and 
the third for the widows and poor. The 
offertory now should take this latter place 
to a far larger extent than it has done, es¬ 
pecially as the Rubric makes the alms for 
the poor its chief use. In England extra¬ 
ordinary collections have been taken up from 
time to time upon royal briefs, but latterly, 
as the machinery for such a gathering was 
very expensive,—taking up above half the 
amount collected,—it has not been often 
used. After reforms under Anne, and again 
under George IV., it gradually fell into dis¬ 
use, though a royal brief was issued as late 
as 1854. 

There should be some system devised and 
faithfully carried out in each Diocese that 
shall teach the duty of almsgiving, and 
show how much good it effects. Alms should 
be put into the hands of the Bishop of the 
Diocese for use ofteuer than they are. 

Altar. A structure of stone or wood, 
upon which the elements of the Holy Com¬ 
munion are consecrated. The more usual 
name in the Prayer-Book is the Lord’s 
Table, but the term Altar is used in the 
office of Institution. The word occurs in 
the Epistle to the Hebrews, “ We have an 
altar, whereof they have no right to eat 
which serve the tabernacle” (Heb. xiii. 10), 
and is best referred to the Christian Table. 
The altar of the Old Testament was one on 
which bloody sacrifices were offered, though 
there was also the Altar of Incense. The 
first altar was built by Noah. The altar 
was usually placed in some spot deemed for 
some reason hallowed: as where God ap¬ 
peared to Jacob. The material of which they 
were made was, according to the Mosaic Law, 
either of earth or of “ stones, upon which no 
tool had been lifted.” It was contrary to 
the Law to build an altar elsewhere than in 
the Tabernacle, and afterwards in the Tem¬ 
ple, though this was frequently violated: 
as when David built an altar at the thresh¬ 
ing-floor of Araunah. Altars, not for sacri¬ 
fice, were often built, as when the tribes of 
Reuben and Manasseh, and Gad, put up an 
Altar of Witness. There was the altar for 
burnt sacrifice in the Tabernacle made of 
wood and overlaid with brass; a second 
larger one made wholly of brass was erected 
in the first Temple; a third, of unhewn 




ALTAR-CLOTH 


26 


AMBON 


stones (at least the one that replaced it under 
Judas Maccabeus, when he cleansed the 
polluted Temple after Antiochus Epiphanes 
had desecrated it, was so), was placed in the 
second Temple on the spot where the brazen 
altar had stood. In the Temple, as restored 
by Herod, the altar was also of unhewn 
stone. There was also the Altar of Incense, 
which, however, was not properly so, since 
no sacrifices were offered upon it. As for 
Christian altars, they have been made of 
various materials, in early times, generally 
of wood, but very often of marble, and in 
one or two instances of gold. Often the 
wood was decorated or covered with gold or 
silver plating or chased work and adorned 
with gems. The form varies from the Table 
to the Tomb form. In the Greek Liturgical 
language the term used is trapeza,—table, 
but with some epithet, as “the spiritual,” 
“the mystical,” “the royal,” “the holy,” 
or “ the divine.” 

In this country there is no rule, and an 
altar may be made of either wood or stone, 
and in either of the forms above described. 
There can be no real objection to using the 
term altar for the Holy Table, since both 
terms are used in the Prayer-Book, and upon 
it are placed the oblations for the memorial 
our Lord commanded us to make of His 
one, full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice once 
offered. 

Altar-Cloth. The cloths with which the 
Holy Table is vested, either as permanent 
coverings, or for the celebration of the Holy 
Communion. The earliest unquestionable 
reference to altar-cloths other than for the 
celebration is found in St. Chrysostom’s 
Homily on Matthew xiv. 23, 24, wherein 
he contrasts the costly silken embroidered 
covering given for the Holy Table with the 
scanty clothing often grudgingly given to 
the poor. In his time (390-405 a.d.) we see 
that such costly altar-cloths were usual. The 
symbolic use of colors in altar vestments 
for the several seasons of the Christian year 
is not more than seven or eight centuries 
old. {Vide Colors.) 

Altar-Piece. This was a picture or carved 
bas-relief placed behind and over the altar. 
This practice of placing pictures in churches, 
though very ancient, still won its way 
slowly, against much opposition. The dan¬ 
ger that arose later was clearly seen by a 
few. The feeling that the house of God 
should be made as glorious as possible filled 
the devout hearts of the many. The earliest 
instance we have of a picture in a church is 
from St. Epiphanius (391 a.d.), who, when 
journeying through Palestine, found at 
Anablatha a veil hanging before the doors 
of the sanctuary of the church with a 
painting of Christ or some Saint upon it. 
This he had torn into pieces and given for a 
winding-sheet for the poor, and replaced it 
with a plain veil from his own home in Cy¬ 
prus. Paulinus of Nola (402 a.d.) introduced 
pictures largely in his new church. They 
were of Scripture subjects, and were de¬ 


signed to instruct the illiterate. From this 
time on the decoration of churches with 
paintings became more common. These re¬ 
marks apply to pictures proper, for we find 
symbolic decoration much earlier, but noth¬ 
ing that applies to paintings. But while 
frequent casual references are made to pic¬ 
tures, after this there is ever a note of warn¬ 
ing sounded. The famous Gregory I., in 
condemning the misuse of pictures, urges 
that it would be wrong to remove them, as 
they were object-lessons in sacred history to 
the unlearned (Ep. ad Ser. Mass.). There 
was, at first, very much objection to produc¬ 
ing any likeness of our Lord, but that, 
soon after the common introduction of art 
into the Church, was overcome. 

Very early mosaics exist, the oldest of 
which are at Ravenna and at Thessalonica. 
The Cross was a symbol that was employed 
at a very early date, but the Crucifix was 
not used till very much later. The oldest 
frescoes are of Saints, in the catacombs at 
Naples, in the fifth, but the nearest in age 
after them are dated about the eighth, cen¬ 
tury. There were three styles, distinct in 
treatment of the same subjects,—the Roman, 
the Byzantine, and the Lombard, which 
developed upon different lines of church 
decoration. In the Greek Church the icon¬ 
ostasis is the space on which the greatest 
amount of painting is placed. 

Altar-Rails are of modern arrangement, 
being due probably to Archbishop Laud, 
who had them erected to prevent the profa¬ 
nations and intrusions which frequently oc¬ 
curred. They have taken the place of the 
old open-work grating or screen which parted 
the choir from the nave. This latter sep¬ 
aration was of ancient date, as may be shown 
by the frequent references and descriptions, as 
that by Eusebius (325-40 a.d.) of the Church 
in Tyre. It was open trellised work, often 
enriched by bronze or gilt or silver. The 
material was usually of wood or iron, but 
sometimes of stone. There was always some 
mode of marking the division between the 
nave of the church and the sanctuary. In 
the Eastern Church it was as above, till 
later, when the open-work was paneled and 
painted with pictures of Christ and the 
Apostles or Saints, and entered by doors, 
which therefore formed a complete partition 
between the two portions of the church 
(Iconostasis). The material of which this 
iconostasis was made was usually of wood, 
though other material is used also. In the 
West, the partition was, as stated above, 
without railing and open-work. 

Ambon, or Ambo. The desk or raised 
platform for the reader, from which the 
Epistle and Gospel were read, notices were 
published, and from which the inferior 
clergy preached. Its position varied. It 
probably occupied the same position rela¬ 
tively that the place for the readers did in the 
synagogue. It often stood in the middle 
of the nave, but sometimes to the right of 
the front of what we now call the choir. 




AMBROSIAN RITE 


27 


AMERICAN CHURCH 


In large churches there were often two 
Amhons, one on the right for the Gospel, 
the other on the left for the Epistle. The 
Ambon was probably movable. It pre¬ 
ceded the pulpit, which was later. (Vide 
Pulpit.) It was frequently ornamented 
with carved work on its panels, and in some 
examples still surviving it was supported 
upon a pillar. That at St. Sophia (536 a.d.) 
had two flights of steps, the one on the east, 
the other on the west. The Bishop generally 
preached from his chair (Cathedra), but 
sometimes from a desk in front of the altar. 
St. Chrysostom preached from the Ambon 
that he might be heard the better. At 
Ravenna exists still an Ambon which may 
date from the building of the church (493- 
525 a.d.). 

Ambrosian Rite. Vide Liturgies. 

Amen. Faithful, True, Firm (Heb. and 
Gr.). The response of the people to every 
prayer. It is a strong asseveration of 
either faith in or consent to the contents of 
the prayer. The people gave their consent to 
the binding power of the curses pronounced 
upon Mt. Ebal (Deut. xxvii. 15) by their 
Amen. It was a title God by Isaiah (lxv. 
16) gave Himself,—“ the God of Amen.” 
It had the force of an oath, as when the 
accused woman was to reply to the Priest, 
reciting the curse upon perjury, Amen, 
Amen, in the trial for jealousy (Num. v. 
22). It, of course, passed into Christian use 
at once (1 Cor. xiv. 16), but our Lord 
gave it a significance which we undervalue. 
The enunciation of solemn central truths of 
His Revelation was always preceded by an 
Amen, Amen (Verily,Verily), as in St. John 
iii. 3, 5, 11 ; v. 19, 24, 25 ; vi. 32, 47, 53 ; 
viii. 51, 58, etc. Compare with this and 
with Is. lxv. 16 ; Rev. iii. 14. The response 
was always made loud and full. The Amen 
should be printed in other type when # it is 
a response than when it is an invocation. 
In the one case (in Italics) the congregation 
alone respond, as in the prayers generally, 
but when it is also for the minister to use, 
it should be always printed in Roman. 

American Church, The (officially, “ The 
Protestant Episcopal Church in the United 
States of America”), is that branch of the 
One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church in 
America which traces its Apostolic origin 
through the Church of England. It is in 
communion and in agreement in doctrine, 
discipline, and worship with the Church of 
England, which it venerates as its mother- 
Church, while being at the same time as 
entirely independent of it as any daughter 
can be who has left her mother’s home and 
is mistress of a house and family of her own. 

Through the Church of England this 
Church has affiliations with the whole 
Church of the West. In its Creeds and 
Liturgy and Discipline it occupies the 
ground which is common to all the churches 
of Christ from the beginning. As having 
cast off the errors of Rome, it is so far in 
sympathy with those bodies of Christians 


who, since the Reformation of the sixteenth 
century, have been known as Protestant and 
Reformed. 

The history of the Church in America is 
a story of full three hundred years, for it 
was in the year 1578 that on the shores of 
Frobisher’s Straits (named in honor of the 
admiral in command) “ Master Walfall 
celebrated a communion upon land, at the 
partaking whereof were the captain and 
many others with him. The celebration of 
the Divine mystery was the first signs, seals, 
and confirmation of Christ’s death and pas¬ 
sion ever known in these quarters.” The 
first known baptisms in English America 
were those of Virginia Dare, the grand¬ 
daughter of Governor White, and “ Man- 
teo the savage,” both baptized on shipboard 
off Roanoke Island, on the coast of North 
Carolina, both baptized by White, the gov¬ 
ernor of Raleigh’s second colony. Another 
layman, Sir Thomas Hariat, records his use 
of the Prayer-Book among “the poor infi¬ 
dels” in 1585,—one of “ the first lay-readers 
in the American Church.” The next date 
takes us north again. In 1605 an expedition 
sailed from Bristol, under Captain Richard 
Weymouth, whose declared object was “ the 
promulgating of God’s hoty Church by 
planting Christianity,” and which sailed up 
the Penobscot and erected a cross near the 
site of the present town of Belfast. This 
attempt failed, but two years later another 
effort promised better results. In August, 
1607, a company, among whom was the 
Rev. Richard Seymour, landed on an island 
at the mouth of the Sagadahock, or Kenne¬ 
bec, and, besides fifty houses and a fort and 
store-house, built a church. The severity 
of the climate, and a fire that destroyed their 
store-house and church, disheartened them, 
and they returned to England the next sea¬ 
son. This was thirteen years before the 
celebrated Pilgrim Fathers landed on Ply¬ 
mouth Rock. The same year, 1607, the first 
permanent settlement was effected in Vir¬ 
ginia. In May, 1607, under Mr. Robert 
Hunt, a priest of the Church of England, 
the first services were held, and a church 
begun at Jamestown in Virginia. Services 
were held at first “ under an awning and 
in an old cotton tent. This,” says Captain 
John Smith, “ was our church till we built 
a homely thing like a barn, where we had 
daily common prayer morning and evening, 
every Sunday two sermons, and every three 
months the Holy Communion till our min¬ 
ister died. But our prayers daily, with an 
homily on Sundays, we continued till more 
preachers came.” With liberal gifts of 
money and land the Church in Virginia 
was in a fair way to prosper, though the 
disturbances at home told upon the colonies, 
and the clergy who came out were by no 
means all that they should have been. 
Among those who deserve to be remembered 
were Buck and Whitaker, who succeeded 
Mr. Hunt. Whitaker has been named the 
Apostle of Virginia. He it was who bap- 





AMERICAN CHURCH 


28 


AMERICAN CHURCH 


tized Pocahontas. In the mean time settle¬ 
ments were being established all along the 
coast under different religious influences, 
and some of them, as in New England, dis¬ 
tinctly hostile to the Church. Among them 
were here and there Churchmen and Church 
colonies, though the Church was never so 
strong, even in Virginia and Maryland, as 
is often supposed. Elsewhere it was very 
weak. 

The case of Maryland is peculiar and not 
generally understood. The Charter of 1634 
and the Act of 1649 are represented as a 
noble instance of religious toleration on the 
part of Roman Catholics, but without suf¬ 
ficient ground. Those acts, it is true, were 
obtained by Roman Catholics, but they were 
granted not by them, but to them. They 
were obtained from Charles and his advisers 
for the special benefit of Roman Catholics, 
and Roman Catholics took advantage of 
them, as it was intended that they should. 
That liberty and protection which was 
granted was all they asked for, and all they 
could have obtained. But neither in Mary¬ 
land nor anywhere else did Roman authority 
ever regard the doctrine “ that in conscience 
and in worship men should be free” as any¬ 
thing but insanity (delir amentum). In 
Maryland from the first the Church of Eng¬ 
land was “ protected,” and the Rev. Richard 
James, a clergyman of the Church of Eng¬ 
land, came on with the first Lord Baltimore 
and with his flock settled on Kent Island, 
opposite Annapolis. In 1623, Governor 
Robert Gorges brought with him the Rev. 
William Morrell, a Church of England 
clergyman, to his colony on Massachusetts 
Bay. In 1630 the Rev. William Blackstone 
sold his farm in Shawmut, where Boston 
now stands, and removed to Providence. 
In 1629, John and Samuel Brown, two of 
the original patentees, were banished from 
Salem for using the Prayer-Book. In 1646 
and 1664 petitions were presented in Boston 
for permission to use the Prayer-Book ; and 
the petitioners were punished for sedition. 
The first church services were held in Boston 
in 1686. None are known to have been held 
within the limits of New York before 1678, 
nor in Pennsylvania before 1695. When the 
Independents became the masters in Mary¬ 
land, they at once repealed the laws of tolera¬ 
tion and proscribed “popery and prelacy,” 
as they had from the first in New England. 

The Church grew, however, slowly, but it 
was without head or chief pastors until 1685, 
when Dr. Blair was sent to Virginia as Com¬ 
missary of the Bishop of London ; there was 
no authority over the Presbyters of the 
Church, who too often were just the men who 
needed overlooking. Soon afterwards Dr. 
Bray was sent out as Commissary to Mary¬ 
land, and they did what good men could who 
were clothed with such authority as a Bishop 
can delegate, but who still were not Bishops. 
The Church in America for another hundred 
years was an Episcopal Church without a 
Bishop. Dr. Blair was Commissary of Vir¬ 


ginia for fifty-three years. Dr. Bray entered 
upon the field of his labors in 1700, and a 
result of his missionary zeal was the found¬ 
ing of two societies which havedoneso much 
for the cause of the Gospel, the Society for 
promoting Christian Knowledge, and the 
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in 
Foreign Parts. When after a few years he 
returned home, the majority of the colony 
of Maryland were accounted of the commu¬ 
nion of the Church. In 1667 New Amster¬ 
dam was ceded to the English, and in 1696 
“ Trinity Church,” in New York, was built^ 
and endowed. In 1679 King’s Chapel, in 
Boston, was erected “for the exercise of relig¬ 
ion according to the Church of England.” 

At the time of the foundation of the S. P. 

G. “ in South Carolina were 7000 souls, be¬ 
sides negroes and Indians, living without any 
minister of the Church, and above half re¬ 
gardless of any religion. In North Carolina 
above 5000 without any minister. Virginia 
containing 40,000, divided into 40 parishes, 
but wanting near half the number of clergy¬ 
men. Maryland containing 25,000, in 26 
parishes, wanting half the number of clergy¬ 
men. In Pennsylvania at least 20,000 souls, 
of which not above 700 frequent the church, 
and not above 250 are communicants. In 
New York the numbers are 30,000, 1200, 
450. In Connecticut, 30,800, 150, 35. In 
other colonies of New England, 90,000, 750, 
150.” And the writer adds, “ This is the true 
though melancholy state of our Church in 
North America.” 

The missionaries of the S. P. G. were sent 
into the provinces in which the Church had 
no establishment, as it had in Virginia and 
Maryland, and fruit was not wanting to their * 
labors, though it was not gathered without 
opposition. In New England the movement 
Churchward began within the very walls of 
Yale College, when Dr. Cutter the rector of 
the college, and Messrs. Johnson and Brown, 
two of the tutors, through reading of works 
of the English divines in the college library, 
were brought to resign their positions, and 
in 1723 went over to England for ordination. 
Mr. Brown died in England of smallpox, 
but Dr. Cutter in Boston, and Mr. Johnson 
at Stratford, labored many years, and ex 
erted a powerful influence for the Church. 
Many more would have followed them into 
the priesthood, but were deterred by the 
dangers of the sea-voyage and “ the unhappy 
fate of Mr. Brown.” “Thefountain of all 
our misery is the want of a Bishop.” They 
were bitterly opposed and persecuted, but 
nowhere in the country were there so many 
native clergy, and nowhere was the Church 
more firmly planted, at the breaking out of 
the Revolution, than in Connecticut. On 
the other band, in Virginia and Maryland 
the Church, though comparatively strong in 
numbers, was weak in influence. There was 
no Episcopal authority, and the whole system 
of the Church was gradually dissolved. 

“ Certainly,” says Bishop White, “ the dif¬ 
ferent Episcopalian congregations knew of 







AMERICAN CHURCH 


29 


AMERICAN CHURCH 


no union before the Revolution : except what 
was the result of the connection which they 
in common had with the Bishop of London. 
That authority being withdrawn, the clergy 
and people of any district might, without 
unlawfulness, have acted for themselves, and 
in some departments such a proceeding would 
not have been surprising.” 

There could be no confirmations and no 
ordinations, and the supply of clergy fell off, 
and the authority which belonged to a Bishop 
was usurped or lost altogether. 

Many causes were at work to prevent the 
appointment of a Bishop, and to make that 
which was not altogether easy at first more 
and more difficult. The primary obstacle 
lay in the eighteenth century idea, which 
friends and enemies shared alike, that a 
Bishop was partly an ecclesiastical function¬ 
ary and at least half a State dignitary. 
Many who would not have objected to a 
“ purely religious Episcopacy” did object to 
a “political Episcopacy.” So general has 
this apprehension become that Bishop White 
declares his belief that a few years before 
the Revolutionary war it would have been 
“ impossible to have obtained the concur¬ 
rence of a respectable number of laymen in 
any measure for the obtaining of an Ameri¬ 
can Bishop,” and that when all were ready 
to avow “their preference of Episcopacy 
and of a form of prayer.” To add force to 
this apprehension came in the understanding 
that this dignitary required a large endow¬ 
ment to support him. But more than all 
other causes was the prevailing ignorance 
and coldness which prevailed even among 
professed friends of the Church in the 
colonies. 

A writer in 1735 expresses the feeling of 
a great many, who writes that “ considering 
how long a time it is since the establishment 
(of the S. P. G.), the colonies may by this 
time be provided with ministers among 
themselves, and likewise be of sufficient 
abilities to support them if they were in¬ 
clined to it.” And still more when he adds, 
“ in effect I know hardly any here that are 
disposed to do much for promoting or ad¬ 
vancing religion, or that seems to be much 
concerned what becomes of it either abroad 
or at home.” Efforts were made, but they 
failed. At one time matters went so far 
that a palace was purchased for the Bishop 
at Burlington, and considerable bequests 
were received for the endowment of the See, 
but the death of the queen in 1712 put a stop to 
all proceedings. In 1727, chiefly through the 
exertions of Berkeley (afterwards Bishop), 
a charter and a grant were obtained, but be¬ 
fore the broad seal was attached the king 
died. Once the Church came near obtaining 
Bishops in spite of opposition, when Dr. 
Welton and Mr. Talbot were consecrated by 
one of the non-juring Bishops. But the 
matter went no further. Dr. Welton was 
summoned home, and Mr. Talbot dismissed 
from his post as missionary of the S. P. G. 
Archbishop Seeker renewed the effort in 


1761, and the New England clergy joined 
in strong representations, but all in vain. 

But God was preparing for His Church 
a deliverance in His own way. England’s 
statesmen in neglecting the Church in Amer¬ 
ica had neglected the strongest of all bonds 
between the colonies and the mother-coun¬ 
try, and England owes in no small degree to 
that neglect the loss of these colonies. When 
the war of the Revolution came, while in 
the North the Church clergy were generally 
loyal to the mother-country, they were weak 
in numbers and in influence. For a time it 
seemed as though the war, with its conse¬ 
quent hatred of England, would work the 
destruction of the Church. But instead, it 
gave her freedom. The close of the war saw 
most of the clergy exiles, their churches 
desecrated or destroyed, and their congrega¬ 
tions broken up. In Pennsylvania only one 
church was left,—Christ Church, in Phila¬ 
delphia, under the Rev. (afterwards Bishop) 
William White. Virginia entered on the 
war with 164 churches and chapels and 91 
clergymen. At the close of the contest a 
large “ number of her churches were de¬ 
stroyed, 95 parishes were extinct or forsaken, 
and only 28 clergymen remained, and the 
Church was so depressed and so little zeal 
was found in her members that Dr. Griffith 
was unable to go over, with Drs. White and 
Provoost, to be consecrated Bishop of Vir¬ 
ginia, because funds could not be raised to 
defray his expenses.” 

The number of those in “ English Amer¬ 
ica” who belonged to the Church was never 
so large as would be and is naturally sup¬ 
posed, partly owing to the fact that some of 
the colonies were settled by those disaffected 
and hostile to the Church, partly because of 
the immigration of those of other nations. 
At the beginning of the Revolutionary war 
there were only about eighty clergymen of 
the Church to the north and east of Mary¬ 
land, and those, except in Boston, Newport, 
New York, and Philadelphia, principally 
supported by the S. P. G. Outside of Phila¬ 
delphia there were never more than six in 
Pennsylvania. In Maryland and Virginia 
the Church was more numerous, and sup¬ 
ported by legal establishments. Farther 
south they were less than in these provinces, 
but more than in the North. And besides 
this paucity of numbers, the very connec¬ 
tion and name of England was a disadvan¬ 
tage. But the greatest disadvantage of all 
lay in its very organization, which required 
Bishops, who were denied. 

.The difficulties which stand in the way of 
the Church are illustrated by the fact that 
Mr. Adams took up the case of some candi¬ 
dates for orders, and through the Danish min¬ 
ister at the court of St. James made appli¬ 
cation for their ordination to the Danish 
Church, which was favorably received but 
never acted upon. Indeed, those who sought 
to supply the exigency had no idea of having 
recourse to any others besides the English 
Bishops, at least until that hope failed. 




AMERICAN CHURCH 


30 


AMERICAN CHURCH 


In 1784 occurred a correspondence which 
needs no comment to illustrate the condition 
of the Church. Two young men had braved 
the dangers of the sea to obtain ordination 
in England, but had been refused because 
the Bishops could not dispense with the 
oaths of uniformity, and they applied to 
Franklin for assistance. His answer is dated 
“ Passy, near Paris,” and with a refreshing 
innocence he informs them that he had 
applied to the Pope’s Nuncio on their behalf, 
but advised them to give up the thought of 
England and go to the Church of Ireland, 
and if that application failed, to act as 
though England and Ireland were sunk in 
the sea; and expresses his wonder “that 
men in America qualified to pray for and 
instruct their neighbors should not be per¬ 
mitted to do it till they^have voyaged G000 
miles to ask leave of a cross old gentleman 
at Canterbury, who seems, by your own 
account, to have as little regard for your 
souls as did Attorney-General Seymour for 
those of Virginia. Commissary Blair begged 
him to consider that the people of Virginia 
had souls to be saved. ‘Souls!’ (said he); 

‘-your souls ! make tobacco.’ ” 

One curious result of the want of Bishops, 
may well be noticed. In 1784, John Wesley 
ordained and sent out Dr. Coke to be Super¬ 
intendent of the Methodist Societies in 
America, and afterwards joined Mr. Asbury 
with him in office. Partly as a result of 
this action, the Methodists were separated 
from the Church. For this action, so 
opposed to his former conduct and teaching, 
Mr. Wesley gave the reason that while at 
home he would not suffer it, inasmuch as 
there were in America “no Bishops with 
legal jurisdiction, his scruples were at an 
end.” The excuse is a sufficiently weak 
one, and it is Dr. Coke’s own testimony that 
he went further in separation than Mr. 
Wesley intended, as he did in calling him¬ 
self a Bishop ; but such as the excuse is, it 
suggests some interesting questions as to the 
possibilities in case even this had been want¬ 
ing. It was only in November of the same 
year that Bishop Seabury was consecrated. 
In 1791, Dr. Coke applied to Bishop White 
for the ordination of the Methodist minis¬ 
ters and for the consecration of himself and 
Mr. Asbury, and expressed a strong regret 
for his past action and desire of reunion. 
The effort came to naught, but when the 
question of separation turned upon such 
points, it is hardly possible to avoid saying 
to ourselves, What might have been if a 
Bishop had been here ! So hopeless did the 
prospect seem of obtaining Bishops and con¬ 
tinuing the proper ministry of the Church, 
that Dr. White put forth a scheme of pres- 
byterian and provisional ordination, in order 
that the duty of worship and of preaching 
the Gospel might not utterly lapse. But the 
peace of 1783 opened a better prospect, and 
in 1784 several conferences were held in 
Brunswick, N. J., in Philadelphia and New 
York, which resulted in a General Conven¬ 


tion in Philadelphia in 1785. But in the 
mean time the clergy of Connecticut had 
acted for themselves, and by their appoint¬ 
ment Dr. Samuel Seabury sailed for England 
and applied for consecration as Bishop. But 
the English prelates could do nothing with¬ 
out the consent of the ministry, and the 
ministry would not give their consent with¬ 
out a formal request of Congress, which of 
course was out of the question; and after 
waiting some months in vain, at length 
following the instructions which he had 
received at home, and acting upon the 
advice of friends in England, Dr. Seabury 
turned his steps to Scotland, where was 
a Church which, if it was persecuted by 
the state, and its assemblies forbidden by 
law, was, at least, not hampered in its spirit¬ 
ual rights by state control. On the 14th 
of November, 1784, in a little upper room 
in Aberdeen, the first Bishop of the Amer¬ 
ican Church was consecrated by three Bish¬ 
ops, Kilgour, Petre, and Skinner, and in 
June, 1785, he was at home. His consecra¬ 
tion had a double good effect, encouraging 
the Churchmen of America and rousing 
the authorities in England, by the certainty 
that even if they were refused by England, 
Scotland could and would supply them with 
Bishops. 

At the Convention in Philadelphia in 
October, 1785, seven States were repre¬ 
sented. Dr. White presided, and it is to his 
meekness and wisdom that the Church owes 
its deliverance from the many dangers 
that encompassed it. There were grave dif¬ 
ferences on almost every conceivable sub¬ 
ject. Some were afraid of a Bishop, and 
wanted his hands tied and himself made 
the creature of the Convention. Some would 
have excluded the laity from the Convention. 
Some would omit the opening petitions of 
the Litany. Bishop Seabury and his clergy 
declined to attend the Convention. By 
some Dr. White himself was charged with 
Socinianism. There were elements in the 
Church and in the Convention that boded 
neither any good, but out of them all the 
Lord delivered them. 

The “proposed book” of 1785, which 
was by order of the Convention sent out 
into the different States for consideration, 
and which embodied many radical changes 
from the English Prayer-Book, fell flat. Cor¬ 
respondence witfi, the English Prelates re¬ 
sulted in bringing the mind of the Church to 
a general agreement that the best thing to 
be done was to take the English book with as 
few changes as possible, and when, in 1786, 
Dr. White and Dr. Provoost, elected for 
Pennsylvania and New York, arrived in 
England, they were favorably received, and 
on February 4, 1787, were consecrated in 
Lambeth Chapel by the two Archbishops, 
and the Bishops of Bath and Wells, and 
Peterborough. In 1789 the union between 
the Dioceses was happily effected, Bishops 
White and Seabury constituting the House 
of Bishops in General Convention. When 








AMERICAN CHURCH 


31 


AMERICAN CHURCH 


again the alterations in the Prayer-Book 
came under discussion, the influence of 
Bishop Seabury appears in the important 
alterations in the Communion office, by 
which that office follows the Scottish model. 
The prayers of invocation and oblation are 
those of the First Book of Edward VI., 
but the order is that of the Scottish and of 
the ancient Liturgies. It was a change 
that “ lay very near to the heart of Bishop 
Seabury,” who even doubted whether the 
form of the Church of England “strictly 
amounted to a consecration.” When the 
proposed change oame down to the lower 
house, by the influence of the President, Dr. 
William Smith, it was accepted without op¬ 
position. By it “ the Holy Eucharist is 
restored to its ancient dignity and efficacy,” 
and we have an office than which nothing 
more magnificent and worthy can be con¬ 
ceived. In comparison with this great gain, 
for which, under God, we have to thank 
Bishop Seabury, the other changes and 
omissions are small. The omission of the 
Athanasian Creed was the only important 
omission. Besides changes required by the 
changed political condition of the coun¬ 
try, others were made. Selections from the 
Psalms were added to the Psalter. The 
Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis were omitted, 
the Venite and Benedictus shortened, and 
other alterations were made, some of them 
decided improvements, some decided losses, 
and some for which it would be hard to give 
a reason, but none of them aflfecting any 
doctrine or indicating any “ essential de¬ 
parture from the doctrines, discipline, or 
worship of the Church of England.” 

The revolution, therefore, effected no break 
in the line of the Church’s history. Noth¬ 
ing in her discipline, or worship, or prac¬ 
tice is to be regarded as having a beginning 
at that time. There were portions of the 
Prayer-Book, as the Articles, for example, 
not finally acted upon until 1801, and even 
later, but there was no release from former 
obligations on that account, except from those 
political obligations which were affected by 
the war. The Church always had the Lit¬ 
urgy, and that which was not expressly 
changed simply continued in force. .The 
declaration which was made in the Conven¬ 
tion of 1811, that the Protestant Episcopal 
Church is the Church formerly known under 
the name of “ the Church of England in 
America,” a declaration called for by some 
disputes which had arisen about land-titles, 
expressed the universal understanding that 
in no respect was this a “new Church.” 
We look back over the long struggle for ex¬ 
istence which culminated so successfully, 
and we are more and more impressed with 
the greatness of the leaders of the Church, 
of the two especially who made up the House 
of Bishops in 1789, and on whom so much 
depended; but of those two we must give 
the palm to one. Bishop Seabury’s zeal and 
devotion to Church principles supplied what 
was lacking in the character of BishopWhite, 


and we owe him a great debt of admiration 
and gratitude. But the gentle and firm 
hand that guided the frail bark of the Church 
through the dangers that beset her on every 
side, the one man who was to the Church 
what Washington was to the State, was 
William White. 

The life was still very feeble. In 1790, 
one hundred and eighty-four years after the 
first planting of the Church of England in 
Virginia, Dr. Madison went over to England 
and was consecrated Bishop of Virginia. 
But nineteen years after, when the General 
Convention was held in Baltimore, the 
Bishop of Virginia considered that his duties 
to the college of which he was president 
were sufficient excuse for his absence from 
Convention, and the Diocese was not repre¬ 
sented. At that Convention only Bishops 
White and Claggett were present, and, as 
Bishop Claggett was just recovering from a 
severe illness, it was a question not unlikely 
to present itself whether a single Bishop 
could constitute a house. Special reasons 
doubtless existed in some Dioceses for the 
weakness of the Church. In Virginia the 
immediate and apparent reason was the 
withdrawal of the stipends and seizure of 
the glebes by the Legislature. Patrick 
Henry resisted the act to the last, and as 
long as he lived it could never be obtained, 
and it was declared unconstitutional by the 
Supreme Court of the United States; but, 
aside from the illegality of the act, such was 
the character of many of the clergy who 
received the stipends and held the glebes, 
that, in the opinion of Bishop Meacle, the 
loss of them was the saving of the Church, 
by relieving her of the burden of unworthy 
ministers and throwing her upon her own 
resources, though for a time her condition 
was deplorable. 

The Convention of 1811 met in New 
Haven under serious difficulties, since out of 
seven Bishops in the Church there were but 
two present,—Bishops White and Jarvis. 
Bishop Claggett was prevented from at¬ 
tendance by sickness; Bishop Madison by 
the duties of his college. Bishop Provoost 
was in ill health. The consecration of Drs. 
Hobart and Griswold was necessarily post¬ 
poned, and, after the Bishops had gone down 
to New York, it was till the last minute 
doubtful whether the assistance of Bishop 
Provoost could be obtained. He, however, 
“ finally found himself strong enough to give 
his attendance, and thus the business was 
happily accomplished.” 

The* Church in America was in more 
ways than one hampered by its English 
origin. The branch had been bound, and 
choked almost to death by long neglect 
before it was broken off and planted in the 
American soil, and it inherited many of the 
defects and deformities of worship and dis¬ 
cipline of the mother-Church at that time. 
In its earliest dealing with its own proper 
missionary work it rivaled its teacher. In 
1801 several clergy of Western Pennsvlva- 






AMERICAN CHURCH 


32 


AMERICAN CHURCH 


nia and Virginia, which were largely settled 
by Church people, made an effort to have 
the Western country organized into a sepa¬ 
rate Diocese. It was not till 1808 that 
General Convention gave the desired per¬ 
mission, which, in effect, was repeated in 
1811. In 1819, Philander Chase was conse¬ 
crated for Ohio; but it was not till 1825 
that a Bishop was seen in Pennsylvania 
west of the Alleghanies. Prom 1800 to 
1823 the clergy in Pennsylvania had only 
increased from 16 to 34. It is only natural 
to add that the Church in the western part 
of the State had been for many years in a 
state of decline, while the disposition to fra¬ 
ternize with those who in doctrine and dis¬ 
cipline were the Church’s enemies, and to 
“ oppose the received properties of our Com¬ 
munion, or to undermine them insidiously 
and by degrees,” saddened the last years of 
Bishop White’s life, and made him fear, 
while he prayed, for the Church’s existence. 

In Maryland, party spirit ran so high that 
at Dr. Kemp’s election a party endeavored 
to create a schism in the Church, and after 
the death of Bishop Stone, in 1838, it was 
three years, and after two elected had de¬ 
clined the See, that a successful choice was 
made. 

In Virginia, the Convention which as¬ 
sembled to elect Bishop Moore, after Bishop 
Madison’s death, numbered only 7 clergy 
and 17 laymen, and was the first which 
had met for seven years. In Richmond 
“Episcopacy was almost dead.” Church¬ 
men assured Dr. Moore that “ no man 
could carry out our forms in all their ru¬ 
brical sign;” but the man of their choice 
had had a different training and held dif¬ 
ferent views, and acted upon them, though 
he was not able to carry the body of his 
clergy with him. The Church in Virginia, 
through his efforts and those of his successor, 
was roused from its slumbers that were 
almost death. Only three years before 
the election of Bishop Moore to Virginia, 
John Henry Hobart had been chosen As¬ 
sistant Bishop of New York, and along with 
Dr. Griswold had been consecrated at a time 
when the Episcopate could with the greatest 
difficulty muster the necessary three for a 
consecration. He did not find the Church 
or the Churchmanship of New York what 
he left it, or what it has been ever since, 
but he roused his own Diocese from its 
slumbers, and the influence of his writing 
and preaching, and of his laborious and holy 
life, was felt in the State as well as the Dio¬ 
cese, and went out over the whole country 
and through the whole Church. His motto 
was “the Gospel in the Church,” and he 
shrunk from no labor and from no contest 
in behalf of his belief. Bishop White looked 
forward to the future of his son in the 
faith with the keenest hope “ that he would 
not cease to be efficient in extending the 
Church and preserving her integrity,” and 
it was fulfilled. Schools and seminaries 
were established, publication societies incor¬ 


porated, the Board of Missions was organ¬ 
ized, the old apologetic tone was laid aside, 
and the Church claimed her place and her 
right. It is one indication of the rapid turn 
of the tide that the Diocese which at his con¬ 
secration contained 40 clergy, twenty-four 
years afterwards—five years after his death 
—contained 198. Not till 1819 was the first 
“ Western” Bishop consecrated,—Philander 
Chase for Ohio. In 1835, the last Conven¬ 
tion at which Bishop White presided, Jack- 
son Kemper was consecrated the first Mis¬ 
sionary Bishop of the Northwest, and in his 
sermon at the consecration Bishop Doane 
spoke for the Church, which was waken¬ 
ing to new life, when he laid down the 
principle that this “ Church is to be a Mis¬ 
sionary Church, that her Bishops are true 
Apostles, and that of this missionary body 
every Christian by the terms of his bap¬ 
tismal vow is a member.” 

The difference between the Church of then 
and now is greater than appears by any 
mere comparison of numbers. We read in 
reports of General Convention, “so many 
Bishops present, so many Dioceses repre¬ 
sented;” but the bodies which they repre¬ 
sented were smaller still. In Illinois, in 
1835, “three clergymen met for organiza¬ 
tion,” and “ this Convention unanimously 
appoint Philander Chase to the Episcopate 
of Illinois;” and at the seventh Annual 
Convention the Bishop reports “tliatneither 
as pioneer missionary, as a Diocesan Bishop, 
or as parish minister, has he received any 
salary except $12.” In Delaware, in 1791, 
3 clergymen and 11 laymen met to frame a 
constitution and organize the Church. In 
the Peninsula of which Delaware forms part, 
in 1827, there were only 15 clergy, while 
there were 40 churches in a fit state for wor¬ 
ship. In Kentucky the “ organization of 
the Diocese was thus happily effected, there 
being 16 lay delegates and 3 of the clerical 
order,” only one of whom was “settled.” 
In North Carolina, where, in 1770, a list is 
given of 18 settled clergy, and which was 
organized in 1817, at Bishop Ravenscroft’s 
death, in 1830, the clergy only numbered 11. 
In South Carolina, where 153 clergy are re¬ 
corded as laboring from 1700 to 1800, in 
1786 only 9 parishes are represented. On 
the other hand, South Carolina, in 1882, 
reports 45 clergy; North Carolina, 73, and 
in 1883 asks for a division; Kentucky 36 
clergy ; and Illinois is a province including 
3 Dioceses, with 60, 26, and 45 clergy, re¬ 
spectively. 

Bishop Doane was elected to New Jersey 
in 1832, and died in 1858. During his 
Episcopate the number of communicants in 
New Jersey increased from 800 to 4500, the 
clergy from 14 to 94, and the parishes from 
31 to 79. In 1882 the two Dioceses of New 
Jersey and Northern New Jersey report 99 
clergy and nearly 8000 communicants, and 
80 clergy and 8700 communicants. 

The first Convention of New York, in 
1785, consisted of 5 clergy and delegates 





AMERICAN CHURCH 


33 


AMERICAN CHURCH 


from 7 parishes. In 1811, the year of Bishop 
Hobart’s consecration, the number of clergy 
was 40. In 1835, five years after his death, 
the number was 194. 

In 1882 the Dioceses of New York, Al¬ 
bany, Western New York, Central New 
York, and Long Island contained 743 clergy 
and 87,364 communicants. 

Pennsylvania, which, in 1811, contained 
20 clergy, in 1882 reports in the three Dio¬ 
ceses of Pennsylvania, Pittsburg, and Cen¬ 
tral Pennsylvania 352 clergy and 39,251 
communicants. 

Some figures presented at the General 
Convention of 1883 will give an idea of the 
general growth of the Church. In 1790 
there were 7 Dioceses and 190 clergy; in 
1800, 12,000 communicants. In 1832, 18 
Dioceses, 592 clergy, 30,939 communicants. 
In 1883, 48 Dioceses and 15 missionary 
jurisdictions, with 67 Bishops, 3575 clergy, 
4348 parishes and missions, 373,000 com¬ 
municants. Between 1865 and 1883 the reve¬ 
nue of the Church increased from $6,471,669 
to $23,217,765. 

When the venerable Bishop G-reen took 
leave of the Convention of 1883, he said, 
“ Of the Convention of 1823, which met in 
this city, I alone am alive. When I went 
into holy orders, sixty-three years ago, 
there were nine Bishops in the Church. 
When I looked around me to-day in the 
House of Bishops I cast my eyes upon more 
than seven times that number. How hath 
God wrought! His blessing hath been 
upon the Church and she hath prospered.” 
Since 1800, when the first report is made of 
communicants, the increase has been over 
30 to 1, while the population of the country 
has increased as 10 or 12 to 1. 

If, however, the American Church suffered 
from the deadness of the English Church in 
the last century and in the first part of this 
century, it has felt in no less a degree the 
movement of life which has wrought such a 
reformation and restoration in that Church 
in the last forty years, and it is still feeling 
it. There was “in the forties” the same 
panic—fear of “ popery”—here as in Eng¬ 
land, and the same folly has been repeated 
on occasion since ; but wisdom has come with 
advancing years : only a weak handful has 
gone over to Rome to justify the fears, while 
in respect of knowledge of the Church and 
faith in her as a true branch of the Church 
Catholic, of the doctrine and practice of wor¬ 
ship, of belief in her mission in America, 
there has been a general education and ele¬ 
vation that has brought whole “parties” 
forward upon ground-which, forty years ago, 
they were almost ready to condemn as heret¬ 
ical. The Convention of 1844 came to the 
conclusion of far-sighted wisdom when, 
after days of excited discussion, the effort of 
some to procure a condemnation of the doc¬ 
trine of the Oxford Tracts resulted in a 
vote of confidence in the “ Liturgy, officers, 
and Articles and Canons of the Church as 
sufficient exponents of the sense of Holy 
3 


Scripture, and affording ample means of dis¬ 
cipline and correction.” A similar result 
was reached in 1868, and again in 1871, 
when, after a protracted and brilliant dis¬ 
cussion, the conclusion was in effect a vote 
of general condemnation of all ceremonies 
fitted to express a doctrine foreign to that 
set forth in the authorized standards of the 
Church, and expressing confidence in the 
paternal counsel and advice of the Right 
Reverend Fathers. 

Some untoward events require to be no¬ 
ticed. The trial and suspension of the two 
brothers, Bishop Henry W. Onderdonk, of 
Pennsylvania, in 1844, and of Bishop Ben¬ 
jamin T. Onderdonk, of New York, in 1846, 
demonstrated at least the power of disci¬ 
pline that existed in the Church. The at¬ 
tempted “ trial” of Bishop Doane (1849-53) 
resulted not only in his triumphant acquit¬ 
tal, and in “ making the trial of a Bishop 
hard,” but established firmly the principles 
of order upon which an Episcopal Church 
must stand. Bishop Ives, in 1853, set the 
only example of a Bishop of this Church 
perverting to Rome. In 1873, Bishop Cum¬ 
mins became the leader of the only schism 
which has rent the Church, and which has 
effectually taught us the lesson that all the 
treachery and danger does not lurk on one 
side of the camp. The “ Reformed Epis¬ 
copal Church,” commonly known as the 
“ Cumminsite movement,” still continues to 
exist for our warning. 

A real danger was escaped at the close of 
the civil war of 1861-65. During the war 
the Southern Dioceses had organized them¬ 
selves under the title of the “ Church in the 
Confederate States,” and in the General Con¬ 
vention of 1862, which met in the midst of 
the war, none of them were represented. 
But in 1865, at the close of the war, two 
Southern Bishops presented themselves at 
the General Convention, and the reunion 
of the once politically-divided Church was 
happily and thoroughly effected. All signs 
of that division have long passed away, and 
no others appear to disturb us or to hinder 
our progress. 

At the Convention of 1880 the new ar¬ 
rangement went into operation, by which 
the Convention is made the Board of Mis¬ 
sions, and the session was marked by a new 
interest in the subject of missions. Three 
new missionary jurisdictions were set off and 
Bishops elected. The special work of the 
Convention of 1883 was dealing with the 
report of the committee on enrichment of 
the Prayer-Book. To some this work, and 
that of missions, seem to partake of the same 
character of catholicity with the final action 
upon doctrine and ritual in former Conven¬ 
tions, and either are a far more worthy sub¬ 
ject of the attention of the Convention than 
the length of a cassock, or the conversation 
in a seminary student’s room. It is believed 
that the development of the missionary work 
of the Church and the work of enrichment 
of the Prayer-Book will make the Conven- 




AMICE 


34 


AMOS 


tions of 1880 and 1883, in the future judg¬ 
ment of the Church, among the most im¬ 
portant Conventions that have been held. 

The American Church is not without weak 
points in her constitution, some of which 
she inherited, and for some of which the 
neglect and exposure of her early existence 
are responsible. 

The pew-system, which makes it a possible 
and not improbable thing that the poor shall 
be excluded from the house of the Lord ; the 
vestry system and delegate system of most 
Dioceses, which makes it not impossible that 
the body on which depends the calling and 
supporting of a rector, and the lay portion 
of that body which elects the Bishop, may 
be composed of unbaptized unbelievers ; the 
want of endowments, which makes the living 
of the clergy a precarious hire; the small 
salaries which hinder young men from en¬ 
tering the ministry, and which produce fre¬ 
quent changes of parishes; the disposition 
of the lay-power and the purse-power to 
tyrannize over the clergy ;—these are some 
of the special forms of evil in our consti¬ 
tution, though not one of them is peculiar 
to us. On the other hand, there are some ad¬ 
vantages which are the result of the inde¬ 
pendence of Church and State in this country 
which it would be difficult to overestimate. 
The Church in America fis absolutely free 
from state control. She has only to speak 
the word to be absolutely free from the con¬ 
trol of official worldliness. She is free to 
carry on her own affairs in her own way. 
Her failures and successes are her own. She 
has a fair field and no favor. Her relation 
to the state is that of the primitive Church, 
with the added advantage of being respected 
instead of persecuted. She is in the midst 
of a hundred different religious bodies, and 
in the eye of the state she is one among the 
hundred. But her real position in her own 
eyes is that she offers a centre of union for 
them all, and occupies the ground of apos¬ 
tolic order and evangelic truth, towards 
which all of them are tending, and where 
all can stand together. Her past history 
furnishes no ground for boasting, but much 
for gratitude and encouragement. The days 
of doubt and darkness have passed away; 
she no longer apologizes for existence or 
hesitates to assert her claims. Let us hope 
that the days of division and doubting each 
other have passed away also. The present 
is full of encouragement. The future is in 
the hands of them that believe and lay hold 
of it. 

Authorities: ‘Wilberforce’s American 

Church, S. P. G. Documents, Bp. Perry’s 
Hand-book of Gen. Conv., Bp. White’s 
Memoirs, Bp. Meade’s Churches of Vir¬ 
ginia, Life of Bp. Hopkins, Sermon of Bp. 
Morris. Rev. L. W. Gibson. 

Amice. A vestment worn on the shoul¬ 
ders over the cassock and covering the neck. 
Apparently it was a sort of cape which 
could be drawn over the head. It was in 
use in pagan times, but the earliest use of it 


mentioned in England was in the tenth cen¬ 
tury. It was later a sort of fur cape. If, 
as is now held, the vestments were varieties 
of the usual dress which, being made of 
richer material and with more costly orna¬ 
mentation, were used in the services, the 
amice was evidently used as a protection 
from the cold. When it was used as a dis¬ 
tinct and sacred vestment, the mystical 
meaning of it was that it denoted the Hel¬ 
met of Salvation, and a short prayer was 
recited when it was put on, imploring the 
overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. 

Amos, whose name signifies “ burden,” 
was of the herdsmen of Tekoah, a village 
not far from Bethlehem, and probably, 
though nowhere so recorded, a native of the 
place, as his tomb was shown there in the 
time of St. Jerome. It was in the days of 
Uzziah, King of Judah, and of Jeroboam 
II., King of Israel, that he was called to 
deliver God’s message against the nations 
neighboring to Israel and Judah, and espe¬ 
cially against the northern kingdom of Is¬ 
rael. The date of his prophecy is variously 
assigned to the years between 808 b.c. and 
784 b.c. , during which period these kings 
were contemporary. 

Amos declares of himself that he was not 
the son of a prophet, nor trained in any 
school of prophets (chap. vii. 14), but that 
it was from feeding his flocks and gather¬ 
ing the fruits of the sycamore (Ficus Syc- 
amorus ) that the Lord took him and said, 
“ Go, prophesy unto my people Israel.” 

This statement of his occupation and man¬ 
ner of life is corroborated by many expres¬ 
sions in the prophecy, which show the author 
to be a man accustomed to out-door life, ob¬ 
servant of nature and familiar with the care 
of cattle (see chap. ii. 9, 13; iii. 4, 5, 12; 
iv. 1, 2, 9; v. 8; vii. 1 ; ix. 9, 13). Yet 
this prophet’s language is not that of an un¬ 
lettered or ignorant man, as it exhibits great 
natural powers of thought, of observation, 
and experience, and further presupposes a 
popular acquaintance with the Pentateuch, 
and implies ceremonies of religion (though 
corrupted by Jeroboam) in accordance with 
the law of Moses. The prophecy displays a 
remarkable unity throughout, and was prob¬ 
ably put into its present form by the author 
himself; it may be analyzed into four prin¬ 
cipal parts, viz. : I. Chap. i. to ii. 3. A 
general denunciation against various nations 
connected with Judah and Israel; II. Chap, 
ii. 4, to vi. 14. Prophecies against Judah, 
and especially against Israel; III. Chap. vii. 
to ix. 10. An account of the prophet’s 
visit to Bethel, and a series of visions or 
prophetical symbols ; IV. Chap. ix. 10 to end. 
An evangelical prophecy foretelling the day 
when the fallen tabernacle of David shall be 
raised up again, and the hope of the Mes¬ 
siah’s kingdom shall be fulfilled. The 
vigor, beauty, and freshness of the proph¬ 
et’s style have been acknowledged from the 
earliest times. It is true St. Jerome calls 
him “ rude in speech, but not in knowledge,” 






AMPHIBALUM 


35 


ANAPHORA 


but the opinion of Bishop Lowth is far oth¬ 
erwise, as follows: “Let any person who 
has candor and perspicacity enough to 
judge, not from the man, but from his writ¬ 
ings, open the volume of his predictions, 
and he will, I think, agree with me that our 
shepherd ‘is not a whit behind the very 
chief of the prophets. \ He will agree that as 
in sublimity and magnificence he is almost 
equal to the greatest, so in splendor of dic¬ 
tion and elegance of expression he is scarcely 
inferior to any." (Lowth’s Lectures on He¬ 
brew Poetry.) 

There is a tradition that Amos suffered 
martyrdom at the hands of his offended 
countrymen, but there is no sure founda¬ 
tion for the assertion, which might easily 
have been a development of Amaziah’s 
complaint to Jeroboam, “Amos hath con¬ 
spired against thee in the midst of the House 
of Israel ; the land is not able to bear all his 
words.’ •* 

Authorities: Bible Commentary, Smith’s 
Dictionary of Bible, Pusey’s Minor Proph¬ 
ets. 

Amphibalum. A name for a part of the 
ecclesiastical dress used in Gaul. Its Greek 
derivation is one of the minor proofs that 
the Gallican Church received so much of its 
details as well as its foundation from the 
East. The word was synonymous with 
casula, or chasuble , and was probably a 
heavy outer garment worn in bad weather ; 
but as its texture and use were modified in 
course of time it passed into ecclesiastical 
use, and became a part of the vestments in 
the service. It was seamless, or rather 
united from top to bottom without any slit 
for the hands, without sleeves. It is prob¬ 
ably identical with the phenoleon worn by 
the Eastern Bishops. 

Analogy of Faith (Rom. xii. 6. A. V. 
“proportion of the faith”). It is evident that 
faith here is not the act of the mind, whether 
as a “ saving faith” or merely belief. It must 
be compared (Eph. iv.) “ with One Faith,” 
and, Jude v. 3, “ the Faith once delivered to 
the saints.” It must therefore stand for the 
body of the doctrines whose contents are the 
object of faith. If so, it will be necessary 
to compare it with 2 Tim. i. 13, “ the form 
of sound words.” Now reverting to Rom. xii. 
6, “ Having therefore gifts differing accord¬ 
ing to the grace that is given us, whether 
prophecy, let us prophesy according to the 
proportion [analogy] of the Faith,” the 
only fair conclusion that can be drawn is 
that there was a distinct body of doctrinal 
statements universally received, for St. Paul 
had no authority over the Christians at Rome, 
and therefore spoke of not what he might 
have ordained, but of what all received to¬ 
gether, and to which the teacher was to con¬ 
form his public teaching. It points to an 
apostolic form of the Creed; but without 
pressing this so far, this phrase of the Apos¬ 
tle’s shows that already there was a criterion 
by which all teachers should be guided, and 
which was received as authoritative. It is 


as clear that at that date, 58 a.d., there was 
no body of Christian literature such as the 
New Testament now is that could claim that 
position. Therefore if it was not a Creed, 
as we now mean by this word, it was some¬ 
thing equivalent to it. Again, there follows 
the necessity for us now to use the same re¬ 
straint, not selecting such texts as suit our 
views, but using them all fairly, i.e ., ac¬ 
cording to the proportion of the Faith. Com¬ 
pare Article XN. in the XXXIX. Articles : 
“ The Church hath power to decree Rites or 
Ceremonies and authority in Controversies 
of Faith; and yet it is not lawful for the 
Church to ordain anything that is contrary to 
God’s Word, written: neither may it so ex¬ 
pound one place of Scripture that it be repug¬ 
nant to another. Wherefore, although the 
Church be a Witness and a Keeper of Holy 
Writ, yet as it ought not to decree anything 
against the same, so besides the same it ought 
not to enforce anything to be believed for 
necessity of salvation.” 

Anaphora. {Gr. lifting up; offering; cf. 
Heb. vii. 27, offering sacrifices; thence the 
oblation at the Holy Communion.) The 
term Anaphora is, then, equivalent to our 
Lift up your hearts. The whole subject 
will come up under the word Liturgy, but 
it may be well here to compare the Eastern 
Liturgy with our own. Omitting the prep¬ 
aration, we have— 

Preface. 

Prayer of the Triumphal 
Hymn. 

Triumphal Hymn. 

Commemoration of our 
Lord’s Life. 

Commemoration of institu¬ 
tion. 

H Words of institution for the 
Bread. 

Words of institution for the 
Wine. 

Oblation of the Body and 
Blood. 

Prayer for the Descent of ] 
the Holt Ghost. I 

Prayer for the change of | 
the Elements J 

General intercession for 
Quick and Dead. 


Prayer before the Lord’s' 
Prayer.. 

Lord’s Prayer. 
Embolismus. Prayerafter 
Lord’s Prayer. 

Prayer of inclination 
Holy things to Holy Per¬ 
sons. 

Fraction. 

Confession. 

Communion. 

Antidoro, or Thanksgiving. 


Lift up your hearts. 
Preface. 

Sanctus. 

All glory be to Thee, etc. 
And did institute, etc. 

He took bread. 

Likewise. 

Wherefore, 0 Lord, etc. 


And we most humbly, etc. 

t« u u a 


Cf. Prayer for Christ, 
Church Militant, 
and 

Here we offer and present, 
etc. 

Nothing directly parallel 
in our Prayer-book. 


Almighty God Maker of 
all. 

Communion. 

Almighty and ever Living 
God. 


But this, though the general order, was not 
invariable. The preceding preparation (pro¬ 
anaphora) was far less changed than this 
which we now would shrink from changing. 
Our own Prayer-Book has, in the placing the 
Invocation in the office, drawn more nearly 
to the Eastern rule than have any other of 
the Western Churches. 





ANATHEMA 


36 


ANDREW 


Anathema. [Gr. a devoted thing or offer¬ 
ing. A cutting off from the offices and priv¬ 
ileges of the Church of an obstinate offender.) 
Anathema was the greater, as Aphorismos or 
Separation was the lesser, excommunication. 
It is the extremest act of discipline that can 
be inflicted. It was based upon the words 
of our Lord, “ If he will not hear the 
Church, let him be as an heathen man and 
a publican.” “ He must be a grievous and 
scandalous sinner, notorious, under accusa¬ 
tion and conviction.” St. Paul used the 
term five times, and always to express 
strong feeling of condemnation. It was 
derived from the Septuagint translation by 
the New Testament writers, and was un¬ 
derstood by them in its deepest spiritual 
sense, not merely formal exclusion from the 
Church’s privileges, but a most serious, nay, 
fatal loss to the soul. “ If any man love 
not the Lord Jesus Christ let him be 
anathema.” The anathema was directed 
against heresies, as they were the preaching 
of another Gospel. The form occurs in the 
declaration appended to the Nicene Creed. 

(Vide Nicene Creed.) “But those who 
say, ‘ Once He was not,’ and, 1 Before He 
was begotten He was not,’ and, 1 He came 
into existence out of nothing ;’ or who say 
that ‘ The Son of God is of another sub¬ 
stance, or essence, or is created or mutable 
or changeable,’ the Catholic and Apostolic 
Church anathematizes.” The consent or the 
refusal to subscribe to this formed the test. 
The anathema was afterwards used in sev¬ 
eral enactments by succeeding Councils, but 
the most notable were the twelve anathemas 
launched by Cyril of Alexandria against 
Nestorius at the Council of Ephesus, 430 a.d. , 
and the Canon then passed, and re-enacted at 
Chalcedon, 451 a.d., threatening the anath¬ 
ema against the layman who should issue a 
Creed in place of the Nicene, also the anath¬ 
ema against all past heresies enacted by the 
fifth General Council of Constantinople 
(553 a.d.). 

But later it became fearfully abused. Of 
course its binding power is only as the anath¬ 
ema defends a truth of Holy Writ, or cuts 
off an offender against it. But the terror it 
inspired was so great that many times it was 
utterly perverted. It was launched against 
the offender with solemn tolling of bells. Its 
terms were recited by the Bishop sitting 
before the altar in full vestments, with 
twelve priests in attendance holding each a 
lighted candle, which, as the last terrible 
words of the curse were uttered, were dashed 
upon the pavement. Hence the phrase 
“ Cursed with Bell, Book, and Candle.” Its 
misuse, while it wrought great and often 
irreparable mischief, overreached itself, and 
it was often set at naught at later times. 

But the English Church has been singu¬ 
larly cautious in pronouncing any anath¬ 
ema. It occurs once in the Article (XIII.) 
upon obtaining eternal salvation only by the 
name of Christ, following closely in tem¬ 
per the example of St. Paul. 


Anchoret. A person who lives apart; a 
hermit. (Vide Hermit.) 

Ancyra. In the year 314 a.d. a Council was 
held at Ancyra by some eighteen Bishops, 
among whom were Yitalis of Antioch, Mar- 
cellus of Ancyra, Lupus of Tarsus, and Am- 
phion of Epiphania. Their consultations 
were embodied in 24 Canons, chiefly relating 
to the treatment of such as had fallen in 
times of persecution. Canon 10 allows those 
to marry who, on receiving Deacons’orders, 
declare their purpose to do so ; but forbids 
marriage, under pain of deposition, to those 
who are ordained professing continence; 
Canon 13 forbids Chorepiscopi to ordain 
without permission in writing, from the 
Bishop. 

Another Council was held at Ancyra in 
358 a.d. by Basil of Ancyra and George of 
Laodicea, with a party of Semi-Arian Bish¬ 
ops. This Council condemned the doctrine 
of the pure Arians, and put forth an exposi¬ 
tion of their faith, in which they affirmed 
that the Son was of like substance with the 
Father ; meaning it to be inferred that He 
was not of the same substance ; they con¬ 
demned the term consubstantial , and, on the 
other hand, they also condemned the Arian 
formulary of faith called the Second Creed 
of Sirmium. 

Andrew, St., surnamed Protolectos, or 
first-called, was a native of Galilee. He 
was the son of Jona, and, together with his 
brother Simon, he followed the occupation 
of fishing. Bethsaida, a small town on the 
Sea of Galilee, was their birthplace. Little 
mention is made of St. Andrew individually 
in the Gospels, yet a good judgment of his 
character may be formed from that little. 
He was probably older than his brother 
Simon, since he first attended the preaching 
of John the Baptist. When he heard the 
declaration of John, “ Behold the Lamb of 
God ” as he saw Jesus approaching, An¬ 
drew (after his interview with Christ, in 
company with St. John) went first to his 
brother, to whom he told of his finding 
the Messiah, and whom as a brotherly 
duty he brought to Jesus. He was of a 
devotional turn of mind, seeking earnestly 
for the truth himself, and desiring to bring 
others to the knowledge of it. After this 
first interview with his future Lord it 
is conjectured that more than a year passed 
before the formal call to the two brothers 
took place, which was after the miraculous 
draught of fishes on the Sea of Galilee, 
when, with their partners, James and John, 
“they forsook all and followed Him” (St. 
Luke v. 11). 

There are but two other circumstances in 
St. Andrew’s life mentioned in the Gospels, 
the first in St. John’s Gospel, ch. xii. 21, 
where he brings the inquiring Greeks to 
Jesus, and the other in St. Mark, ch. xiii. 
9, when Peter, James, John, and Andrew 
inquire privately of their Lord concerning 
the destruction of Jerusalem. 

Ecclesiastical history, however, gives an 







ANDREW 


37 


ANGELS 


account of the labors of St. Andrew. He 
went, after the dispersion of the Apostles, 
to Scythia, Cappadocia, and Bitbynia, con¬ 
verting many to the faith and establishing 
Churches. From thence he went to Sarmatia, 
a portion of Russia that borders on the Black 
Sea, and for this he is called the Founder 
of the Russian Church, and is honored as 
their titular saint. Sinope and Sebastopol 
are both connected with the name of St. An¬ 
drew. Having suffered many persecutions 
he returned to Jerusalem. On his way he 
tarried at Byzantium, where he instructed 
the inhabitants in the religion of Christ 
and founded a Church, over which he con¬ 
secrated “the beloved Stachys” as first 
Bishop. 

He traveled after this into Thrace, Mace¬ 
donia, and Achaia, where for many years 
he preached the faith, and at last gave his 
great testimony to its truth by laying down 
his life in its defense. 

The account of his martyrdom is very af¬ 
fecting. At an advanced age he was called 
before the proconsul, at Patras, a city of 
Achaia, on the Gulf of Lepanto, and required 
to cease from preaching the Christian doc¬ 
trine. Instead of complying he proclaimed 
Christ even before the judgment-seat of 
./Egeus, the proconsul, who was so enraged 
that he commanded the aged Apostle to be 
imprisoned and scourged seven times on his 
naked back, and then to be fastened to a 
cross with cords, that his sufferings might 
be prolonged. This cross differed from the 
upright cross, and was called the cross de¬ 
cussate, from the Roman numeral X. 

When the suffering Apostle came near to 
this instrument of torture, he fell on his 
knees and addressed to it this famous invo¬ 
cation, “Hail, precious cross I thou hast 
been consecrated by the Body of my Lord 
and adorned with His limbs as with rich 
jewels. I come to thee exulting and glad; 
receive me into thine arms. Oh, good cross, 
I have ardently loved thee ; long have I 
desired thee and sought thee; now thou art 
found by me and art made ready for my 
longing soul; receive me into thine arms, 
taking me from among men, and present 
me to my Master, that He who redeemed 
me on tbee may receive me by thee.” For 
two days the dying martyr preached to the 
people from the cross, at the end of which 
time the people importuned the proconsul 
that he might be taken down; but the 
blessed Apostle prayed earnestly to the 
Lord that he might at this time seal the 
truth with his blood, when he instantly 
expired, November 30, in the year 70 a.d. 

The feast of St. Andrew, on which the 
beginning of Advent depends, is considered 
the beginning of the Christian year, and is 
of very ancient date, being one of those for 
which an Epistle and Gospel are provided 
in the Lectionary of St. Jerome, and which 
has also prayers provided for it in the Sac¬ 
ramentary of St. Gregory. The relics of 
St. Andrew, which had been preserved in 


Constantinople for thirteen centuries, on 
the taking of that city by the Turks were 
dispersed throughout Christendom. He is 
called the patron saint of Scotland and 
Russia, and three orders of knighthood bear 
his emblem (the Crux decussata ), the Scotch 
order of the Thistle, the Burgundian order 
of the Golden Fleece, and the Russian order 
of the Cross of St. Andrew, and for near!}' 
three centuries this cross has been borne on 
the national banner of Great Britain. 

Angels. “ Which are spirits, immaterial 
and intellectual, the glorious inhabitants 
of those sacred palaces where nothing but 
light and blessed immortality, no shadow 
of matter for tears, discontentments, griefs, 
and uncomfortable passions to work upon, 
but all joy, tranquillity, and peace, even for 
ever and ever, doth dwell. As in num¬ 
ber they are huge, mighty, and royal 
armies, so likewise in perfection of obe¬ 
dience unto that law which the Highest, 
whom they adore, love, and imitate, hatli 
imposed upon them, such observants they 
are thereof, that our Saviour Himself, 
bping to set down the perfect idea of that 
which we are to pray and wish for on earth, 
did not teach to pray or wish for more, 
than only that here it might be with us, as 
with them it is in heaven. Beholding the 
face of God, they adore Him: being rapt 
with love of His beauty, they cleave unto 
Him : desiring to resemble Him, they long 
to do good unto all His creatures, and espe¬ 
cially unto the children of men.” (Hooker.) 

“ How oft do they their silver bowers leave 
To come to succor us, that succor want! 

How oft do they with golden pinions cleave 
The flitting skies, like flying pursuivant, 

Against foul fiends to aid us militant! 

They for us fight, they watch and duly war, 

And their bright squadrons round about us plant, 
And all for love, and nothing for reward,— 

0 why should heavenly God to men have such regard ?” 

(Spencer.) 

It certainly does not lessen the wonder, 
while perhaps it leads towards an answer to 
the question, if we believe that the appear¬ 
ances which are ascribed in the Old Testa¬ 
ment to the Angel Jehovah (“ the angel of 
the Lord”) were Theophanies,—manifesta¬ 
tions of God, —and that “the angel of the 
Lord” is the Lord of the angels, and not 
one of the angelic host. It is very evident 
that He who appears to Abraham in the 
plains of Mamre and in the land of Moriah, 
to Lot in Sodom, to Hagar in the Wilder¬ 
ness, to Jacob in Haran (Gen. xvi. 7; xviii. 
1; xix. 1 ; xxii. 11 ; xxxi. 11, 13), to Moses in 
the bush, to Balaam, at Bochim to the peo¬ 
ple, to Gideon, to Manoah, to Elijah the Tish- 
bite, is one who assumes the authority, exer¬ 
cises the power, and is called by the name of 
Jehovah and God (Num. xxii. 35 ; Judges 
ii. 1; vi. 11 ; xiii. 18 ; 2 Kings i. 3,15). Other 
later cases there are where the angel is plainly 
the minister and messenger of Jehovah, 
as in the vision of David at the threshing 
floor, and at the destruction of the Assyrians, 
and in the vision of Zachariah (2 Sam. xxiv. 










ANGELS 


38 


ANGELS 


16; 2 Kings xix. 35; Zech. i. 12). But in 
the instances which have been cited, even 
where a distinction seems to be made, He 
whom Jehovah calls “ Mine angel” is 
named by Isaiah “ the angel of His presence” 
(Ex. xxiii. 20; xxxii. 34; Is. lxiii. 9), and 
by Jehovah Himself it is said “my pres¬ 
ence shall go with thee, and I will give thee 
rest” (Ex. xxxiii. 14). And whether we 
understand with the earlier Fathers that “the 
angel of the Father is the Lord and God,” 
or, with St. Augustine, that the Theophanies 
were “self-manifestations of God through a 
created being” (Liddon, Bamp. Lee.), the 
fact of those divine manifestations is the 
same. The Angel Jehovah is the Lord of 
the angels. 

And they are His creatures and servants. 
We need not pause to consider the reason¬ 
ableness of a belief, which all races and gen¬ 
erations of men share, in the existence of 
orders of beings higher than man and be¬ 
tween man and God, nearer to God than 
man is, holier and wiser, and, on the other 
hand, having relations of duty towards 
men,—the fact that all men do share it 
proves its reasonableness. What we have 
to consider, as servants of the same Lord, 
who has set them before us as our exam¬ 
ples of obedience to His will, is, what He 
has revealed to us in His Word concerning 
them. And the instruction which He has 
given us is by no means so meagre as is 
sometimes supposed. 

In the Old Testament, aside from those 
instances which have been cited, and which 
were with few exceptions evident manifesta¬ 
tions of the Divine presence, the instances 
in which the angels are named are not many, 
but they are pregnant with meaning. Abra¬ 
ham saw three (Gen. xviii. 2, 3), of whom 
One was pre-eminent; Lot, two (ch. xix. 1). 
But He whom Joshua saw is Captain of the 
Lord’s host (Josh. v. 4). The Psalmist 
names “the chariots of God, thousands of 
angels” (Ps. lxviii. 17), “whom He maketh 
spirits” (Ps. civ.), “ whom He giveth charge 
concerning” His people, who “ excel in 
strength” (Ps. xci. 11 ; ciii. 20). Jacob saw 
them ascending and descending on the lad¬ 
der from earth to heaven (Gen. xxviii. 12). 
Isaiah “saw the Lord high and lifted up, 
and His train filled the temple, and above it 
stood the seraphim, crying one to another, 

1 Holy, Holy, Holy’ ” (Is. vi. 1). Ezekiel 
saw “the cherubims of God,” “the living 
creatures,” “in the visions of God by the 
river of Chebar” (Ezek. x. 20). In Daniel’s 
vision the angel Gabriel—“ man of God”— 
is his teacher, and angels are the princes 
of the kingdoms, of whom Michael is one of 
the chief,—Michael, “who like God?” (Dan. 
ix. 16; x. 13). 

In 2 Esdras the angel, who is sent to in¬ 
struct the prophet, is named Uriel, “the 
flame of God” (Esd. iv. 1), one of “ the in¬ 
numerable multitude of angels gathered 
together” (ch. vi. 3), whose hosts stand trem¬ 
bling before the Lord (2 Esd. viii. 21). The 


angel’s name in Tobit is Kaphael, “one of 
the seven holy angels which present the 
prayers of the saints, and which go in and 
out before the Holy One” (ch. xii. 15), one 
not to be feared, but who served men “ not 
of any favor of mine, but by the will of our 
God,” as the angel who talked with St. 
John forbade his worship, “for I am thy 
fellow-servant” (Kev. xxii. 9). 

But it is in the Christian Scriptures in the 
light of the “ manifestation of God in the 
flesh” that we have the fullest evidence and 
doctrine of the angels of God. We can be¬ 
lieve, we can almost understand, that His 
coming from heaven must have opened the 
way and brought the atmosphere and the 
angelic attendance of heaven with Him to 
the earth. An angel announced the birth 
of His forerunner (St. Luke i. 1, 27; ii. 
10). The angel Gabriel saluted His virgin 
mother with the promise of His conception 
and birth. A multitude of the heavenly 
host attended the angel that announced His 
birth to the shepherds. An angel warned 
and guided Joseph (Matt. i. 20,24). Angels 
delivered Him from the hand of Herod. 
Angels ministered to Him in His tempta¬ 
tion (Matt. iv. 11). An angel comforted 
Him in Gethsemane (St. Luke xxii. 43). 
Legions of angels were at His bidding when 
He was betrayed (St. Matt. xxii. 53). An¬ 
gels announced His resurrection (St. John 
xx. 14). Angels accompanied His ascension 
(Acts i. 10). Far above all angels He sitteth 
now. Before Him.angels bow and veil their 
faces as they worship (Heb. i. 7). The voice 
of the archangel shall herald His coming to 
judgment (St. Luke iv. 16). With all holy 
angels He shall come (St. Matt. xxv. 31). 
Angels shall summon quick and dead before 
His throne (St. Luke xii. 8). Before angels 
He shall confess them that have confessed 
Him, and deny them that have denied Him. 
Angels shall be His ministers of reward and 
punishment (St. Matt. xiii. 39). 

They differ from us and excel us, these 
glorious creatures of God, in many things, 
but most of all in holiness and obedience. 
They are wonderful in knowledge, in ap¬ 
pearance glorious, great in power, in dig¬ 
nity exalted, in number “ an innumerable 
company,” “ thousand thousands and ten 
thousand times ten thousand.” These are 
they whom we understand by “ the elect 
angels” (1 Tim. v. 21), who have passed 
the ordeal before which others fall, have 
“kept their first estate” (Jude 6), and will 
keep it forever. And yet these glorious and 
immortal beings are but creatures, and finite 
creatures. They are so far beyond us that 
the “ worshiping of angels” (Col. ii. 18) 
would be the natural impulse of humility 
and of reverence for the infinite God. But 
they themselves forbid such worship. “Stand 
up,” said St. Peter ; “I also am a man” 
(Acts x. 26). And in the same spirit the 
angel forbade St. John, “ I am thy fel- 
j low-servant, worship God” (Rev. xxii. 8). 
! But, “ let all the angels of God worship 





ANGELS 


39 


ANGELS 


Him,” for “by Him, the Son, were all 
things created, that are in Heaven, and that 
are in earth, visible and invisible, whether 
they be thrones, or dominions, or principali¬ 
ties, or powers : all things were created by 
Him and for Him, and by Him all things 
consist” (Col. i. 16). Finite, therefore, in 
power, for they were created; finite in 
magnitude, for space contains them; finite 
in knowledge, “desiring to look into” (1 
Pet. i. 12) the mysteries of Christ, so that 
the Apostles of the Lord are “ a spectacle 
to them” (1 Cor. iv. 9), and “even to the 
principalities and powers in heavenly places 
is made known by the Church the manifold 
wisdom of God” (Eph. iii. 11), and of the 
future ignorant. As compared with us 
wise ; but “ He chargeth His angels with 
folly” (Job iv. 18). As compared with us 
Holy, but a great host of them has fallen. 
The great leader of that fallen host, so great 
that he could make “ war in Heaven” (Rev. 
xii. 7-9), and on earth so divide the king¬ 
dom of God that in the very presence of 
the Son of God he could offer Him all the 
kingdoms of the earth and the glories of 
them, is a fallen angel (St. Matt. iv. 9; 2 
Cor. iv. 4). 

Of that glorious host of the elect Heaven 
is the home. Of them alone, there they 
alone—the judgment is not yet, and all men 
wait for it—worship and adore and do the 
will of their God. There they worship 
and adore Him that sitteth upon the throne 
and the Lamb. “ When He bringeth the 
first-begotten into the world He saith, Let 
all the angels of God worship Him” (Heb. 

i. 6). And angels worship Him who sitteth 
upon the throne in human form, who “.took 
not on Him the nature of angels, but He 
took on Him the seed of Abraham” (Heb. 

ii. 16), “the Man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 

iii. 5), “ the Son of whom He saith Thy 
Throne, O God, is for ever and ever” (Heb. 
i. 8). 

But their work is not all done in Heaven. 
“Are they not all ministering spirits, sent 
forth to minister to them that shall be heirs 
of salvation?” (Heb. i. 14) The existence 
of them that do the will of God in Heaven 
is no life of idleness. They are the fellow- 
servants of Him who is the Lord and the 
Saviour of men. They are the agents of 
God and the means of intercourse between 
earth and Heaven. It is no novel interpreta¬ 
tion to read, “ He maketh His angels to be 
winds, and His ministers a flame of fire.” 
The fires on Mount Sinai were the work of 
angels. An angel troubled the waters of 
Bethesda. In the Apocalypse we read of 
angels restraining the four winds. Works of 
vengeance, the destruction of Sodom and 
Gomorrah by the fiery lava of volcanoes, 
the destruction of Sennecharib’s hosts by 
means, it is supposed, of a sutfocating wind, 
the pestilence in Israel when David num¬ 
bered the people, the smiting of the earth 
in the Apocalypse, are ascribed to angels 
Nature is not inanimate. Its toils are du¬ 


ties. “ For all things serve Thee.” “ And 
every breath of air, and every ray of heat 
and light, every beautiful prospect, is, as 
it were, the skirts of their garments, the 
waving of the robes of those gracious and 
holy beings, whose faces see God in Heaven. 
And I put it to any one whether it is not as 
philosophical, and as full of intellectual eru- 
joyment, to refer the movements of the na¬ 
tural world to them as to attempt to explain 
them by certain theories of science, useful as 
these are, and capable of a religious applica¬ 
tion.” (Newman.) 

They guarded, led, and fed His Church in 
the wilderness (Ps. lxxviii. 25). They watch 
over nations. They watch over men. “ The 
angel of the Lord campeth round about” 
(Ps. xxxiv. 7); “and lo! the whole moun¬ 
tain round about was full of horses and 
chariots of fire round about the prophet” 
(2 Kings vi. 17). They are the instruments 
of mercies and punishments (2 Sam. xxiv. 
16). They bear the prayers of men up to 
God (Rev. viii. 3). They watch over little 
children (ch. xxvi.). “ Of such is the king¬ 
dom of Heaven,” and “their angels do al¬ 
ways behold the face of my Father which 
is in Heaven” (St. Matt, xviii. 10). They are 
present in the assemblies of Christians ; the 
reason for their decency and order is “be¬ 
cause of the angels” (Eccl. v. 6; 1 Cor. xi. 
10). They are God’s messengers to men 
(Acts viii. 26 ; x. 4), and under the guise of 
strangers and needy “ some have entertained 
angels unawares” (Heb. xiii. 2). They watch 
over the living, and there is joy in the pres¬ 
ence of the angels of God over one sinner that 
repenteth.” And when Lazarus, the beggar, 
dies, they “carry his soul to Abraham’s 
bosom” (St. Luke vii. 39; xv. 10). 

Their work is of a kind that to our pride 
and envy (the devil’s own sins) seem irksome 
and unworthy (1 Tim. iii. 6; Wis. ii. 24). 
But “ the angelic life is passed between 
Heaven and earth” (Leighton), and in their 
eyes it is “ Glory to God on high” where 
there is “ peace on earth, good-will towards 
men,” and nothing which is worthy of the 
care and love of God is beneath their atten¬ 
tion. What we learn about them shows us 
that there is close connection between these 
two portions of the one kingdom,—the visible 
and the invisible. It is not without mean¬ 
ing that the Apostolic Liturgies repeat the 
very forms of words and of worship which 
the shepherds heard, and which were re¬ 
vealed to Isaiah and St. John (St. Luke ii. 
14; Is. vi. 3; Rev. iv. 4-11). So Moses was 
bidden to “ make all things according to the 
pattern showed to thee in the mount” (Heb. 
viii. 5). May it not be for a like reason that 
as the name of Malachi signifies “my 
Angel,” and his prophecy of John the Bap¬ 
tist is “ Behold, I send my angel before Thy 
face” (Mai. iii. 1), so in the letters to the 
Churches of Asia the Lord chooses to name 
the Chief Pastors not Apostles or Bishops, 
but by the very name of those ministering 
spirits which were about His throne? The 





ANGLICAN 


40 


ANGLICAN 


men on earth officers in the Church visible, 
and the Spirits in Heaven officers of the 
Church invisible, are knit together in the 
same Communion of Saints, set. to do the 
same will of God, and called by the same 
name of “ Angels” (Rev. i. 20). 

What St. John saw in Heaven it is for 
tjie Church to reflect on earth, and so to do 
the will of our Father. In their worship, 
its order, harmony, beauty, constancy, they 
show us who, and who alone, is the object 
of our worship,—not spirits of the dead and 
“ souls yet under the altar” (Rev. vi. 9), 
not even their glorious selves, but “ the Lord 
God Almighty, which was, and is, and is 
to come” (Rev. iv. 8), and how He is to 
be worshiped. And in their ministrations, 
making His will theirs, caring for what He 
cares for, seeking His glory because they are 
Holy and Hi3, they show us what is to be 
the spirit and the manner of our work. The 
Lord tells us who they shall be that in 
the resurrection shall inherit the kingdom 
and be “ as the angels” (St. Luke xx. 36), 
those who have like them ministered to 
“ these his brethren” (St. Matt. xxv. 40). 
They have confessed Him here, and He shall 
confess them before the angels. They have 
followed and worshiped Him here, and 
there as here, “ with angels and archangels 
and all the company of Heaven, they shall 
laud and magnify His glorious name, ever¬ 
more praising Him and saying, Holy, Holy, 
Holy, Lord God of Hosts. Heaven and 
earth are full of Thy Glory. Glory be to 
Thee, O Lord, Most High.” 

Rev. L. W. Gibson. 

Anglican. The Angles were one of the 
tribes of Teutonic sea-robbers that descended 
upon the coasts of England, drove the an¬ 
cient Britons back to the mountains of 
Cornwall and Wales, and established them¬ 
selves as permanent residents on the soil. 
For some occult reason, perhaps for its 
euphony, their name has been perpetuated 
in English and England. 

The term Anglican is now commonly ap¬ 
plied to the National Church of England, as 
the term Gallican is to the National Church 
of France,—the ancient Gaul,—Coptic to 
the Church of the Copts, or Russian to the 
Oriental Church in Russia. 

These are national terms. They evince 
the important fact that while the Catholic 
Church is one over all Christendom and re¬ 
mains one and the same into whatever land 
her missionaries penetrate, still she conforms 
herself to national peculiarities. The cus¬ 
toms, the tastes and habits, with the mode 
of thought and action, which distinguish the 
nations from each other, enter even into 
the national forms of religion. While the 
Anglican is, as she claims to be, the One, 
Holy, Catholic Church in England, she has 
her own English modes of Liturgical wor¬ 
ship, and her special terms and ways of the¬ 
ological teaching. The Anglican Church 
was originated among the Britons in Apos¬ 
tolic times and was revived among the 


Anglo-Saxons, 598 a.d., by Augustine and 
his companion monks, who was induced by 
Gregory the Great, a Bishop of Rome, to 
enter upon a mission at Canterbury. The 
Roman Bishop pursued the same policy to¬ 
wards England that was so successful towards 
the other nations of Western Europe. His 
claim of supremacy was rejected at first by 
the British Christians, and was never tamely 
submitted to by the English Church or peo¬ 
ple. Even Hildebrand (Gregory VII.), 
while grinding under his heel the crown of 
the Holy Roman Empire in the person of 
Henry IV. of Germany, was careful not to 
turn the screws of his usurpations too 
tightly upon William of Normandy, con¬ 
queror of England. John was the first of 
the kings of England to acknowledge the 
temporal and spiritual lordship of the Pope, 
but even then the barons, who were the rep¬ 
resentative English people, wrung from him 
the Magna Charta, in which the phrase 
“ our Church of England” shows that the 
nation itself rejected the uncatholic claims 
of the Roman Pontiff. At last, after many 
vicissitudes, the English Convocation, 1537 
a.d., finally resisted successfully the Roman 
usurpations, and the National Church of 
England became, as she still remains, free 
from foreign control. She became only the 
more distinctly Catholic by rejecting the 
uncatholic assumptions of the Pope. The 
Gallican Church was at least equally rest¬ 
ive under the Papal grip, but she now, like 
other National Churches of Western Eu¬ 
rope, has been forced to succumb. The 
Anglican Church, however, maintains suc¬ 
cessfully her national autonomy. While 
recognizing the authority of the whole 
Church Catholic, and remaining ready to 
obey it should it ever be clearly and legiti¬ 
mately exercised, she supports the right of 
National Churches to conduct their peculi¬ 
arly national affairs without foreign inter¬ 
vention. 

What the Anglican Church claims for 
herself she allows to others. Both the Scot¬ 
tish and Irish Churches have their own Lit¬ 
urgies, canons of discipline, and general 
self-rule, while they keep up reciprocal 
communion with England. The English 
colonies being essentially parts of England, 
their Churches are branching outgrowths 
that still retain not only organic union with 
the “ Church of England,” but canonical 
conjunction with her. 

The Church in America, though descend¬ 
ing through both the English and Scottish 
lines of the Apostolic Episcopacy, is prop¬ 
erly not Anglican. Here, as in England, in 
France, and in other countries, the Catholic 
Church is one in organic union with the 
universal Body of Christ, holding to the 
one succession under the one Lord, with 
the one faith and the one baptism, but she 
is already, and is more and more manifest¬ 
ing herself to be a distinctively national 
Church. She feels the current of progress, 
and while doing all she can to purify it and 






ANNATES 


41 


A N TH ROPOMOR PHI SM 


keep in the ways of truth and holiness, she 
does not madly and foolishly throw herself 
athwart it. Her mission is primarily and 
chiefly to the American people, and she is 
fast developing an American type of Cath¬ 
olic doctrine and practice. 

The Anglican Church has no authority in 
the Church in the United States. She has 
rightfully great influence through the writ¬ 
ings of her scholars living and dead, as well 
as through her noble example; hut the 
daughter has a domain and household of 
her own which she holds directly under the 
one Lord, and by the grace of His presence 
she is bearing her witness to His name, win¬ 
ning souls to His glory, constructing forms 
of worship adapted to her time and sphere, 
and learning fast so to teach the one Faith 
that it shall take up into itself, after Ameri¬ 
can methods, the best thought and purest 
life of the American people. 

Rev. B. Franklin, D.D. 

Annates. The revenues or profits of one 
year, and so far synonymous with first 
fruits. They were the revenues of the 
Bishopric for the first year after the conse¬ 
cration of the Bishop to his See. They were 
a tribute paid to the Papacy. They arose 
from the disposal made of the accruing 
rents, tithes, and payments due, though the 
Bishopric were vacant. Who was to enjoy 
them ? The temptation to the Bishop over 
vacant benefices, and to the Metropolitan in 
the case of the vacant See, was to keep the 
See vacant and to appropriate the revenues, 
or else to require from the Bishop-elect the 
payment of the first year’s incomes. This 
right, or rather, usurpation, passed on to 
the Pope. The beginning of the practice is 
said to have begun with Pope Gregory (600 
a.d.), but it did not finally take the bur¬ 
densome shape it attained till about 1253 
a.d. , when Innocent III., by granting to 
Henry III. the Episcopal revenues for three 
years, obtained the royal aid in fixing the 
claim upon the clergy for the Papacy. It 
formed part of the complaints made for cen¬ 
turies before the Reformation. It is esti¬ 
mated that in the forty-five years between 
1486 and 1531 the equivalent of $225,000 a 
year was paid to the Popes by English 
Bishops in the form of annates alone. In 
1531 the Convocation of Canterbury applied 
to the crown for relief, and a conditional 
act was passed, by which a compromise was 
offered to the Pope. As no notice was taken 
of it, the act was confirmed by letters 
patent two years later. Annates in a less 
burdensome shape have ever since been paid 
to the crown by every Bishop and every 
priest holding a benefice above a certain 
amount of annual value. But this revenue 
was applied to the benefit of the clergy by 
Queen Anne’s Bounty Act, and is now 
chiefly used for building parsonages. 

Annotine Easter. The meaning of the 
word is doubtful, but the most probable 
explanation is that it was the anniversary 
Sunday of those who had been baptized the 


previous years, as this was usually adminis¬ 
tered at Easter-tide ; yet, if observed on the 
actual Sunday the year following, it might 
fall very much later, or before the Easter of 
that year. This will explain why it could 
fall on such varying dates. It does not 
appear to have been kept up, as it was obso¬ 
lete ( antiquus ) in 1100 a.d., when Micro- 
logus mentioned it in his treatise. 

Annunciation. The Feast of the Annun¬ 
ciation of the Angel Gabriel to the Virgin 
Mary. The feast commemorating this event 
is said to date earlier than 492 a.d., for in the 
Sacramentary of Gelasius there is an Epis¬ 
tle, Gospel, and Collect, but the actual day 
observed varied. However, the Sacrament¬ 
ary has had interpolations, and no un¬ 
doubted proof for the observance of the 
feast can be traced higher than the Spanish 
Council of Toledo (656 a.d.), which ordered 
that, as the feast day would fall in Lent, it 
should be observed in December, in accord¬ 
ance with the Laodicean Canon (51st), order¬ 
ing that no festivals of Martyrs, i.e ., Holy 
Days, should be observed in Lent. But the 
Trullan Council (692 a.d.) ordered that this 
feast should be excepted from the prohibition 
and restored to its right place,—the 25th of 
March. The purpose of the festival is to 
commemorate the announcement made by 
the Angel Gabriel to the Virgin, that she 
should conceive and bring forth the prom¬ 
ised Messiah, and the conception of our 
Lord, which followed that announcement. 

Antelucan. (Before dawn.) In the prim¬ 
itive Church in time of persecution the 
Christians were wont to meet before dawn 
to escape detection. The custom was con¬ 
tinued after persecution had ceased, but it 
was broken up later, as it led to some irrever¬ 
ence and disorder. In dangerous times, of 
course, the Holy Communion was then most 
safely and readiiy celebrated ; but in times of 
quiet this was not necessary, and the custom 
was no longer imperative. Also there were 
irregularities connected with the celebrations 
at that hour, so that it was ordered that the 
Holy Communion should not be celebrated 
at night. 

Antependium. A frontal vesting the 
front of the altar. The color of the ante¬ 
pendium should vary with the season and 
the special day. The Holy Table in the 
Greek Church is always vested with special 
care, with altar-cloths which were conse¬ 
crated at the time the altar or the church 
was consecrated. 

Anthem. Vide Music. 

Anthropomorphism. (The likeness or 
form of man.) The gross error of some here¬ 
tics,—Audeans,—who held that God had 
a human form. It was and is probably a 
natural hasty error which some may find it 
difficult to put away. At any rate, it has 
been supposed that many held it whose lan¬ 
guage, following the accommodations of 
Holy Scripture, has seemed to justify the 
charge. One of the earliest, Tertullian (180- 
202 a.d.), taught that God had a body, but 







ANTICHRIST 


42 


ANTICHRIST 


being self-existent, was bound by very dif¬ 
ferent and to us incomprehensible, laws of 
existence. The language, His Eye, His 
Hand, His creating man in His own Image, 
is only suited to our powers of comprehen¬ 
sion, for we are distinctly and authori¬ 
tatively taught (Is. xl. 18; Acts xvii. 20, 
et al.) that He is everywhere present, a 
Spirit whom no man hath seen nor can 
see, who cannot be delineated by man’s 
art or device, or, as the Article hath it (Art. 
I.), “ There is but one living and true God, 
everlasting, without body, parts, or passions, 
of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness.” 
As we can only use Scripture language upon 
such lofty and insoluble subjects, it is well 
to use great care and devout thought in 
forming such conceptions. Anthropomor¬ 
phism does not necessarily exclude a person 
from the Church Communion, though, as 
St. Augustine says of those who were mis¬ 
led in the Church in Hay, they are carnal 
and childish. 

Antichrist. A word compounded from 
the Greek anti and Christos, and meaning 
“opposed to,” or, “instead of Christ.” 
There is probably no theological subject 
involved in greater obscurity, and from the 
earliest times the explanatory theories have 
been almost innumerable. The idea of An¬ 
tichrist may be traced back almost as far as 
the Messianic idea, and is undoubtedly the 
Christian analogue of that dualism which 
characterizes all Oriental religious systems, 
and which is most familiar in the Persian 
Ormuzd and Ahriman, the personal op¬ 
posing powers of Good and Evil. The sim¬ 
plest solution of these striking analogies is 
that the great truths of Christianity were 
foreshadowed in the primeval or patriarchal 
revelation and retained in purity only in the 
Old Testament prophecies, but lived on in 
one or other corrupted form in all the cog¬ 
nate heathen systems. The term Antichrist 
is found in the New Testament only in 
the 1st and 2d Epistles of St. John, al¬ 
though the idea is very clearly taught in 
St. Matthew xxiv. and St. Mark xiii. St. 
Paul, also, in 2 Thess. ii., speaks of “The 
man of sin,” by whom it is generally be¬ 
lieved he means Antichrist. Certainly St. 
John states positively that the coming of 
Antichrist was a doctrine well known to 
those to whom he wrote. The greatest di¬ 
versity of opinion has prevailed as to whether 
is meant by Antichrist a person, or a system, 
or a corrupted Church, or a persecuting anti- 
Christian power ; as to whether Antichrist 
has already come, or is yet to be expected, or is 
typical of a constant opposition of the world- 
power to that of Christ. In the Roman 
Church Antichrist is generally believed to 
mean heathen imperial Rome, though many 
interpret the prophecies in Revelation as 
pointing to a personal opponent of Christi¬ 
anity who is to appear immediately prior to 
the second coming of Christ. In the Greek 
Church Gregory VII. was called Antichrist 
by some, as Boniface III. had already been bv 


Phocas ; but the prevailing belief has pointed 
to Mohammed, as might naturally be ex¬ 
pected. Among Protestants the almost 
universally accepted solution has been 
found either in the Pope or in the Church 
of Rome; while individual rulers, from 
Caligula to Napoleon III., have been claimed 
as meeting the most minute requirements of 
prophecy. It would be as unprofitable as 
impossible to allude, even, to all these beliefs 
and fancies. The sad divisions of Chris¬ 
tianity have caused almost every Christian 
system to be regarded as Antichrist by some 
opposing system. The confusion has largely 
resulted from the many unsuccessful at¬ 
tempts to solve the mysterious prophecies 
of Daniel and the Revelation, especially 
those which concern “the number of the 
beast,” ahd the “ time, and times, and divid¬ 
ing of time,” which are supposed to point 
to the name of the individual Antichrist 
and the duration of the anti-Christian power. 
This immense diversity of belief, together 
with the mystery in which the whole subject 
is involved, would seem to suggest that the 
matter, outside of the general principles 
taught by our Lord Himself, is of far less 
practical importance than has been assigned 
to it. The one essential point is that Chris¬ 
tianity is in constant conflict with “the 
prince of this world,” “ the evil one” from 
whom the Lord has taught us to pray for 
daily deliverance, and that Antichrist is to be 
found in every concrete development or incar¬ 
nation of his power. A close examination 
of St. Paul’s language in 2 Thessalonians 
will show conclusively that the Roman em¬ 
perors, of whom Nero was the type, fulfilled 
every particular of his description of the 
“ Man of sin.” They were in all respects 
personal Antichrists. They were “ Christoi,” 
“anointed” sovereigns; they were worshiped 
as God and declared themselves to be incar¬ 
nations of the Supreme God, assuming the 
title “Dives;” they claimed “lying won¬ 
ders” in support of their assumed divinity; 
they were monsters of iniquity such as the 
world has never seen before or since, and 
they were the relentless persecutors of all who 
confessed Christ, demanding the abjuration 
of His faith and the substitution for it of 
their own worship as the price of life from 
every apprehended Christian; and, finally, 
the great Arian apostasy immediately pre¬ 
ceded the final destruction of Roman heathen 
imperialism by “ the breath,” or “spirit”— 
“ pneuma”—of the Lord’s mouth, for the 
death of the half-converted Constantine 
ended forever the great centralization of the 
world-power which had been the uncompro¬ 
mising opponent of the kingdom of Christ, 
and thenceforth Christianity became the 
dominant power in the world. This view 
is greatly strengthened by St. Paul’s refer¬ 
ence to our Lord as having predicted the 
events which, for obvious reasons of safety 
to the Church as well as to Himself, He 
could mention only in figurative and ob¬ 
scure language. It was, doubtless, to this 







ANTIDORON 


43 


ANTIOCH 


language of St. Paul, and other and more 
secret teachings to the same effect, that 
St. John alludes in his First Epistle, and his 
declaration that there were then “ already 
many Antichrists” is most significant, as ap¬ 
parently designed to draw attention from 
the prevailing expectation of a personal 
Antichrist, and the immediate occurrence 
of the Second Advent, and fix it upon the 
doctrinal defection which had even then 
arisen, and which embodied the most im¬ 
portant features of the prophecy. In regard 
to the bearing of the Revelation upon the 
subject, that book is yet too much an un¬ 
solved mystery to permit any definite con¬ 
clusion to be drawn. How much of it is 
prophecy and how much the mystical de¬ 
scription of events already past or then pass¬ 
ing we cannot yet decide. Nor is the theory 
above advanced in any way inconsistent 
with the doctrine of a personal Antichrist, 
immediately to precede the final coming of 
the Lord in glory. Almost all prophecy 
is manifold in its fulfillment, having gen¬ 
eral and special significations, the teach¬ 
ing of some general truth being always the 
more important, and tlie'prediction of events 
in most cases secondary. This is undoubt¬ 
edly true of the prophecies of Antichrist. 
What we need to know and remember may 
be summed up in a very few words. No 
orthodox development of Christianity can 
possibly be meant as being a power hostile 
to Christ. But the world-power is always 
opposing the Christ-power and striving to 
set itself in its place, and the world-power 
is always assuming some concrete form to 
make its opposition tangible and effective. 
As faithful Christians we must be constant 
in maintaining the Lord’s side in this cease¬ 
less conflict, and in enduring the trials which 
that faithfulness involves, and doing so we 
need not to disturb our minds with looking 
for a personal Antichrist, hut rather direct 
them in watchful hope to the coming of the 
Lord Himself in the full assurance that 
every opposing power will be destroyed be¬ 
fore Him and every faithful watcher be re¬ 
warded. 

Rev. Robert Wilson, D.D. 

Antidoron. The remaining unconse¬ 
crated bread which had been blessed in the 
service of the preparation of the Elements. 
Prothesis. Its name signifies “ instead of 
the gift” ( i.e ., the consecrated bread), given 
to non-communicants instead of the conse¬ 
crated bread. There is, doubtless, a historic 
bond, though not very distinct, connecting 
the old love-feasts (1 Cor. xi. 20, 39), this 
Antidoron, the Eulogise of the Western 
Church, the “ pain beni” of the Gallican, 
and the blessed bread of the older English 
Church, together. 

Antinomianism. (Opposed to Law; in 
Church History, those opposed to the moral 
Law of God.) The earliest Antinomians 
were the Gnostics, whose wild speculations 
and gross imaginations led them into such 
a conclusion. Their profligate lives and ab¬ 


surd doctrines and high pretensions to Wis¬ 
dom and inner Knowledge naturally led to 
the denial of any moral obligations at all. 
But in this they sought for some support 
■ from the strong and decided language of St. 
Paul upon Faith, and so misled those will¬ 
ing to be misled by their want of self- 
control. There is always an Antinomian 
principle in mere human nature, and this 
reappears in some form or other along the 
line of Church history, some leader in each 
age not being entirely free from some form 
of the error. But it reappeared with vio¬ 
lence at the Reformation. In that age and 
in the whirl of that terrible breaking up it 
is not at all surprising that some were 
tempted to use more violent language than 
the truth would bear (as did Luther), and 
that others would fall into this heresy. John 
Agricola, at Wittenberg (1538 a.d.), became 
the leader of the sect. His tenets were re¬ 
pudiated by Luther and Melancthon, and it 
is said that he himself recanted his error 
afterwards. It sprang up again under Crom¬ 
well in England, among the innumerable 
sectaries which swarmed in that country 
during the Great Rebellion (1640-56 a.d.). 
In every age, however, some sectaries have 
held it, though in a repressed way. The 
Holy Scriptures present, as is their wont, 
both sides, both Faith and Works, most 
strongly, and the Church’s duty is to do the 
same. Logical consequences in such cases 
are to be measured by practical conse¬ 
quences. The true line is to fill out works 
with the Life of Faith and to clothe faith 
with the body of works. “Show me thy 
Faith without thy Works, and I will show 
thee my Faith by my Works” (c/. iii. 13; 
Jas. ii. 18). 

Antioch. There were two Antiochs, the 
best known in Syria, where the disciples 
were first called Christians, where St. Peter 
labored so much, where St. Ignatius after¬ 
wards ruled; the other a large town in Pi- 
sidia, where St. Paul preached and suffered 
for the Gospel’s sake. But the first Antioch 
deserves a longer notice, from the important 
events which took place there, and from the 
influence its School exercised at one time. 

It was founded by Seleucus Nicator (300 
b.c.), and a part of its population was Jew¬ 
ish. It grew apace, as its position was ex¬ 
cellent both in a political and in a commer¬ 
cial sense. It was adorned by the Seleucid 
kings, the Romans favored it, and Herod 
the Great contributed to its adornment. Its 
population, like that of Alexandria, was 
witty, gay, and licentious, easily roused, and 
often (as in the famous case of the Statues) 
proceeding to excesses. Its fondness for 
giving nicknames possibly is noted in the 
fact that the disciples received there theh* 
future designation as Christians. Ignatius, 
upon the death of Evodius in a riot, became 
the Bishop of the Jewish, as he already was 
of the Gentile, congregations, and, having 
safely brought his flock through the perse¬ 
cution under Domitian (95-96 a.d.), bravely 










ANTIOCH 


44 


ANTIPHON 


set the example of a good confession before 
Trajan. His letters are a precious result of 
his devotion, and the journey to Rome was 
unintentionally a better way of proclaim¬ 
ing the Gospel than if he had remained in¬ 
humed at home. Antioch became famous 
for its Catechetical School, under Lucian, 
who was martyred (311 a.d.). He was a 
clear, cool man, with a great deal of insight 
and originality. But he was hardly ortho¬ 
dox in his teaching. His pupils were nearly 
all afterwards Arians, under the lead of 
Arius, who was himself trained in this An- 
tiochean school. Lucian’s teaching seems 
to have been of a disputatious turn. He 
combated the Syrian mysticism and gnosti¬ 
cism, and in the effort brought out the plan 
of proposing problems on the Faith for de¬ 
bate. The sophistical style of argument 
was in vogue, and to his training in dialec¬ 
tics in such a school Arius owed much of his 
first successes. In this the school of Lucian 
did much more harm to Christian Truth 
than all the fancies of Origen. Lucian re¬ 
deemed his own good name afterwards by a 
good confession at his martyrdom (311 a.d.), 
but he sowed seeds that bore poisoned fruit 
in the next twenty years. The history of 
Arianism belongs to another article, but 
here in Antioch were held some of its strong¬ 
est Councils. Lucian’s school soon died out, 
but his influence in urging more practical 
and grammatical criticism of the Bible long 
continued. From him really came the tone 
which influenced Diodorus of Tarsus in his 
exegesis, and through him Theodore. 

A Council was held at Antioch in the 
year 340 or 341 a.d. Some historians affirm 
that there were two Councils, one in each 
year, but whether or not that was so, it will 
suffice to consider the things done as the 
acts of one Council. The Emperor Con¬ 
stantine had laid the foundations of a mag¬ 
nificent church at Antioch, which was fin¬ 
ished about this time by his son Constantius ; 
and Eusebius of Nicomedia gathered to¬ 
gether a large number of Bishops (as many 
as 97, of whom 40 were Eusebians) to dedi¬ 
cate it; these organized themselves into a 
Council, which is often called the Council 
of the Dedication, and is the second Council 
of Antioch, if, as some think, another was 
held in 340 a.d. The Bishops assembled 
were from the East alone, no one from the 
Western Empire being present, nor any rep¬ 
resentative of the Pope ; and Eusebian opin¬ 
ions seem to have prevailed, either through 
the retirement of the orthodox Bishops, or 
through the influence of Constantius, who 
was present in person. The charges against 
St. Athanasius, formerly preferred at the 
Synod of Tyre (of murder, sacrilege, and 
iftipurrty), were renewed, in spite of having 
been plainly confuted; and he was con¬ 
demned without a hearing. The Council 
then proceeded to elect and consecrate a 
Bishop of Alexandria in his place,—one 
Gregory of Cappadocia, a coarse and vio¬ 
lent man, who presently took possession of 


i his See by military force with many out- 
j rages and cruelties. They then drew up 
three or four creeds, which under ordinary 
circumstances would have been unobjection¬ 
able, but were suspicious from the careful 
omission of the term opooveiog (co-essential, 
eonsubstantial), which had become the test 
of orthodoxy. The second of these creeds 
is sometimes styled th e Formulary of Antioch, 
or the Creed of the Dedication , but is ascribed 
to an earlier date than the Council. Besides 
these Creeds twenty-five Canons were passed, 
which, though technically rejected as the 
work of heretics, have actually been re¬ 
ceived into the Code of Church Canons, 
being confirmed by the Council of Chalce- 
don. Those of most interest now are the 
following: The 1st Canon establishes the 
decree of Nice concerning Easter ; the 5th 
prescribes a rule for dealing with those who 
assemble private independent congrega¬ 
tions ; the 7th enjoins the use of letters of 
peace, or dismissary letters ; the 12th (which 
was directed against Athanasius) deprives 
of all hope of restoration any one who being 
deposed shall carry his complaint to the em¬ 
peror instead of to a Synod of Bishops; the 
15th forbids appeal from the unanimous de¬ 
cision of a provincial Synod ; the 21st for¬ 
bids translations ; and the 22d forbids one 
Bishop interfering in the Church of another. 
Other Councils or Synods were held at An¬ 
tioch, as follows : in 345 a.d., when the Con¬ 
fession of faith called the fiaKpoauxog was 
drawn up; in 360 a.d., when Meletius was 
elected Patriarch of Antioch, who, warmly 
espousing the defense of the Catholic faith, 
so provoked the Arians that they procured 
his banishment as a Sabellian; in 363 a.d., 
when the Creed of Nice was received as the 
exposition of the true faith ; in 380 a.d., of 
which no records are preserved, though the 
Council is said to have received, unani¬ 
mously, the Epistle of Pope Damasus; in 
391 a.d., when the errors of the Massalians 
were condemned ; in 417 a.d., against Pela- 
gius; in 433 a.d., against Nestorius; and 
in 435 a.d., when the memory of Theodorus 
of Mopsuestia was defended. 

Rev. R. A. Benton. 

Antiphon (English form, Anthem). An- 
tiphonal chanting, i.e ., responsive, as when 
two choirs respond to each other. Antiph- 
onal reading, as in our reading the Psalter 
in the service, minister and congregation 
replying the one to the other. It was the 
Jewish mode. Indeed (Is. vi.. 3, “this 
cried to this,” Heb.), the Seraphim respond 
the one to the other. The arrangements of 
the choirs (1 Chron. vi. 31, sq ., and xxv.) 
necessarily involved antiphonal singing. 
Many of the Psalms ( e.g . xxiv., cxviii., 
cxxxiv.) must have been so used : Miriam’s 
Song at the Red Sea was choral and antiph¬ 
onal. The dedication of the rebuilt walls 
of Jerusalem was evidently with antiphonal 
singing, as was also thus celebrated the 
founding of the second Temple (Heb. xii. 
36, sq.; Ezra iii. 10, 16). 






ANTIPHON AL 


45 


APOCRYPHA 


Pliny’s famous letter to Trajan about the 
Christian implies in the phrase “ secum in- 
vicem by terms among themselves, antiph- 
onal singing. It is a very old tradition 
that Ignatius of Antioch introduced an- 
tiphonal singing into the Gentile Church 
because of a vision of antiphonal chanting 
in heaven. Most probably, as he united the 
Jewish and Gentile congregations under 
his jurisdiction, it may be a way of record¬ 
ing his argument from Isaiah to the Gen¬ 
tiles for such singing. East and West took 
it up, and it spread with great rapidity. 
The custom once taken up was not laid 
aside. But the term antiphon came later 
to have various meanings, springing out of 
the one central use of the Psalms: (a) The 
Psalms were so called from their use. ( b ) 
It came to mean later a section of a Psalm, 
or a compilation of several Psalms, or other 
selections from Scriptures. The use was in 
this case for one choir to sing each verse, 
and at its close the other choir responded 
with an unvarying versicle. Such arrange¬ 
ments are frequent in the old office-books. 
The Canticles used in English state services 
instead of the Yenite are of this nature, 
(c) A further change took place in its 
meaning when it was the name for a single 
sentence from the Psalm, originally sung 
between the verses, but'later only at the 
beginning and the close. ( d) The last step 
was to make it mean the sentence taken by 
itself and sung alone. This antiphon might 
be from Scripture or from some other source. 
These antiphons are very common in the 
Greek services. The word anthem (anti- 
phona, O. E. antefn, antem), found in Chau¬ 
cer (Mod. E. anthem), means in English 
music such a verse most usually from Scrip¬ 
ture, though often the composer made a 
single anthem out of two separate texts or 
passages from the Holy Writ. The anti¬ 
phon forms a very notable part of the Litur¬ 
gical services, especially in the Mozarabic 
and Eastern rites. (For the use of the An¬ 
them in the service, see Anthem and 
Music.) 

Antiphonal. (Antiphonar.) The book 
which contains the invitatories, responso- 
ries, verses, collects, and whatever is sung in 
the choir, but not including the hymns pe¬ 
culiar to the Communion service, which are 
contained in the Graduale. It is a book 
that belongs to the Roman rite. The antiph¬ 
onal was also used in the English service 
till the compilation of the Prayer-Book did 
away with its use. 

Antipope. Rival Popes were called anti¬ 
popes. They were pretenders to the Papal 
throne, elected by partisans upon some pre¬ 
text or claim. But several of them were 
elected under such circumstances that, had 
they been successful in their claims, they 
would have been acknowledged as legiti¬ 
mately chosen. The number of rival claim¬ 
ants has been variously stated, and probably 
cannot be completely given. But it has 
been estimated at about forty. Many be¬ 


gan an opposition which maintained itself 
too short a time to require notice. Others 
again surrendered their claims by com- 
romise. From the date 251 a.d. there was 
ut one century (the thirteenth) which was 
not marked by an antipope. For over a cen¬ 
tury, from 1046 a.d. to 1180 a.d., there was 
a continuous series of antipopes; and at the 
outset (1046 a.d.) there were as many as four 
in the field. The Council of Pisa (1409 a.d. ) 
deposed both the legitimate and the anti pope 
and elected a third. This but introduced 
three rivals. The Council of Constance 
(1414-18 a.d.) deposed two, the third abdi¬ 
cated, and a fourth was elected, who re¬ 
mained possessor of the See; but before he 
died there were two rival claimants (1425- 
26 a.d.). This, together with other histori- 
•cal facts, make a very significant commen¬ 
tary upon the doctrine of Papal infallibility. 

Antitype. This word can be used in two 
distinct and opposing senses: (a) as op¬ 

posed to mere representations of a reality, 
as the substance is opposed to the shadow. 
Christ was the antitype; Moses, David, 
Solomon, were the types. It is also used 
(5) in a reverse sense, as twice in the New 
Testament (Heb. ix. 24): “For Christ is 
not entered unto the holy places made with 
hands, which are the figures (the antitypes) 
of the true; but unto heaven itself, now to 
appear in the presence of God for us,” 
where the antitype means the shadow, 
while the type, as St. Chrysostom says, has 
the power of the reality. And again in 1 
Pet. iii. 21, where the word antitype led to 
its use in the Liturgies: “ The like figure 
whereunto (the antitype) baptism doth also 
now save us.” The Fatners then used this 
word in the same way. Irenseus: “The Holy 
Spirit is then invoked that the bread may 
be the body and the cup may be the blood 
of Christ, that they who receive these 
antitypes may obtain remission of sins and 
everlasting life.” St. Basil uses this term 
antitype in reference to the human body. 
As at first glance the body would be 
called a simple substance, but subsequent 
reasoning would show that it was a complex 
thing, having color and shape, and antitype 
and magnitude, when, if the text be correct, 
it is difficult to translate it unless it be a 
reference to its prototype— God’s Image. 
It can be compared, therefore, with the 
phrase in His Liturgy: “We offering the 
antitypes of the Holy Body and Blood of 
Christ, beseech Thee that Thy Holy Spirit 
may descend upon us and upon these gifts.” 

Apocrypha. This Greek word means 
“hidden, secret.” It seems to be used for 
“spurious” in the latter part of the second 
century. Perhaps the name indicates a secret 
knowledge made known only to the initiated. 
The names of distinguished men, as Solo¬ 
mon and Ezra, Daniel and Jeremiah, were 
falsely given as authors of the various books. 
The introducing of Apocryphal books into 
the Septuagint gave them a certain weight, 
though Jerome speaks strongly against an 






APOCRYPHA 


46 


APOCRYPHA 


undue valuation of them. The Church of 
Rome, at the Council of Trent, included the 
doubtful books in its definition of Canonical 
Scripture, excepting the two books of Esdras 
and the Prayer of Manasseh. The German 
and English Reformers followed the opinion 
of Jerome. In Luther’s German Bible the 
title “Apocrypha” had this addition : “i.e., 
Books which are not of like worth with Holy 
Scripture, yet are good and useful to be 
read.” Wiclif used the term Apocrypha 
for the uncanonical books, and the judgment 
of St. Jerome is given in the VI. Article 
of the English Church. He admits them 
to be “ read for example of life and instruc¬ 
tion of manners,” but not “ to establish any 
doctrine.” The Apocryphal books are in¬ 
teresting in their connection with the litera¬ 
ture and history of the Jews. “ They repre¬ 
sent the period of transition and decay which 
followed on the return from Babylon, when 
the prophets, who were then the teachers of 
the people, had passed away and the age of 
scribes succeeded.” “ The alterations of the 
Jewish character, the different phases which 
Judaism presented in Palestine and Alexan¬ 
dria, the good and the evil which were called 
forth by contact with idolatry in Egypt, and 
by the struggle against it in Syria, all these 
present themselves to the reader of the Apoc¬ 
rypha with greater or less distinctness.’’’ 
These books lack the prophetic element, 
though there is some attempt to feign it. 
The Song of the Three Children is the only 
poetry in the Apocrypha. Where the writ¬ 
ers are affected by Greek culture there is 
“the taste for rhetorical ornament which 
characterized the literature of Alexandria.” 
In the Apocrypha works of fiction appear, 
which rest, or purport to rest, on “an his¬ 
torical foundation.” The Jewish exiles had 
a reputation for music, and were asked to 
sing the “ songs of Zion ” (Ps. cxxxvii.). 
The trial of skill in wise sayings given in 
1 Esdras iii. and iv. “ implies a traditional 
belief” that the Persian kings honored 
those who possessed such gifts. The transi¬ 
tion to story-telling was natural. The cap¬ 
tivity, with its remoteness of scene and 
strange adventures, gave a wide field to the 
imagination. In Bel and the Dragon there 
is a love of the marvelous, and a scorn of 
the idolater. In Tobit and in Susanna there 
is a moral tendency. Jeremiah has a promi¬ 
nent place in the hopes of the Jews, and so 
in 2 Macc. xv. 13—16, he is represented as 
appearing to Judas Maccabseus and giving 
him “a sword as a gift from God.” This 
may help to explain the rumor of the 
people in Christ’s day, that “Jeremias, 
or one of the prophets,” had appeared on 
earth (Matt. xvi. 14). With regard to the 
false names given to Apocryphal writers, it 
is difficult at this day to know how much 
deception existed, if any was intended. Sol¬ 
omon’s name may have been used to draw 
attention by personation. Later Jewish his¬ 
tory shows this, however, to be a danger¬ 
ous practice. There are inaccuracies in the 


history contained in the Apocrypha. This 
may be partly due to a want of “ power to 
distinguish truth from falsehood.” The in¬ 
fluence against idolatry is strong, as in the 
story of the noble Maccabees, and in the 
books of Judith, Baruch, and Wisdom. The 
heroic death by martyrdom of the mother 
and her seven sons in 2 Macc. vii. is a won¬ 
derful narrative. A high idea of almsgiv¬ 
ing appears in Tobit iv. 7-9, which form a 
part of the sentences used in the Offertory. 
In Tobit xii. 8, prayer, fasting, and alms are 
named as characteristics of a holy life. Our 
Lord explains their relation to true relig¬ 
ion in St. Matt. vi. 1-18. The Wisdom of 
Solomon is a book of a very elevated tone of 
thought. Wisdom is beautifully styled “the 
brightness of the everlasting light, the un¬ 
spotted mirror of the power of God, and the 
image of His goodness” (ch. vii. 26). “ In 

all ages, entering into holy souls, she maketh 
them friends of God” (v. 27). This resem¬ 
bles Philo’s teaching, and foreshadows St. 
John’s description of Christ as the Word 
of God and “ the true Light, which lighteth 
every man that cometh into the world” 
(John i. 1, 9). Eternal blessedness shines out 
in this book. How magnificently the fol¬ 
lowing words sound in days of heathen dark¬ 
ness : “ The souls of the righteous are in the 
hand of God” (Wisdom iii. 1), and, “ In 
the sight of the unwise they seemed to die” 
(v. 2); “ But they are in peace” (v. 3). See 
the final triumph of the righteous in ch..vi., 
with its figures of rapidly passing life, in 
the ship, the bird, and the arrow. In such 
a fleeting life the wicked cry, “We in like 
manner, as soon as we were born, began to 
draw to our end” (v. 13). The wide love 
of God is described inch. xi. 23-26 : “ Thou 
lovest all the things that are, and abhorrest 
nothing which Thou hast made” (v. 24); 
“ O Lord, Thou lover of souls” (v. 26). 
The second book of Esdras, from the “ allu¬ 
sions to Jesus Christ and to the phrase¬ 
ology of the New Testament,” is supposed to 
be the work of a Jewish Christian. Ecclesi- 
asticus is believed to be written by the son of 
Sirach, as it claims to be. Josephus excludes 
the Apocryphal books from the-Canon of 
Scripture, and “Philo never quotes them as 
he does the Sacred Scriptures. By the Jews 
they were never viewed as part of the 
Canon.” Still they form an “important 
link” in Jewish history, and narrate “ the 
fulfillment of many of the Old Testament 
prophecies, especially those in the book of 
Daniel.” They give accounts of customs 
and circumstances alluded to in the New 
Testament, and so help us to understand it. 
They contain, also, “pious reflections, writ¬ 
ten by devout men, who were waiting for 
the consolation of Israel.” The Fathers 
often appealed to them and quoted them. In 
very early times “they were read in most 
j Churches, at least in the West,” not as 
Canonical Scripture, but as ancient and val¬ 
uable for instruction, as a homily or sermon 
might be read. The Belgic Confession al-. 




APOLLIN ARIANISM 


47 


APOSTLE 


lowed them to be read in Churches. This 
passage occurs in Cecil’s “ Remains” : “ Man 
is a creature of extremes. The middle path is 
generally the wise path ; but there are few 
wise Enough to find it. Because Papists 
have made too much of some things, Prot¬ 
estants have made too little of them. . . . 
The Papist puts the Apocrypha into his 
Canon ; the Protestant will scarcely regard 
it as an ancient record.” While the Eng¬ 
lish Church reads the Apocrypha in the 
public service, it is not read as Scripture. 
The Episcopal Church wisely takes the mid¬ 
dle ground of which Cecil speaks. While 
she, with the Jews themselves, excludes the 
Apocryphal books from Canonical Scrip¬ 
ture, she is ready to draw from them such 
information as may be of benefit to her chil¬ 
dren. Bishop Ch. Wordsworth contends 
that if the early Church had claimed canon- 
icity for them she would have impeded the 
entrance of the Jews into her fold ; but all 
the Apostles were Jews, “the first fifteen 
Bishops of Jerusalem wbre of Hebrew ex¬ 
traction” (Euseb. H. E., iv. 5). The Greek 
Church, though not considering the Apoc¬ 
rypha inspired, venerates it, and by a proper 
use of it we keep in concord thus far with 
that ancient body. While the Apocrypha 
was allowed to be read for instruction in an¬ 
cient Churches, Cyril’s Catechetical Lectures 
show that the Church of Jerusalem was an 
exception, and the Council of Laodicea de¬ 
termined the case for some other Churches 
by forbidding all but the Canonical books 
to be read in the Church. The author of 
the Apostolic Constitutions, giving orders 
about the reading of Old Testament books, 
omits the Apocrypha. 

Authorities: E. H. Plumptre in Wm. 
Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible; Horne’s 
Introduction; Bible Lore, by J. Comper 
Gray ; Browne on the Articles ; Wordsworth 
on the Canon ; Bingham's Antiquities. Eor 
a list of works on the Apocrypha, see In¬ 
troduction to the Old Testament in Lange’s 
Genesis, Third Division, p. 64 

Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Apollinarianism. Apollinaris, Bishop of 
Laodicea (d. 390 a.d.), a very learned and in¬ 
fluential Bishop, promulgated certain erro¬ 
neous teachings concerning our Lord’s 
nature. The Nicene Council had deter¬ 
mined Holy Scripture to teach that He was 
perfect man as well as Eternal Son of God. 
As perfect man His human nature must 
subsist of body and soul, or He would not 
be perfect man. But this Apollinaris denied. 
He did not deny the true body, but he did 
deny the soul in our Lord’s human nature. 
He was refuted by Athanasius (who, how¬ 
ever, did not mention his name, for they were 
personal friends), by Gregory Nazienzen, 
Gregory of Nyssa, and others, and was con¬ 
demned by a Council at Alexandria (362 
A.D.), and by the second General Council at 
Constantinople (381 a.d.). His error led him 
to leave the Church and create a sect. Greg¬ 
ory Nazienzen states firmly the true doctrine 


of the Church (Ep. ad Cled.): “ Let not men 
deceive nor be deceived,” supposing “the 
lordly nature” (using this term instead of our 
Lord and God) “ to be soulless. For we 
do not separate the manhood from His Di¬ 
vinity ; but we confess that it is one and the 
same; not that the manhood was first, but, 
that He was God, the only Son, before all 
worlds, without a human body or its attri¬ 
butes. But in the fullness of time He took 
upon Him flesh for our salvation. He was 
capable of suffering according to the flesh. 
He was incapable of suffering according to 
His divinity, circumscribed according to His 
body ; not to be circumscribed according to 
His divinity ; at once earthly and heavenly, 
He was seen ; he was known ; He was in 
space (as to His human body); He was no* 
bounded by space (as to His divinity, com¬ 
pare St. John iii. 13). That our whole man¬ 
hood having fallen under sin might be re¬ 
formed by Him who was wholly man as well 
as God.-” 

Apostasy. (A falling away; a desertion 
from a cause or from a general.) A defection 
from the true faith of Christ. In times of 
persecution this sin was rife among Christians 
from fear of bodily peril especially, as gen¬ 
erally the act itself was often proposed in 
the mildest way: a few grains of incense 
offered to an idol, or to the image of the 
emperor, or a renunciation easily ambigu¬ 
ously made, and certified to by a magistrate. 
But there have been other apostates, such as 
was the Emperor Julian, or renegades to the 
Mohammedan Faith. It was legislated upon 
by the Church, and the penitents had to un¬ 
dergo a long discipline of probation, in some 
places for twelve years, before they could 
be restored. But when the state took up 
apostasy into its Civil Code, its enactments 
were intolerant. The apostate to paganism 
was not allowed to bequeath by will or to 
inherit. At one time he was to be dismissed 
from all posts of civil dignity. And if the 
apostasy of a testator could be established 
within five years after his death, his will was 
null and void. 

Apostle. One who is sent; a title given 
to the Twelve disciples by our blessed 
Lord when He chose them to be His 
messengers to all the world. As for the 
special traits of the individual Apostles we 
must turn to the short sketches under their 
names. Here their office is dwelt upon. 
They are called Apostles by St. Matthew, 
only when their appointment is recorded, 
and by St. Mark, when they return from 
their mission. But St. Luke gives them 
this title, from their appointment, in six 
places, evidently showing that the full 
value of their title was appreciated later. 
In St. John’s Gospel the name is not given 
at all, but the Twelve are called disciples. 
Our Lord considered them as one body. 
He gave them the practical training His 
presence and mission work afforded. He 
seems rather to have trusted to His having 
them with Him, and to His personal influ- 







APOSTLE 


48 


APOSTLE 


ence, than to His many instructions (St. 
John xiv. 9). His words, His parables, 
His works, Elis example, were His instruc¬ 
tion more than the imparting of doctrine. 
Indeed, His doctrine being so much the 
expansion and the enforcement of the Old 
Testament, except the prediction concern¬ 
ing Himself and His Atonement and Resur¬ 
rection He gave them no secret* doctrines. 
Out of the Twelve there appear to have 
been chosen to serve Him more closely SS. 
Peter, James, and John. These were taken 
up into the Mount of Transfiguration, 
were with Him in the Garden, as well as 
selected at other special occasions. Still, 
He made no further distinctions between 
them, and it would seem that the Three 
stood so closely to Him, because of their 
own love to Him. They all, however, were 
dull to see what His purposes were, and, 
with all their training and their zeal and 
perseverance, still failed to comprehend 
Him aright. It was not till after His 
resurrection, and then by a special gift 
from Him, that they understood all the 
Scripture about Him. But their office 
began properly after His Resurrection. The 
commission that had been given (St. Matt, 
xvi. 18, 19 ; xviii. 18, 21) was by anticipa¬ 
tion, but now it was given fully and finally, 
yet not at once, but during the forty days 
previous to His Ascension. The first part 
given was on that evening, in the upper 
chamber, when he met them : (a) “ Peace 
be unto you. As my Father hath sent 
me, even so send (Apostleize) I you.” 
It was a plenary commission, with equal 
but delegated powers. Then follows : (6) 
“ He breathed on them, and said, Receive 
ye the Holy Ghost : whose soever sins ye 
remit, they are remitted unto them ; and 
whose soever sins ye retain, they are re¬ 
tained.” This is recorded in St. John’s 
Gospel xx. 21-23. There appears to have been 
a pause in the conveyance of their commis¬ 
sion. For the forty days that He was going 
in and out among them He was “speaking 
of the things pertaining to the Kingdom of 
God” (Acts i. 8). But here we must place 
the giving of the second part of the com¬ 
mission in His appearing to the Eleven as 
they sat at meat (St. Mark xvi. 14-18). 
The mission is now given : (c) “ Go ye into 
all the world, and preach the Gospel to 
every creature. He that believeth and is 
baptized shall be saved ; and he that believ¬ 
eth not shall be damned.” At this point, 
too, we may add St. Luke’s record as par¬ 
allel and explanatory of St. Mark’s: “And 
that repentance and remission of sins should 
be preached in His Name among all nations, 
beginning at Jerusalem. And ye are wit¬ 
nesses of these things” (St. Luke xxiv. 47, 
48). In obedience to His command they 
meet Him in a mountain in Galilee, and 
then He claims His royal authority: “All 
power is given to Me in Heaven and in 
earth. Go ye, therefore, and make disciples 
of all nations, baptizing them in the Name 


of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
Holy Ghost ; teaching them to observe 
all things whatsoever 1 have commanded 
you.” And then He gives that solemn 
promise, now so strangely denied as possible, 
“ And, lo, I am with you alway, even unto 
the end of the world. Amen” (St. Matt, 
xxviii. 19, 20). We see that the command 
to baptize is given twice, and the commis¬ 
sion to absolve, which involves the effects of 
baptism, is given once with plenary and co¬ 
equal power as His own, and that this dele¬ 
gation rests upon the power given to Him, 
and He seals it with the gift of the Holy 
Ghost for their official acts. St. Luke 
gives a note, too, in the Apostolic office, 
“And ye are witnesses of these things.” 
The whole commission is given in perpe¬ 
tuity : “I am with you alway, even to the 
end of the world.” We ascertain, then, that 
the Apostolic office was never to fail, and 
was to be a witness of Him and His Resur¬ 
rection ; that it was to convey to the re¬ 
pentant sinner thS effect of His atonement, 
i.e., pardon, and forgiveness by baptism, 
and it was to use discipline; that its mis¬ 
sion-field was the world. 

The continuity of the office was shown by 
the election of Matthew (Acts i. 15-26), the 
condition being that the person elected must 
have been with the Lord Jesus from the 
beginning, that he might be a competent 
witness of the Resurrection. The co-equal¬ 
ity in the office was shown by the co-equal 
gift of the Holy Ghost to the Twelve, 
and in the fact that the College of the Apos¬ 
tles sent SS. Peter and John down to Sama¬ 
ria (Acts viii.), and that St. James presided, 
at the Council of Jerusalem (Acts xv.), and 
that St. Paul admitted no superior to him¬ 
self (Gal. i. 1). The perpetuity of the of¬ 
fice was shown by the fact that Silvanus 
and Timothy and Epaphroditus and Titus 
were Apostles as well as Barnabas and 
Paul. Indeed, there were some who were 
false Apostles (2 Cor. xi. 13; Rev. ii. 2), 
which could not have been unless the office 
was widely spread. This we note was within 
Apostolic time. But as Timothy was an 
Apostle (comp. 1 Thess. i. 1 with ii. 6), he 
was led (2 Tim. ii. 1, 2) to commit to faith¬ 
ful men the commission that they might 
teach others also, a very direct command on 
the succession, which was of course implied 
in the directions about Bishops or Elders 
and Deacons. What, then, were the func¬ 
tions of the Apostle ? He was primarily to 
Preach, and to Baptize, and to Confirm (Acts 
viii. and xix. ; Heb. vi.), and to Discipline 
(c/. St. John xx. 23, with Acts viii. 20-23 ; 
1 Cor. v. 1-5 ; 1 Tim. i. 18-20). Again, it 
is to be noted that not only did our Lord 
promise a perpetual presence with the hold¬ 
ers of the office, but it was the only office 
He ordained, prayed for, and gave the Holy 
Ghost to Himself, and sent it for them to use 
for the Church. They selected Elders in 
every Church, they ordained Deacons, but 
they alone were in the original sacred com- 





APOSTOLIC FATHERS 


49 


APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION 


mission. This would be alone sufficient to 
prove its continuity did the New Testament 
give us no other facts. But in truth the 
whole work presupposes Apostolic author¬ 
ity. And continuance in the unity of the 
Apostles was from the first a proof of ortho¬ 
doxy (Acts ii. 42; 2 Thess. ii. 15, iii. 4-9; 1 
Cor. iv. 16-21; xi. ; Gal. i. ; Phil. iii. 17; 1 
John i. 3; ii. 19; Rev. ii. 2, 3). In fact, 
Apostolic authority is so constantly presup¬ 
posed that to quote any texts in proof is 
needless. All commands and directions are 
founded upon it. Now, the Apostolic of¬ 
fice was to give real and true spiritual gifts, 
and to be the only appointed channel by 
which they were conveyed. Prophets and 
Teachers might be multipled, but since Bap¬ 
tism and Absolution, and the Confirmation, 
and the Lord’s Supper, and the Blessing of 
Peace are real and true gifts to be received 
and lived in, and are not conferred by merely 
preaching which opens the mind, or teach¬ 
ing which trains the disciples to receive ; 
and since these gifts are only to be received 
by these officers, the Apostolic office must be 
perpetual. It was and it must continue to 
be the witness of the Incarnation and Res¬ 
urrection (1 John throughout), and it is a 
sad fact, but one which follows from the 
principles inherent in the commission, that 
wherever it has been dropped by any sect, 
and there has been no continuing Apostolic 
Church near it to enforce these doctrines, 
the body so rejecting the Apostolic office 
has also rejected the Divinity of Christ. 

Apostolic Fathers. Clement, the compan¬ 
ion of St. Paul, and later Bishop of Rome 
(97 a.d.), Ignatius (116 a.d.), and Polycarp 
(167 a.d.), companions of St. John, wrote 
certain letters which have come down to us, 
and are of great value. Clement’s letter to 
the Corinthians is valuable not only for its 
own merits, but chiefly for its quotations from 
the New Testament, being an unconscious 
witness of the authenticity and general recep¬ 
tion of the books he cites. Ignatius wrote 
six Epistles to the Churches of Ephesus, 
Tralles, Rome, Magnesia, Philadelphia, and 
Smyrna, and one to Polycarp, which give 
incidental but positive information on Epis¬ 
copacy, and upon Church government, and 
which quote the New Testament very freely, 
enabling us to establish the early circulation 
of parts of the New Testament. There is also 
a cotemporary account of his martyrdom. 
Polycarp wrote a letter to the Philadelphians, 
and there is also a cotemporary narrative of 
his mart 3 r rdom. These are most valuable 
records from those who were trained by the 
Apostles. There are, besides, the Shepherd 
of Hermas (identified by some with the Her¬ 
nias of Rom. xvi. 14, but very doubtful), 
which was at one time very popular, the 
very doubtful (but very early written) Epis¬ 
tle of St. Barnabas, and some fragments of 
the works of Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, 
and a disciple of St. John. These had been 
taught by the Apostles St. John and St. Paul ; 
and their writings, especially since their tes- 
4 


timony cannot be doubted as true, are val¬ 
uable not so much on the subjects they dis¬ 
cussed as upon the facts of Church govern¬ 
ment they assumed or alluded to, and of the 
genuineness of such of the New Testament 
Scriptures as they quoted incidentally, doing 
so without hesitation, as if appealing to an 
inspired authority equal to the Old Testa¬ 
ment Scripture. 

Apostolic Succession. The real mean¬ 
ing of this term is but little appreciated even 
by many otherwise well-informed Church¬ 
men. It is supposed to be, as it really is, a 
consecration of a person to Episcopal author¬ 
ity and office by those who have themselves 
received it from others tracing their author¬ 
ity by successive ascent back to some one of 
the Apostles. But harsh deductions are 
drawn from it, and the Church is accused of 
judging and “ unchurching” those who from 
some prejudice or other reject it. She does 
not do this. She has a duty to do in assert¬ 
ing her right to be a part of the Holy Cath¬ 
olic Church, and this is one of the visible 
elements of her divine organization. She 
judges none. That is God’s prerogative. If 
they reject her claims to their fealty, it is 
not her fault. If there is any unchurching, 
they do it themselves. But this Law of 
Apostolic Succession in the Church is only 
what she must have as a self-perpetuating 
Body. Its principle underlies all acknowl¬ 
edged government. Unless the exercise of 
supreme authority be received from some 
acknowledged and revered source, this au¬ 
thority is but usurpation. And the formal 
admission to wield this authority by the 
proper persons thereto appointed constitutes 
the person so admitted an officer clothed with 
this authority. The President of the United 
States is elected, but he is not President and 
cannot assume the authority of his office till 
the oath of office is administered to him by 
the officer appointed by the Constitution. It 
must be so in every organization. The 
Church is Christ’s organized kingdom. It 
cannot break a law which He has put as 
fundamental to all government. It must 
derive its authority from Him. Spiritually 
He is present. The Holt Ghost abides in 
it, and it is sustained and fed by Him. As 
He withdraws His visible Presence it must 
have a self-perpetuating government. As it 
is divine and miraculous it must be founded 
in miracles. Our Lord took not His office 
upon Himself, but was sent (Apostleized), 
even as Aaron was called of God. It was 
founded in miracles. In fact, it is a proper law 
in God’s dealings with men, that every dis¬ 
pensation or covenant He makes is founded 
in miracles, rests upon them. For the 
Patriarchs, the miracles to Abraham were 
vouchers. For the Jew, from Moses’ time 
forth, the wonders in the land of Ham, in 
the field of Zoan, at the Red Sea, and in the 
"Wilderness were enough. And the author¬ 
ity of the High-Priest rested upon the mira¬ 
culous call and the wonderful power given 
to Aaron. So our Lord had a public com- 






APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION 


50 


APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION 


mission given Him, and was endowed by His 
Father (as well as by inherent right as 
God’s Son) to prove His doetrine by His mir- j 
acles. And He sent His officers forth with 
that power. It was superadded, not essential. 
It was for proof, not for authority. The last 
High-Priest that entered within the veil was 
as much a High-Priest as was Aaron. But our 
Lord was sent, was His Father’s “Apos¬ 
tle” (Heb. iii. 1). He chose twelve, whom 
He called Apostles (St. Luke vi. 13), and 
when He commissioned them anew after His 
Insurrection He admitted them to His own 
rank. “As my Fatheb has made me an 
apostle, even so I send you” (St. John xx. 
21). For this reason the distinction between 
the Apostolate and the Presbyterate is clearly 
preserved throughout the New Testament. 
Again, as this office involves our Lord’s own 
office, He has promised an abiding perpetuat¬ 
ing presence in it to the end of the world 
(St. Matt, xxviii. 20). He has Himself 
made unity with Him and His Father de¬ 
pend upon it. (I.) It is noticeable that He 
does not pray for. unity till interceding first 
for the Apostles. He pleads, “ Neither pray I 
for these alone, but for them also that be¬ 
lieve on me through their word ; that they 
all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in Me, 
and I in Thee, that they also may be one in 
us” (St. John xvii. 20, 21). When we remem¬ 
ber the time of this prayer, the High-Priest 
sanctifying Himself as the one perfect victim, 
the unutterably solemn power of it will be 
felt. (II.) The Apostles claimed that fel¬ 
lowship with themselves was essential to the 
continuance of the members in the Church 
(Acts ii. 42 ; 1 John i. 1-7 ; ii. 19; 2 Thess. 
iii. 6, as in other like places). This author¬ 
ity resided in them to admit to their own 
rank upon the Lord’s own commission. In¬ 
deed, they admitted several,—St. Matthias, 
St. Barnabas, St. Paul. We know that St. 
Paul numbered with himself in rank St. 
Timothy, and Titus, and Silvanus (vide 1 
Thess. ii.; comp, with ii. G). Indeed, if 
these steps of the transmission can be proven 
it is useless to deny the fact or to explain 
away the principle. But we see our Lord, 
our Apostle, from His Father; the Twelve, 
the Apostles, from our Lord ; St. Matthias, 
and Barnabas, and Paul (Acts xiii. 1, 2) from 
the Twelve ; St. Timothy, and Titus, and Sil¬ 
vanus from St. Paul. The question of the 
Angels of the Churches (Bev. ii. and iii.) 
needs no discussion here, since the acceptance 
of the principle in the New Testament is 
sufficiently established. It is absurd to sup¬ 
pose that St. Timothy or St. Titus would 
break the commandment they had received 
so solemnly from St. Paul. The question 
is authoritatively decided by the Ignatian 
Epistles, since they accept and carry forward 
this line of succession. 

It is absurd to claim that the line has been 
broken. For (a) the earliest Canon of post- 
Apostolic times orders that the consecrators 
shall be three. The purpose being that the 
consecration shall be most public and notor¬ 


ious. ( b ) The intercommunion of the dif¬ 
ferent Churches kept any one Church from 
being imposed upon. It is significant that 
this was tried in the times of the Apostles. 
False Apostles, cried St. Paul. Our Lord 
commends the Angel of the Church in 
Ephesus, “ and hast tried them which say 
they are Apostles and are not, and hast 
found them liars” (Kev. ii. 2). The chain 
can no more be broken than the descents of 
an ever-increasing family be denied. We 
ask no Jew to prove his descent from Abra¬ 
ham. The principle of the succession is 
well shown by the following occurrence, 
which shall be set down in the words of the 
venerated narrator : 

“A doctrine is sometimes better illustra¬ 
ted by a story than by a dogmatic treatise. 
The character of true repentance, and the 
possibility of free pardon for transgressions 
against Heaven, are better exhibited by the 
parable of the Prodigal Son than they would 
be by a homiletical treatise. Bearing this 
in mind, we are inclined to believe that an 
anecdote of parochial experience will satisfy, 
if not convince, multitudes, better than more 
formal statements respecting Apostolical suc¬ 
cessions. 

“A rector, who had gone to a railroad 
depot to see a clerical brother start upon a 
journey, encountered a lady who, though a 
Presbyterian, had for years belonged to his 
church-choir. She was much pleased to see 
him, for she was going from home perma¬ 
nently and was glad to bid him farewell. 
She thanked him for his ministrations, 
and confessed that her mind had become 
softened about many Episcopal peculiari¬ 
ties ; but one she had never been able to 
admit or tolerate. Of course, the natural 
question was, to what do you allude? Oh, 
to the well-known theory of an Apostolic 
succession in the ministry. Why, the an¬ 
swer was, you yourself believe in a whole 
family of Apostolic successions, and surely 
a single specimen in the ministry ought not 
to give you any trouble. Oh, no ; she had 
no faith in anything of the kind. Well, let 
us see. Do you, or do you not, believe in the 
Apostolic succession of the Christian relig¬ 
ion ? .Why, she had never heard of such an 
idea before. But, it was pressed upon her, 
if you do not, then you must admit the 
charge of infidels that Christianity is an in¬ 
vention or an imposture, for it must be 
traced to its sources to be true to its own 
pretensions. So she admitted the point and 
consented to the most comprehensive of all 
Apostolic successions whatever. 

“ Then she was asked about the Apostolic 
succession of the Christian Church,—the 
grand outward institution of Christianity. 
Was there ever a time, since the days of 
Christ and His Apostles, when there was 
not a Christian Church upon the earth? 
Had this Church ever died out and vanished ? 
Oh, no; she could allow nothing of the 
kind. Then you believe in the Apostolic 
succession of the Christian Church ? Bather 










APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION 


51 


APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION 


timorously (for she began to have an inkling 
of the journey she was traveling) she ad¬ 
mitted that she did. 

“Now, exclaimed her somewhat amused 
querist, here comes a formidable matter : 
Do you, or do you not, believe in the Apos¬ 
tolic succession of the Christian Scriptures ? 
Remember, and remember well, here con¬ 
fronts us one of those awful gaps with which 
your friends so often threaten us. We have 
no manuscripts of such Scriptures which go 
back of about the middle of the fourth cen¬ 
tury, that is, say 350 a.d. And the last 
writer of Christian Scripture may be dated 
at 100 a.d. Here, then, is a prodigious gap 
of two hundred and fifty years to be bridged 
over, and unless you will cross it under the 
guidance of history and ancient authors, 
unless you will take the testimony of that 
institution whose continuity you have ac¬ 
knowledged, you have no Bible. You have 
lost it in that dark abyss which has swal¬ 
lowed up (as you affirm) our pretensions to a 
ministry whose line has never been broken. 
It was an awful alternative, and she surren¬ 
dered without conditions. 

“ Then the question was followed up by 
one about visible sacraments. If such things 
had no Apostolic succession we must aban¬ 
don the celebration of old-fashioned sacra¬ 
ments and join the Quakers. Infant bap¬ 
tism came next; and if this-could not be 
traced by its Apostolic succession, we must 
march for the camping-ground of Anabap¬ 
tists. 

“ From outward institutions the ques¬ 
tioner went on to doctrines. If the doctrine 
of the Trinity had no Apostolic succession, 
we must acknowledge this doctrine a failure 
or a misconception, make fellowship with 
actual heretics, and adopt Socinianism. If 
the doctrine of the fall and original sin had 
no Apostolic succession, we must justify 
Pelagianism and avow ourselves our own 
redeemers. She now foresaw her destiny 
quite plainly, and bowed to the rector’s 
postulate, that with him she believed in 
a family of successions which were truly 
Apostolic. 

“ But now, said he, comes the crux of this 
debated matter. You believe in the Apos¬ 
tolic succession of a Christian ministry. 
Was there ever a time when there was not 
such a ministry upon earth ? when its 


continuity was broken and its existence 
was to be again begun ? Oh, no ; by 
no means. Then at last you believe with 
me in the steady existence of an Apostolic 
ministry, be its inward constitution what it 
might, and the difference between us is 
about the nature of an exceedingly long 
chain,—w.hether it has three strands in it or 
only one. Take Solomon’s assurance about 
the reliability of a threefold cord, and you 
will come over to my side cordially. The 
difference between us has dwindled down to 
an affair so small that for safety’s sake you 
should capitulate without aaqualm. And to 
help you do so gracefully, let me beg you to 
remember that there is almost the same 
unanimity in Christendom about Episcopacy 
which even Gibbon was constrained to admit 
there is about the doctrine of the Trinity, 
which, of course, as a governing doctrine 
concerning the Godhead, is the pivot on 
which doctrinal orthodoxy has for ages 
turned. ‘ The consubstantiality of the 
Father and the Son,’ says the skeptical 
historian, ‘ was established by the Council 
of Nice, and has been unanimously received 
as a fundamental article of the Christian 
Faith, by the consent of the Greek, the 
Latin, the Oriental, and the Protestant 
Churches.’ (Dec. and Fall, ch. xvii. 12mo. 
ed., vol. ii. p. 317, 318; and comp. p. 312 at 
top.) The unanimity of Christendom about 
Episcopacy is nearly as complete as its una¬ 
nimity about the Trinity; and with the 
Trinity for doctrine and Episcopacy for dis¬ 
cipline, Christendom might begin to be, as 
in the primitive ages, a united whole, an 
unbroken communion of Saints.” (Rev. T. 
W. Coit, D.D.) 

The succession of the English Church 
from St. Polycarp, from the unknown 
founder of the Roman line, and from St. 
James, the first Bishop of Jerusalem, is here 
given. As this must have been an inter¬ 
lacing of the Churches in the East, which 
were founded by St. Peter at Antioch, and 
St. Paul at Ephesus, as well as by St. John 
in Asia Minor, doubtless the direct line of 
the Patriarchs of Jerusalem was bound up 
with these successions by acting upon the 
Canon requiring the three consecrators. So 
the English Episcopate has probably twined 
into one “cord” more of the separate suc¬ 
cessions than any other communion.* 


Ephesus. 


Rome. 


Jerusalem. 


a.d. 

After his exile 

St. John . 96 

resides at Ephesus, and 
his pupil at Smyrna is 
Polycarp . 107 to 169 

From Smyrna he sends 
out 


A.D. 

SS. Paul and Peter. 65 

Linus. 58 

Anacletus. 78 

Clement. 93 

Evaristtis. 100 

Alexander . 109 


A.D. 

St. James. 35 

Simeon ... 65 


Justus 1. 107 

Zacheus. Ill 

Tobias. 112 

Benjamin. 117 


* This list is much more fully traced in larger works, as in Dr. A. B. Chapin’s Primitive Church. 




















APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION 


52 


APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION 


Ephesus. 

Rome. 


Jerusalem. 



a.d. 

A.D. 


A.D. 

POTHINUS, 

Sextus I. 

. 119 

John. 

.... 119 

who survived till. 

. 177 


Matthew. 

.... 121 




Philip. 

.... 122 




Seneca. 

.... 126 




Justus II. 

.... 127 




Levi.. 

.... 128 


Tklesphores.. 

. 129 

Ephraim. 

.... 129 




Joseph. 

.... 131 




Judas. 

.... 132 


Hyginus. 

. 138 

Marcus I. 

.... 134 


Pius. 

. 142 

Cassianus. 

.... 146 




Publius.. 

.... 154 


Anicetus.. 

. 157 

Maximus.. 

.... 159 




Julian. 

.... 163 




Caius I. 

.... 165 


SoiEK. 

. 168 

Symmachus... 

.... 168 


Lyons. 

A.D 



Caius II. 

170 





Julian. 

173 

Pothinus . 


Eleutherius. 

177 

Maximus . 

178 





ANTONIUS . 

182 

Irenaius . 

177 to 202 



Capito. 

186 



Victor . 

192 

Valens. 

191 





Dolchianus. 

194 





Narcissus. 

196 



Zepherinus. 

201 

Dius .. 

200 





Germanio. 

207 

Zach arias. 


Calixtus. 

219 

Gordius and Narcissus. 

211 

Elias. 


Urbanus. 

224 



Faustinus. 


Pontianus ... 

231 





Anterus . . . 

235 





Fabianus . 

236 

Alexander .:. 

237 

Yerus. 


Cornelius . 

250 

Mazabenes . 

251 



Lucius . 

252 





Stephen . 

253 





Sextus II . 

257 





Dionysius . 

258 



Julius. 


Felix . 

271 

Hymen^eus . 

265 

Ptolomy. 


Eutychianus . 

276 





Caius . 

283 





Marcelinus . 

296 

Zambdas . 

298 





Herman . 

300 



Marcellus . 

308 

Macarius I . 

310 

Vocius. 


Eusebius . 

309 





Melchiades . . . 

311 



Maximus. 


Sylvester . 

313 

Maximus III . 

315 

Tetradus. 


Mark . 

335 

Cyril (expelled by the 
Arians) . 



Julius . 

336 

330 

Verissimus. 


Liberius. 

352 

Hf.renius. 

Cyril (restored, and again 

350 





expelled). 

361 



Damasus. 

366 

Hilary. 

364 

Justus. 




Cyril (again). 

379 

Albinus. 


Siricius . 

385 

John II . 

386 

Martin. 


Anastasius . 

398 

• 


Antiochus. 


Innocentius . 

402 



Elpidius. 


Zosimus . 

417 

Praglius . 

416 

SlCHARIUS. 


Boniface . 

418 





Celestine . 

423 

Juvenal . 

424 



Consecrated Palladius 






for the Irish. 




Eucherius I . 


Sextus III . 

432 



Patiens . 


Leo I . 

440 





Hilary . 

461 

Anastasius . 

458 

Lupicinus. 


Simplicius . 

467 

Martyrius . 

478 



Felix II . 

483 

Salutis.... . 

486 

494 

Rusticius. 


Gelasius. 

492 

Elias. 

Stephanus. 


Symmachus. 

498 









































































































APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION 


53 


APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION 


Lyons. 


Home. 


Jerusalem. 


a.d. 

VlVENTIOLUS. 515 

Eucheritjs II. 524 


Lupus . 538 

Licontius. 542 

Sacerdos . 549 

Nicetus . 552 

Priscus . 573 

Etherius . 589 


A.D. 

Hormisdas . 514 

John 1. 523 

Felix III. 526 

Boniface II. 530 

John II. 532 

Agapetus. 535 

Sylverius. 536 

Vigilius. 540 

Pelagius II. 555 

John III. 560 

Benedict 1. 574 

Pelagius III. 578 

Gregory. 590 


John III. 

Consecrated David of 
Wales, who therefore 
carried the succession 
of the Church of Je¬ 
rusalem to Britain, 
whence it passed to 
the English succession. 


A.D. 

513 


Etherius, with Virgilius of Arles, conse¬ 
crated the Monk Augustine (whom Gregory 
had sent out to the Saxons in Britain) as 


Canterbury. a.d. 

1. Augustine. 597 

2. Laurentus. 604 

• 

3. Melitus. 617 

4. Tustus. 622 

5. Honorius. 626 

6. Adeodatus . 654 


Yitalian being asked to aid the Saxons in 
selecting an Archbishop, selected Theodorus, 
a Greek of Tarsus, and consecrated him, and 


7. Theodore. 668 

8. Brithwald. 693 

9. Tatwin. 731 

10. Nothelm.*. 735 

11. ClTTHBERT. 736 

12. Bregwin. 759 

13. Lambert... 764 

14. Athelard. 793 

15. Wulfred. 805 

16. Theogild. 832 

17. Cjeolnoth. 833 

18. Ethelred. 870 

19. Plegmund. 890 

20. Athei.m. 914 

21. Wulfhelm. 923 

22. Odo. 942 

23. Dunstan. 960 

24. Ethelgar.. 988 

25. Siricius. 990 

26. Elfric. 995 

27. Elphege. 1005 

28. Livingus.. 1013 

29. Ethelnoth. 1020 

30. Eadsinus. 1083 

31. Robert. 1051 

32. Stigand. 1052 

33. Lanfranc. 1070 

34. Anselm. 1093 

35. Ralph. 1114 

36. William Corbeuil. 1123 

37. Theobald. 1139 

38. Thomas a Becket. 1162 

39. Richard. 1174 

40. Baldwin... 1185 

41. Reginald Fitz-Jocelin. 1191 


Archbishop of Canterbury. The English 
succession is by Augustine, through Etherius 
and Virgilius to St. John. It runs on thus: 


Rome. a.d. 

Sabianus . 604 

Boniface III. 606 

Boniface IV. 607 

Deusdedit . 615 

Boniface V. 618 

Honorius. 624 

Severinus. 640 

John IV. 640 

Theodore . 642 

Martin . 649 

Eugenius . 654 

VlTALIAN . 657 


sent him to England. At this late point the 
Roman succession enters into the English 
line, which traced first to St. John. 


42. Hubert Walter. 1193 

43. Stephen Langton. 1207 

44. Richard Wethershed. 1229 

45. Edmund Rich. 1234 

46. Boniface of Savoy. 1245 

47. Robert Kilwarby. 1273 

48. John Peckham. 1279 

49. Robert Winchelsey. 1294 

50. Walter Reynolds. 1313 

51. Simon Mepeham. 1328 

52. John Stratford. 1332 

53. John de Ufford. 1348 * 

54. Thomas Bradwardine. 1349 

55. Simon Islip. 1349 

56. Simon Langham. 1366 

57. William Whittlesey. 1368 

58. Simon Sudbury. 1375 

59. William Courtenay. 1381 

60. Thomas Arundel. 1397 

61. Roger Walden. 1398 

62. Thomas Arundel. 1399 

63. Henry Chicheley. 1414 

64. John Stafford. 1443 

65. John Kempe. 1452 

66. Thomas Bourchier. 1454 

67. John Morton. 1486 

68. Henry Deane. . 1501 

69. William Wareham. 1503 

70. Thomas Cranmer. 1533 

71. Cardinal Pole. 1556 

72. Matthew Parker. 1559 

73. Edmund Grindal. 1576 

74. John Whitgift. 1583 

75. Richard Bancroft. 1604 

76. George Abbot. 1611 






















































































































APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION 


54 


APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION 


77. William Laud . 1633 

78. William Juxon. 1660 

79. Gilbert Sheldon. 1663 

80. William Sancroft. 1678 

81. John Tillotson. 1691 

82. Thomas Tenison. 1695 

83. William Wake. 1716 

84. John Potter . 1737 

85. Thomas Herring. 1747 

86. Matthew Hutton. 1757 

87. Thomas Secker. 1758 

88. Frederick Cornwallis. 1768 

89. John Moore. 1783 


Archbishop Moore, assisted by the Arch¬ 
bishop of York, and by the Bishops of Bath 
and Wells and of Peterborough, conse¬ 
crated William White and Samuel Provoost, 
on Eebruary 4, 1787. Three years later he, 


with the Bishops of London and of Roches¬ 
ter, consecrated James Madison, on Septem¬ 
ber 19, 1790. Already, Samuel Seabury had 
received consecration from the Bishops of 
Scotland, Robert Kilgour, Bishop of Aber¬ 
deen ; Arthur Petrie, Bishop of Moray ; and 
John Skinner, of Aberdeen, Primus of the 
Church of Scotland, on November 14, 1784. 

The Scotch succession springs from the 
English succession, as Archbishop Sheldon, 
assisted by the Bishops of Carlisle, Worces¬ 
ter, and LlandafF, consecrated James Sharpe 
Archbishop of St. Andrew’s ; from them the 
consecrators of Bishop Seabury drew their 
authority. 

The number of American Bishops from 
this beginning has become a total of one 
hundred and thirty-four. 


w 

p 

PS 

O 


Name of Bishop. 


Name of See. 


1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 
9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 
21 
22 

23 

24 

25 

26 

27 

28 

29 

30 

31 

32 

33 

34 

35 

36 

37 

38 

39 

40 

41 

42 

43 

44 


Samuel Seabury (Presiding Bp.)... 
William White “ “ 

Samuel Provoost “ “ 

James Madison. 

Thomas John Claggett. 

Robert Smith. 

Edward Bass. 

Abraham Jarvis. 

Benjamin Moore. 

Samuel Parker. 

John Henry Hobart. 

Alexander Viets Griswold. 

Theodore Dehon. 

Richard Channing Moore. 

James Kemp. 

John Croes. 

Nathaniel Bowen. 

Philander Chase (Presiding Bp.)* 
Thomas Church Brownell “ 

John Stark Ravenscroft. 

Henry Ustick Onderdonk. 

William Meade. 

William Murray Stone. 

Benjamin Tredwell Onderdonk... 

Levi Silliman IvEsf. 

John Henry Hopkins (Pres. Bp.)... 
Benjamin B. Smith “ “ ... 

Charles Pettit McIlvaine. 

George Washington Doane. 

James Hervey Otey. 

Jackson KemperJ. 

Samuel Allen McCoskry$. 

Leonidas Polk||. 

William Heathcote De Lancey... 
Christopher Edwards Gadsden.... 
William Rollinson Whittingham.. 

Stephen Elliott. 

Alfred Lee. 

John Johns. 

Manton Eastburn. 

John Prentiss Kewly Henshaw..., 

Carlton Chase. 

Nicholas Hammer Cobbs. 

Cicero Stephens Hawks. 


Connecticut. 

Pennsylvania. 

New York. 

Virginia. 

Maryland. 

South Carolina. 

Massachusetts. 

Connecticut. 

New York {Assistant) . 

Massachusetts.j 

New York ( Assistant) .j 

Eastern Diocese.| 

South Carolina. 

Virginia.. 

Maryland ( Siijfragan) . 

New Jersey. 

South Carolina. 

Ohio. 

Connecticut. 

North Carolina. 

Pennsylvania {Assistant).. 

Virginia {Assistant) . 

Maryland. 

New York. 

North Carolina. 

Vermont. 

Kentucky. 

Ohio. 

New Jersey. 

Tennessee. 

Mo. and Ind. {Miss.) . 

Michigan. 

Arkansas {Missionary) . 

Western New York. 

South Carolina. 

Maryland. 

Georgia. 

Delaware.. 

Virginia {Assistant) . 

Massachusetts {Assistant). 

Rhode Island. 

New Hampshire. 

Alabama. 

Missouri. 


Date of Conse- Date of 

oration. Decease. 


Nov. 

14, 

1784 

Feb. 

25, 

1796 

Feb. 

4, 

1787 

July 

17, 

1836 

Feb. 

4, 

1787 

Sept. 

6, 

1815 

Sept. 

19, 

1790 

Mar. 

6, 

1812 

Sept. 

17, 

1792 

Aug. 

2, 

1816 

Sept. 

13, 

1795 

Oct. 

28, 

1801 

May 

7, 

1796 

Sept. 

10, 

1803 

Sept. 

18, 

1797 

May 

3, 

1813 

Sept. 

11, 

1801 

Feb. 

27, 

1816 

Sept. 

14, 

1804 

Dec. 

0, 

1804 

May 

29, 

1811 

Sept. 

12, 

1830 

May 

29, 

1811 

Feb. 

15, 

1843 

Oct. 

15, 

1812 

Aug. 

o, 

1817 

May 

18, 

1814 

Nov. 

11, 

1841 

Sept. 

1, 

1814 

Oct. 

28, 

1827 

Nov. 

19, 

1815 

July 

30, 

1832 

Oct. 

8, 

1818 

Aug. 

25, 

1839 

Feb. 

U, 

1819 

Sept. 

20, 

1852 

Oct. 

27, 

1819 

Jan. 

13, 

1865 

May 

22, 

1823 

Mar. 

Y 

1830 

Oct. 

25, 

1827 

Dec. 

6, 

1858 

Aug. 

19, 

1829 

Mar. 

14, 

1862 

Oct. 

21, 

1830 

Feb. 

26, 

1838 

Nov. 

26, 

1830 

April 

30, 

1861 

Sept. 

22, 

1831 

Oct. 

13, 

1867 

Oct. 

31, 

1832 

Jan. 

9, 

1868 

Oct. 

31, 

1832 




Oct. 

31, 

1832 

Mar. 

12, 

1873 

Oct. 

31, 

1832 

April 

27, 

1859 

Jan. 

14, 

1834 

April 

23, 

1863 

Sept. 

25, 

1835 

May 

24, 

1870 

July 

7, 

1836 



Dec. 

9, 

1838 

June 

14, 

1864 

May 

9, 

1839 

April 

4, 

1865 

June 

21, 

1840 

June 

23, 

1852 

Sept. 

17, 

1840 

Oct. 

17, 

1879 

Feb. 

28, 

1841 

Dec. 

21, 

1866 

Oct. 

12, 

1841 




Oct. 

13, 

1842 

April 

4, 

1866 

Dee. 

29, 

1842 

Sept. 

11, 

1872 

Aug. 

11, 

1843 

July 

20, 

1852 

Oct. 

20, 

1844 

Jan. 

18, 

1870 

Oct. 

20, 

1844 

Jan. 

11, 

1861 

Oct. 

20, 

1844 

April 

19, 

1868 


* Translated to Illinois, 1833. 
t Accepted Bishopric of Wisconsin in 1854. 
I Translated to Louisiana Oct. 16, 1841. 


f Deposed Oct. 14, 1853. 
g Deposed Sept. 3,1878. 









































































































a 

H 

O 

BS 

o 

45 

46 

47 

48 

49 

50 

51 

52 

53 

54 

55 

56 

57 

58 

59 

60 

61 

62 

63 

64 

65 

66 

67 

68 

69 

70 

71 

72 

73 

74 

75 

76 

77 

78* 

79 

80 

81 

82 

83 

84 

85 

86 

87 

88 

89 

90 

91 

92 

93 

94 

95 

96 

97 

98 

99 

100 

101 

102 

103 

104 

105 

106 

107 

108 


APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION 


APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION 




55 


Name of Bishop. 


William Jones Boone. 

George Washington Freeman. 

Horatio Southgate*. 

Alonzo Potter... 

George Burgess. 

George Upfold. 

William Mercer Green. 

John Payne!. 

Francis Huger Rutledge. 

John Williams. 

Henry John Whiteiiouse. 

Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright... 

Thomas Frederick Davis. 

Thomas Atkinson. 

William Ingraham Kip. 

Thomas Fielding Scott. 

Henry Washington Lee. 

Horatio Potter. 

Thomas March Clark. 

Samuel Bowman. 

Alexander Gregg.. 

William Henry OdenheimerJ. 

Gregory Thurston Bedell. 

Henry Benjamin Whipple. 

Henry Champlin Lay§.I 

Joseph Cruickshank Talbot||. 

William Bacon Stevens. 

Richard Hooker Wilmer. 

Thomas Hubbard Vail. 

Arthur Cleveland Coxe. 

Charles Todd Quintard. 

Robert Harper Clarkson. 

George Maxwell Randall. 

John Barret Kerfoot. 

Channing Moore Williams. 

Joseph Pere Bell Wilmer... 

George David Cummins^. 

William Edmond Armitage. 

Henry Adams Neely. 

Daniel Sylvester Tuttle. 

John Freeman Young. 

John Watrous Beckwith. 

Francis McNeece Whittle. 

William Henry Augustus Bissell. 

Charles Franklin Robertson. 

Benjamin Wistar Morris. 

Abram Newkirk Littlejohn. 

William Croswell Doane. 

Frederic Dan Huntington. 

Ozi William Whitaker. 

Henry Niles Pierce. 

William Woodruff Niles. 

William Pinkney. 

William Bell White Howe. 

Mark Antony DeWolfe Howe. 

William Hobart Hare. 

John Gottlieb Auer. 

Benjamin Henry Paddock. 

Theodore Benedict Lyman. 

John Franklin Spalding. 

Edward Randolph Welles. 

Robert W. B. Elliott. 

John Henry Ducachet Wingfield. 
Alexander Charles Garrett. 


Name of See. 


Date of Conse¬ 
cration. 


Date of 
Decease. 


China (Missionary) . 

Arkansas “ . 

Turke}' “ . 

Pennsylvania. 

Maine. 

Indiana. 

Mississippi. 

Africa (Missionary) . 

Florida. 

Connecticut (Assistant) . 

Illinois (Assistant) . 

New York (Provisional)... 

South Carolina. 

North Carolina. 

California (Missionary )... 

Or. and Wash. (Miss.) . 

Iowa. 

New York (Provisional)... 

Rhode Island. 

Pennsylvania (Assistant).. 

Texas. 

New Jersey. 

Ohio (Assistant) . 

Minnesota. 

Arkansas (Missionary) . 

Northwest “ . 

Pennsylvania (Assistant).. 

Alabama. 

Kansas. 

West New York (Assist.).. 

Tennessee. 

Nebraska (Missionary) . 

Colorado “ . 

Pittsburg. 

China and Japan (Miss.).. 

Louisiana. 

Kentucky (Assistant) . 

Wisconsin u . 

Maine. 

Montana (Missionary) . 

Florida. 

Georgia. 

Virginia (Assistant) . 

Vermont. 

Missouri. 

Or. and Wash. (Miss.) . 

Long Island. 

Albany. 

Central New York. 

Nev. and Ariz. (Miss.) . 

Ark. and Ind. Ter. (Miss.). 

New Hampshire. 

Maryland (Assistant) . 

South Carolina (Assist.)... 

Central Pennsylvania. 

Niobrara (Missionary)**.. 
Africa “ 

Massachusetts. 

North Carolina (Assist.)... 

Colorado (Missionary) . 

Wisconsin. 

Western Texas (Miss.) . 

North California “ . 

Northern Texas “ . 


Oct. 
Oct. 
Oct. 
Sept. 
Oct. 
Dec. 
Feb. 
July 
Oct. 
Oct. 
Nov. 
Nov. 
Oct. 
Oct. 
Oct. 
Jan. 
Oct. 
Nov. 
Dec. 
Aug. 
Oct. 
Oct. 
Oct. 
Oct. 
Oct. 
Feb. 
Jan. 
Mar. 
Dec. 
Jan. 
Oct. 
Nov. 
Dec. 
Jan. 
Oct. 
Nov. 
Nov. 
Dec. 
Jan. 
May 
July 
April 
April 
June 
Oct. 
Dec. 
Jan. 
Feb. 
April 
Oct. 
Jan. 
Sept. 
Oct. 
Oct. 
Dec. 
Jan. 
April 
Sept. 
Dec. 
Dec. 
j Oct. 
j Nov. 
Dec. 
Dec. 


26, 1844 
26, 1844 

26, 1844 

23, 1845 
31, 1847 

16, 1849 

24, 1850 
11, 1851 
15, 1851 

29, 1851 

20, 1851 

10, 1852 

17, 1853 

17, 1853 
28, 1853 

8, 1854 

18, 1854 

22, 1854 

6, 1854 

25, 1858 
13, 1859 
13, 1859 
13, 1859 
13, 1859 

23, 1859 
15, 1860 

2, 1862 
6, 1862 
15, 1864 
4, 1865 

11, 1865 
15, 1865 
28, 1865 
25, 1866 

3, 1866 

7, 1866 
15, 1866 

6, 1866 
25, 1867 

1, 1867 
25, 1867 

2, 1868 

30, 186S 
3, 1868 

25, 1868 
3, 1868 

27, 1869 
2, 1869 

8, 1869 
13, 1869 
25, 1870 

21, 1870 
6, 1870 

8, 1871 

28, 1871 

9, 1873 
17, 1873 
17, 1873 
11, 1873 

31, 1873 
25, 1874 
15, 1874 

2, 1874 
20, 1874 


July 17, 1864 
April 29, 1858 

July. 4, 1865 
April 23, 1866 
Aug. 26, 1872 

Oct. 23, 1874 
Nov. 6, 1866 

Aug. 10, 1874 
Sept. 21, 1854 
Dec. 2, 1871 
Jan. 4, 1881 

July 14, 1867 
Sept. 26, 1874 


Aug. 3, 1861 
Aug. 14, 1879 


Jan. 15, 1883 


Sept. 28, 1873 
July 10, 1881 

Dec. 2, 1878 
June 26, 1876 
Dec. 7, 1873 


July 4, 1883 


Feb. 16, 1874 


* Resignation accepted by the House of Bishops, Oct. 12, 1850. 

! Resignation accepted by the House of Bishops, Oct. 21, 1871. 

Elected the Diocese of Northern New Jersey Nov. 12, 1874. 

Translated to Easton, 1869. || Translated to Indiana, 1865. 

<[ Deposed June 24, 1874. 

** Jurisdiction enlarged and title changed to Southern Dakota by the General Convention of 1883. 





































































































































APPELLATE COUKT 


56 


APPELLATE COURT 





a 

a 

© 


Name of Bishop. 


Name of See. 


109 

110 
111 
112 

113 

114 

115 

116 

117 

118 

119 

120 
121 
122 

123 

124 

125 

126 

127 

128 

129 

130 

131 

132 

133 

134 


William Forbes Adams*. 

Thomas Underwood Dudley. 

John Scarborough. 

George DeNormandie Gillespie... 

Thomas Augustus Jagger. 

William Edward McLaren. 

John Henry Hobart Brown. 

William Stevens Perry. 

Charles Clifton Penick. 

Samuel I. J. Schereschewsky f. 

Alexander Burgess. 

George William Peterkin. 

George Franklin Seymour. 

Samuel Smith Harris. 

Thomas Alfred Starkey. 

John Nicholas Galleher. 

George K. Dunlop. 

Leigh Richmond Brewer. 

John Adams Paddock. 

CORTLANDT WHITEHEAD. 

Hugh Miller Thompson. 

David Buel Knickerbacker. 

Henry Codman Potter. 

Alfred Magill Randolph. 

William D. Walker. 

A. A. Watson, elect . 


New Mexico (Missionary). 

Kentucky ( Assistant ,). 

New Jersey. 

Western Michigan. 

Southern Ohio. 

Illinois. 

Fon du Lac. 

Iowa. 

Africa (Missionary) . 

Shanghai “ . 

Quincy. 

West Virginia. 

Springfield. 

Michigan. 

Northern New Jersey. 

Louisiana.. 

Nefw Mexico (Missionary). 
Montana “ 

Washington Ter. “ 

Pittsburg. 

Mississippi (Assistant) . 

Indiana. 

New York (Assistant) . 

Virginia ft . 

North Dakota (Miss.) . 

East Carolina. 


Date of Conse¬ 
cration. 

Date of 
Decease. 

Jan. 

17, 1875 


Jan. 

27, 1875 


Feb. 

2, 1875 


Feb. 

24, 1875 


April 

28, 1875 


Dec. 

8, 1875 


Dec. 

15, 1875 


Sept. 

10, 1876 


Feb. 

13,. 1877 


Oct. 

31, 1.877 


May 

15, 1878 


May 

30, 1878 


June 

11, 1878 


Sept. 

17, 1879 


Jan. 

8, 1880 


Feb. 

5, 1880 


Nov. 

21, 1880 


Dec. 

8, 1880 


Dec. 

15, 1880 


Jan. 

25, 1882 


Feb. 

24, 1883 


Oct. 

14, 1883 


Oct. 

20, 1884 


Oct. 

21, 1884 


Jan. 

2, 1884 



* Resignation accepted by the House of Bishops, Oct. 15, 1877. 
f Resignation accepted by the House of Bishops, Oct. 24,1883. 


The discussion on the Apostolic Succession 
has occupied so many pens that only a very 
few works can be mentioned here. In the 
English Church, Haddon on the Apostolic 
Succession is of authority, as also the older 
“ Daubeny’s Guide.” In the American 
Church, many valuable tracts and works 
have been put forth, as Bishop Onderdonk’s 
“ Episcopacy tested by Scripture,” Dr. Bow¬ 
den’s “ Letters to Dr. Miller,” Chapin’s 
“ Primitive Church,” Bishop Kip’s “ Double 
Witness,” Marshall’s “ Notes on Episco¬ 
pacy.” These are old works, but they con¬ 
tain the whole question, and are probably 
more accessible than other later ones. The 
lists of the succession above given have 
been compiled from Chapin’s “ Primitive 
Church” and Bishop Seymour’s List in the 
“ Churchman’s Calendar” for 1866. 

Appellate Court. In all our Dioceses, 
except the three in Illinois, the system of 
Church courts, for the trial of priests, dea¬ 
cons, and laymen, is incomplete, providing, 
for the most part, for only one formal trial. 
In nearly all, no trial can be entered upon 
unless the Bishop consents. In nearly all, 
the Bishop has so large an agency in the 
formation of the Court,—which is a Court 
appointed for the special case,—that it is pos¬ 
sible to organize it to convict or to acquit, as 
he may prefer. In some Dioceses the Court 
is a permanent body, elected annually by the 
Convention. Where there is a definite party 
predominance in any such Diocesan Con¬ 
vention, it will naturally be embodied in 
the personnel of the Court, and any trial 
marked with the slightest partisan tinge 


would merely be decided like any other 
party vote. In neither case is any appeal 
provided. If injustice were done, there could 
be no possible remedy. Even if a Bishop 
should be so extreme as to lay himself open 
to trial and conviction for the mode in which 
he might have secured the deposition of an 
obnoxious clergyman, still, the punishment 
of the Bishop would not operate to restore 
the poor clergyman. Eor him there is no 
remedy. His oppressor might be deposed, 
but he himself would not be in the slightest 
degree relieved from the consequences of 
that oppression. 

Several attempts to establish an Appellate 
Court by General Convention have failed, for 
various reasons. Every such attempt has 
shown the cumbrousness and practical diffi¬ 
culty of constructing any one Appellate 
Court, which can receive appeals from the 
whole American Church ; and it is as well 
that they have failed, for they were not rea¬ 
sonably workable. In the Canon for the 
trial of a Bishop we find an important recog¬ 
nition of the true principle, in the establish¬ 
ment of a Board of Inquiry, whose members 
are taken from the Diocese concerned and 
the three adjoining Dioceses. The grouping 
of Dioceses conveniently situated is the true 
solution of the difficulty. The other prin¬ 
ciple involved is, that whereas the proba¬ 
bility of injustice in the first instance is 
due to the predominance of the will of one 
man, the appeal should be to the judgment 
of more than one. Individual prejudice 
is more likely to be remedied by collective 
fairness. 
































































APPELLATE COUBT 


57 


APPELLATE COUBT 


The “grouping of Dioceses conveniently 
situated” is only another description of 
what is known in Ecclesiastical language as 
a Province. And the first Province to be 
fully organized in this country is also the 
first to give us a reasonable Court of Appeal. 
We refer to Illinois, whose three Dioceses 
of “ Chicago,” “ Quincy,” and “ Spring- 
field” are united in the “ Province of Illi¬ 
nois.” The scrupulous obstructiveness of 
the General Convention had decided that a 
Court of Appeals, under Article VI. of the 
Constitution, could be established only by 
the action of the Dioceses as such, and not 
by the action of the Province as a Province. 
Accordingly, the Federate Council acted 
only as an informal committee in preparing 
the draft of a Canon, which, with substan¬ 
tial identity, was afterwards adopted by each 
of the three Diocesan Conventions. The 
leading principles of this Canon are as fol¬ 
lows : 

1. The Bishops of the Province are the 
judges of the Court of Appeal. As the pos¬ 
sible prejudice or passion of the Bishop of 
the Diocese from which the appeal comes 
may be the leading feature in the case, it 
would be manifestly a departure from our 
established ideas for the official action of 
one Bishop to be officially reviewed and cor¬ 
rected, except by his peers,—his brethren in 
the same order. Moreover, this is the prim¬ 
itive rule,—the Bishops of the Province 
being the universal Court of Appeal in the 
earlier ages. It is wisely provided, how¬ 
ever, that the Bishop whose judgment is 
appealed from shall not preside in the Court 
during the trial of that case. In all other 
cases, the Bishop who presides in the Fed¬ 
erate Council (the Metropolitan , as he was 
called in ancient days) presides also in the 
Appellate Court. 

2. But there are few of our Bishops who 
have been trained as lawyers; and to one 
who has not had that training, there are 
many legal points which may fail to be ap¬ 
preciated by the unlegal mind. The Illinois 
Canon, therefore, provides that there shall 
be Assessors in the Court of Appeal,—each 
Diocesan Convention shall elect one Clerical 
and one Lay Assessor. It may be taken 
for granted that each Convention will select 
a clergyman who is known for his familiar¬ 
ity with the Canons, and a layman who is 
learned in the law of the land. As occasions 
may arise when there will not be entire har¬ 
mony between a Bishop and the majority in 
his Convention, and as it is his right that he 
should have the advice of those in whom 
he has confidence, it is properly added that, 
besides the elected Assessors,—who may be 
depended upon to protect the rights of clergy 
and laity,—each Bishop may, if he see fit, 
appoint one clerical or lay Assessor, or both. 
This power will, doubtless, be very seldom 
exercised; but it is quite proper that it 
should be secured. 

3. In other Courts of Appeal, with As¬ 
sessors, it has been a contested point whether 


the members of the Court should be bound 
to decide in accordance with the advice of 
the Assessors, or should have power to decide 
otherwise. In Illinois, the responsibility is 
accurately divided in the Canon itself. As 
the Assessors are supposed to be superior in 
the knowledge to be expected of experts, 
they are to decide all interlocutory questions, 
—all those questions of historical or pro¬ 
fessional interpretation, admissibility of evi¬ 
dence, etc., in which men without special 
training are most likely to make mistakes. 
In this way they protect the dignity of the 
Bishops from the danger of making an un¬ 
happy exhibit of insufficient information. 
But when all preliminary questions are thus 
settled, and nothing remains but the final 
decision as to whether the appeal shall be 
granted, or refused, or a new trial ordered, 
then the dignity of the Bishops is further 
secured by giving to them, alone the right to 
vote. But a further safeguard for the rights 
of clergy and laity is secured in the pro¬ 
vision that each Bishopshall give, in writing, 
seriatim , the reasons for his decision. When 
it is known beforehand that every such 
opinion must run the gauntlet of open and 
public criticism, it is the more likely to be 
fair. 

4. The Illinois Canon is seriously defec¬ 
tive in one point. It allows of no appeal 
except from an adverse decision in a Diocesan 
Court. This would limit the usefulness of 
the Court to the lowest possible minimum. 
Not one-tenth part of the grievances that 
arise ever come before an Ecclesiastical 
Court at all: and thus nine-tenths of our 
practical troubles would be left just where 
they are now,—with no remedy whatsoever. 
An appeal should be allowed to ever} 7 per¬ 
son claiming to be aggrieved by any action 
on the part of any of the constituted 
authorities of the Church in any Diocese of 
the Province. In the primitive Church, 
this was carried so far as to include every 
case of suspension from the communion or 
of excommunication. The principle was, 
indeed, early recognized that an act of dis¬ 
cipline by one Bishop could not be revoked 
by another Bishop. The one under discipline 
could be restored only by his own Bishop. 
But every such act was open to revision by 
the Bishops of the Province. For instance, 
the 5th Canon of the great Council of Nicaea 
provides as follows : 

“ Concerning those, whether of the Clergy 
or of the Laity , who have been excommuni¬ 
cated by the Bishops in the several Provinces, 
let the provision of that Canon prevail which 
provides that persons who have been cast 
out by one Bishop are not to be readmitted 
by another. Nevertheless, inquiry should 
be- made whether they have been excom¬ 
municated through captiousness, or conten¬ 
tiousness, or any such like ungracious dis¬ 
position, in the Bishop. And, that this 
matter may have due investigation, it is 
decreed that, in every Province, Synods 
shall be held twice every year ; in order that, 





ARCHBISHOP 


58 


ARCHIMANDRITE 


all the Bishops of the Province being assem¬ 
bled together, such questions may bv them 
be thoroughly examined ; so that those who 
have confessedly offended against their 
Bishop may be seen to be, for just cause, 
excommunicated by all, until it shall seem 
fit to the common assembly of the Bishops 
to pronounce a milder sentence upon them,” 
etc. 

And the 6th Canon of Antioch (afterwards 
made oecumenical) provides in like manner: 

“ If any one has been excommunicated by 
his own Bishop, let him not be received by 
others until he has either been restored by 
his own Bishop, or until, when a Synod is 
hold, he shall have appeared and made his 
defense, and, having convinced the Synod, 
shall have received a different sentence. 
And let this decree apply to the Laity, and 
to Presbyters and Deacons, and all who are 
in the Canon” (i.e., on the Sacerdotal List). 

It is clear that if the exercise of the power 
of the keys—specifically given to each Bishop 
at his consecration—was thus open to appeal, 
and revision by other Bishops, there can be 
no official action of a Bishop secure from such 
revision. And if all the official acts of a 
Bishop are liable to revision and correction 
by his brethren, there are no inferior officers 
or organizations in the Church who can have 
the face to claim exemption. 

The good example set by Illinois will, in 
course of time, it is to be hoped, be followed 
in other States of the Union, only with its 
imperfections remedied, so as to bring it 
into closer agreement with the example of 
the primitive Church, and with the require¬ 
ments of justice and common sense. The 
true idea of the Episcopate is, not that each 
Bishop maybe an irresponsible despot within 
his own territorial limits, liable to no cor¬ 
rection until be is bad enough to be deposed, 
but that the entire order is One ( Ejrisco - 
patus est uenus ), in such wise that there is no 
official act of any Bishop which may not be 
submitted to the revision of his brethren. 
The strength of the whole order will thus 
rest in each act: while, on the other plan, 
the authority of the entire order will suffer 
from any manifestation of arbitrary caprice 
or infirmity on the part of any individual 
Bishop. Nothing short of the true system 
will realize St. Cyprian’s description of the 
One Episcopate,— 11 cujas a singulis in soli- 
dum pars teneturV 

Rev. J. H. Hopkins, D.D. 

Archbishop. It at first probably meant 
what it now signifies,—Bishops over prov¬ 
inces, but themselves under Metropolitans 
or Patriarchs. About the time of the Coun¬ 
cil of Chalcedon, however, it came to mean 
the Patriarchs themselves. But later again 
it fell back to its original use, i.e., the Bishop 
over other Bishops in a Province. The co¬ 
equality of spiritual power of his suffragans, 
and the superiority position for the disci¬ 
pline of the Church in the Archbishop, were 
both strenuously set forth. The Arch¬ 
bishops of the Western Church for centu¬ 


ries were independent, but about 514 a.l>. 
the Popes began giving fhe pall (vide 
Pall), and from that in about two hundred 
and fifty years succeeded in enforcing that 
the gift of the pall was imperative, and that 
the Archbishop should swear fealty to the 
Pope on receiving it. This was thrown off 
by the Anglican Communion. In the 
English Communion there are four Arch¬ 
bishops,—Canterbury, York, Armagh, and 
Dublin. In the American Church the pre¬ 
siding Bishop, who is the eldest consecrated 
Bishop, has many Archepiscopal functions 
to perform. Through him must be made 
all official communications from foreign 
Churches. He presides in the House of 
Bishops, or convenes it for special meetings; 
either consecrates in person or appoints con- 
secrators for a Bishop-elect; appoints the 
council of five Bishops to settle differences 
between a parish and the Diocesan ; receives 
the resignation of a Bishop and communi¬ 
cates it to each of the Bishops having juris¬ 
diction in the Church, and upon their advice 
accepts or refuses such resignation; and 
receives charges against, and arranges for 
the trial of, an accused Bishop. 

Archdeacon. The Archdeacon was orig¬ 
inally the presiding Deacon over the body 
of Deacons, either in a city or a Deanery, or 
a Diocese. Later, in the ninth century, 
the Archdeacon was in priests’ orders. His 
functions were to look after the finances 
of the Church and the distribution of funds 
to the poor. He exercised a discipline 
over the Deacons and Presbyters under him 
in the Bishop’s behalf, and he had a care 
over the property of the Church. He was 
the Bishop’s business man, so to speak. In 
the East, when a See was vacant, he was 
one of the guardians of its rights and its 
property. The Diocese usually had several 
Archdeacons. In the English Church the 
Archdeacon looks after the condition of the 
church and of the parsonage, and is the 
proper person to order or to permit repairs. 
It is there an office of great weight, since 
the Archdeacon holds a court, at which 
cases of discipline of the laity are presented. 
The rights of the office vary much in the 
several Dioceses, but usually the Archdea¬ 
con visits for the Bishop the clergy, in¬ 
spects the property, inducts parsons, receives 
the presentments of the Church-wardens, 
and holds a minor court. 

The title has been revived in two of the 
Dioceses of the American Church,—Albany 
and Connecticut, but the office is probably 
identical with the title Dean of Convocation. 

Archimandrite. (Gr. the leader of the 
fold.) The title of the ruler over several 
monasteries. It does not necessarily imply 
that the Archimandrite had several monas¬ 
teries under him, but this was usually the 
case. The Hegumen was the chief over a 
single monastery, and consequently when 
several monasteries were under one rule he 
was subject to the Archimandrite. The 
Archimandrite was, of course, under the 




ARCHITECTURE 


59 


ARCHITECTURE 


authority of the Bishop. It was a title which 
soon came into use after monastic bodies 
obtained some cohesion and lived by some 
acknowledged rule. 

Architecture, Church. Prefatory. —Un¬ 
der this head an endeavor will be made to 
inquire into the nature and structure of 
the places of worship of the early Chris¬ 
tians, their development from the upper 
room of the days of the Apostles, through the 
intervening centuries, to the magnificent 
structures of the Middle Ages, continuing 
thence to our own times. But a cursory 
glance can be given to the history of this 
subject in the limited space here allotted, the 
idea of this article being mainly to show 
what may he done in the way of improving 
the architecture and arrangement of our 
parish churches, adapting them not only to 
the wants of the congregation, but making 
them more houses of God, monuments and 
offerings of a grateful people to the great 
and unseen Creator of all things. 

Parly History. —What little is known of 
the places of worship of the early Christians 
is found in the patristic writings and among 
the writings of the early Christian histori¬ 
ans, while much information is also obtain¬ 
able from the early heathen writers of the 
age. In the earliest times, doubtless, there 
were no fixed edifices, services being held in 
the houses of Christians, sometimes, as we 
read in the Scriptures, in an upper room, 
as when Paul was stopping at Troas: 
“ Upon the first day of the week, when the 
disciples came together to break bread (that 
is, to celebrate the Eucharist), Paul preached 
unto them, ready to depart on the morrow, 
and continued his speech until midnight. 
And there were many lights in the upper 
chamber, where they were gathered together. 
Now there sat in a window a certain young 
man named Eutychus, being fallen into a 
deep sleep, and as Paul was long preaching, 
he sunk down with sleep and fell down from 
the third loft and was taken up dead.” 

This is the most particular description of 
a house of worship that we find in the 
Scriptures. It will be noticed that this is 
an upper room, as was also that in which 
our Saviour celebrated the Last Supper. 
These out-of-the-way places were doubtless 
selected because in those early days it was 
as much as a man’s life was worth to pro¬ 
claim himself a Christian. In Rome we 
find them worshiping in the houses of 
wealthy Christians, in underground chapels, 
and in other places where they were least 
liable to be disturbed. 

Owing to the cruel persecutions to which 
the early Christians were subjected, both 
under the tyrant Nero, 64 a.d., and then 
under the Roman Emperor Domitian, 94 
a.d. , many have held that there were no 
structures set apart for the worship of God. 
Yet St. Paul says, u Have ye not houses to 
eat and drink in ? or despise ye the Church 
of God?” Now it is shown that the an¬ 
cient writers, St. Austin, St. Basil, St.Chrys- 


| ostom, and St. Jerome, took this to mean the 
I place set apart for Christian worship, and 
not the assembly of people. Then we 
know that the disciples often met together 
for prayer and worship after the death of 
our Saviour. 

In the second century, when the persecu¬ 
tions were still active against the Christians 
and it became necessary for them to band 
together, Ignatius writes to exhort them to 
meet together in one place, and in his Epis¬ 
tle to the Philadelphians says that at this 
time there was one altar in every church, 
and one Apostolic Bishop, or head, ap¬ 
pointed with his Presbytery and Deacons. 
Some of the later Greek readings omit the 
word Church, but speak of the one altar, thus 
showing that there was a stated place of wor¬ 
ship. Then history tells us of people turning 
their houses over to the Church in which to 
celebrate the divine offices of worship. We 
have record of forty churches in Rome at 
the date of the last persecution, and there 
were many in Africa. 

As early as the middle of the third century 
Gregory of Neo Caesarea writes describing 
the degrees or admission of penitents, ac¬ 
cording to the discipline of those days : 

1st. Weepers (the first degree of penance) 
were without the porch of the oratory. There 
the mournful sinners stood and begged of 
all the faithful, as they went in, to pray for 
them. 

2d. Hearers (the second degree) were with- 
in the porch, in the place called Narthex, 
where the penitent sinners might stand near 
the catechumens and hear the Scripture read 
and expounded, but were to go out before 
them. 

3d. Prostrantes,—lying down along the 
church-pavement. These prostrate ones 
were admitted somewhat farther into the 
church and went out with the catechu¬ 
mens. 

4th. Stantes,—staying with the people or 
congregation. These consistentes did not 
go out with the catechumens, but after they 
and the other penitents had left remained, 
and joined in prayer with the faithful. 

5. Participators in the Sacraments. 

About the beginning of the fourth cen¬ 
tury Constantine ascended the throne, and 
becoming fully convinced of the truth of 
the Christian religion, set about establish¬ 
ing it throughout his dominions, erecting 
| churches everywhere. Eor some time before 
: his reign, and even into it for twenty-five 
j years, heathen temples were used to some 
extent for Christian worship, how much has 
never been determined. At this time, how¬ 
ever (333 a.d. ), Constantine ordered all the 
temples, altars, and images of the heathen 
to be destroyed, and in many instances these 
temples were demolished and their revenues 
confiscated. Some of the later emperors, 
however, instead of pulling down the tem¬ 
ples, converted them to Christian uses, 
tlonorius published in the Western Empire 
two laws forbidding the destruction of any 







ARCHITECTURE 


60 


ARCHITECTURE 


more temples in the cities, as they might 
serve for ornament or public use, being once 
purged of their idols and altars. There can be 
no doubt of the antipathy of the Christians 
to the fine arts, because defiled by idolatrous 
uses, and that they destroyed everything that 
was beautiful that came in their way. Not¬ 
withstanding the later imperial decrees for 
the preservation of the heathen temples, 
nothing could induce the people to tolerate 
them or their contents, and it was only in a 
few out-of-the-way places, as at Palestine, 
they were allowed to remain. At Rome the 
only example that owes its preservation dis¬ 
tinctively to the Christians is the Pantheon. 
They destroyed everything that they could 
lay their hands on, the more beautiful the 
quickest destroyed, it mattered not so long 
as it savored of the rites of the heathen 
Church. They worked, even as in later 
times the Puritans worked in England : 
whatever was beautiful, whatever pleased 
the eye, if it belonged to the earlier religion, 
must give way to the new. 

We know that the Emperor Constantine 
gave orders, after a long search by the Em¬ 
press Helena, which resulted in finding the 
Holy Sepulchre, that a church be erected over 
its site. The place had been desecrated by 
the pagans ; they even had erected a statue 
of Venus over the place, and dedicated the 
spot to the heathen goddess. Constantine 
orders how the church shall be built, of 
what form, of what materials, and sets forth 
as to the decoration, etc. All in a most 
elaborate manner. There is even a plan of 
this Holy Sepulchre Church handed down 
by the Abbot Adamnan of Iona on his tab¬ 
lets, as he took it down from the description 
of Arculphus, a Gallican Bishop, who had 
visited the East. It was of “ wonderful ro¬ 
tundity,” entered by four doors; it con¬ 
tained three aisles, and was surrounded by 
twelve columns; hanging in it were twelve 
lamps, burning day and night, emblems of 
the twelve Apostles. 

Although the Church of the Holy Sepul¬ 
chre was evidently round, it had other parts 
attached, and there is little evidence of this 
form being employed elsewhere to any great 
extent, the usual form being that of a paral¬ 
lelogram. Baptisteries, however, were gen¬ 
erally built either round or polygonal. It 
is evident that the churches, of whatever 
form, had other buildings attached, both for 
secular and religious purposes,—such as li¬ 
braries, houses for the clergy, schools, etc., 
much the same as in the later cathedrals 
and in many of the mission churches of to¬ 
day in London, and occasionally in Amer¬ 
ica. The entrance was at the west end, the 
church being placed east and west, with 
the altar at the east. There are exceptions 
to this custom; no more, however, than to 
prove the rule, the habit being to face to 
the east, so in this way it became natural to 
orientate the churches. Entering the west¬ 
ern door, and passing through the porch, a 
large open court was reached, surrounded . 


by a colonnade. In the centre, this court 
contained a fountain, used to wash the 
hands and face, sometimes the feet. This, 
perhaps, is the origin of the custom now 
1 in vogue in Roman churches, though per- 
| verted, of having a stoup of holy water at 
the door. This open court, or atrium, was 
used for penitents of the first order, those 
who were not allowed to enter the church ; 
later it was used as a place of burial, par¬ 
ticularly for the wealthy and those of dis¬ 
tinction. Passing through this quadrangle 
the narthex was reached. Entrance to this 
was had through three gates, the central 
usually the larger. There were, sometimes, 
several narthexes to a church, even as many 
as four. The narthex formed the first di¬ 
vision of the church, and contained the cate¬ 
chumens and the hearers. Jews, infidels, 
and heretics were admitted here. In front 
came the third class of penitents. 

The narthex was separated from the nave 
or church proper by a wooden screen, or 
railing. The nave was entered through 
several gates, often called royal or beautiful 
gates. Here were congregated the main 
body of worshipers, those in full com¬ 
munion and under no censure. 

The sexes were usually separated during 
service, a practice that is yet in use in some 
of the modern ritualistic Churches. St. 
Cyril says, “ Let men be with men and 
women with women in the church.” Then 
in the Apostolical constitutions, “ Let the 
door-keepers stand at the gate of the 
men, and the deaconesses at the gate of the 
women.” The women were usually placed 
on the north side of the church. The 
Greeks now put them in the galleries. 

Not only was this order observed, but the 
virgins, matrons, and widows were given dis¬ 
tinct places; then came the order of peni¬ 
tents not allowed to partake of the Holy 
Eucharist, but permitted to stay in the 
church and witness the celebration. East 
of the nave came the choir, the place for 
the singers. This was separated from the 
former by a screen or low wall. Here was 
placed the ambo, or pulpit, from which the 
gospel and epistle were read. The sermon, as 
a rule, was preached by the Bishop from the 
altar-steps, although St. Chrysostom, the 
better to be heard of the people, preached 
from the ambo. 

Extending from the choir eastward, was 
the sanctuary, corresponding to the holy of 
holies of Jews. The Latins called it the sa- 
crarium. Here were celebrated the Church’s 
most sacred offices. The sacrarium was al¬ 
ways elevated above the choir, and was often 
separated from it by a rail or low screen called 
cancelli, hence the word chancel. This was 
to keep out the multitude. The Council of 
Laodicea forbade lay persons entering the 
sanctuary, while the Council of Trullo says, 
“ That no layman whatsoever be permitted to 
enter the place of the altar, excepting only 
the Emperor, when he makes his oblation to 
the Creator, according to ancient custom.” 







ARCHITECTURE 


61 


ARCHITECTURE 


The sacrarium was usually semicircular 
in plan. In the centre was placed the altar, 
raised on several steps, and surmounted by a 
canopy supported by twelve columns, sym¬ 
bolical of the twelve Apostles. On the top 
of the canopy was a cross, while behind the 
altar was the Bishop’s chair raised and facing- 
west. Around the circumference of the 
apse were placed the seats for the priests. 
The early altars were of wood, but this ma¬ 
terial was not used long, as is evident from 
the decree of the Council of Epone, that no 
altars should be consecrated except such as 
be of stone. Gregory Nyssen says, “ This 
altar whereat we stand is by nature only 
common stone, nothing different from other 
stones, whereof our walls are made and 
pavements formed; but after it is conse¬ 
crated, and dedicated to the services of God, j 
it becomes a holy table, an immaculate altar, 
which may not promiscuously be touched by 
all, but only by the priests in the time of 
divine service.” All of which goes to show 
the sacred feeling for the church, and espe¬ 
cially its more sacred altar, held even in the 
very early days of the Church. The spaces 
between the columns of the canopy to the 
altar were hung with curtains or veils to 
conceal the altar. St. Chrysostom says, 

“ When you see the veils undrawn, then 
think you see heaven opened, and the angels 
descending from above.” Hangings were 
placed in other parts of the church, some¬ 
times richly worked in gold. They were 
placed between nave and chancel, and before 
doors, etc. The altar was covered with a 
linen cloth, emblem of purity. The sacred 
vessels were Of various substances, usually of 
gold and silver, yet glass was used in the 
earlier times for chalices. 

Often beside the altar in a recess on one 
side was a shelf to contain the offerings of 
bread and wine. On the opposite side from 
this was the priest’s vestry. 

Outside the main body of the church, and 
within an outer inclosure, were the various 
buildings connected with the church, such 
as the baptistery, which in those days was 
always a separate structure, the library, 
priests’ houses, etc. 

The interiors of these churches of the 
early Christians were, according to the 
writers of the time, quite elaborately deco¬ 
rated. The walls were often lined with 
marble, while the roofs were of mosaic or 
paneled, and covered with gold and color. 
The altars were inlaid with precious stones 
and gold and silver, while gates were set 
with silver and ivory, and columns were of 
rare marbles with capitals of bright gold. 

It has been thought by some that the 
ancient Roman basilica, the seat of public 
justice of the time, suggested the form and 
arrangement of the Christian church. 
However true this may be, they certainly 
bore a close resemblance, and there are num¬ 
erous instances of basilic® being converted 
into churches. This plan of Trajan’s Basil¬ 
ica will show how far the basilica was imi¬ 


tated in the arrangement of the Christian 
church (Fig. 1). The basilica was of the 
shape of a parallelogram, with a semicircu¬ 
lar apse at one—sometimes at either—end. 


Fio. l. 



BO BO 


B t3 BO 



Trajan’s Basilica or Justice Hall, Home, 98 a.d. 

In the centre of the apse was the seat of the 
praetor, and below and about him those of 
the assessors and other officers. These were 
separated from the main body of the build¬ 
ing by a screen of lattice-work called can- 
celli. In the main body sat the people, 
while between them and the higher officers 
of the court sat the advocates and notaries. 
The main building was divided by two rows 
of columns into three aisles. These columns 
supported an arcade carrying a wall con¬ 
taining windows, forming a clear-story, the 
side aisles being lower. A better arrange¬ 
ment could not have been devised for a 
Christian church, and it is the form, with 
slight modifications, that is in use to this 
day throughout Western Christendom. 
However well adapted these heathen basilic® 
were to the exigencies of Christian worship, 
they did not continue long in use. There 
is only one example remaining to us of a 
heathen basilica converted to a Christian 
church. A veneration for the graves of the 
martyrs and a distaste for edifices con¬ 
structed for pagan uses caused, under Chris¬ 
tian rule, the demolition of these ancient 
structures and their re-erection in other 
places made sacred by containing the re¬ 
mains of .the martyrs. Here they were 
built again on much the same plan and on a 
yet grander scale. The martyrs were usu¬ 
ally put to death outside the city walls, and 
were supposed to be buried on the spot of 
their execution, so that when the churches 
came to be erected on these spots they were 
very inconvenient of access, being so far 
from the centre of population. 

A custom had grown up of worshiping 
underground in the catacombs among the 

















ARCHITECTURE 


62 


ARCHITECTURE 


graves of tlie martyrs, and this custom un¬ 
doubtedly was the reason, when Christian¬ 
ity became legalized by Constantine, of the 
churches being set up in the same places, as 
instanced in Rome by Santa Agnese and 
San Lorenzo, and also at St. Peter’s, which 
Constantine had placed near to the Circus of 
Nero, and whose altar was set over the re¬ 
mains of the ^Apostles. This custom of plac¬ 
ing the churches without the city walls 
caused great inconvenience and was a matter 
of much moment in later times, when the 
incursions of northern barbarians prevented 
an attendance upon the churches and finally 
caused their desecration, and, in many in¬ 
stances, entire demolition. 

The Basilica of St. Peter, however, con¬ 
tained certain additions and variations from 
the civil basilica. (Fig. 2.) It consisted of a 


Fig. 2. 



five-aisled church, extending east and west. 
At the end of the five aisles was an aisle 
running north and south; east of this came 
the apse, giving the plan the form of across. 
There were forty-eight columns of precious 
marbles inclosing the large aisle, and the 
lateral aisles contained forty-eight columns 
likewise. There were an hundred other col¬ 
umns surrounding the various chapels and 
shrines. The walls were covered with paint¬ 
ings of religious subjects. The flat wooden 
ceiling was covered with gilt metal and 
Corinthian brass taken from the temples of 
Romulus and Jupiter Capitolinu^. In this 
magnificent structure was one candelabrum 
that alone contained 1360 lights. Beside 
this there were more than a thousand other 
lights. All this magnificence in less than 
three centuries after the death of Christ ! 
This structure withstood the varied fortunes 
of Rome for twelve hundred years, being re¬ 
spected by all its invaders, finally falling 
away with age. On its site rose another 
basilica, grander and more be'autiful still, 


that glory of modern times. When the seat 
of the Roman Empire was removed to By¬ 
zantium, Constantine set about erecting a 
grand church there, probably modeled on 
St. Peter’s. This did not last long. Another 
was built on its site and partially destroyed, 
rebuilt and destroyed again, meeting with 
many disasters in the mean time. Finally, 
the most famous architects were called from 
all parts of the known world by Justinian, 
and the erection began of the great Church 
of St. Sophia. This church, unlike those 
of Rome, formed a Greek cross in plan, each 
arm being alike, while the Western churches 
had a Latin cross for a plan. At the inter¬ 
section of the arms of the cross rose a great 
dome of peculiar construction. During the 
revival of learning, communication was 
established between Greece and Italy, and 
this last and most magnificent basilica of 
the Eastern Empire greatly influenced the 
form and architecture of the new buildings. 
The Church of St. Mark, at Venice, of the 
tenth century, was copied in many partic¬ 
ulars from St. Sophia, and this influence 
extended throughout Italy. The modern 
Church of St. Peter at Rome owes much to 
this importation of the dome from the East. 
As did the ancient Basilica of St. Peter’s 
furnish the form for the ancient St. Sophia, 
so did the later St. Sophia supply much that 
influenced the modern St. Peter’s. 

Some writers have held that Constantine 
removed his seat of empire from Rome to 
the East to have more freedom in the estab¬ 
lishment of his new religion, to throw off all 
the trammels of an earlier paganism, to start 
anew and fresh. One of his first objects, of - 
course, was the erection of churches, and 
having no example anywhere about, the 
architects were left to their own resources. 
They undoubtedly drew some from Rome,— 
the idea of the round arch, maybe, and a 
partial use of the basilica plan. The East¬ 
ern architecture developed from these 
efforts, however, is a distinct style of its own 
and essentiall}- a Christian architecture, not¬ 
withstanding its early Roman influence. It 
grew out of the exigencies of the time, hav¬ 
ing no contact with the earlier pagan styles, 
and spread over the entire Eastern Empire. 
This is the style generally known as Byzan¬ 
tine. Its plan is usually the shape of a 
Greek cross, the eastern end terminating in 
a semicircular apse : a plan that might be 
effectually used in the present day, and of 
which more will be said farther on. 

Many say that this work at Byzantium 
was but a debasement of the Romanesque, 
itself debased from the Roman and the clas¬ 
sics. 

It may have been so ; allow it so, and yet 
still we have much to admire ; perhaps more 
in the utilities, than in the beauties, of this 
style, a style which spread throughout the 
East, and in the fifth and sixth centuries 
even to North Italy, where, at Ravenna, 
are several types. These, and the much 
later examples at Venice, made mention of 





























ARCHITECTURE 


63 


ARCHITECTURE 


above, are the purest types of the style in the 
West. The Lombards, however, were great¬ 
ly influenced in their building by Byzan¬ 
tium ; and through the trade with the East j 
this style crept into France, where a whole ' 
line of unmistakably Byzantine churches 
stretch across the southwestern corner of 
the country. Its correlative, the Roman¬ 
esque, abounds throughout Southern and 
Central France, running into Normandy 
and England, where it is represented by what 
is called the Norman style. 

Both the Romanesque and Byzantine are 
distinguishable by the round arch, the latter 
also by the dome. To show the potency of 
the influence of the dome, essentially a By¬ 
zantine production, we have only to be re¬ 
minded of the name given to the cathedral, 
even to our day, in many European coun¬ 
tries. In Germany we have the Dom, in 
Italy the Duo?no, and, although now the 
terms are indiscriminately applied to the 
principal church of a city, they came from 
the habit of this church being domical. 
Running from Italy north, and down 
through the Rhine towns, is a line of round- 
arched domical churches, evidently owing 
their inspiration to the East, where the By¬ 
zantine maintained its sway until the supre¬ 
macy of the Ottomans summarily checked 
its farther spread. 

The other essentially Christian style is 
that now usually denominated Gothic. It 
may be said to have sprung up simultane¬ 
ously throughout Europe, while it is certain 
that no one nation can claim any priority of 
introduction. Its main characteristic, as 
now generally understood, is the pointed 
arch, although many writers have held 
that the term Gothic included all styles in 
use after the debasement of the classics and 
the decline of Roman architecture, including 
the Lombardic, Romanesque, Byzantine, 
and Norman. 

But the word has now, generally, come to 
be confined to the pointed arch of the Mid¬ 
dle Ages, and in general use throughout 
Christendom. To be sure, there is the Sara¬ 
cenic, also pointed, but this style is easily 
distinguished from the Gothic. There are 
many theories as to the origin of the pointed 
arch, yet, the divergence of opinion being so 
great, scarcely any two writers agreeing on 
any one theory, it will be sufficient here 
to instance a few of the theories put forth, 
and a favorite one is that of the form pre¬ 
sented by the overhanging boughs of an 
avenue of trees. Then we have interlaced 
wicker-work, and the bending of two twigs 
or wands to meet at the top. Still more plaus¬ 
ible is that of the intersected groin of the 
ceilings of early churches, which formed a 
pointed arch, while the round arch was ob¬ 
servable elsewhere throughout the structure. 
It is certain, also, that the ancients knew of 
this shape, as is seen in some of their under¬ 
ground passages and tombs, yet they had 
not arrived at the correct method of con¬ 
struction of the arch. Although some of 


these theories might account for the origin 
and growth of the pointed arch in a certain 
locality, yet they could not be held to favor 
its general and rapid introduction into so 
many countries at once. Simultaneously, 
on the return, in the twelfth century, of the 
Crusaders from the East, this style began to 
appear, buildings springing up rapidly in all 
directions. This fact of its springing up at 
such a time, and so rapidly, has led to the 
theory of its derivation from the pointed 
Saracenic arch, and some prejudiced writers 
have, in their efforts to prevent its use, 
called it the Saracenic style. Allowing the 
fact of the adoption of the pointed arch of 
the East, how are we to account for the wide 
divergence in the styles ? for, although the 
pointed arch is a principal characteristic of 
the Gothic, it is not the only one. There are 
the great idea of verticality; the clustered 
columns, with their light and slender shafts ; 
the lofty spires and towers; the tracery; 
the mullions ; the cross vaulting. 

Fortunately for this Saracenic theory, it 
has the advantage of chronological correct¬ 
ness, while the simultaneity of the growth 
of Gothic is the main objection to the adop¬ 
tion of the other theories. Some derive the 
use of tracery from the perforated fret-work 
of the Arabians. 

The origin of the term Gothic lies shrouded 
in as much mystery as the source of the style. 
That the Goths had nothing to do with the 
introduction of the style which bears their 
name is now generally accepted, and the use 
of this pagan name to designate an essen¬ 
tially Christian architecture has annoyed 
and puzzled man} 7 . Other names have been 
suggested, such as Christian, Pointed, Eng¬ 
lish ; but all of them are objectionable and 
misleading. The Byzantine and Lombardic 
are as much outgrowths of Christianity as 
the Gothic, while there are other pointed 
styles. As for the last term, surely England 
cannot lay claim to the architecture of the 
Christian world. 

Many writers used the name Gothic as 
one of reproach, meaning thereby to stigma¬ 
tize the style as barbarous, outlandish, and 
uncivilized. The style had its growth in, 
and belongs essentially to, those countries 
that had been overrun and inhabited by the 
Goths, and for this reason, perhaps, it is as 
appropriate as any. 

The Gothic with which we in America 
have had most to do is that known as Eng¬ 
lish, and this is divided into three distinct 
periods, with transitions from one period to 
another, where the character of the work is 
of necessity more or less mixed. These three 
periods are designated Early English, Dec¬ 
orated, and Perpendicular. This is confin¬ 
ing the definition of the term Gothic to 
Pointed Gothic. Saxon and Norman are 
often counted in as being Gothic, although 
round-arched. The arch of the Early English 
is quite sharp, the openings being narrow 
and high, a complete subversion of the pre¬ 
ceding low round-arched Norman, while the 








ARCHITECTURE 


64 


ARCHITECTURE 


character of the work was simpler than in 
the succeeding styles, the wall-spaces greater, 
and there was little carving or decoration. 
The decorated work is characterized by a 
somewhat flatter arch and wider openings, 
profuse carvings and ornamentations, and, 
in short, is the style in which Gothic reached 
its height of grandeur and magnificence. 
The Perpendicular has quite flat-headed 
openings, very broad, with many divisions 
by vertical bars, called mullions. In this 
style the windows often are larger than the 
surrounding wall-space. It represents the 
decline of Gothic architecture, and is charac¬ 
terized by all kinds of depravities, while 
much of it is very beautiful. 

Most of the prominent cathedrals and 
churches contain examples of all the differ¬ 
ent styles, from the Norman of William 
the Conqueror down. Sometimes one part 
is Norman, another Early English, and so 
on. Again, one sees the division of styles in 
the different stories, the lower arcade being 
Norman, the blind-story Early English, and 
the clear-story decorated, thus showing 
when the different parts were built or re¬ 
built. It is not within the province of this 
article to say which is the proper style for 
to-day, each having its own merits. Noth¬ 
ing, however, can be more beautiful than an 
English parish church built in the true spirit 
of Gothic work. And this English parish 
church is where ordinarily we should look 
for our model; not but what this nation and 
age may be capable of developing a style of 
church architecture of its own, without re¬ 
verting to the Middle Ages for enlighten¬ 
ment, yet it has so far been unable to do so. 
Not only the church architecture, but the 
whole architecture of this country has been 
but a continuous series of tentative experi¬ 
ments in the endeavor to create an American 
style. Each architect and church committee 
has started out on his or its own independent 
line, sometimes copying, in so far as their 
knowledge or ignorance allowed, the archi¬ 
tecture of an earlier age, sometimes reach¬ 
ing out in a blind, groping, pitiable way for 
that which they were unable to reach, yet 
thought they had consummated. 

Seemingly the more intelligent solution 
of the problem would be to adapt our 
churches to the wants and needs of the peo¬ 
ple, keeping in mind the variations of cli¬ 
mate and temperature, not letting the utili¬ 
tarianism of the age run away with us. 
Employing the best talent, using the best 
materials, and building in the most sub¬ 
stantial, churchly, and beautiful manner. 
With the thousands of churches built in 
this country since its foundation, there 
stands in the city of New York, at the head 
of Wall Street, a church erected a half- 
century ago, that, to this day, is the best 
example of a thoroughly-appointed, well- 
adapted, and beautiful parish church that 
we have. However conventional it may be, 
however unoriginal, however faulty in de¬ 
tail, designed as it was by a man who, when 


he first came to this country from England, 
worked at a carpenter’s bench, it yet stands 
to remind us of the beauties of an English 
parish church, and of the folly of striving 
for something new when one simple edifice 
can show us more of beauty and of use in 
its little conventions than all the scores and 
hundreds and thousands of other churches 
strewn over our land, and devoted to the 
worship of God. The main idea of this 
age is to get a large, ugly, ungainly assem¬ 
bly-room that might be used for a barn, 
skating-rink, or railway-station, with as 
much or more purpose than that for which it 
is built, erected in a spirit and form un¬ 
known in any age or country but this, with¬ 
out even the merit of beauty or originality, 
an unintelligent, illiterate attempt at an 
adaptation of a style once the glory of the 
Christian world, a style yet capable of as 
perfect and beautiful an interpretation and 
exposition as was ever given it in the sum¬ 
mit of its power. And yet they call this 
style Gothic ! Better that architecture had 
been relegated to the master-workman of 
the Middle Age ere it became thus debased. 
One may travel from one end of this great 
land to the other, from ocean to ocean, from 
gulf to gulf, and see scarce a beggarly 
dozen of churches worthy of the name, 
either as to appropriateness of plan, beauty 
of structure, or simplicity or monumental 
grandeur. Eor not only should a church 
be arranged for the economies and decen¬ 
cies of public worship, but it should be 
for a monument, standing through all time 
to the glory of the Triune God. Builded 
as of old, by loving and masterly hands, 
of the best of the earth, not cheaply nor 
niggardly, but, where poverty will allow 
no more, simply and substantially, then 
grandly, magnificently, and gloriously it 
must keep in mind the character of the cause 
it is to serve, the name it is to commemorate, 
the God it is to glorify. Then will we have 
a structure worthy its holy name, not crum¬ 
bling to dust, but serving its purpose through 
generation and generation, through the ages 
and centuries, as have the churches of old, 
and that, with the care of dutiful hands, may 
stand for all time. 

Who can see the work of the ancients 
and say that they built not well nor strong¬ 
ly ? It is only work done in the times of 
the debasement of the arts and sciences that 
crumbled and fell away. The simplest form 
of the parish church in England consisted of 
a nave and chancel, both long and narrow. 
When an enlargement was needed an aisle 
was added, first on one side and then on the 
other. Sometimes, to obtain more room, 
resort was had to transepts, but these, as a 
rule, were confined to cathedrals. The form 
of plan thus obtained was that of a Latin 
cross. Occasionally the aisles were extended 
along the sides of the chancel. The churches 
almost invariably faced the east, as did 
those of the early times. The tower was 
placed in various positions, at the west 








ARCHITECTURE 


65 


ARCHITECTURE 


end; in the centre, at junction of nave and 
transepts; on the south side, in which case 
it was usually near the west end ; and, in 
short, in any place that seemed best adapted 
or, in the opinion of the architect, most be¬ 
coming. There was usually a porch on the 
south side, near the west end. Entrances 
were had also at other places, as when the 
tower was at the west end, an entrance was 
given through it. Then there was the 
priest’s door in one side of the chancel, op¬ 
posite to the vestry. The vestry was usu¬ 
ally on the north side of the chancel, and 
was the only place in the church in which a 
chimney was permissible. Just inside the 
main door of the church was placed the font, 
the most conspicuous, object on entering, 
sometimes almost blocking the way, an all- 
time reminder that the only entrance to 
Christ’s Church was through baptism. It 
was invariably large enough for immersion 
of infants, and of a dignified and substantial 
character, not reminding one, as do some of 
the fonts often seen in our churches, of the 
vases of a flower-garden. Running up 
through the church was one wide, central 
alley or passage, with open benches on each 
side, while near the walls, on either side, 
were other alleys, giving easy access to the 
benches. At the head of the central alley, 
at the chancel steps, was the desk or stool 
for saying the Litany at; while the pulpit 
was placed at one side, either at the north 
or south. The chancel was raised several 
steps, and divided from the nave often by a 
screen, called the rood-screen, from its being 
directly under the rood-beam and holy-rood 
placed thereon. This rood-beam was a heavy 
piece of timber extending across the chancel, 
on which was placed a cross or crucifix, with 
figures of St. John and the Virgin on either 
side. Sometimes a stone or wooden gallery 
extended across the chancel to carry the rood, 
and was called a rood-loft. Just within the 
chancel were the seats or stalls for the clergy 
and singers. These stalls ran north and 
south, facing each other, and were equally 
divided on the two sides. The end stalls, at 
the west, were returned and faced the altar. 
Here the service was said or sung, and here 
the lectern stood, on which was placed the 
Bible. A wide passage extended between 
the stalls leading to the sanctuary or sacra- 
rium. This was raised again, above the 
chancel, by one or more steps, and separated 
from it by a rail. Within this rail, and 
usually against the east wall, was placed the 
altar, which was raised on at least three 
steps ; in a very large church the number 
was increased, that the altar might not be 
obscured. The top step, called the foot-pace, 
was wider than the others, in order that the 
priest might the better stand to celebrate the 
Eucharist. The altar was usually of stone, 
the top slab of which was incised with five 
crosses, one in the middle and one at each 
end, emblematic of the five wounds of 
Christ. Back of the altar, or on it, and 
raised slightly above it, was a shelf, called 


the retable, on which were placed the cross 
and candle-sticks. 

The east end of the churches was usually 
square, although occasionally polygonal or 
round; the apsidal form, however, being 
confined principally to the Continent. If 
this apse form was used the altar was not 
placed against the east wall, as then it lost 
its dignity, but was set forward, usually to 
the chord of the apse, where it was often left 
exposed on all four sides, with a canopy over 
it, or was placed against an elaborate stone 
screen called the reredos. Even when it 
came against the wall it usually had this 
screen back of it. Within the chancel-rail 
on one side, generally the south, were placed 
seats for the clergy, generally three, called 
sedilia. Sometimes on the same side, some¬ 
times on the other, was set the credence, a 
recessed shelf in the wall to contain the un¬ 
consecrated bread and wine. Here was often 
placed the piscina, in which the priest washed 
his hands before the celebration. With the 
exception of the latter, the above arrange¬ 
ment is that now used and generally accepted 
throughout the Anglican and American 
churches; the universality of the adoption 
and use depending much upon the knowl¬ 
edge of the clergy or laity having in charge 
the erection of churches, often upon their 
individual ideas as to the utility or impor¬ 
tance of such customs, and sometimes, per¬ 
haps frequently, upon a curious prejudice as 
to the superstitions liable to be engendered 
by their use, and this because they were 
or are used and observed by that branch of 
the Church under the jurisdiction of the 
Bishop of Rome. The enlightenment of 
this age is a sufficient guard against the 
introduction of the superstitions of a period 
five centuries past. The Church decrees that 
everything be done decently and in order, 
and in pursuance of this the house of worship 
should be arranged decently and orderly. 

In the erection of a church the plan, per¬ 
haps, is the first thing to consider. The 
simplest and best form for a small church is 
that of nave and chancel, both as narrow 
and long as may be consistent with economy 
of space and practicability of hearing and 
seating. The narrower and higher the 
church the better the effect, both architect¬ 
urally and ecclesiastically. In the simplest 
and smallest churches the nave and chancel 
may be under one roof, and even of the same 
width, the division being marked by an arch 
or screen of open-work. Often in the coun¬ 
try a very small church only is needed ; this 
may have low, rough stone walls, and be 
built on the line of picturesqueness of effect, 
rather than that of grandeur and sublimity. 
The outline of all country churches had bet¬ 
ter be studied on this line of picturesqueness. 

Next to the simple form of nave and chan¬ 
cel comes the church with the side aisles; 
these separated from the nave by a row of 
columns on either side. These columns or 
piers should be of brick or stone, and carry 
an arcaded masonry wall called the clear- 





ARCHITECTURE 


66 


ARCHITECTURE 


story wall. This wall should extend higher 
than the outer, or aisle walls, and be pierced 
with windows to light the nave. Much ob¬ 
jection is made in this country to having 
side aisles, since the columns obstruct a 
clear ’view of the chancel. This may be 
obviated by making the aisles narrow, or 
by a judicious distribution of the seating, 
so that there need be no trouble on this 
score. Another method of enlarging the 
church is by transepts ; this, however, should 
be resorted to only in large churches, as 
the form really belongs to the cathedral. 
Deep transepts are very objectionable, as 
they throw the people off to one side, often 
entirely out of view of the chancel. The 
better way to do if transepts are needed is 
to adopt the Byzantine plan of a Greek 
cross. Here the nave and transepts may be 
made wide, and the chancel large, and not 
so deep as by the English plan. In this 
way the entire congregation is thrown nearer 
together and nearer the chancel. But never 
use the Greek plan without its inseparable 
great round arch and Byzantine detail. For 
nothing looks more incongruous than to see 
Gothic, which is essentially an architecture 
of height and vertical lines, used where the 
main character of the work must of neces¬ 
sity be low and broad, and the lines more or 
less horizontal, often on account of the lack 
of sufficient funds to make the building of 
the necessary height. For the effect of all 
ecclesiastical architecture is increased by 
great verticality. Byzantine or Romanesque 
may be made as lofty as you like, but if a 
broad church is needed, the round arch is 
much easier adapted than the pointed. 

Materials .—The materials of the edifice 
should be either brick or stone, or both. 
Avoid the use of wood as much as possible, 
except for temporary structures, or perhaps 
for small mission chapels on the frontier. 
Even then a more substantial material should 
be used if obtainable. Very pretty and in¬ 
expensive churches may be erected out of 
the round boulders of the fields, such as our 
ancestors in some of the more sterile and 
rocky parts of the country gathered into 
stone walls to fence their lands. The walls 
should always show the rock face, and be 
usually what is called rubble-work, laid in 
mortar, and showing as rough and massy a 
face as possible. The window-openings may 
be of the same stone, squared and dressed, 
or of a better stone wrought and moulded. 
Buttresses should be placed about the walls 
wherever necessary, but no particular regu¬ 
larity should be observed in their distribu¬ 
tion. If the funds will afford it, build a 
tower, or tower and spire. If not, let your 
money be expended in making what you do 
attempt substantial and lasting. If it is de¬ 
sirable or necessary to use wood, a very pretty 
effect may be got, with an idea of solidity, 
by using rubble-stone for the foundations, 
which may be extended up to the line of the 
window-sills, the structure above being of 
wood. Instead, however, of battening or 


clapboarding the wooden part, it may be 
covered with shingles, which should be 
stained, not painted, thus showing the natu- 
j ral grain of the wood. The inside, even, 
may be treated in this way with wonderful 
effect. Always have everything simple and 
real, not tawdry, sham, or finical. *It will 
be found, no matter what the climate, that 
if the church is built of masonry with thick 
walls, the temperature will be much more’ 
even, and more easily kept so, than if the 
building is of wood. In the South it will 
be found necessary to have the windows 
large, and to extend them nearly to the floor 
for air and ventilation. 

A good way, perhaps, to go about the 
erection of a church is to build a little at a 
time, as the early builders did; say the 
chancel first, which may be used as a chapel , 
then the nave; then the tower; and if an 
enlargement is needed, aisles may be added. 
Never try to put up a large church with 
insufficient funds. 

Red or yellow bricks, either pressed or 
common, may be used, and in city churches 
of a simple character, especially those for 
mission purposes, brick may seem the more 
appropriate material. Most of the new 
churches throughout London are of brick, 
and very beautiful they are, too. Many 
new churches in the east of London are 
usually of red brick in a very severe round- 
arched style. What strikes an observer 
mostly in these churches is their simplicity, 
appropriateness, and solidity. They are in¬ 
variably lined on the inside with bricks, and 
often have vaulted ceilings of the same. They 
consist of nave and chancel, with usually 
two, sometimes four, side aisles. By the 
side of the chancel is a morning chapel, in 
which is held the week-day or early morn¬ 
ing service, at which few people are likely 
to be present. The church is usually seated 
with chairs, sometimes with open benches, 
pews never, and floored with tiles, which 
are sometimes of clay, encaustic, or even 
wood. This last material has the advan¬ 
tage of not being cold and damp. 

As consonant with the simple, lasting 
monumental character of your church, al¬ 
ways have the material of the interior, as 
well as the exterior, of the walls substantial, 
either brick or stone, never plaster. For 
this latter is liable to drop off in time, or to 
get spotted with water, or frozen, and has, 
withal, a very unsubstantial look for a 
church, while to plaster you must put floor¬ 
ing strips and laths on the walls, thus mak¬ 
ing the fire risk much greater. If you want 
to plaster the ceilings to obtain an evenness 
of temperature, endeavor to have them 
ceiled over afterwards in wood, or paneled. 
It is pleasing to see the idea of the monu¬ 
mental character of a church gaining ground 
in this country, especially in the East, where 
many, if not the most, of the churches 
erected in the last few years, in the larger 
towns at least, have their interior walls of 
a substantial material, usually brick. 







ARCHITECTURE 


67 


ARCHITECTURE 


Furniture .—The altar and font, perhaps 
the pulpit, should be of stone, and the lec¬ 
tern of brass, while the other furniture is of 
wood, always substantial, and designed in 
keeping with the church. The most of the 
furniture obtained at the ecclesiastical fur¬ 
nishers’, so called, is but a mongrel Gothic, 
clumsy and poorly designed. The brass- 
work is sometimes better. It is more desir¬ 
able, however, where the funds will allow, 
to have the furniture, including brass- 
work, designed and made to order. Your 
architect will advise you, and if he is an 
able one,—you should have none other,—let 
him design, or oversee the designing of, 
everything that is connected with the 
church, even to the stained-glass windows 
and the gas-fixtures, and attend to the selec¬ 
tion of carpets, rugs, etc. He will not usu- 
ally undertake the designing of stained- 
glass work, unless of a simple character, but 
will advise you where to look, or will obtain 
designs for you. 

There has been of late years some excel¬ 
lent stained-glass work done in this country. 
It is mostly, however, of a different charac¬ 
ter from the ancient stained glass, and con¬ 
sequently from that produced by the best 
makers in London and Munich of to-day. 
In small churches that cannot afford figure- 
work, a very pleasing effect can be got by 
using cathedral glass, and at a very small ex¬ 
pense. It is not advisable to have a window 
in the east end over the altar, precedent to 
the contrary notwithstanding, for unless it is 
made very dark indeed, it is sure to throw an 
unpleasant glare in the faces of. the congre¬ 
gation, and to obscure almost entirely the 
altar and things about it. The better way is 
to place a window on one side only, which 
may be made as large as needed, thus obtain¬ 
ing a sufficiency of light without the confu¬ 
sion resulting from the multifarious rays of 
conflicting lights. Then it is not well to have 
too much light in a church,—a glare is ex¬ 
ceedingly unpleasant and confusing to many 
worshipers. Almost as bad is the lack of 
light found in some churches. This latter 
fact is not always owing to small or insuffi¬ 
cient windows, but often to the fact of the 
church being so wide that the light from the 
low windows will not strike across. This 
can be obviated by building the church with 
a nave and aisles, and getting most of the 
light from the plear-story windows. The 
clear-story may be as high as you like, the 
higher the better. Windows in the west 
end are permissible, but they should not be 
too bright or large, else the clergy will ex¬ 
perience the same annoyance that an east 
window causes the congregation. 

The altar should be of stone and a fixture 
in the church, resting on a stone foundation. 
It should be of the form of a tomb, at least 
six feet long, and be two and a half feet wide 
and three feet and three inches high. It 
should be placed against the east wall in 
a square chancel, while in an apsidal one it 
should be set forward, even to the chord, if 


the room can be afforded. It should always 
be raised on at least three steps,—three will 
answer for all ordinary purposes,—the top 
one being wider than the other. The sanc¬ 
tuary-rail should be of brass if possible; if 
not, a round wooden rail is sufficient, set on 
simple standards of metal as open as possi¬ 
ble. A rail is not at all necessary, except to 
keep out the multitude. A cord will answer 
for the gate, unless a metal rail is used, when 
a smaller metal pipe may be made to slide 
into the other. This is better than a cum¬ 
brous gate that is continually getting out of 
order. Near the altar should be a credence 
to hold the elements before the service, and 
against the south wall should be two or 
three, usually three, seats, or sedilia, for the 
clergy. The chancel should contain the stalls 
or benches for the clergy and choir, consist¬ 
ing of two or three long benches on each 
side, running longitudinally ; the front ones 
being low for the choir and the back ones 
high for the clergy. The organist also 
should sit here with his key-board, and face 
the same way as the choir, the organ being 
placed in a recess or gallery on either side, 
or at the west end. On a line between the 
nave and chancel should be placed the lec¬ 
tern, which ought to be of brass and in the 
shape of an eagle. A simple wooden lectern 
is often used in small churches ; a very neat 
one may be made of metal to fold up, and 
have a canvas or cloth book-rest. The pul¬ 
pit may be placed on the north or south side 
of the church, and be of wood or stone. The 
lectern must be on the opposite side from the 
pulpit. The pulpit should be in the nave, 
and as near the people as possible, even 
among them. The prayer should never be 
said or sung at the lectern, as is sometimes 
done, but in the stalls, or at a prayer-desk, 
and facing north or south, not west. At the 
head of the main alley or passage may be a 
small desk at which to say the Litany. 
Often dividing the chancel from the nave is 
an open screen of wood or metal called the 
rood-screen. St. Stephen’s, Providence, has 
a very fine new wooden one; while the 
Church of the Advent, Boston, has an iron 
one of considerable height, and St. Stephen’s, 
Lynn, Mass., is, I believe, to have one of 
brass. 

If the church is a free or mission church 
in a town, it is better to seat with chairs, 
otherwise plain open benches may be used. 
They should be two feet and ten inches apart 
from back to back, while they are often made 
three feet, and even more, as at Trinity 
Church, Boston. Twenty inches in width 
may be allowed for each person. The main 
alley can be from four to six feet wide, and 
the side ones three to four feet. The font 
should be of stone and placed near the main 
entrance. It must be on a solid foundation, 
and be large enough for immersion. It 
ought to be raised on two or three steps, so 
that the clergyman may be seen while ad¬ 
ministering the rite of baptism. Whether 
the floor is of wood or not, it is better to have 





ARCHITECTURE 


68 


ARCHITECTURE 


a line of matting down the alleys than to 
carpet the whole church, while rugs and mats 
may be used for the pews. This last, how¬ 
ever, is more a matter of convenience and 
comfort, and is often determined by the 
climate and by the methods of heating used. 

Sunday-School Chapels .—A Sunday-school 
chapel is often attached to a church, and it is 
always better to have it so ; a separate build¬ 
ing being far more preferable than to use 
the basement of the main structure. 

Heating and Ventilation. — Great care 
should be taken in the matter of heating and 
ventilation, especially in the North, where 
it is very seldom that the temperature of a 
church in winter is at all satisfactory. Heat- 

Fig. 3. 


ing by furnaces is probably the most desir¬ 
able way. The whole basement may be 
made a hot-air chamber, letting the air up 
in a multitude of places under the pews. In 
this way, by a judicious arrangement of the 
openings for the fresh warm air and of out¬ 
lets for the foul air, a reasonably perfect 
system may be obtained. It is difficult to 
put forth anyone system for all cases. Each 
problem should be worked out for itself and 
to meet the exigencies of the occasion. 

Lich-Gates. — A pleasant sight about 
churches, especially in the country, is the 
well-kept church-yard,—the God’s acre,— 
where lie all the dead of the parish. At the 
entrance to this church-yard it was a goodly 
custom to erect a shelter over the gate-way, 
under which the mourners might stop and 
rest the corpse while waiting for the proces¬ 


sion of clergy to come out from the church 
to meet them. This sheltered gate was 
thence called lich-gate or corpse-gate. This 
custom might be revived, the gate serving as 
a shelter from the weather at all times, be¬ 
sides being a picturesque ornament to the 
church-yard. 


GLOSSARY. 

Abacus. The upper part of the capital of a col¬ 
umn or pier. 

Abbey. A term for a collection of conventual 
buildings, consisting of a church and other 
structures, presided over by an abbot or abbess. 

Abutment. The solid part of a wall or pier from 
which an arch springs or abuts. 

Aisle. The wings at the sides of 
a church, separated from the 
nave by columns or piers, and 
roofed lower than the main body 
of the church. It is an architec¬ 
tural division of the structure, 
and not a passage or alley be¬ 
tween the pews, as often used. 
Almery. A recess in the wall near 
the altar used to contain the 
sacred vessels. 

Almonry, or Aumbry. A room 
where alms were distributed to 
the poor. 

Altar. An elevated tomb-like 
structure for the celebration of 
the Eucharist, placed at the east¬ 
ern end of the church, made at 
first of wood, but the Council of 
Epone, in France (509 a.d.), 
commanded that altars be made 
of stone. 

• Alure. An alley or passage in a 
wall, as in the clear-story of a 
church. 

Ambo. A kind of pulpit in the 
early church, originally a read¬ 
ing-desk. 

Ambulatory. A passage to walk 
in, such as cloisters. 
Ante-Chapel. A small chapel, 
forming the entrance to another. 
Apse. The semicircular or poly¬ 
gonal termination to the chancel 
or aisles of a church, very little 
used in England, but common on 
the Continent. 

Arcade. A row or range of arches supported on 
piers or columns, either against a wall or de¬ 
tached. 

Arch. A construction of masonry spanning an 
opening, and so constructed that the stones or 
bricks by mutual pressure* will support each 
other. The lower part is called the springing, 
the sides the haunches, and the top the crown. 
(Fig. 3.) 

Ashlar. Squared stones used for the facing of 
walls. The ashlar-line is that of the face of the 
building. 

Baldachino. A canopy, supported on shafts, 
standing over the altar. 

Baptistery. A separate building or an addition 
to the church to contain the font for the rite of 
baptism. 

Base. The moulded lower part of a column or shaft. 

Basilica. A building used by the Greeks and 
Romans for public purposes, as for a justice- 
hall, hall of exchange, etc. 



Semicircular. 





Segmental. Horseshoe. 




Horseshoe. 


Equilateral. Lancet. 




Segmental Pointed. Trefoil. 



Trefoil. 


























ARCHITECT UK E 


09 


ARCHITECTURE 


Bay. The compartment of an arcade, or space 
or division between any two columns or piers. 

Belfry. Usually applied to the ringing-loft of 
a church. Properly, a detached campanile con¬ 
taining bells. 

Bell-Gable, Bell-Cot. A gable or cot in small 
churches and chapels that have no tower, to 
contain one or more bells, usually placed at the 
west end. When placed over the chancel arch 
it is called sanctus bell-cot. 

Blind-Story, or Triforium. A term applied to 
the space between the lower arcade of the wall 
and the clear-story. 

Buttress. A pier of masonry projecting from a 
wall and used to strengthen it. 

Canopy. An ornamental projection or covering 
over niches, doors, windows, seats, and altars. 

Cap, or Capital. The upper part of a column, 
pier, or pilaster; usually elaborately carved. 

Cathedral. The principal church of a diocese, 
where the Bishop has his seat. (Fig. 4.) 


Fig. 4. 



Chalice. The cup used for the wine at the cele¬ 
bration of the Eucharist, at first made of wood 
and glass, then of gold and silver. 

Chancel. The eastern end of a church, where 
the clergy and the choir are placed, and where 
the services are performed. 

Chantry. A small chapel built out from a church, 
and often containing the tomb of the founder. 

Chapel. A small building used in place of a 
church in a large parish; a building attached 
to a church or forming part of an institution, 
and used for the services of the church. 

Chapter-House. The place of assembly for the 
chapter, or deans and canons, of a cathedral. 
The rooms are of various shapes, usually polyg¬ 
onal. 

Choir. That part of a cathedral where the choir 
sits and where the service is sung. In a parish 
church this place is called the chancel, the term 
choir being confined to cathedrals; it was sepa¬ 
rated from the rest of the church by a screen. 

Clear-Story, or Clere-Story. An upper story 
or row of windows in a church above the blind- 
story. It is in the wall separating nave and 
aisle, which is usually called the clear-story 
wall. 


Cloister. A covered ambulatory or walk about 
a quadrangle in a collegiate or monastic struc¬ 
ture. 

Column. A vertical cylindrical shaft used to sup¬ 
port a superincumbent weight. A clustered 
column is a collection of small slender shafts 
banded together. 

Coping. The top or covering course of a wall, 
usually of stone, and weathered to throw off the 
rain-water. 

Corbel. A projecting stone or piece of timber 
jutting out from a wall and used as a support. 

Credence. A small table or recess in the wall 
near the altar, on which the bread and wine 
were placed before they were consecrated. 

Cross. The symbol of the Christian religion. The 
Greek cross has each of its arms alike, while 
the Latin has the lower arm longer than the 
others; this latter is the usual form of cross 
seen. 

Crypt. A vaulted apartment under a church or 
other building. In a church it is generally 
under the chancel. 

Cusp. The point of meeting of the foliations of 
tracery as in a trefoil, where the three project¬ 
ing points of meeting of the foils are called 
cusp. 

Diaper-work. A form of decorating of flat sur¬ 
faces, such as walls, panels, etc., with a geomet¬ 
rical pattern, consisting of squares, lozenges, 
or other forms, filled with a flower or rosette 
design. The name is derived from a kind of 
cloth worked in similar patterns made at Ypres, 
Belgium, hence the name, Drap D’Ypnes. 

Dome. A cupola or inverted cup on the top of a 
building. The term is derived from the name 
given the Italian cathedral, “ II duomo,’’ which 
usually had a dome. 

Dorsal, or Dossel. The hangings behind the 
altar. 

Faldstool, or Folding-stool. A seat made to 
fold up like a camp-chair, and of wood or metal, 
carried about by a Bishop when away from his 
own church, a term erroneously applied to the 
Litany stool. 

Finial. The ornament in which a spire, gable, 
pinnacle, or canopy terminates, consisting gen¬ 
erally in a flower or bunch of flowers. 

Fl^che. The small spire over the intersection 
of nave and transepts containing the sanctus 
bell. 

Font. The vessel used in the rite of baptism. It 
should be of stone, and of sufficient size to allow 
a child to be immersed. 

Frithstool, or Freedstool. A seat placed near 
the altar, the last refuge for those who claimed 
the privilege of sanctuary. The seat of peace. 

Frontal. The hanging of the front of the altar. 

Gable. The triangular-shaped upper part of a 
wall formed by the termination of a roof against 
it. 

Galilee. A chapel or porch at the western 
entrance to a church. Sometimes a part of the 
west end of the church, separated from the rest, 
and not considered so sacred as the rest of the 
edifice. Used chiefly for penitents not yet 
admitted to the body of the church. 

Gargoyle. An ornamental termination to a 
gutter or water-spout used to carry the water 
clear of the building. It is usually a grotesque, 
and supposed to be named from the gurgling 
sound made by the water passing through it. 

Grille. The ornamental iron-work screen in¬ 
closing a chapel, tomb, or an opening, such as 
a window. 





























ARCHITECTURE 


70 


ARCHITECTURE 


Groin. The style of vaulting formed by the ; 
intersection of two vaults; a ceiling of this form 
is called a groined ceiling. 

Grotesques. The light and fanciful ornaments 
used by the ancients; also gargoyles, corbels, 
and other ornaments carved in curious and gro¬ 
tesque forms are often thus called. 

Hammer-beam. A horizontal timber resting on 
the top of the wall and projecting into the 
church, forming part of a truss, and often 
carved ; hence the name hammer-beam truss. 

Jamb. The sides of a door or window-opening. 

Joints. The interstices between the stones or 
bricks in masonry are called joints. 

Lady-Chapel. A chapel placed to the eastward 
of the altar in large churches and dedicated 
to the Blessed Virgin, called Our Lady. 

Lancet. A long, narrow window or opening with 
a narrow, pointed arch. 

Lantern. A term given to the light construction 
forming the top of a tower or dome, usually of 
a polygonal form ; occasionally it is placed on 
a roof, and is used for purposes of light and air. 

Lectern. A movable desk of wood or metal 
used to hold the Bible, often made of brass in 
the form of an eagle, the Bible resting on the 
back of the eagle. 

Lich-gate. A covered gate-way at the entrance 
to a church-yard or cemetery, where the mourn¬ 
ers rested the corpse while waiting for the 

• clergy. 

Louvre. An open structure on a roof, usually for 
ventilation, and consisting of a small lantern or 
cupola, the openings filled with slats or louvre 
boards. 

Minster. A large church attached to an ecclesi¬ 
astical establishment. If the fraternity be pre¬ 
sided over by a Bishop it is called a Cathedral; 
if by an abbot, an Abbey; if by a prior, a 
Priory. 

Miserere. A projection on the under side of 
seats in the stalls of large churches. These 
seats were made to turn up during the long 
services, which were performed standing, and 
the misereres were projected enough to form 
a partial seat. They were elaborately carved 
in various grotesque forms. 

Monastery. A group of buildings used for the 
habitation of an order of monks. 

Mosaic-work. Flat ornamental work formed by 
inlaying small pieces of stone, glass, enamel, or 
marble of various colors. Floors, walls, and 
ceilings are done in this manner.. 

Mullion. A vertical division of a window into 
two or more parts. 

Narthex. The porch forming the entrance to 
the early Christian basilica. 

Nave. The main body or division of a church, 
so called from its fancied resemblance to a ship. 
On either side are the aisles, and at the east end 
is the chancel. 

Oratory. A small room or chapel attached usu¬ 
ally to a private house and for individual or 
family devotions. 

Pace, or Foot-pace. A broad step in front of 
the altar. 

Paten. A small plate or salver used in the cele¬ 
bration of the Eucharist; it was formed to fit 
the chalice as a cover. 

Pier. That' portion of a wall between windows 
or other openings, or a massive erection stand¬ 
ing alone and used to support arches, etc. 

Pillars. The round or polygonal piers or col¬ 
umns that support the main arches of a build¬ 
ing. 


Pinnacle. A small turret or tall ornament, taper¬ 
ing to the top and usually elaborately carved, 
forming terminations to buttresses, corners, etc. 

Piscina. A small basin, either recessed in the 
wall, near the altar, or projecting from it, and 
used to carry off the water used in ablutions 
before the mass. 

Poppy-heads. The finials, or ornaments, at the 
top of bench or stall ends. 

Porch. A covered shelter at the entrance to the 
church. Sometimes the lower story of the tower 
forms the porch. It is usually placed on the 
south side near the west end. 

Pulpit. An elevated platform or desk from 
which sermons are preached. Sometimes of 
stone, but usually of wood, and polygonal or 
round in shape: placed at either the north or 
sputh side of nave near entrance to chancel. 

Refectory. The dining-hall of a monastery or 
convent. It contained a desk or pulpit, from 
which one of the members read to the others 
during meals. 

Reliquary. A small box, chest, or casket to 
contain relics. 

Reredos. The screen or other ornamental work 
at the back of the altar, either against the wall 
or detached. 

Retable. A raised shelf at .the back of the altar, 
*on which are placed the cross, vases, and can¬ 
dlesticks. 

Ridge. The apex of the roof running the length 
,of the building. 

Rood. The crucifix placed in the rood-loft, with 
figures of the Virgin Mary and St. John on 
either side. 

Rood-beam, or Rood-loft. A heavy beam or 
gallery extending across the chancel at the 
junction with the nave, on which was placed 
the rood; underneath was often placed a screen 
or low wall, called rood-screen or rood-wall. 
These screens are made quite light and open. 

Rood-tower, Rood steeple. A name sometimes 
given to the great tower at the intersection of 
nave and transepts. 

Rose-window. A name given to a window of 
circular form filled with tracery ; if the tracery 
is in the form of spokes it is called a wheel- 
window. 

Sacrarium. The inclosed space about the altar. 

Sacristy. A room attached to a church in which 
the priests robed, and in which the sacred ves¬ 
sels, vestments, etc., were kept. 

Sanctuary. The eastern end of the chancel, in 
which the altar is placed; called also sacrarium. 

Sanctus Bell-cot. A small gable or other struc¬ 
ture on the roof, to contain a small bell called 
the sanctus-bell, which was used during various 
parts of the service, especially at the words 
“ sanctus, sanctus, sanctus;” placed usually 
over the chancel arch ; sometimes it is in a 
small spire called a fl&che. 

Sedilia. Three seats placed near the altar, and 
against or recessed in one of the walls; used 
during parts of the service by the priest and his 
attendants, the deacon and subdeacon. 

Sepulchre, The Easter. A recess,” generally 
in the north wall of a Roman church, to contain 
the cross from Good-Friday to Easter. 

Shafts. Slender columns, either standing alone 
or attached to walls, buttresses, etc. 

Shrine. A chest or box to contain relics; some¬ 
times in the form of a church; often they were 
covered with jewels. 

Sill, Cill. The horizontal stone forming the 
bottom of window-openings. In a wooden 





ARK OF THE COVENANT 


71 


ARKANSAS 


building the first timber put on the foundations 
and extending around the building. 

Soffit. A ceiling; a term used only to designate 
subordinate parts and members of a building, 
as the ceiling or soffit, or an arch, doorway, 
stairway, cornice, etc. 

Span. The width of an arch between the walls; 
also the width of a roof. 

Spire. A sharply-pointed termination given to 
towers, and rising to a great height, forming 
the roof to the tower; usually built of masonry 
in the best work, sometimes of wood, and cov¬ 
ered with shingles, tiles, or slates. 

Stall. A fixed seat, partially inclosed, for the 
use of clergy and choir. The stalls are situated 
in the chancel or choir. 

Standard. The term applied to the upright ends 
of stalls or benches. 

Steeple. A general term used to include the 
whole structure of tower, belfry, and spire. 

Stoup. A small vessel placed at the entrance to 
a Roman church to contain holy water. 

Super altar. A small portable stone altar. 

Tabernacle. A small cell or niche in which 
some holy or precious thing is placed; applied 
to the receptacle over the altar where the pix is 
placed ; also a niche where an image may be 
placed. 

Tessellated Pavement. A pavement formed of 
small cubes of stone, marble, pottery, etc., of 
from an inch to a half-inch square, like dice. 

Tower. The large masonry structure used to 
mark the position of a church, usually square, 
sometimes round or polygonal; occasionally 
topped out with a flat roof, oftener, however, 
with a tall spire. 

Tracery. The ornamental filling in of circular 
windows, window-heads, and panels formed by 
the ramifications of the mullions. It should be 
of stone, and not of wood, as it often is. 

Transept. That portion of a church that crosses 
transversely between nave and choir, extending 
beyond the nave on either side, and forming 
the arms of a cross. 

Transom. The horizontal cross-bars of wood or 
stone that divide a window or doorway in height, 
in contradistinction to mullions that run verti¬ 
cally. 

Trefoil. A panel, window, or window-head 
formed by cusping in the shape of a three-leafed 
flower; quatrefoil is four-leafed; cinquefoil, 
five-leafed; multifoil, many-leafed. 

Tritorium, or Blind-story. The space of wall 
between the lower arcade and the clear-story. 

Turret. A small tower, usually round or octag¬ 
onal; generally placed at corners of buildings 
or larger towers. 

Tympanum. A name given to the space above 
the opening of a doorway, formed by the square 
head of the door and the form of the arch above 
it; often elaborately carved, or filled with mosaic. 

Vault. The arched ceiling of a roof; where the 
vaults intersect the ceiling is said to be groined. 

Vesica Pisces. An oval-shaped ornament pointed 
at both ends; used for panels, windows, etc. 
It is the common form of the aureole, or glory, 
by which the representations of the persons of 
the Holy Trinity were surrounded in the Mid¬ 
dle Ages. The name was given by Albert 
Durer. 

Vestry. Vide Sacristy. 

Ion Lewis, Chicago. 

Ark of the Covenant. The coffer or chest 

of shittim or acacia wood, in which were 
placed the fables of the Law. It was also 


called the Testimony. According to Heb. 
ix. 4, the pot of manna and Aaron’s rod 
were within it. It was two and a half cubits 
long and one and a half cubits deep, and 
the same measurement in width. It was 
overlaid with gold within and without, and 
its lid was surrounded with a crown of gold. 
Four golden rings, one at each corner, were 
placed for the staves of acacia wood by which 
it was to be carried, and which were always 
to remain in place. It was the consecrated 
depository for the Tables of the Law— God’s 
Testimony to His people. It therefore con¬ 
tained the stone tables, hewn by Moses, and 
written on by God for a Testimony before 
His people. It occupied the chief place in 
the Hol} r of Holies, and it was set before 
the mercy-seat, which was overshadowed by 
the cherubim. In the journeyings of the 
children it was always to be borne by the 
Kohathites, when the priests had covered it 
with the veil and pall of badger-skins. Upon 
the tent where the Testimony rested, the 
cloud, the glory of the Lord, hovered. It led 
the way in the three days of the first journey 
after leaving Sinai, and it was placed in the 
front of the advancing hosts with a solemn 
proclamation by Moses (Num. x. 83-36; cf. 
Ps. lxviii. 1). Its march was marked by 
the blast from two silver trumpets. It was 
never seert but by the High-Priest, for none 
could look upon it and live. It was thus in 
the central place in the Jewish worship, and 
was a perpetual witness of God’s covenant 
with His people. So Isaiah appeals to it: “To 
the Law (i.e., the whole Levitical Law) and 
to the Testimony” (i.e ., the covenant in the 
Ark). (Is. viii. 20.) It excluded idolatry in 
the tabernacle, however much the heart of 
the people leaned to that sin. 

Again, when Joshua was about to cross 
the Jordan, the Ark led the way, two thou¬ 
sand cubits in advance oT the people (Josh, 
iii., iv.), and it was borne in front in the 
solemn processions about Jericho. It was 
at Gilgal, then removed to Shiloh, till the 
time of Samuel. It was taken by the Philis¬ 
tines when Hophni and Phinehas sacrile¬ 
giously carried it to the battle of Aphek, 
who kept it seven months. It was then re¬ 
turned (1 Sam. vi.), and remained at Kir- 
'jath Jearim twenty years, till it was left 
by David at. the house of Obed Edom (1 
Chron. xiii.); finally, it was carried to 
Jerusalem and placed in the tent David had 
prepared for it. Thence it was borne to the 
Temple by Solomon. 

Arkansas and Indian Territory. This 
Diocese was organized in 1871 a.d The 
population of the State is 802,564. Bishop 
Polk (born April 10, 1806 a.d.) was “con¬ 
secrated Missionary Bishop of Arkansas and 
the Indian Territory south of 36° 30', with 
provisional charge of Alabama, Mississippi, 
and the republic of Texas, December 9, 1838 
a.d. At the General Convention hqld in 
Philadelphia, October 6 to 19, 1841 a.d., 
Bishop Polk was nominated by the House 
of Bishops to the Episcopate of Louisiana, 








ARKANSAS 


72 


ARKANSAS 


agreeably to the request of that Diocese that 
the General Convention should elect its 
Bishop, in which action the House of Depu¬ 
ties unanimously concurred. Died June 14, 
1864 a.d. 

“Second Bishop, the Rt. Rev. George 
Washington Freeman, D.D. Born June 13, 
1789 a.d. Consecrated Missionary Bishop 
of Arkansas and the Indian Territory south 
of 36J°, with supervision of the Church in 
Texas, October 26, 1844 a.d. Died April 29, 
1858 a.d. 

“ Third Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Henry Cham¬ 
plain Lay, S.T.D., LL.D. Born December 
6, 1813 a.d. Consecrated Missionary Bishop 
of Arkansas and the Indian Territory, Oc¬ 
tober 23, 1859 a.d. Translated to Easton, 
1869 a.d. 

“ Present Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Henry 
Niles Pierce, D.D., LL.D. Residence, Little 
Rock. Bom in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, 
October 19, 1820 a.d. Graduated at Brown 
University 1842 a.d. Ordered Deacon 
April 23, 1843 a.d. Ordained Priest Jan¬ 
uary 3,1849 a.d. He was successively rec¬ 
tor of St. John’s, Mobile, Ala., St. Paul’s, 
Springfield, Ill. (1850-70 a.d.). Received 
degree of D.D. from University of Ala¬ 
bama, and that of LL.D. from the College 
of William and Mary, Virginia, 1869 a.d. 
Consecrated Missionary Bishop of Arkan¬ 
sas and the Indian Territory in Mobile, 
Ala., January 25, 1870 a.d., by the Rt. Rev. 
Wm. M. Green, D.D., Rt. Rev. Henry J. 
Whitehouse, D.D., LL.D., D.C.L., Rt. Rev. 
R. H. Wilmer, D.D., Rt. Rev. C. J. Quin- 
tard, S.T.D., LL.D., Rt. Rev. Joseph P. B. 
Wilmer, D.D , Rt. Rev. J. F. Young, S.T.D. 
Writings: Occasional Sermons, Essays, Ad¬ 
dresses, and Poems.” (Living Church An¬ 
nual, 1884.) 

Bishop Freeman was rector of Immanuel 
Church, Newcastle^ Del., before his eleva¬ 
tion to the Episcopate, hence William T. 
Read, Esq., of New Castle, presented reso¬ 
lutions concerning his death in the Dela¬ 
ware Convention of 1858 a.d. They declare 
that “ the Church has lost one of her bright¬ 
est ornaments, a chief pastor eminently qual¬ 
ified for the exalted and responsible station 
to which the Church called him with con¬ 
siderable unanimity, and who discharged its 
duties with diligence, ability, uprightness, 
and zeal, directed by sound judgment, and 
animated by ardent love of God and man.” 

In 1835 a.d., Rev. Francis L. Hawks, 
D.D., was chosen by the General Conven¬ 
tion as Missionary Bishop, to have jurisdic¬ 
tion in Louisiana and the Territories of 
Arkansas and Florida. He declined the 
position. 

When Bishop Polk was elected by the 
General Convention of 1841 a.d. “to the 
Diocesan Episcopate of Louisiana, he re¬ 
signed his previous charge, and Bishop 
Otey,,of Tennessee, was made acting Bishop 
of Arkansas, etc. This state of things con¬ 
tinued until 1844 a.d.” when Bishop Free¬ 
man was elected. Bishop Freeman was also 


to have jurisdiction in Texas, as well as the 
Indian Territory. 

Bishop Lay reported to the General Con¬ 
vention of 1868 a.d. concerning Arkansas 
and the Indian Territory, that in the preced¬ 
ing three years he had licensed 6 lay-readers. 
There was 1 candidate for holy orders, and 
there were 8 Presbyters canonically resi¬ 
dent, and 1 without a cure. There were 
16 parishes, 5 churches, and 1 parsonage. 
Baptisms, 466; confirmations, 254; com¬ 
municants, 605; Sunday-school teachers, 57 ; 
scholars, 520. 

EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS. 

“ Academic. —St. John’s Associate Mission 
School, Fayetteville, Ark., C. A. Leverett, 
Principal. Went into operation the 1st of 
October, 1868 a.d.” 

Bishop Pierce’s first annual report to the 
Board of Missions, in October, 1870 a.d., 
stated that 103 had received confirmation, 
and there had been 52 baptisms. The Bishop 
had traveled 5414 miles. “ Two parishes 
were self-supporting, Little Rock and Hel¬ 
ena.” The Bishop was consecrated in Jan¬ 
uary of this year. 

Bishop Pierce reports to the Board of Mis¬ 
sions in 1883 a.d. that he has been busily 
at work in his jurisdiction for the past four 
years, “ having in that period allowed him¬ 
self little or no time for simple recreation.” 
He speaks with interest of a visit to the 
missions in the western part of the Indian 
Territory, under Rev. F. B. Wicks. Mr. 
Wicks was a rector in the State of New York, 
who took some Indian lads to educate, and 
afterwards entered on this missionary work. 
Progress has been made “ in planting the 
Church among the Cheyennes, Arapahoes, 
Kiowas, and Comanches.” The labors of 
Mr. Wicks have been aided by the help of 
the Cheyenne Deacon, Rev. David P. Oka- 
hatee. The Bishop confirmed at the Chey¬ 
enne school-house fifteen persons, all Chey¬ 
ennes. They were young men and women, 
appearing very intelligent. The Bishop says 
that “ they form a grand nucleus for a large 
work among these Indians.” He adds, “ I 
do not think that I was ever more deeply im¬ 
pressed with any religious services than I 
was by the baptism of three young men by 
Mr. Wicks on the Wednesday night previ- 
ons to their confirmation, Sunday, October 
5. There was a large congregation of Indi¬ 
ans and whites present, and few eyes were 
seen in which no tear-drop glistened.” At 
the Kiowa and Comanche school-house, 
Anadarko, Mr. Wicks baptized six Indian 
young men, and the Bishop confirmed twelve 
persons. At Anadarko the Kiowa Deacon, 
Rev. Paul C. Zotom, has assisted Mr. 
Wicks, and Mr. George W. Hunt, the 
superintendent of the Kiowa and Comanche 
school, has also given him valuable aid. 
Mr. Hunt has become a candidate for 
orders. Steps have been taken looking to 
the erection of a church at Anadarko. At 
Fort Sill the Bishop confirmed two per- 




ARLES 


73 


ARTICLES, THE XXXIX. 


sons, one of them being the wife of the com¬ 
mandant, Col. G. V. Hendry. The Bishop 
was pleased with the success of the plane of 
Mr. Wicks and his influence among the 
Indians, and thinks that the mission needs 
to be enlarged and developed under such 
wise leadership. 

In Arkansas the Bishop reports a new 
church being pushed towards completion at 
Van Buren, and a new church soon to be 
commenced at Marianna. The Bishop is ex¬ 
ceedingly anxious to establish a central mis¬ 
sion and clergy-house, with a Board of 
Clergy at Little Rock. He has worked for 
years, steadily but gradually, “towards the 
establishment of this cathedral and clergy- 
house.” He says, “ I am now, and have been 
since the middle of June last, trying to raise 
the requisite funds. My success has not 
been up to this time great, and yet not 
discouraging. With $2000 in addition to 
what is now secured, I can begin to build 
this fall, and have much* of my scheme in 
operation during the coming year. I con¬ 
sider this work one of so much importance 
and so vital to the Church in Arkansas that 
I shall place it second to nothing else till it 
is done. May God put it into the hearts of 
Churchmen everywhere to help me ! The 
sum I ask is so little, that I ought not to be 
obliged to take months to raise it.” He re¬ 
ports 88 confirmations, 1 ordination to the 
priesthood ; number of miles traveled, 6201. 
In addition to the confirmations in Arkan¬ 
sas, 29 have been confirmed in the Indian 
Territory. Rky. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Arles. Of the numerous ecclesiastical 
conventions called Councils of Arles, the 
first only need be considered in any full¬ 
ness. About the beginning of the fourth 
century, on occasions of violent persecu¬ 
tion, much weakness had been exhibited by 
Christians, as well as much fortitude and 
zeal, which latter was sometimes carried to 
foolish fanaticism; and there had arisen., 
chiefly in Africa, two classes in the Church ; 
one, of those inclined to treat forgivingly 
and leniently such as had fallen when sorely 
tried by persecution, and to discourage 
fanaticism which provoked persecution ; 
the other, of those who thought they ought 
to take a severer view, and exclude the 
lapsed, often styled traditors , from Church 
privileges and communion, at least until the 
hour of death. The antagonism of these 
two parties took more definite form, and 
became open and violent, on the election of 
Caecilian to the See of Carthage (311 a.d.). 
and a rival, Majorinus, was elected and 
consecrated to the same See, on the ground 
that Caecilian’s consecration was not valid, 
having been given by a traditor. The Em¬ 
peror Constantine, who became master of 
the West about this time, gave some atten¬ 
tion to these disputes, and authorized a meet¬ 
ing of Bishops at Rome to compose them 
(313 a.d.). Caecilian was present at this 
conference, as was also the opposite party, 
headed by a certain Donatus ; not, however, 


that one from whom the party shortly after¬ 
wards was named. The decision was in favor 
of Caecilian, but Donatus and his brethren 
were not satisfied, and they applied to the 
Emperor for another hearing. This applica¬ 
tion issued in the Council of Arles, a general 
Council of the West assembled at Arelate, 
a city near the mouth of the Rhone (August 
1, 314 a.d.). It is said as many as two 
hundred Bishops met at this time, among 
whom were three from Britain,—Eborius 
of York, Restitutus of London, and Adel- 
fius of Lincoln. The result of the deliber¬ 
ations was again in favor of Caecilian and 
the more moderate party, and a number of 
Canons were passed in the hope of ending 
the dissensions. Among other things it was 
decided that clergymen who were duly con¬ 
victed as traditors should be deposed; that 
false accusers should be excommunicated 
until near death ; that ordination by tradi¬ 
tors, if otherwise unexceptionable, should 
be valid; that persons baptized by heretics 
in the Name of the Father, etc., and in the 
right form, should not be rebaptized, but 
received into the Church by imposition of 
hands ; and that Easter should be observed 
on Sunday. 

Articles, the XXXIX. “ Articles of Relig¬ 
ion” were an invention, in Western Europe, 
of the sixteenth century. The Eastern 
Church retains yet the Catholic practice of 
fifteen hundred years, and is satisfied with 
the Creed as the one formula of faith, with 
the Liturgy as the rule of worship, and 
with Canons for discipline. The latter tend 
to preserve good morals and promote the 
order of the Church. The second nourishes 
growth in grace, wisdom, and soundness of 
faith. The first maintains the primary facts 
respecting Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, 
which are necessary to be believed in order 
to be saved. They are so necessary because 
salvation is a fact, and must, therefore, rest 
on facts. The only facts which make a sure 
foundation are those set forth in the for¬ 
mulas of the Creed. Though the Creed has 
two forms, one called the Apostles’, and the 
other the Nicene, the latter is only an ex¬ 
pansion of the former, containing no merely 
human opinions or explanations, but merely 
such enlargements of the old statements of 
facts as were known to have been accepted 
and taught from the beginning in all the 
Churches of Apostolic foundation and up¬ 
growth. 

In the sixteenth century, however, the 
resistance to the Bishop of Rome, which led 
to the convulsions of the Reformation, was 
accompanied by a fierce reaction against the 
mediaeval theology. Indeed, the encroach¬ 
ments of the Pope upon the rights of the 
national Churches in Western Europe, and 
his usurpations of power based upon his un¬ 
catholic claims of “ supremacy,” had long 
proceeded, paripassic, with the development 
of novel and, therefore, erroneous theolog¬ 
ical doctrines. Practical corruptions followed 
from erroneous teaching, and induced an 





ARTICLES, THE XXXIX. 


74 


ARTICLES, THE XXXIX. 


active, indignant, and sometimes violent re¬ 
sistance. The whole Church, in the West, 
had become so bound in the chains of a tyr¬ 
annous papal rule, and so held captive by a 
powerful, well-organized, and minutely-di¬ 
vided ecclesiasticism, that when the inevi¬ 
table reaction came, and the indestructible 
dignity of personal man—made in God’s 
image, and responsible directly to Him— 
was reasserted and defended, the rebound, 
like its occasion, became extreme. 

Not only were the rights of man as man, 
free by nature and godlike, an impelling 
force under the Reformation, but the su¬ 
premacy of Truth, as the Word of God, was 
naturally set forth as the only sure test of 
His will and ways. A general intellectual 
renaissance had prepared the way for a the¬ 
ological, as well as moral and religious re¬ 
vival. The theological revival led, of 
course, to doctrinal controversies. These 
disturbed the quiet of both Church and 
State. The rulers, in both Church and 
State, endeavored to check disorder. The 
Reformers were in earnest, and began to 
show something more than a'mere spirit of 
endurance. They were not all ecclesiastics. 
Princes favored the Reformation. Both 
Pope and Emperor tried in vain to stamp 
out the movement. Huss and Jerome had 
been silenced, but Luther, Zwingle, Calvin, 
and the English Convocation were, both 
jointly and severally, too strong to be re¬ 
pressed, and too numerous to be confined. 

Open controversy was, therefore, the only 
resort, and out of this controversy grew the 
invention of “ Articles of Religion.” Gen¬ 
erally, though not always, especially at first, 
Articles of Religion were distinguished 
from the Articles of the Faith. The latter 
were contained in the Creed. The former, 
while claimed to be accordant with and 
based upon the Creed, treated largely the 
contemporary questions in dispute. 

A body of Articles of Religion was pre¬ 
sented by Luther, Melancthon, and their 
associates to the Germanic Diet at Augs¬ 
burg, June 23, 1530 a.d., and is called “ the 
Augsburg Confession.” On October 3, 1529 
a.d. , a body of seventeen articles, known 
as the “ Schwabach Articles,” had been 
presented to a joint meeting of the follow¬ 
ers of Luther and of Zwingle at Marburg, 
but were not accepted by the latter. Indeed, 
this conference seems to have settled the 
fact that Luther and Zwingle could not 
agree. The latter insisted that every point 
should be settled solely upon the express 
words of Holy Scripture, while the former 
claimed that the Church had at least some 
weight of authority as interpreter of Holy 
Scripture. Luther, therefore, wished to re¬ 
tain all existing doctrines and practices 
which were not against the express words 
of Holy Scripture. On this point they sep¬ 
arated, and the German Reformers proceeded 
alone. 

The first part of “ The Augsburg Confes¬ 
sion” consisted of XXII. Articles; the last 


of which “concludes ... by declaring that 
there is nothing in the doctrine of the Luth¬ 
eran body which differs either from the 
Scriptures or the ancient Church.” (Hard- 
wicke.) 

The English Church 1534 a.d., by distinct 
convocational enactment, rejected the su¬ 
premacy of the Pope. This was the first de¬ 
cisive act which involved the English Church 
in the flood of the Reformation. Naturally 
the Continental Reformers were conferred 
with ;' and a strong effort was made, in which 
both Henry VIII. and Cranmer joined, to in¬ 
duce Lutherans, and especially Melancthon, 
to meet and confer with the English Convo¬ 
cation. 1536 a.d. a series of English “Arti¬ 
cles of Religion” were drawn up, but not 
actually authorized and set forth. The 
hands of both Gardiner and Cranmer appear 
in them, with not a little of the dash of 
Henry VIII. Meanwhile, the Smalcaldic 
League had organized in Germany a politi¬ 
cal as well as religious resistance to papal 
usurpations; and efforts were made to at¬ 
tach Henry VIII. to it. He and his Bishops 
were not, however, willing to adopt the 
Augsburg Confession. Embassies were in¬ 
terchanged, and conferences followed ; until 
some time in the summer of 1538 a.d. a body 
of XIII. Articles were agreed upon. They 
were (1) of the Unity of God and Trinity of 
persons, (2) of Original Sin, (3) of the two 
natures of Christ, (4) of Justification, (5) 
of the Church, (6) of Baptism, (7) of the 
Eucharist, (8) of Penitence, (9) of use of 
Sacraments, (10) of Ministers of the Church, 
(11) of Ecclesiastical Rites, (12) of Things 
Civil, (13) of Resurrection of the Body and 
Last Judgment. 

These Articles, though showing the in¬ 
fluence of the Augsburg Confession, were 
full also of signs of those views which dis¬ 
tinguished the English Reformation from 
that on the Continent. 

The death of Henry VIII., 1547 a.d., 
placed the crown upon the head of the boy 
Edward VI. The Duke of Somerset—the 
Protector of King and realm—was a corre¬ 
spondent of Calvin. Both King and Protec¬ 
tor were in close intimacy with Cranmer, 
who is regarded as the chief compiler and 
constructor of the XLII. Articles. These, 
though “ agreed by the Bishops and other 
learned men in the Synod of London, 1552 
a.d.,” were set forth June 19, 1553 a.d., by 
“ a mandate in the name of the King directed 
to the officials of the Archbishop of Canter¬ 
bury, requiring them to see that the New 
Formulary should be subscribed;” i.e., by 
all the clergy, school-masters, and members 
of the university on admission to degrees. 
This was not, however, carried generally 
into effect. 

The reign of Mary Tudor restored papal 
authority, and though nothing official was 
done with the XLII. Articles, they remained 
so in abeyance, that on the ascension to the 
throne of Elizabeth—November 17, 1558 
a.d. ,—they were not held to be of authority. 











ARTICLES, THE XXXIX. 


75 


ARTICLES, THE XXXIX. 

7 • 


Indeed (1559 a.d.), “ Archbishop Parker, 
with the sanction of the other Metropolitan 
and the rest of the English prelates,” set 
forth XI. Articles of Religion; “ and the 
clergy were required to make a public pro¬ 
fession of itand it was “ appointed to be 
taught and holden of all parsons, vicars, and 
curates, as ‘ well in testification of their com¬ 
mon consent in the said doctrine, to the stop¬ 
ping of the mouths of them that go about to 
slander the ministers of the Church for di¬ 
versity of judgment, as necessary for the in¬ 
struction of their people.’ ” (Hardwicke.) 

The XLII. Articles were, however, taken 
up and discussed by both houses of Convoca¬ 
tion 1562 a.d. They were a remodeling 
of those set forth ten years before under Ed¬ 
ward VI. Four were stricken out and sev¬ 
eral altered, but subscription to them was 
not at first required, although they were used 
sometimes as tests of orthodoxy. Now and 
then “ men suspected of heterodoxy were 
called upon to subscribe as equivalent to re¬ 
cantation.” The XXXIX. Articles were set 
forth by authority of Queen, Convocation, 
and Parliament 1571 a.d., and subscription 
to them was required by a Canon of the Con¬ 
vocation, assembled at that period, and by a 
contemporary enactment of the civil legisla¬ 
ture.” (Hardwicke.) 

After the death of Luther, 1546 a.d., Cal¬ 
vin, who was then about thirty-seven years 
old, began to be felt as a power among the 
Continental Reformers. Geneva, in Swit¬ 
zerland, was his home, but his writings 
spread abroad. He was particularly noted 
for advocating, what is freely talked about 
though never clearly defined, viz., the 
“ right of private judgment.” This, at least, 
indicates the full evolution of one of the 
germinal forces of the Reformation, viz., the 
dignified position under God and before man 
of the free person. With a not unusual in¬ 
consistency Calvin added to this the theology 
of Predestination. These two incompatible 
propositions—human freedom and absolute 
decrees—worked strangely together, and ex¬ 
erted, indeed, still exert, a vast influence 
upon the Reformation and its development. 
English divines, and especially Whitgift, 
were captivated by Calvinism, and endeav¬ 
ored to get a series of Calvinistic articles es¬ 
tablished by authority. They put forth the 
Lambeth Articles, nine in number, which 
were “approved by John (Whitgift), Arch¬ 
bishop of Canterbury, Richard, Bishop of 
London, and other theologians, at Lambeth, 
November 20, 1595 a.d.” The first reads : 
“ God from eternity has predestinated some 
to life, and reprobated others to death.” The 
fourth: “ They who are not predestined to 
salvation, necessarily on account of their 
own sins, are damned.” The ninth: “ It is 
not put in the will or power of every man 
to be saved.” 

XIX. Articles of Religion, containing one 
hundred and five paragraphs, “ were agreed 
upon by the Archbishops and Bishops and 
the rest of the Cleargie of Ireland in the 


Convocation holden at Dublin 1615 a.d., 
for the avoiding of diversities of opinion, 
and the establishing of consent touching 
true Religion.” They were not Calvinistic, 
but were strongly anti-Romish ; and closed 
with a severe denunciation and decree of 
silence and deprival of office against who¬ 
ever, “after due admonition, doe not con- 
forme himselfe and cease to disturbe the 
peace of the Church.” 

Calvinism was rampant in England un¬ 
der Elizabeth. Presbyterianism became, 
both in Church and State, an aggressive force 
soon to be exceeded by Puritanism. The 
later was equally Calvinistic with, and more 
violent than, the former. 

The Calvinists in France and Switzerland 
had drawn up several bodies of articles of 
religion, called Confessions. 

When James I., 1603 a.d., came to the 
English throne he disappointed the Presby¬ 
terians by siding with the Church of Eng¬ 
land. He dabbled in theology, and was 
well disposed towards a reconciliation, if 
possible , with Calvinism. He sent “ a pri¬ 
vate deputation of divines to the national 
Synod of Dort,” 1619 a.d., but without avail. 
This Synod drew up the final Calvinistic 
confession, and manifested the irrepressible 
antagonism of that doctrine to the Catholic 
faith, as set forth in the formulas of worship 
in the Church of England. The “XXXIX. 
Articles of Religion” still carried the firm 
rejection, by the Church of England, both 
of the dogmas of Calvin and the usurpa¬ 
tions of Rome. Neither were the peculiar 
tenets of Arminius, who held the opposite 
pole to Calvinism, sanctioned by the Ar¬ 
ticles. Though drawn in the prevalent 
theological language of the times, they were 
an earnest etfort to express the peculiarly 
catholic position of the Church of England. 
Necessarily, with dangers on every hand, 
they had to be more or less negative in 
spirit and form. In denying errors they 
may not have escaped, in every case, 
the inevitable tendency towards overstate¬ 
ment. 

The ferment in Western Europe stirred 
even the Roman Church to her depths. She 
was compelled to respond to the Reforma¬ 
tion. Pope Paul III. convened the Council 
of Trent, 1545 a.d. It continued through 
his reign and that of Julius III., and 
came to a close December* 3-4, 1563 a.d., 
under Pius IV. It made no concessions, 
but rather the contrary. It petrified many 
of the Roman corruptions, added new 
articles to the Faith, and confirmed that 
principle of “ Development” which has now 
at last culminated in setting forth, as “Ar¬ 
ticles of Faith,” the Immaculate Conception 
of the Blessed Virgin, and the Infallibility 
of the Pope. 

James I. died 1625 a.d., and was suc¬ 
ceeded by his son Charles I., who was 
beheaded January 30, 1648 a.d. The pre¬ 
ceding year the Assembly of Divines in 
AVestminster set forth the well-known 







ARTIQLES, THE XXXIX. 76 ARTICLES, THE XXXIX. 


“Westminster Confession,” which is the 
authorized exponent of Presbyterian doc¬ 
trine. The XXXIX. Articles, however, re¬ 
mained, and still continue with authority in 
the Church of England. 

The Church in America did not at first 
adopt the XXXIX. Articles. They were 
not referred to even in the Preface to the 
American Prayer-Book, last paragraph hut 
one, where it is stated “ that this Church is 
far from intending to depart from the 
Church of England in any essential point of 
doctrine, discipline, or worship.” This dec¬ 
laration had direct reference, as the context 
shows, only “to those alterations in the 
Liturgy which became necessary ... in 
consequence of the Revolution.” That it 
did not refer specifically to the XXXIX. 
Articles will appear in the proceedings of 
Convention, 1792 a.d., 1799 a.d., as referred 
to below. 

The first action taken in the American 
Church on Articles of Religion was in Gen¬ 
eral Convention, 1789 a.d., as follows : The 
House of Bishops, consisting of Seabury and 
White, “originated and sent to the House 
of Clerical and Lay Deputies ... a pro¬ 
posed ratification of the Thirty-nine Articles, 
with an exception in regard to the Thirty- 
sixth and Thirty-seventh Articles.” This 
was on the last day of the session. In the 
House of Deputies the “ proposed ratifica¬ 
tion” was, “ with the concurrence of the 
House of Bishops, referred to a future Con¬ 
vention.” 

At the General Convention of the Protest¬ 
ant Episcopal Church in the United States 
of North America, 1792 a.d., the matter was 
considered in the House of Deputies, but 
postponed “because the Churches in some 
of the States are not represented in this 
Convention and others only partially.” The 
General Convention held 1795 a.d. again 
postponed the matter. At the Special Gen¬ 
eral Convention, held in Philadelphia 1799 
a.d. , on Thursday, June 13, the Rev. Ash- 
bel Baldwin, from Connecticut, moved in 
the House of Deputies, that “the House 
resolve itself into a committee of the whole 
to take into consideration the propriety of 
framing articles of religion.” This was 
agreed to, and when the committee rose, 
“the chairman of the committee, Wm. 
Walter, D.D., of Massachusetts, reported 
the following resolution, viz. : 

“ Resolved , That the Articles of our faith 
and religion, as founded on the Holy 
Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, 
are sutficiently declared in our Creeds 
and Liturgy as set forth in the Book of 
Common Prayer established for the use of 
this Church, and that further articles do not 
appear necessary.” 

“ This resolution was disagreed to by the 
House.” 

On Saturday, June 15, “A resolution was 
proposed by Mr. Bisset,—Rev. John Bisset, of 
New York,—that the Convention now pro¬ 
ceed to the framing of articles of religion for 


this Church.” “ The question was taken by 
yeas and nays,” and “carried in the affirm¬ 
ative. Clergy: yea, Connecticut, Rhode 
Island, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, 
5; nay, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Vir¬ 
ginia, 3. Laity: yea, Connecticut, New 
Jersey, Pennsylvania, 3; nay, Virginia, 1.” 
The committee was “chosen,” and con¬ 
sisted of seven members, one from each State 
except Rhode Island. 

On Tuesday, June 18, “ The chairman of 
the Committee on the Articles reported sev¬ 
enteen articles of Religion, which were read. 
Whereupon, on motion of Mr. Bisset, 

“ Resolved , unanimously, That on account 
of the advanced period of the present session, 
and the thinness of the Convention, the con¬ 
sideration of the Articles now reported and 
read be postponed, and that the Secretary 
transcribe the Articles into the journal of 
this Convention, to lie over for the consider¬ 
ation of the next General Convention.” 

The XVII. Articles are printed in full in 
an appendix. 

The House of Bishops do not appear to 
have taken action upon the subject. Its 
members present were Bishops White, Pro- 
voost, and Bass. Bishop Provoost was 
absent first and last day. Bishop Bass was 
absent on the first day. Session continued 
from Tuesday, June 11, to Tuesday, June 
18, inclusive, except Sunday. 

The General Convention, 1801 a.d., was 
opened in St. Michael’s Church, Trenton, 
N. J., September 9, a sufficient quorum not 
appearing on the 8th, the day of call. The 
House of Bishops, consisting of Bishops 
White, Pennsylvania, Claggett, Maryland, 
and Jarvis, Connecticut, on Wednesday, 
September 9, “agreed on a form and manner 
of setting forth the Articles of Religion, and 
agreed that the same be sent to the House 
of Clerical and Lay Deputies for their con¬ 
currence.” 

It will thus be seen that the Bishops 
ignored, of course, the XVII. Articles, 
which had only passed in a committee of the 
lower house, and took the initiative in ac¬ 
tion. The Articles sent by them were the 
XXXIX. of the English Church, with such 
alterations as adapted them to the American 
Church. It will be observed that they call 
them “ The Articles of Religion.” 

Conference between the houses and sev¬ 
eral action resulted in setting forth the so- 
called XXXIX. Articles, as now printed in 
the Prayer-Book, entitled “ Articles of Re¬ 
ligion as established by the Bishops, the 
Clergy, and the Laity of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church in the United States of 
America, in Convention, on the 12th day of 
September, in the year of our Lord 1801.” 

In Article VIII. all reference to the Atha- 
nasian Creed is left out. Article XXI. is 
omitted “because it is partly of local and 
civil nature, and is provided for as to the 
remaining parts of it in other Articles.” 
Article XXXV. has a note modifying its 
recommendation of the Homilies. Article 





ASCENSION 


77 


ASCETICS 


XXXVI. “ Of Consecration of Bishops and 
Ministers,” is made to commend and defend 
“ The book of Consecration of Bishops, and 
ordering of Priests and Deacons, as set forth 
by the General Convention of this Church in 
1792.” “Article XXXVII. to be omitted, 
and the following substituted in its place: 

£ Of the power of the Civil Magistrate.’ ” 

Thus the American Church has thirty- 
eight Articles of Religion “set forth” by 
the General Convention 1801 a.d., and since 
acquiesced in. 

“ In the Church of England, the 36th 
Canon requires the candidate (for orders) 
after reference, first, to the royal supremacy ; 
second, to the Book of Common Prayer 
with the Ordinal; and, third, to the XXXIX. 
Articles, to signify his assent as follows : I, 
N. N., do willingly and ex animo subscribe 
to those three Articles above mentioned, and 
to all things that are contained in them.” 

In the American Church, Article VII. of 
the Constitution requires, “ Nor shall any 
person be ordained until he shall have sub¬ 
scribed the following declaration : “ I do be¬ 
lieve the Holy Scriptures of the Old and 
New Testaments to be the Word of God, 
and to contain all things necessary to salva¬ 
tion ; and I do solemnly engage to conform 
to the doctrines and worship of the Protest¬ 
ant Episcopal Church in the United States.” 

The authority of the “ XXXIX. Articles” 
extends specifically to the clergy, and is set 
forth in the above forms of subscription. 
The laity, as such, even in England, are not 
bound to their terms, though some laymen 
— e.g ., members of the universities—have to 
subscribe them. In America the laity are 
only bound by the Creeds. They profess be¬ 
lief in the Apostles’ Creed at baptism, and 
usually recite the Nicene Creed in the Lit¬ 
urgy proper, or, as it is designated in the 
Prayer-Book, “ The Order for the Adminis¬ 
tration of the Lord’s Supper, or Holy Com¬ 
munion.” Their profession of faith, in the 
Holy Catholic Church, subjects the Ameri¬ 
can laity to such Canons of Discipline as are 
or may be established by the American 
Church. 

Authorities : Bishop Burnet on XXXIX. 
Articles, Hardwicke’s History of the Arti¬ 
cles, Bishop H. Browne on the XXXIX. 
Articles, Bishop Tomlines’ Elements of The¬ 
ology, etc. Rev. B. Franklin, D.D. 

Ascension. The article of the Creed de¬ 
clares that our Lord ascended into heaven. 
A creed properly states only facts to be 
believed. A Christian creed states the 
facts of the Christian religion. Therefore 
a fact linking the Resurrection with His 
continuous mediatorial acts and His gift 
of the Holy Ghost could not be omitted. 
But this fact, so briefly stated in the Creed, 
must also be vouched for in the inspired 
record. Therefore we have recorded by 
St. John that Christ foretold his Ascen¬ 
sion (ch. xvi. 5; xx. 17), that He did ascend 
openly before His Apostles, by St. Mark 
(ch. xvi. 19), by St. Luke (ch. xxiv. 51; 


Acts i. 9-11). He was seen at His place in 
heaven by St. Stephen. His ascension was 
taught and inferences drawn from it by St. 
Paul (Eph. iv. 8-16; Col. ii. 15; 1 Tim. iii. 
16), by St. Peter, who was also an eye-wit¬ 
ness (1 Pet. iii. 22). Therefore it was in His 
very and true Body and Soul, now immor¬ 
tally conjoined to His Divinity, by which 
He hath entered into the Holiest. The As¬ 
cension was necessary for us, since He could 
not otherwise send to His Apostles, and 
therefore to His Church, and consequently 
to us, the gift of the Holy Ghost, nor those 
gifts which he received for men that the 
Lord God might dwell among us. It was 
necessary that He might take up His media¬ 
torial work. It was necessary that our af¬ 
fections might ascend to Him (Col. iii. 1-4). 
These main facts are thus grandly summed 
up by Bishop Pearson : “Upon these consid¬ 
erations we may easily conclude what everj r 
Christian is obliged to confess in these words 
of our Creed, He ascended into heaven; for 
thereby he is understood to express thus 
much. I am fully persuaded that the only 
begotten and eternal Son of God, after He 
rose from the dead, did, with the same soul 
and body with which He rose, by a true arid 
local translation, convey Himself from the 
earth on which He lived, through all the 
regions of the air, through all the celestial 
orbs, until He came unto the heaven of 
heavens, the most glorious Presence of the 
majesty of God ; and thus I believe in Jesus 
Christ who ascended into heaven.” 
(Pearson on the Creed.) 

Ascetics. (Vide Hermits.) The name 
ascetic is derived from the Greek word “ as- 
ketikos,” which means “exercised.” As¬ 
ceticism has been said to be a temperament, 
rather than a law of Christian life. The 
idea of the ancient ascetics was that soli¬ 
tude, extreme fasting, and self-denial, and 
hardening of the body and keeping it under, 
and bringing it into subjection (1 Cor. ix. 
27), brought the spirit into better condition 
for constant contemplation of Divine things. 

This style of life is first met with in the 
heathen world, and doubtless many good 
men among them have thus sought God ac¬ 
cording to their light. The East Indians, 
the Mohammedans, and the ancient Egyp¬ 
tian priests all practiced asceticism. The 
Therapeutse (Worshipers) of Egypt, who en¬ 
deavored to mingle the teachings of Moses 
and Plato, belonged to this school. 

Among the Jews the Essen es were noted 
ascetics, and in the days of St. John the 
Baptist they were leading in their mountain 
valleys a life similar to his. Those who 
strive to trace the history of such communi¬ 
ties see a forerunner of them in the prophet 
Elijah. Daniel the prophet, in his mourn¬ 
ing, ate no pleasant bread (Dan. x. 3). In 
the Apocrypha, when Esdras prepares him¬ 
self for his visions, he goes, according to 
commandment, into the field Ardath, “ and 
did eat of the herbs of the field, and,” he 
adds, “ the meat of the same satisfied me” 





ASCETICS 


78 


ASSURANCE OF FAITH 


(2 Esdras ix. 26). Anna, the prophetess, 
“ served God with fastings and prayers night 
and day” (St. Luke ii. 36, 37). 

The ascetic is older than the monk, and 
the term is a more general one. In the be¬ 
ginning he lived alone, or he could live in 
the busy city, distinguished by his zeal; the 
communities were an after-thought. 

Egypt, “ the mother of wonders,”’ was 
the natural home of asceticism. The East¬ 
ern mind is naturally given to reflection. A 
warm climate allows men to live much in 
the open air, and the magnificent clear star¬ 
light nights of the East “declare the glory 
of God” to the silent watcher. About the 
close of the fourth century the mountains 
and deserts of Egypt were full of Christian 
brethren, whose self-denying lives astonished 
the world. The dwellers in the Roman em¬ 
pire, which was then rotting in vice, were 
allured to these seats of piety, and St. Je¬ 
rome and others visited them. Noble Roman 
women gave up their property, and, tired 
of the effeminate, faithless life of the capi¬ 
tal, sought the Egyptian desert. The ques¬ 
tion which met all was whether pleasure or 
virtue was the aim of life. From the Thebaid 
asceticism has spread over the world, and for 
centuries it was a mighty power among men. 

The Essene by his mountain spring with 
his incessant washings was a type of all who 
have followed him. The Carthusians, with 
their rule to eat no flesh and keep perpetual 
silence and never go abroad, and the monks 
of La Trappe, who were to observe silence 
and dig their own graves, are lineal descend¬ 
ants of the ascetic Jew and the Egyptian 
Christian. The dark forests of Mount Athos 
contain the monasteries which gave Bishops 
to the Eastern Church, and thus its doctrine 
and worship were determined by men who 
knew not the education of public life. 

Hallam, in the “ Middle Ages,” draws at¬ 
tention to the fact that the fasting and 
watching and hard lot of monks and her¬ 
mits must lead men to conclude that they 
are living in hope of a better world in the 
future. The reality of heaven was a con¬ 
stant impulse in their life. “ Jerusalem the 
Golden” is the composition of a monk. The 
worthlessness and uncertainty of earthly 
things led their minds above. * The fasting, 
continued often for days, subdued the body 
to the spirit. If heaven was a reality, hell 
was also one. No wonder that the worn-out 
watcher heard the cries of devils in the 
night-birds’ notes or in the yells of wild 
beasts among ruins. The sinfulness of sin 
on the one hand and the nearness of God on 
the other were constantly before the mind 
of the ascetic as he watched under the sky 
or tilled his little field. 

A weariness of life, and a preparation for 
death, were the great stimulants to those 
who led so solitary and denying a life. Con¬ 
templation and p'rayer were the business of 
life. The Holy Scriptures were the guide, 
and those early ascetics who could not read 
committed them to memory. 


In a busy age, when men must be in the 
world, and yet not of the world, it is well 
sometimes to look upon the lives of men who 
gave up all for Christ, and who, with all 
their imperfections, were the salt of the earth 
in a godless age. 

Authorities: Bingham’s Antiquities, Hase, 
Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, Farrar’s 
Life of Christ, Geikie’s Life of Christ, and 
Kingsley’s Hermits. Kingsley refers to 
Gibbon, Montalembert’s “ Moines d’Occi- 
dent,” Dean Milman’s “ History of Chris¬ 
tianity” and “ Latin Christianity,” and 
Ozanam’s “ Etudes Germaniques,” and 
especially to Rosmeyde’s “ Lives of the 
Hermit Fathers.” 

Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Assurance of Faith. The word assu¬ 
rance, in the first verse of St. Luke’s Gospel 
and in St. Paul’s Epistles, is a metaphor 
taken from the onward sweep of a ship be¬ 
fore a favoring breeze. St. Luke means to 
say that outward historical facts have given 
us a full persuasion of the truth of what 
spiritual facts we teach in the Gospel. St. 
Paul means the same thing when writing to 
his converts (1 Thess. i. 5; Heb. vi. 11 ; x. 
22; and Rom. iv. 21 ; xiv. 5). It is the con¬ 
viction that comes from those proofs (as the 
gifts of sacramental life by the Holy Ghost, 
cf. the texts cited), which He chooses to put 
before us as sufficient, and our action upon 
that conviction. It cannot refer to the in¬ 
ward conviction from emotion or excitement. 
The word assurance is used in connection 
either with historic proofs or with the power 
of the Holy Ghost, shown by miracles or 
in connection with the sacraments, or with 
Abraham’s faith (Rom. iv. 21), who had 
already outward demonstration of God’s 
power. Therefore Hooker was right when 
he taught that the proofs of faith were not 
so strong as the assurance of the senses, from 
the certainty of evidence depending upon the 
proofs adduced ; but there arises from this a 
certainty of adherence, which, itself, causes 
the heart to “ cleave and stick to that which 
it doth believe. The reason is this: the 
faith of a Christian doth apprehend the 
words of the law, the promises of God not 
only as true but as good ; and therefore even 
then when the evidence which he hath of 
the truth is so small that it grieveth him to 
feel his weakness in assenting thereto, yet is 
there in him such a sure adherence unto that 
which he doth but faintly and fearfully be¬ 
lieve, that his spirit having once truly tasted 
the heavenly sweetness thereof, all the world 
is not able quite and clean to remove him 
from it, but he striveth with himself to hope 
against all reason of believing, being settled 
with holy Job upon this immovable resolu¬ 
tion, ‘ Though God kill me I will not give 
over trusting in Him.’ For why? this les¬ 
son remaineth forever imprinted in him, 
1 It is good for me to cleave unto God.’ ” 
(Hooker, Serm. i., p. 585, Keble’s ed.) This, 
however, is very different from the pre¬ 
sumptuous assurance of pardon sometimes 







ATH AN ASIAN CREED 


79 


ATHEISM 


taught by sectaries, but which has no war¬ 
rant of Holy Scripture. Even St. Paul felt 
the need of constant active work for his 
Christian life (c/. 1 Cor. ix. 27, with 2 Tim. 
iv. 8). 

Athanasian Creed. Vide Creeds and 
Quicumque Vult. 

Atheism, from a and Qtog, is the denial of 
the existence of a personal God. It thus 
includes pantheism, which teaches that 
everything is God. Atheism must be care¬ 
fully distinguished from skepticism, which 
simply doubts, and from infidelity, which 
is the rejection of an organized faith or form 
of religion. Nor does it include the god¬ 
lessness of savage tribes, if there be such, 
whose intellectual development is too low to 
form a conception of God. Avowed and 
consistent atheism is exceedingly rare, and 
is always individual, no sect or system hav¬ 
ing ever been willing to establish itself upon 
this basis. Even the positivism of Comte 
stops short of avowed atheism, content with 
holding the futility of all speculation be¬ 
yond the data of positive experience. The 
charge of atheism has always been most 
abhorrent to those, even, who might be 
practical atheists. Among the Greeks and 
Romans it was punished with death, those 
convicted of it being regarded by the law 
as hostes humani generis ,—enemies to the 
human race. A little thought will reveal 
the grounds of this universal repugnance. 
First, it is the deliberate rejection of the 
suggestions of consciousness, no argument 
being ever required to establish a belief in 
God, while atheism is always the result of 
some process of thought. Then the mind 
naturally recoils from what is contrary to 
reason, and atheism is so because it necessi¬ 
tates the recognition of effect without cause, 
of design without a designer, of law with¬ 
out a lawgiver, and of life without a source. 
A slight elaboration of the last two points 
may be sufficient for illustration. One of 
the first results of observation and experi¬ 
ence is the necessary recognition of laws by 
which natural processes are governed, and 
which man can neither understand nor con¬ 
trol. The recurrence of the seasons, the 
germination of seed, the reproduction of 
plants and animals each after its kind, with 
many more instances which will readily 
occur, are seen to be regular, systematic, 
and permanent. Man finds them neces¬ 
sary to his life, while he can neither alter 
nor restrain them, but he may rely upon 
them, and does rely upon them, with the 
absolute certainty of not being disap¬ 
pointed. Reason tells him that there 
must be a Mind greater than his to conceive 
laws which he cannot comprehend, and a 
Power greater than his to enforce them. 
This Mind and this Power he always finds 
greater than the grasp of his mind and 
power, and this supreme intelligent force is 
God. Again, man recognizes the fact -and 
the phenomena of life, but finds no ori¬ 
gin for them within his ’experience. But 


reason demands an origin, which must 
necessarily be beyond his experience. He 
finds, too, in close connection with life the 
phenomenon of death, and soon discovers 
that it is abnormal. There ought to be no 
death ; by the very nature of life the ma¬ 
chines which it quickens should be perma¬ 
nent. But they are not so, and that sys¬ 
tematically. Reason demands for this a 
controlling Will which restrains, as it orig¬ 
inates, the phenomena of life. That origi¬ 
nating and controlling will is God. Thus 
the rejecting of the existence of God is con¬ 
trary to reason, and, therefore, abhorrent to 
human intellect. We sometimes meet the 
phrase “ scientific atheism,” but there can 
be no such thing as scientific atheism, be¬ 
cause nothing could be more unscientific 
than to deny the existence of that which is 
undemonstrable. But the existence of a 
personal God is undemonstrable by science 
because science deals necessarily with finite 
data and causes ; but finite causes must lead 
to finite results, and God is of necessity 
infinite. Hence science can neither prove 
nor disprove the existence of God, because 
it must work with data which cannot lead 
beyond human experience, while God is 
beyond human experience. But to assume 
that which we cannot know is contrary to 
science, and therefore there can be no sci¬ 
entific atheism. Finally, atheism is repug¬ 
nant to reason because it is illogical, logic 
being the perfection of the processes of reason. 
For logic is essentially the necessary sequence 
of cause and effect, and therefore to deny to 
any effect an antecedent cause is illogical. 
But the human mind must necessarily con¬ 
fine its processes to sequences, beginning 
within its own experience, and the ultimate 
attainment of human experience is always 
manifestly an effect. But atheism denies 
any antecedent cause beyond the possible 
attainment of human experience, and there¬ 
fore atheism is illogical, and consequently 
repugnant to reason. Thus we may read¬ 
ily account for the abhorrence always man¬ 
ifested by individuals to the charge of 
atheism. But it is equally repugnant to 
morality, and consequently to the welfare 
of society, because it destroys the strongest 
and highest incentive to the control and 
restraint of those natural appetites and pas¬ 
sions which in their unbridled indulgence 
are hostile to the interests of society. The 
first element of social order and welfare is 
the restriction of individual liberty for the 
common good, and the restraint within per¬ 
mitted limits of those dispositions and de¬ 
sires which are common to all animal na¬ 
ture. But the fear of human punishment 
and the desire of the good of others have 
never been found sufficient to accomplish 
these ends, unless aided and supported by 
a sense of responsibility and accountability 
unto a higher Power, whose vigilance can¬ 
not be escaped and whose authority can¬ 
not be defied, or whose love and kindness 
excites to reverence and obedience. But 





ATONEMENT 


80 


ATONEMENT 


atheism destroys alike this fear and this 
reverence, and by removing all sense of 
danger beyond this life, or of compen¬ 
sating reward hereafter, directly fosters the 
commission of acts contrary to the com¬ 
mon welfare. Hence society has ever re¬ 
garded atheism as hostile to its best interests 
and subversive of its fundamental princi¬ 
ples, and has punished it as a crime or made 
it a bar to social privileges and respect. 
The refusal to accept the oath of an atheist 
in a court of justice is a brand of disgrace, 
and the assertion of a distrust by his fellow- 
citizens, from which every man must shrink 
with horror. It is a powerful proof of the 
healthy tone of public sentiment upon this 
vital matter, that there is probably not a 
single society in the country organized for 
mutual benefits of any kind into which an 
avowed atheist could obtain admission. 

Among those who have been classed as 
atheists are the Peripatetic and Epicurean 
philosophers of ancient times, and Hobbes, 
Hume, Kant, Spinoza, Blount, Yanini, and 
others in the modern period. We must 
remember, however, how inaccurate was 
the language and how intolerant the views 
of theological writers only a few years ago. 
Few, if any, of those named can be properly 
called atheists under the exact terminology 
and discriminating classifications of more 
recent philosophy, though most of them, 
wandering in the misty regions of meta¬ 
physical speculation, have trodden danger¬ 
ously near to the fatal verge, and there are 
few minds strong enough to follow their 
teachings with safety. 

, Rev. Robert Wilson, D.D. 

Atonement. This word, as applied to the 
great work of Christ, has been used in two 
senses, differing according to the view taken 
of the Person of Christ and of His relation 
to the process of man’s salvation. Those 
who deny the divinity of our Lord Jesus 
Christ commonly regard the Atonement as 
a mere restoration of friendly feeling be¬ 
tween two alienated parties. It is, to use 
their own favorite etymology, an “ at-one- 
ment ,”—a reconciliation of the Creator and 
creature to each other. From this point of 
view, inasmuch as the Creator cannot be 
supposed to have contributed to the aliena¬ 
tion,—and is not supposed to have raised any 
barrier to the restoration of the original 
amicable relations between Himself and His 
creature,—inasmuch, therefore, as both the 
original departure and the continued separa¬ 
tion are exclusively on the part of the crea¬ 
ture, the Atonement is regarded as a process 
not for reconciling the Creator to the crea¬ 
ture, or the law to the offender, but only for 
reconciling the creature to the Creator. 
According to this view the work of Christ 
is reduced to the exercise of a mere persua- 
sory influence upon the creature. First, 
persuading him to desire reconciliation, and 
then persuading him to take the steps of 
moral and spiritual reform necessary for the 
restoration of harmony. But in all this 


there is nothing of the nature of expiation 
or of satisfaction rendered for the offense. 

But the Holy Catholic Church, while in¬ 
cluding this persuasory process in her idea 
of the Atonement, and understanding the 
language of St. Paul (2 Cor. v. 20) as ex¬ 
pressing it, has, from the first, included 
much more. She holds that the fitness of 
things, their accurate adjustment, the eter¬ 
nal principles of justice and truth, and the 
permanent well-being of the universe de¬ 
mand that where law has been broken some 
adequate satisfaction for the offense shall be 
rendered, especially where a penalty has 
been attached beforehand to the infraction 
and made known to those under its au¬ 
thority. 

1st. It is contrary to justice, to the essential 
fitness of things, and to the dignity of all 
law that the infraction of any law should 
have no evil consequences for the infringer ; 
that the results of disobedience should be to 
him the same as those of obedience. Law 
is something more than a mere indication or 
suggestion of action. It is an obligatory 
rule of action, imposing respect for itself 
upon all; not only binding the person gov¬ 
erned* but existing as an authority in the 
universe, the maintenance of which becomes 
of universal obligation and interest. To be 
law in this sense it must be an enforced rule 
of action. 

2d. The controlling power of law,—its 
value as an effective regulator of action is sac¬ 
rificed when disobedience goes unpunished. 
Wherefore, when law is violated, its regu¬ 
lating efficiency, which is impaired by the 
violation, must be restored by some expia¬ 
tory penalty. It is for the benefit of all for 
whom law is made, the law-breaker himself 
included, that the law shall not be rendered 
ineffective and contemptible by permitting 
its infraction with impunity. 

This becomes more evident when the na¬ 
ture of Sin is considered : 1st. “ Sin is trans¬ 
gression of Law.” 2d. Sin is always the re¬ 
sponsible act of a free agent. No being is 
responsible for what he cannot help. There¬ 
fore sinfulness is our common inherited na¬ 
ture. But Sin itself involves freedom of ac¬ 
tion,—action performed not by compulsion— 
however induced through the persuasive in¬ 
fluence of motives ,—but not the less free be¬ 
cause the result of such persuasion. Hence the 
rationale and the importance of offsetting all 
temptation to law-breaking by correspond¬ 
ing penalty. This is an absolutely rational 
arrangement, and one of universal applica¬ 
tion,—in all worlds and forms of responsible 
existence,—one adapted to the nature of free 
agents, who, because they are free, must 
therefore be able to break the law, and who 
are therefore to be hindered from doing so 
not by compulsion, but by the persuasory 
power of motives. These motives may be of 
different sorts. They may be found in the 
love of the right, or in the love of the law¬ 
maker. But these motives may be legiti¬ 
mately and effectively supported by another, 




ATONEMENT 


81 


ATONEMENT 


viz., the apprehension of the evil consequences 
of breaking the law. The attachment of a 
penalty to law-breaking is therefore more 
than a measure of justice. It is a positive 
measure of mercy, since it supplies an addi¬ 
tional protection of the universe against the 
disturbing influences of temptation and sin 
by protecting the free agent against himself. 
It is, therefore, also as much a measure of 
mercy for the law-breaker as for the law- 
keeper. 

But in order that a penalty may have any 
useful effect its enforcement must be assured. 
This is—equally as the other, and for the 
same reasons—a measure of true mercy as 
well as of justice,—and for all —for the law¬ 
breaker as well as for the law-keeper. And 
all that might be said of the protective 
power of an enforced penalty in the case of 
a first offense would apply to all subsequent 
offenses. The rationale is the same. 

But where a particular penalty has been 
beforehand attached to the breach of a law 
the veracity of the law-maker is also involved 
in its enforcement. It is of course conceiv¬ 
able that the terms of the penalty may be 
that the law-breaker shall only be liable to 
certain consequences. But whatever the 
actual terms of the penalty, the veracity of 
the law-maker requires that those terms be 
enforced. A positive threat is only a promise 
in another form. And it is a promise not 
only to the possible law-breaker, made with 
the merciful intent to deter him from the 
crime, but it is a promise to the rest of the 
universe also, whose peace is more or less 
endangered by any infraction of law. The 
actual enforcement of the penalty becomes, 
therefore, an obligation of justice , of mercy , 
and of veracity. 

When man was placed in probation he 
was told that if he sinned he should die. 
It was a promise on the part of the Divine 
Law-maker, and, as made by Divine wisdom, 
one which must be held to have been in just 
proportion to the offense. Having been 
made, its fulfillment was required by the 
principles of absolute justice ,—by the inter¬ 
ests of the universe, those of the law-break¬ 
ing race included, and by the veracity of the 
Creator. 

It was necessary, therefore, from all these 
points of view, that man’s offense should be 
punished by the actual infliction, in some 
way, of the promised penalty. And it must 
be observed that the penalty promised was a 
positive and punitive one. There was some¬ 
thing more than a mere separation from 
God as a simple effect or resulting fact ,—a 
fact which could be neutralized or extin¬ 
guished by another simple fact, viz., by a 
mere bringing together again of the sepa¬ 
rated parties,—an at-one-ment. The penalty 
was not only consequential, but was also 
positively primitive, and was therefore some¬ 
thing more than the offender could himself 
remove by simply returning. The offender 
could not reinstate himself. He must needs 
be reinstated. But inasmuch as it was due 
6 


to absolute justice, as well as to the in¬ 
terests of the universe, that no reinstatement 
should take effect which should leave the 
sin unpunished or the broken influence 
of the law unrepaired or uncompensated, 
some adequate compensation, or satisfaction, 
or expiation was necessary, that the law¬ 
breaking might be properly offset or bal¬ 
anced, and the shattered influence of the 
law itself repaired. Could the human law¬ 
breaker make this expiation for himself 
either by subsequent obedience or by suffer¬ 
ing? He could not do this by subsequent 
obedience , inasmuch as there was still due 
from him to his Creator, a perpetually per¬ 
fect service. All that he could do, therefore, 
at the best, would be not to break the law 
again. There could be no room or possibil¬ 
ity for a superabundant or superfluous ser¬ 
vice or obedience. But not to offend again 
would offer no satisfaction for the breach 
already committed; nothing but suffering in 
such case could answer the purpose of expi¬ 
ation ; and had the offender risen from his 
first fault to a continuously perfect obedi¬ 
ence thereafter, it is conceivable that by his 
sufferings justice could have been satisfied 
and the law vindicated, and its influence 
sustained. But, unfortunately for him, his 
sin not only subjected him to punishment, 
but brought in a depravation of his nature. 
So that from the first he has gone on in¬ 
creasing in place of diminishing the fatal 
record against himself. Manifestly, there¬ 
fore, he, being a continuous offender, could 
make no expiation for himself, either by 
obedience or by suffering. 

At the same time it was not consistent 
with justice that the penalty should be 
borne by one absolutely unconnected with 
the offense. Besides which, the penalty hav¬ 
ing been denounced specifically upon the 
offender himself, the veracity of the Law¬ 
maker was pledged for its infliction upon 
him. How, then, could expiation be made, 
or the reinstatement of the offender accom¬ 
plished, if neither one himself an offender, 
nor one unconnected with the offense, could 
make it? 

Just here an important fact must be 
noticed. Adam represented the race of man, 
and his act was a representative act. His 
offense was a race-offense , and so the penalty 
was a race-penalty. That this is so is evi¬ 
dent from two facts, not to speak of others : 

1st. The whole race, as a race, have inher¬ 
ited the taint of Adam’s sin. The case is 
not one of a multitude of individual sinners, 
but one of a race or stock of sinners, in 
whom the sinfulness in the stock is congeni¬ 
tal. There is absolutely never an exception. 

2d. The penalty of mortality is equally uni¬ 
versal and congenital. There is no exception 
in respect to it. It is, therefore, a race-pun- 
isliment. 

But here again another fact must be borne 
in mind, viz., that the human family is, 
after all, in a very real sense, only one con¬ 
tinuous person. As the branches of a tree 





ATONEMENT 


82 


ATONEMENT 


are a part of the one tree, and as, no matter 
how long the life of the tree, its continuity is 
preserved, so that it is, after all, hut one and 
the same tree, and its latest branches are 
only a continuation of the wood which was 
in it as a sapling a hundred years before, 
so with the human stock. It has not been 
a series of successive creations; it has 
been but one continuous, uninterrupted in¬ 
dividual, at least so far as body and brain 
are concerned, and so far as we may hold 
that mental and moral qualities are inher¬ 
ited, we may include the mind with the 
body in this statement (the will is perhaps 
the only separable part of the man). The 
child begins by being a living part of its 
parents before it sets out on its own inde¬ 
pendent career of. will. There has never 
been a break or an interval in this human 
continuity, and so, in point of fact, there 
has been literally but one ever-developing, 
continuous human being. Its many branches, 
however separated after a time from the 
parent stem, are in their start as identical 
with the original stock as are the branches 
of a tree with its trunk. 

This great, continuous, self-involving hu¬ 
man being, now as many years old as have 
elapsed since the creation, sinned as a 
whole , was sentenced as a whole , and as a, 
whole now lies under the penalty of the law. 
In this fact we find the beginning of the 
solution of our difficulty. To complete it 
another fact is necessary. 

The Most High God, the Son, by causing 
Himself to be born of the Virgin Mary, 
entered into the human race and became a 
part of the same. Having thus become 
part of the human stock, He could, in His 
human nature, rightfully represent that 
stock in any transaction with Divine Jus¬ 
tice. Punishment inflicted upon Him in 
His human nature would be punishment 
inflicted upon the human race. And as the 
pain inflicted upon any part of a human 
body is inflicted upon that body as a whole, 
so the penalty inflicted upon an individual 
of a race is inflicted upon the race. Thus, 
one person might become proxy for his race 
to the avenging law. 

Yet a continuously sinful member of the 
race could not thus stand as proxy, seeing 
that he would have his own offenses to 
answer for. But one who had incurred no 
individual penalty might thus, by suffering, 
atone— according to his measure —for the of¬ 
fense of his race, so that in him his race 
might be punished. 

But could any one person adequately atone 
for a whole race ? Could the majesty of 
the law be thus sufficiently vindicated, the 
necessities of justice be maintained, the ve¬ 
racity of the law-maker be preserved, and 
the interests of the universe be sufficiently 
guarded ? 

When in human warfare a body of men 
having become liable to punishment certain 
of their number are selected as representa¬ 
tives of the rest, the punishment of a leader 


is accounted the equivalent of that of many 
private individuals. Natural reason accepts 
this as a principle. But God, the Son, by 
taking humanity did not put off His own 
Divinity. And so in standing proxy to 
justice for the human race, His value as an 
example or substitute for others was in¬ 
finitely multiplied. By how much a Divine 
victim was of more value than a human 
one by so much the more did His suffer¬ 
ing exceed in value that of any merely 
human victim in supplying a suitable satis¬ 
faction to the broken law and in restoring 
the power of the law as a preventive of 
future disobedience. Being a part of the 
human stock, the sentence of the law against 
that stock was literally executed in Him, 
and the veracity of the Law-giver was 
maintained. Being Divine, as well as 
human, i.e ., a Divine man, He could ade¬ 
quately represent any number of individuals 
in that race. Thus was solved the riddle. 
Eternal justice, the true honor and dignity 
of law, its availability as a barrier against 
sin, and the truth of God were made con¬ 
sistent with man’s salvation. 

Atonement, then, in the sense in which it 
is applied by the Holy Catholic Church to 
the work of Christ, is the expiation offered 
in the Person of the Divine man whereby 
He put Himself in the place of the rest of 
the condemned human race and suffered in 
its stead. As man, He paid the penalty ad¬ 
judged against man ; as God, He gave 
value to the substitution of Himself for the 
whole race. 

Thus the Atonement, while including the 
idea of reconciliation or “ at-one-ment ,” and 
indeed involving all the subsequent pro¬ 
cesses of reconciliation whereby the offender 
is brought to a better mind and into har¬ 
mony again with the Divine will, yet con¬ 
tains also the principle of a satisfaction ren¬ 
dered for the breach of the law ; and so a 
ransom paid for the deliverance of the 
offender. 

In this sense the ancient sacrifices were 
measures of atonement. They were satis¬ 
factions or ransoms rendered, and being ante- 
types of the Atonement of Christ, imper¬ 
fect themselves, they were said to effect an 
atonement through Him for those who of¬ 
fered them. Thus (to select one out of 
many passages) in Lev. iv. 35, it is said 
with respect to any one of the people who 
should sin and bring a sacrifice, “ The priest 
shall make an atonement for his sin that he 
hath committed, and it shall be forgiven 
him.” And so of the sacrifice of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, it is said (Rom. v. 11), “ By 
Him we have received the atonement.” 
That His Atonement was not a mere process 
of reconciliation, but an expiation by suffer¬ 
ing, is evident from Eph. i. 7, et al.: In 
whom we have redemption through His 
blood, the forgiveness of sins.” 

Correspondent to this view of the Atone¬ 
ment was the language of the Fathers. St. 
Clement of Rome (a contemporary of the 






ATTRIBUTES OF GOD 


83 


AZYME 


Apostles), 1 Epist. vii. : “ Let us look stead¬ 
fastly to the blood of Christ. . . . shed for 
our salvation.” Epist. St. Barnabas (a very 
early document), ch. v.: “ The remission of 
sins which is effected by His blood of sprink¬ 
ling.” Ignatius ad Smyrn., vi. : “If they 
believe not in the blood of Christ (they) 
shall incur condemnation.” Epist. ad Di- 
ognetum, ix. : “ He (God) took on Him the 
burden of our iniquities ; He gave His Son 
to be a ransom for us.” Justin Martyr, 
Dial. Tryph., lxiii., speaks of Christ as 
“ delivered over to death by God for the 
transgressions of the people.” 

The above are only a few specimens of the 
vast mass of patristic testimony to the doc¬ 
trine held by the Holy Catholic Church 
upon this subject and confirmatory of the 
view we have presented. 

Attributes of God. Those characteris¬ 
tics by which we can recognize Him and 
His dealing with us. “His property is 
always to have Mercy ;” Justice is another ; 
Love is more properly Himself. Holiness, 
Compassion, Omnipotence, Omnipresence, 
are attributes. In short, in the Divine 
nature, since we cannot comprehend it in 
itself, we can only recognize attributes. 
These may be grouped into those relating to 
His nature absolutely, and those displayed 
towards us. Of the first we may recite His 
Omnipotence, His Omniscience, His Omni¬ 
presence, His Wisdom, His Truth. Of the 
second, we may recite His Justice, His 
Mercy, His Love, His Compassion. These 
are evidently part of the Divine Essence. 
They coexist in Him and are inseparable 
from Him, but they are all cognizable by 
us, and in our own unaided speculations 
concerning the Divine nature are forced 
upon our recognition because there is some 
faint counterpart in our own human nature. 
They are so many cords to draw us to the 
Divine nature. Yet while they coexist and 
are inseparable from His Essence, it is some¬ 
thing more, as our soul is an essence known 
to us by our capacities, yet it is something 
more. Therefore these several attributes 
that inhere in the very nature of God and 
belong to any conception we can form of 
Him yet do not describe His full nature. 

Attrition. An attempt by the schoolmen 
to give an analysis of repentance led to a too 
curious and untenable series of subdivisions. 
Attrition is defined to be the first step to¬ 
wards repentance. It is akin to the worldly 
sorrow which worketh death ; not a sorrow 
that arises from a hatred of sin, but a sorrow 
from the consequences of the act. It is a 
step towards true repentance which yet may 
never be attained. As a preliminary part 
to the series of acts in the heart of the sinner 
leading to a true hearty repentance, the dis¬ 
tinction is useful enough for the theologian, 
but it is a very dangerous suggestion to the 
imperfectly taught layman, more especially 
since the Council of Trent (Sess. xiv. c. 4, 
de pcenit.) taught that contrition, confession, 


and satisfaction were sufficient, making con¬ 
trition consist in the terrors of a stricken 
conscience, and a faith that the sins of the 
penitent are forgiven by Christ. It is evi¬ 
dent that this is but a partial statement made 
more fully and accurately elsewhere, but 
certainly (as this is a canon complete in 
itself) very mistakenly here, since the other 
teaching would be lowered to this, not this 
lifted up to meet the truer definition. 

Autocephali. Those Metropolitans who 
were not under a Patriarch were called 
Autocephali. Such were the Archbishop of 
Cyprus by the express recognition of the 
General Council of Ephesus, 431 a.d., and 
the Archbishops of Bulgaria and Georgia. 
The British Archbishop of Caerleon-upon- 
Usk was also autocephalous. 

Ave Maria. The salutation of the Angel 
Gabriel to the Virgin Mary at the Annun¬ 
ciation (St. Luke i. 28). The words of the 
angel were simply “ Hail 1 thou that art 
highly favored, the Lord is with thee. 
Blessed art thou among women.” The 
modern Roman invocation following the 
Vulgate reads, “ Hail Mary ! full of grace,” 
then adds from the salutation of St. Eliza¬ 
beth, “blessed art thou among women, and 
blessed is the fruit of thy womb.” The first 
part came into use about 1196 a.d., as is 
seen from the injunctions of Odo, Bishop of 
Paris, at that date. Its universal use was 
ordered by Urban IV. (1261 a.d.), together 
with the addition of Elizabeth’s salutation. 
Later yet a precator} r , “ Holy Mary, mother 
of God, pray for us now and at the hour of 
our death,” was added and ordered to be 
used, in the Breviary of Pius V. (1566 a.d.). 
The first clause was in use in England, but 
not the second, till nearly the date of the 
Reformation, and the precatory addition 
never. And in the “ Institution of a Chris¬ 
tian Man,” 1530 a.d., the preachers were 
enjoined to teach that it was no prayer, 
but that it was a laud and thanksgiving 
for our Lord’s birth, with a remembrance 
that the Virgin humbly submitted and be¬ 
lieved. 

Azyme. (Unleavened bread.) The con¬ 
troversy between the Greek and Roman 
Churches upon the use by the latter of un¬ 
leavened bread in the Eucharist. The earli¬ 
est use was that of unleavened bread, and 
was so for several centuries (vide Obla¬ 
tions), but the Roman Church gradually 
fell into the use of leavened bread after 
the close of the ninth century. The Greek 
Church has always used leavened bread. 
When, then, the various causes of division 
came to a focus about 1054 a.d., this use of 
unleavened bread became a bitter part of the 
furious disputes which raged over the differ¬ 
ences and wrongs of the two Churches, and 
it continued to be a serious subject of con¬ 
troversy for a long time. (Vide Neale’s In¬ 
troduction to the History of the Eastern 
Church, vol. ii.; Scudamore’s Notitia Eucha- 
ristica, pp. 749-65.) 




BAAL 


84 


BANNERS 


B. 


Baal. (Lord.) The name of a deity wor¬ 
shiped among the Semitic peoples of Syria 
and Mesopotamia. It is identified with the 
Babylonian Bel. The Baal-worship into 
which the Israelites fell when “ they joined 
themselves to Baal-poor” when tempted by 
the Moabites, clung to them till late in 
their history. The minor prophets are full 
of references to it, and, in fact, they were 
only cured of it when finally all idolatrous 
tendencies were crushed out by the Babylon¬ 
ian captivity. 

Balaam. The famous prophet who blessed 
Israel (Num. xxiii. and xxiv.). The whole 
history of his contact with Israel is recorded 
in these two chapters, with a necessary slight 
reference to him in a later chapter. He ap¬ 
pears from the first as a prophet of God, and 
so acts and is so entitled in the Bible. It is 
not the place here to enter into the ques¬ 
tion how much knowledge of God the 
heathen really had, and how far He 
chose to have Himself witnessed to among 
them. For any knowledge given to them 
would be perverted into polytheistic teach¬ 
ing. The history of Balaam is short, but 
very instructive. Balak, the king of Moab, 
sends for him to come to curse the passing 
hosts of Israel, “ for I wot that he whom 
thou blessest is blessed, and he whom thou 
cursest is cursed.” It is not necessary to 
suppose that the rewards of divination in 
the hands of the elders of Moab were any 
other than the usual and courteous gifts 
from a prince to a prophet (c/. 1 Sam. ix. 
7-9). Balaam, desirous to go, still in¬ 
quired of God whether he could go. The 
Lord forbade him, “ for thou shalt not curse 
the people, for they are blessed.” The 
princes returned to Balak with the mes¬ 
sage, but Balak, unwilling to let the 
prophet put him off, as he thought, sent 
other and more honorable ambassadors. 
Balaam still professed utter inability to act 
without permission from the Lord. The 
permission was conditional,—“ if the men 
come to call thee.” Of this call nothing is 
said, only, “ Balaam rose up early in the 
morning and saddled his ass and went with 
the princes of Moab.” His willful conduct 
brought upon him the terrible rebuke,— 
the dumb ass, speaking with man’s voice, 
forbade the madness of the prophet. Doubt¬ 
less the bribe of political honors held out to 
Balaam was really irresistible, and was, as 
we know, yielded to, but he was at least 
nominally obedient to the inspiration of 
God. Despite Balak’s entreaty he blessed 
the people, adding his prophecy of the Mes¬ 
siah, “ There shall come a star out of Jacob 
and a sceptre shall rise out of Israel.” It 
is not necessary to suppose that he could un¬ 


derstand how far his prophecy reached; that 
he thought it only political is clear from the 
next verses: its spiritual truth was beyond 
his ken. After this Balaam returned home, 
but with the Midianite princes—who were 
leagued with Balak (Num. xxii. 4-7)—he 
plotted the licentious feast into which Israel 
fell, and for which Moses inflicted a fearful 
vengeance. Balaam himself thus helped to 
bring on a momentary fulfillment of his 
prophecy, “ He shall smite the corners of 
Moab and destroy all the children of Sheth. ’ ’ 
He fell in the battle that broke the power of 
the Midianites (Num. xxxi. 1-10). His is 
a very fascinating history. A prophet of 
God though a heathen, using this influence 
for temporal good among his people, ambi¬ 
tious, self-willed, vain of his political sa¬ 
gacity, his was a character of mingled clay 
and gold, and was strong and weak in pro¬ 
portion. Not above the ideas of his day in 
his surroundings, though as prophet of the 
One God holding the clue to higher prin¬ 
ciples, he probably deemed his counsel to 
the Midianites a stroke of real policy, and 
did not at all enter into the peculiar purposes 
of God in the separation of Israel from 
among the Gentiles. This was far beyond 
all he had ever learned of God’s merciful 
dealings with men. Sharing the political 
views of his tribe, he fell from the pure 
height into a sin that brought him under 
the edge of the sword. He is a type of a 
large human nature touching many sides 
and appealing to our sympathies. In many 
respects, too, he typifies the character which, 
rising above demagogism, yet does not rank 
above the trickery of the politician when it 
has the opportunity to become a statesman. 

But as one of those permitted to prophesy, 
no matter how obscurely, yet to prophesy 
of Christ, and to leave this prophecy among 
his people, which finally should bring the 
wise men to the cradle of the Star of Jacob, 
Balaam claims of us a special attention. It 
was not necessary that he should understand 
the full reach of his prophecy, but assuredly 
he understood much of its political bearing, 
and, therefore, it added to his responsibility 
in his after-action. To us it is a proof that 
God did not leave Himself without witness 
among the Gentiles. 

Bands. A part of the clerical dress that 
has now almost entirely fallen into disuse. 
It is a remnant of the ancient amice. In 
reality it is a part of the full dress for law¬ 
yers, as well as clergymen in the English 
Church, but there, as well as here, it is 
hardly ever to be seen. 

Banners are of late origin. In the Bible 
the “banner” appears to have been merely 
a pole with some device upon it, as a rallying- 










BANNS 


85 


BAPTISM 


point for the squadron (or worked into the 
sail of the ship if used at sea). It was not a 
flag, whatever standards were used. Rab¬ 
binical writers state that the standards for 
the four divisions of the tribes upon their 
march (Numb, ii.) were, for Judah, a lion ; 
for Reuben, a man; for Ephraim, an ox; 
for Dan, an eagle. But this is mere tradi¬ 
tion ; compare, however, the Vision of Eze¬ 
kiel (cli. x.) and of the Revelation (ch. iv.). 
But the banner, as a flag, belongs rather to 
the age of Chivalry, and is a heraldic stand¬ 
ard, and so it passed into Church usage. 
There is no authorization for its use in our 
services. In the Sunday-school celebrations 
it appears to be quite appropriate, and cer¬ 
tainly most unobjectionable. Banners were 
formerlj’- a part of the accustomed orna¬ 
ments of the altar, and were suspended 
over it. 

Banns ; Banns of Marriage. The word 
“ bann” comes from the Low Latin, signify¬ 
ing to proclaim an edict; hence the edict 
or proclamation itself, and thence, in the 
Church, a proclamation of marriage between 
parties then and there named. The publi¬ 
cation of banns of marriage is not required 
in this country, though the custom is in 
many places still carried out. 

The form in England is as follows: 
After the second lesson, at morning prayer 
(or if there be no morning prayer at evening 
prayer), for three several Sundays previous, 
“ the curate shall say, after the accustomed 
manner, I publish the banns of marriage 

between M. of-and N. of-. If 

any of you know cause or just impediment 
why these two persons should not be joined 
together in holy matrimony, ye are to de¬ 
clare it.' This is the first (second, or third) 
time of asking.” But now marriages may 
also be celebrated without either banns or 
license upon production of the superintend¬ 
ent registrar’s certificate. 

Baptism. One of the two great sacra¬ 
ments “generally necessary to salvation,” 
“ordained by Christ Himself” ( vide Sac¬ 
rament) as a means of initiation into His 
Church, and “a sign of * regeneration or 
new birth” (Article of Religion XXVII.); 
whereby we are made “ members of Christ, 
children of God, and heirs of the Kingdom 
of Heaven” (Catechism). 

In considering baptism we shall set forth 
(a) The history of the sacrament; (b) the 
outward sign and manner of administra¬ 
tion; (c) The Covenant: (1) the inward 
grace, (2) the conditions required of those 
who come; (d) by whom and to whom it is 
to be administered. 

(a) The History. —The washing with 
water as an emblem of purity was of very 
ancient origin and of general use. It is 
specially to be found among Eastern nations. 
Classical writers, both Greek and Latin, fre¬ 
quently allude to it as a means of purifica¬ 
tion before offering sacrifices, and of remov¬ 
ing ceremonial uncleanness. (See Smith’s 
Bible Dictionary.) 


In the Mosaic Ritual washing or bathing 
in water is constantly prescribed as a means 
of ceremonial purification. Numerous such 
commands are found in the Pentateuch, 
both for the priests and the people. Thus, 
before going into the sanctuary the priests 
were to wash their hands and their feet, 
“ that they died not” (Ex. xxx. 20). For- 
this purpose, and also for washing the ves¬ 
sels and things used in the sacrifices, Moses 
was ordered to place a laver of brass be¬ 
tween the altar and the tabernacle. Solo¬ 
mon made ten lavers and “ a molten sea” to 
be put before the Temple (2 Chron. iv. 1- 
6). It is these divers washings that are re¬ 
ferred to in Mark vii. 4, and Heb. ix. 10; 
in both places the Greek word being “Bap¬ 
tisms.” 

That the deep spiritual signification of 
the ceremony was understood appears from 
many passages of the Old Testament: 
“ Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity 
and cleanse me from my sin” (Ps. li. 2); 
“ I will wash mine hands in mnocency, 
O Lord, and so will I go to Thine altar” 
(Ps. xxvi. 6); “Wash thine heart from 
wickedness” (Jer. iv. 14). 

Jewish writers of a later date tell us that 
proselytes from the heathen received a bap¬ 
tism as well as circumcision as a sign of 
the putting away of the old life and admis¬ 
sion into the new as God’s people. 

It is evident that the idea of spiritual 
purification was in the minds of the Jews 
connected with washing or baptism. And 
thus we can understand the readiness with 
which they came to John “ preaching the 
baptism of repentance for remission of 
sins ;” and that they at first saw in him the 
promised Messiah, who was to bring re¬ 
mission of sins. And when he denied this, 
they naturally asked, “ Why baptizest thou, 
then ?” His answer pointed to the higher 
baptism of which his was the preparation, 
the baptism of water and of the Spirit. 

When the Christ instituted baptism as 
the great sacrament of forgiveness of sins, 
and initiation into His Church, He only 
adapted an old custom well known to the 
Jews and other people; though in so doing 
He gave it a wider use and deeper meaning. 
It does not appear that the Christ Himself 
ever baptized, but His disciples did; the 
character of this rite is not described. After 
His resurrection the commission given to 
the Apostles is clear : “ Go ye therefore and 
teach (make disciples of) all nations, bap¬ 
tizing them” (Matt, xxviii. 19). And it is 
very certain that the disciples understood 
that this rite was the “ outward visible sign” 
of remission of sins and reception into the 
Church, Christ’s Body. For whenever men, 
convinced by their preaching that Jesus was 
the Son of God, the Messias, asked, “ What 
shall we do ?” the uniform answer was, “ Re¬ 
pent and be baptized for the remission of 
sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the 
Holy Ghost” (Acts ii. 38. See also Acts 
viii. 12, 36 ; x. 47 ; xxii. 16). Thus baptism 








BAPTISM 


86 


BAPTISM 


took the place of circumcision as the means 
of entering into covenant with God, and as 
all who were circumcised were called Isra¬ 
elites, so all baptized persons were called 
Christians. Nor had any a right to assume 
the name until admitted into the Church by 
baptism. 

' It is unnecessary to show further that 
from the Apostolic times baptism has been 
regarded by the Church as essential. How¬ 
ever they may ditfer as to its meaning and 
modes of administration, all “ who profess 
and call themselves Christian” agree in this. 

(r) The Outward Sign and Manner 
of Administration. —The Catechism 
teaches that “ the outward visible sign or 
form in baptism” is “ water, wherein the 
person is baptized, In the Name of the 
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Ghost.” Two things, then, are to be con¬ 
sidered, the water and the word. 

(1) That water is an essential part of 
baptism we learn from the words of our 
Lord to Nicodemus: “Except a man be 
born of water, and of the Spirit, he cannot 
enter into the kingdom of God” (St. John 
iii. 5). So also St. Peter after that the Holy 
Ghost had fallen upon Cornelius and those 
with him, said, “ Can any man forbid water, 
that these should not be baptized?” (Acts 
x. 47). And the testimony of the Church 
is so clear as to the fact, and it is one so uni¬ 
versally admitted, that it is unnecessary to 
take up space with quotations from the 
Fathers. 

But while there is no doubt as to the use 
of water in this sacrament, there is a differ¬ 
ence of opinion and custom as to the mode 
of administration ; whether it should be by 
sprinkling , or pouring , or immersion. 

As regards sprinkling, though it may be 
regarded as valid, yet is it irregular, there 
being no authority for its use. The rubric 
in the office in the American Prayer-Book 
orders that the minister taking the child 
“shall dip it in the water discreetly, or shall 
pour water upon it.” In the English office 
there are two rubrics, the first ordering dip¬ 
ping in the water discreetly and warily, 
“provided that the sponsors shall certify 
that the child may well endure it.” An¬ 
other adds, “but if they certify that the 
child is weak, it shall suffice to pour water 
upon it.” The same direction is given for 
the baptism of adults. Thus our Church 
allows as valid and regular either “ dipping” 
or “pouring,” giving precedence to the 
former. Blunt says (Annotated Prayer- 
Book) : “ There can be no question that af¬ 
fusion, if thoroughly performed, is amply suf¬ 
ficient for the due administration of the 
sacrament of baptism. In such a climate as 
ours, with such habits as those of modern 
times, and all its consequences considered, 
the dipping of infants could seldom be 
seemly, and would often be attended with 
danger. The ‘ weakness’ of the rubric may 
justly be assumed as the normal condition of 
infants brought up under such conditions.” 


Thus pouring the water has come to be 
with us the usual form of administration. 
But great care should be taken that water be 
poured freely over the head of the child or 
person from the hollow of the minister’s 
hand, so that there may be no possible doubt 
of the actual contact of the water with the 
person. To insure this no covering should 
be retained on the head at that time. 

Trine Immersion, — i.e., the dipping or the 
pouring of the water at the naming of each 
Person of the Trinity, making three times,— 
though not ordered by the rubric, is a very 
ancient custom, worthy to be observed as 
teaching the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, 
and rendering more certain the contact with 
the water. 

Total Immersion .—As regards this, which 
some hold to be essential to baptism, we have 
seen that the Church does not require it. Is 
she right in allowing this discretion ? There 
appears little doubt that the usual custom of 
the early Church was to lead the candidate 
into the water and there dip him three times 
while repeating the prescribed formula. 
And it is urged that St. Paul alludes to this 
in the well-known text, “ Therefore we are 
buried with him by baptism into death” 
(Rom. vi. 4). Too much stress has been 
laid upon an argument drawn from a figura¬ 
tive passage, from which, if the whole be 
thus taken literally, we might also prove 
that we ought to be crucified as he was. 
Doubtless there is here an allusion to the 
usual manner of baptizing, but scarcely in¬ 
tended as making it essential. From old 
drawings in the catacombs at Rome, it ap¬ 
pears that the candidate was led into the 
water, and he standing there, the water was 
poured over his head. But even if total im¬ 
mersion generally obtained in the early 
Church, it never was considered essential. 
What was called clinic baptism, or the bap¬ 
tism of the sick and weak, was by pouring, 
so also where water was scarce, as in prison 
or in the desert, and these were held so valid 
that Canons were passed forbidding the re¬ 
baptizing of such. 

If we turn to the New Testament, we find 
that in many of the instances there recorded 
immersion would have been highly improb¬ 
able if not impossible. How could the 
three thousand baptized on the day of 
Pentecost, or the five thousand afterwards 
added, have been immersed in Jerusalem? 
Nor is it probable that the jailer of Phi¬ 
lippi could have been immersed in the 
prison. The word baptized does not al¬ 
ways mean immersion; “ the baptizing of 
tables” (Mark vii. 4), and the “divers bap- 
| tizings” of the law, were really washings. 

I The Israelites “ were baptized unto Moses in 
the cloud and in the sea” (1 Cor. x. 2). Yet 
they went over dry-shod ; the Egyptians, 
indeed, were immersed. St. Peter also de¬ 
clares baptism to be the “ figure” of (literally, 
antitype, i.e., “that which corresponds to 
and was figured by”) the salvation of Noah 
* in the Ark by water (1 Peter iii.*21). Yet 




BAPTISM 


87 


BAPTISM 


Noali was borne upon the water, and rained 
upon from heaven ; he was not immersed, 
as were the unbelievers. Great stress has 
been laid upon the account of the baptism 
of the eunuch (Acts viii. 38): “ And they 
went down both into the water, both Philip 
and the eunuch; and he baptized him. 
And when they were come up out of the 
water,” etc. But this really proves nothing, 
except, indeed, the necessity of water. For, 
first, the Greek words translated “ into” and 
“out of” (eif and ek ), mean also the place 
towards which and from which there is 
motion; second, one may “go down into” 
and “ come up out of” a water without im¬ 
mersing the whole body ; and, third, if total 
immersion be meant, then must Philip the 
minister as well as the eunuch have been 
immersed, for it reads, “ they went down 
both into the water,” which proves too 
much. Most probably both standing in the 
water, Philip taking up thereof in his hand 
or in a vessel, baptized by pouring over the 
head of the eunuch. 

We assert, then, that Scripture and the 
Church prescribe nothing as to the precise 
manner of administering the water of bap¬ 
tism. It is therefore one of those ceremonies 
and rites which may be changed by partic¬ 
ular Churches “according to the diversity 
of countries, times, and men’s manners, so 
that nothing be ordained against God’s 
Word” (Art. XXXIV.). 

(2) The Form of Words. —About this 
there can be no dispute. The dipping in or 
the pouring on of water must be accom¬ 
panied by the words prescribed by our Lord : 
“In the Name of the Father, and of the 
Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” Without 
these no baptism is valid, “ for these are es¬ 
sential parts of baptism.” (See rubric at 
end of “ Private Baptism of Children.”) 

But what is meant by “ Baptizing in the 
Name” ? Not only by the authority of, as 
His ministers, though this is meant, but also 
and especially “ into the name,” as it should 
be translated. For “the name” was put for 
the thing itself: thus, “His name shall be 
called Jesus (Saviour), for He shall save;” 
“They shall call His name Emmanuel,” 
for He is “ God with us.” The sacred name 
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost is put upon 
the baptized, as that of Jehovah was upon 
the children of Israel (Num. vi. 27), whereby 
they were made a holy, peculiar people. 
Thus to be baptized into “ the name” means 
into the Holy Trinity, for “ the name” of old 
meant God Himself, as in the revelation to 
Moses from the burning bush the name I Am, 
is God. Therefore the Hebrews always 
spoke with the deepest reverence of The 
Name. It was not “ to be taken in vain ;” 
“Incense was to be offered to it;” “In it 
men were to trust.” The Old Testament is 
full of such expressions, by which we learn 
that “ The Name” is God Himself, or, rather, 
the revelation of God. To know God’s 
name is to know Him ; to do anything by or 
in His name is to do it by or in Him. So 


also in the New Testament we read : “ Hal¬ 
lowed be Thy Name ;” “ His name, through 
faith in His name, hath made this man 
strong;” “At the name of Jesus every 
knee should bow.” And numerous texts 
can be quoted where the name of Jesus is 
put for Himself. 

Therefore, when He whose name is Em¬ 
manuel, “ God with us,” is about to send 
forth His messengers to deliver men from 
bondage to sin and death, of which that of 
Egypt was the type, He speaks to them from 
the risen body, dead, yet alive, seeing no 
corruption, of which the Bush was the em¬ 
blem, and gives them His new name to be 
put upon His people, as He did of old to 
Moses,—a new name expressing the fuller 
revelation of Himself, “ Father, Son, and 
Holy Ghost,” not three names, but one, 
for He says not into the names, but into the 
Name expressing the unity of the Godhead 
in the Trinity of the Persons. This Holy 
Name is to be said over them, and into union 
with this Holy Trinity they are by baptism 
received. 

This, we remark in passing, is also in 
brief the creed of the Church, as taught in 
our Catechism. For all Confessions of Faith 
are enlargements or developments or ex¬ 
planations of this divinely-given formula. 
With what reverence and awe should it be 
regarded! 

(c) The Covenant. —As under the old 
dispensation God made a covenant with His 
people whereby they were made His, cir¬ 
cumcision being the outward sign and seal 
thereof, so has He made the new covenant 
in Jesus (Hebrews xii. 24), whereof baptism 
is the outward sign and pledge. This was 
foretold by the prophet Ezekiel: “ Then will 
I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall 
be clean ; from all your filthiness and from 
all your idols will I cleanse you. A new 
heart also will I give you, and a new spirit 
will I put within you, and I will take away 
the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will 
give you an heart of flesh” (Ezek. xxxvi. 
26, 26). 

In this covenant there are the two parties, 
God and man. What God offers is entirely 
a free gift or grace from Him ; He annexes 
to its reception such conditions as He may 
please, but they are in no way of the nature 
of an equivalent; man cannot purchase 
them ; so St. Paul writes, “ By grace are ye 
saved through faith ; and that not of your¬ 
selves it is the gift of God ; not of works, 
lest any man should boast” (Eph.ii. 8). We 
are thus led to consider, first, God’s part, 
and, second, man’s part in the covenant 
made in baptism. 

(1) The Inward Grace of Baptism. 
—The Catechism defines this to be “a death 
unto sin, and a new birth unto righteous¬ 
ness ; for, being by nature born in sin, and 
the children of wrath, we are hereby made 
the children of grace.” And the child is 
taught that in baptism it “ was made a 
member of Christ, the child of God, and 





BAPTISM 


88 


BAPTISM 


an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.” 
This is called Regeneration (which see); 
according to our Lord’s Word, “ Ye must 
be born again.” “ Except a man be born 
of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter 
into the kingdom of God.” 

God gives in baptism, 1st. Remission of 
sins; as St. Peter said to the multitude 
asking, “What shall we do?” “Repent, 
and be baptized every one of you in the 
name of Jesus Christ for the remission 
of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the 
Holy Ghost” (Acts ii. 38); as also it was 
said unto Saul, “ Arise and be baptized, and 
wash away thy sins” (Acts xxii. 16). 

2d. Membership in His Church, the Body 
of Christ: “ Por by one Spirit are we all 
baptized into one body;” “Now ye are 
the body of Christ, and members in par- 
* ticular” (1 Cor. xii. 18, 27); “His body’s 
sake, which is the Church” (Col. i. 24). 

3d. Adoption as His children, and with 
this the gift of the Holy Spirit and heir¬ 
ship of heaven : “For ye are all the children 
of God by faith in Christ Jesus, for as 
many of you as have been baptized, into 
Christ have put on Christ;” “And be¬ 
cause ye are sons, God hath sent forth the 
Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, 
Abba, Father. . . . And if a son, then an 
heir of God through Christ” (Gal. iii. 27; 
iv. 6, 7). 

The Church, then, for her teaching has 
most certain warrant of Holy Scripture. 
Following this, in the baptismal service, 
she bids us pray God to “ sanctify this 
water to the mystical washing away of 
sin.” The sponsors are exhorted to pray 
for the person now to be baptized, “ That 
our Lord Jesus Christ would vouchsafe 
to receive him, to release him from sin, to 
sanctify him with the Holy Ghost, and to 
give him the Kingdom of Heaven and ever¬ 
lasting life.” And the newly-baptized is 
spoken of as “ regenerate and grafted into 
the body of Christ’s Church.” The 
XXVII. Article of Religion declares that 
“ Baptism ... is also a sign of regenera¬ 
tion, or new birth, whereby they that re¬ 
ceive baptism rightly are grafted into the 
Church, the promises of forgiveness of sin 
and of our adoption to be the sons of God 
by the Holy Ghost are visibly signed and 
sealed.” ( Vide Regeneration for further 
proofs.) 

(2) The Conditions required in those 
who come to be Baptized. —Though the 
benefits of baptism are entirely a free gift 
from God, yet has He seen fit to prescribe 
certain conditions with which man must 
comply before he can claim the promises. 
These are in the Catechism declared to be 
“ Repentance, whereby they forsake sin; 
and faith, whereby they steadfastly believe 
the promises of God made to them in that 
sacrament;” or, as it is set forth in the ques¬ 
tions asked at the baptism, Renunciation 
of sin, belief in the Articles of the Christian 
Faith, and an honest purpose throughout 


life to keep God’s Commandments. Repent¬ 
ance and Faith have been called the hands 
stretched forth to take hold of God’s gifts. 
But even these are of Him, “ for it is God that 
worketh in us both to will and to do.” With 
the grace of baptism He gives the capacity 
for these, just as in the natural birth He gives 
the various faculties of mind and,body. It 
is man’s part to realize this and use the spir¬ 
itual life and power thus given him “ to 
work out his’salvation.” ( Vide further in 
Regeneration.) 

(d) The Minister and Subjects of 
Baptism— Lay Baptism. —Ordinarily this 
sacrament is to be administered by one in 
holy orders, for it was in the original com¬ 
mission given to the Apostles that they 
should baptize. In the Acts of the Apostles 
we read of Philip the Deacon baptizing the 
Samaritans and the eunuch of Ethiopia. It 
certainly would seem right that the act of 
receiving into Christ’s Church should be 
by one duly commissioned as an ambassador 
for Christ. The Prayer r Book requires that 
it shall be by a minister ; a deacon may act 
in the absence of the priest. Notwithstand¬ 
ing this, the universal tradition and practice 
of the Church from the earliest ages has 
allowed the validity of lay baptism in case9 
of necessity, a rebaptism never being re¬ 
quired for such persons. The question was 
fully discussed in the Church of Carthage, 
with the above conclusion. And, therefore, 
in our own Church, lay baptism is recognized 
by general custom, though there is no author¬ 
ity for it in the Prayer-Book, unless it be 
implied in the rubric appended to the “ Of¬ 
fice for Private Baptism,” which limits the 
essentials of baptism to “ water, in the 
Name,” etc., but says nothing of the neces- 
sit} 7 of a lawful minister; the rubric in the 
service itself, however, requires “ a lawful 
minister.” It is well here to notice, as an 
historical fact, that in the first Prayer-Book, 
that of 1549 a.d., the rubric directed that 
“ when great need shall compel them so to 
do,” “ one of them present” shall baptize 
the child. In 1603 a.d., after the Hampton 
Conference, to meet the prejudices of the Pu¬ 
ritans (!), the words “ lawful minister” were 
substituted for “ one of them,” and in the re¬ 
vision of 1662 a.d. the rubric took its pres¬ 
ent form. There is in this allowance of lay 
baptism, a departure from the strictness of 
the Church as regards orders ; but universal 
custom seems to sanction it; some writers 
take the ground that any irregularity or de¬ 
fect in such baptism is made good by con¬ 
firmation. Others hold that there is a priest¬ 
hood in. every Christian sufficient to make 
his act valid ; these making a distinction 
between that which he has the power to do 
and that which he has the right to do. 

Adult Baptism. —There is a special ser¬ 
vice provided for the baptism of those of 
riper years. The persons are required to 
answer for themselves, the sponsors being 
“their chosen witnesses.” The rubric di¬ 
rects that “due care be taken for their ex- 






BAPTISM 


8 ( J 


BAPTISM (OFFICE OF) 


animation, whether they be sufficiently in¬ 
structed in the Principles of the Christian 
Religion ; and that they he exhorted to pre¬ 
pare themselves with Prayer and Fasting 
for the receiving of this holy sacrament.” 
There is also a rubric that “It is expedient 
that every person thus baptized should be 
confirmed by the Bishop so soon after his 
baptism as conveniently may be, that so he 
may be admitted to the Holy Communion.” 

Infant Baptism .—Though there is no di- 
-rect command in the New Testament to bap¬ 
tize infants, yet the inference that it was 
done by the Apostles is so strong as to 
amount to proof. Baptism took the place 
of circumcision. Infants were circumcised, 
and so received into the old covenant; the 
Apostles naturally, unless forbidden, would 
baptize infants and receive them into the 
new covenant. So far from being forbidden, 
we read that the only time Jesus was “ much 
displeased” was when the disciples rebuked 
those who brought to Him young children, 
saying, “Sutler the little children to come 
unto me, and forbid them not; for of such 
is the kingdom of God.” If infants are of 
the kingdom, surely they may receive that 
rite which admits into the kingdom (St. 
Mark x. 13). St. Peter, commanding the 
Jews to be baptized, adds : “ For the prom¬ 
ise is unto you, and to your children” (Acts 
ii. 39). St. Paul on several occasions bap¬ 
tized whole households; there must have 
been children in some if not all of these. 

But when we take the testimony of the 
Universal Church from the beginning, the 
proof is overwhelming. We have not space 
for quotations, suffice it to say “ that all tes¬ 
timony of writers down to the twelfth cen¬ 
tury affirms its use,” and “ there is not one 
saying, quotation, or example that makes 
against it.” 

But we have seen that repentance and 
faith are required of those who come to bap¬ 
tism, and it is argued that as infants are in* 
capable of these they should not be baptized. 
But for this the Church provides by re¬ 
quiring sureties or sponsors, who promise 
these both in the child’s naipe. Their duty 
it is to see that it be taught, so soon as it be 
able to learn, what has been done for it, and 
to urge it at the proper time to fulfill the 
same by taking upon itself the baptismal 
obligatio's, so that it may also enter upon 
the full baptismal privileges, just as the law 
allows children to hold property, but re¬ 
quires guardians to act for the minor until 
it comes of age, assumes full possession, and 
acts for itself. 

Public Infant Baptism should be admin¬ 
istered in church, either at Morning or 
Evening Prayer,, immediately after the sec¬ 
ond lesson, both because it is an act in 
which the congregation are to take part, 
and also “ for the better instructing of the 
People in the grounds of Infant Baptism.” 
Nor ought baptism to be deferred till long 
after Birth, as is too much the custom.^ The 
rubric says, not “longer than the first or 


second Sunday.” It may not always be 
possible to comply with* this, but there 
should be no unnecessary delay. 

Private Infant Baptism is only allowed 
for “ great cause and necessity :” a shortened 
form is provided to be used in such case. 
Though this be a lawful and sufficient bap¬ 
tism, still, if the child live, “itis expedient 
that it be brought into the Church,” that 
“the Congregation may be certified of the 
true form of Baptism, and it be received 
publicly as one of the flock of true Christian 
People.” 

Authorities : Baptism tested by Scripture 
and History, by William Hodges, D.D. ; 
Wall’s History of Infant Baptism ; Dr. W. 
Adams’ Mercy to Babes; Wall and Jerriam 
on Infant Baptism. Indeed, the works on 
the subject of Baptism are many and easily 
accessible. 

Rev. E. B. Boggs, D.D. 

Baptism (Holy), Office of. The ser¬ 
vices in our Prayer-Book for the adminis¬ 
tration of baptism are taken almost word for 
word from those in the English book. The 
important changes are that permission is 
given for shortening the service for infant 
baptism in case it is used in the same church 
more than once a month, and that the sign 
of the cross may be omitted if the omission 
be specially desired, “ although the Church 
knows no worthy cause of scruple concern¬ 
ing the same.” The form of the service for 
infant baptism is not closely connected with 
that of ancient rituals, the reason being in 
great part, doubtless, because the Reformers 
thought it necessary to introduce exhorta¬ 
tions, and to make the service a means of 
instruction to the congregation: and for 
this latter reason it is ordered that it shall 
be used in the midst of either Morning or 
Evening Prayer. Since 1552 a.d. the 
whole of the service has been said at the 
font; the book of 1549 a.d. ordered the 
first part, as far as the address to the god¬ 
fathers and godmothers, to be said at the 
church-door and the rest at the font. This 
first part seems to correspond to the ancient 
form of making a catechumen, consisting of 
a call to prayer, a petition for God’s bless¬ 
ing on the child, a short Gospel, followed 
by a comment and exhortation based upon 
it, and a prayer which includes a thanks¬ 
giving. The minister then passes to the 
second part of the service, which is the 
special preparation for the sacrament. The 
sponsors are exhorted as to the meaning of 
the act, and are asked to answer in the child’s 
name. The questions call for a renuncia¬ 
tion (on which in early days great stress 
was laid), a profession of faith, an expres¬ 
sion of desire for baptism, and a promise 
of obedience. Two of the answers in our 
service differ from those in the English 
book: the first, by the addition of all after 
the words “I renounce them all”; and the 
last, by the addition of the words “by 
God’s help.” Then follow four short 
prayers for spiritual blessings, and a prayer 








BAPTISM (OFFICE OF) 


90 


BARNABAS 


for the blessing of the water. These prayers 
(or those which correspond to them) are not 
in the service of 1549 a.d., but will be 
found at the end of the form for private 
baptism, with a direction that when the 
water in the font is changed, which shall be 
once a month at the least, they shall be used 
before any child is baptized in it. Since 
1552 a.d., the water has been put anew in 
the font at each baptism; this has been di¬ 
rected by rubric since 1662 a.d. The third 
part of the service consists of the baptism 
itself, which our Church allows to be either 
by immersion or by atfusion (no permission 
is given for aspersion), and the making of the 
sign of the cross upon the child’s forehead. 
Then in the fourth part the people are 
bidden to prayer, the Lord’s Prayer is 
used as the rightful utterance of the child 
of God, and it is followed by thanksgiving 
and prayer, and by exhortations to the spon¬ 
sors to remember and to fulfill their duties to 
the child, and to see that in due time it is 
brought to the Bishop for confirmation. It 
does not belong to this article to speak of 
the doctrine of Baptism; but the historical 
fact may be stated that this last call to prayer 
and the prayer itself, both of which declare 
that the child is regenerate, were not in the 
first book of Edward YI. (1549 a.d.), but 
were inserted in his second book in 1552 a.d. 

The service for private baptism, contain¬ 
ing also a form for publicly receiving into 
the Church such as have been privately 
baptized, calls for no special notice. But 
with reference to the conditional form of 
baptism, which is placed at the end of the 
service, it may be of interest to quote two 
rubrics from the Prayer-Book which was 
set forth by Bishop Torry, of St. Andrew’s, 
in 1848 a.d., as embodjnng a custom in the 
Scotch Church : “ From the unhappy mul¬ 
tiplicity of religious sects in this country, 
cases frequently occur in which persons, 
from conscientious motives, express a desire 
to separate themselves from such sects, and 
to unite themselves to the Church. In all 
such instances, when the applicants for ad¬ 
mission into the Church, after due instruc¬ 
tion, shall express a doubt of the validity 
of the Baptism which they have received 
from the Minister of the sect to which they 
formerly belonged, the clergyman to whom 
the application is made shall baptize the 
person in the hypothetical form prescribed 
in this office. In cases where such doubt 
does not exist, it shall suffice to receive the 
person into the Church in this manner: he 
first kneeling down, the Minister shall take 
him by the hand and say, We receive this 
J 'person ,” etc. The former of these two rubrics 
was taken from the 17th of the former Canons 
of the Scotch Church; its substance, with 
the direction for the use of the hypothetical 
form of words, is in the 34th of the present 
Canons, \ 4. 

The English Church needed no office for 
the ministration of baptism to such as ’are 
of riper years until after the Great Rebel¬ 


lion. Then, in part because it was hoped 
that there would be great numbers of con¬ 
verts among the natives of America, and 
still more because so many had grown up 
unbaptized at home, a service was prepared 
(it is said by Bishop Griffith, of St. Asaph) 
and inserted in the book of 1662 a.d., from 
which it has passed into our own. Its out¬ 
line is the same as that for infant baptism, 
and the changes which were made will 
readily explain themselves. 

Authorities: Keeling’s Liturgise Britan- 
nicee, Bulley’s Variations of the Communion 
and Baptismal Offices, Palmer’s Origines 
Liturgicae, Bishop Torry’s Prayer-Book. 

Rey. Prof. S. Hart. 

Baptistery. The building or chamber set 
apart for the celebration of the sacrament 
of baptism. It was usually attached to the 
larger, or cathedral church, since the admin¬ 
istration of the rite was usual there only. A 
spacious building was necessary, as the sacra¬ 
ment was administered by immersion, either 
simply or accompanied by aspersion. As 
many as three thousand were baptized on 
Easter-eve when St. Chrysostom was ar¬ 
rested, and many, both men and women, 
who had not yet received the sacrament, 
were dispersed. The oldest baptistery now 
in existence, at Ravenna, is older than 425- 
430 a.d. It is octagonal, about forty feet in 
diameter, with two niches, or apses. It has 
two stories. The font, which is in the cen¬ 
tre and octagonal, has a semicircular inden¬ 
tation in the side, where the priest can stand 
to immerse without descending into the 
water. The walls are decorated with fig¬ 
ures in low relief in stucco, but the dome is 
covered with mosaics; the central portion 
representing the baptism of our Lord. 
Baptisteries of later date are found in vari¬ 
ous parts of Europe, but as adult baptisms 
fell into disuse, the baptistery was not 
needed, and the font was transferred to 
the church. There it has happened that the 
canopy under which the font was placed 
wasio enlarged and enriched as to be sup¬ 
ported upon its own pillars, and so be almost 
a baptistery within the church. Examples 
of this occur in England. 

Barnabas. (Son of prophecy or exhorta¬ 
tion (Rev. Vers.); not so correctly in A.V., 
“ of consolation.”) A Levite by descent, a 
Cypriote by birth, and by some (Clem. Alex., 
Strom, ii. 176) said to be one of the seventy, 
was one of the earliest prominent members 
of the infant Church (Acts iv. 36). His real 
name, Joseph (or Joses), has been overshad¬ 
owed by the name given him by the Apostles. 
His act of giving the price of a field which 
he had sold to the Church is the first notice 
we have of him. He takes Saul after his 
conversion (Acts ix. 27) to the Apostles as 
though there had been a previous friend¬ 
ship between them. When he saw the 
growth of the Gentile Church at Antioch 
he sought Saul at Tarsus and brought him 
there, as if knowing Saul’s special mission 
to the Gentiles. With Saul he carried the 






BARTHOLOMEW 


91 


BATH-KOL 


relief the Church at Antioch sent to Jerusa¬ 
lem upon occasion of the famine (Acts xi. 
30). Upon their return they were set apart 
by direction of the Holy Ghost for their 
first missionary journey (Acts xiii., xiv.), 
which was first to Cyprus (where Saul took 
the name of Paul), and into Asia Minor as 
far as Derbe, in Lyeaonia. Returning to 
Perga, they sailed to the port of Seleucia, 
and so returned home to Antioch. They 
were associated together in the struggle 
against the Judaizers in the question of cir¬ 
cumcision, and were sent from the Council 
of Jerusalem with honor back to Antioch. 
When thesecond missionary journey was pro¬ 
posed, they disagreed as to the propriety of 
taking his nephew, John Mark, with them. 
“ The contention was so sharp that they 
parted asunder.” Since the brethren com¬ 
mended St. Paul to the grace of God, it has 
been inferred that Barnabas was in the 
wrong. This is the last notice in the Acts. 
St. Paul speaks of him in Gal. ii. St. Bar¬ 
nabas was emphatically a good man and 
full of the Holy Ghost, but does not seem 
to have had that energetic determination that 
was so marked in St. Paul. He was im¬ 
pressed by St. Peter even when intimately 
associated with St. Paul (Gal. ii. 13). What 
his after-career was is not authentically told 
us. One tradition sends him to Milan, a 
later one gave him martyrdom upon his 
second visit to Cyprus. 

An epistle under his name is extant. It 
has been held authentic by very many able 
scholars, but is not now admitted as genu¬ 
ine. However, it is a very ancient Christian 
writing, probably of the earlier part of the 
second century. It was evidently the work 
of a very devout but narrow Christian, 
who neither grasped the beauty of allegori¬ 
cal interpretation nor the true breadth of 
Christianity. It is a valuable writing, not 
for its contents, but for the inferences that 
may be drawn from it. (Feast-day, June 

n.) 

Bartholomew. Of him we have nothing 
but the name in the lists of the Apostles. 
In St. Matt. x. 5, we have Philip and Bar¬ 
tholomew the sixth in the list. In St. Mark 
iii. 18, with Philip, he is the sixth ; as, too, 
in St. Luke vi. 14. If he is the same as 
Nathaniel, as some have thought with a 
great deal of plausibility, we have some 
clue to his character,—an Israelite indeed 
in whom is no guile. The arguments relied 
on are, briefly, (a) The call of St. Barthol¬ 
omew is not recorded, while the address to 
Nathaniel is nearly equivalent. ( b) The 
synoptists who mention Bartholomew do 
not allude to Nathaniel, while St. John 
does not name Bartholomew, but does Na¬ 
thaniel. (c) Bar-tholmai is the same as 
Bar-Jona, St. Peter’s other name, or Bar¬ 
nabas, and may be an appellative or a sur¬ 
name, as in the other two cases. But the 
concurrent tradition of the early Church 
is utterly silent upon this identification. 
Any certain tradition, too, about his career 


is wanting. It is supposed that he evangel¬ 
ized Northern India, leaving there a Hebrew 
copy of St. Matthew’s Gospel, which after¬ 
wards was found by Pantsen'us, the great 
Alexandrian catechist (190 a.d.) ; that hav¬ 
ing once escaped crucifixion through the 
remorse of his persecutor, he was afterwards 
flayed alive by King Astyages, at Alban- 
opolis, upon the Caspian Sea. But there is 
nothing to lead us to suppose that there is 
any substructure of fact for the tradition. 
It is only another example of the rule “ prin¬ 
ciples, not men,” which marks God’s work 
in the world, while yet these principles are 
only for man’s salvation. (Feast-day, 
August 24.) 

Baruch. (Blessed.) The son of Neriah, 
and friend and amanuensis of Jeremiah 
(Jer. xxxii. 12 ; xxxvi. 10 sq .), was of courtly 
family. His brother Seriah held office under 
King Zedekiah. He was accused of urging 
Jeremiah in favor of the Chaldeans. Jose¬ 
phus says he was imprisoned with the 
prophet, but was permitted, after the fall 
of Jerusalem, by Nebuchadnezzar, to remain 
with Jeremiah, and was forced with him to 
go down to Egypt. This is the last certain 
information we have of him. He was a man 
of courage, as is shown by his steadfast ad¬ 
herence to Jeremiah, and by his acting as 
his amanuensis. The book attributed to 
him is apocryphal, though it was received 
by some of the Fathers, as Athanasius, Cyril 
of Jerusalem, and Nicephorus. Dr. Gins- 
burg’s conjecture that it was written by 
some devout Jew about the middle of the 
second century before Christ is probably 
correct, but the value he puts upon it is as 
probably exaggerated. It is but a cento 
of passages from the prayer of Daniel (Dan. 
ix.), from Deut. xxviii., and from phrases to 
be found in the prophets, especially Isaiah. 
The first three chapters may be a transla¬ 
tion from some Hebrew imitator, and the 
last two an addition by the translator, as 
has been conjectured. But beyond record¬ 
ing the hopes of the Jews under the Seleu- 
cidae or the Ptolomies it is valueless. 

Basin; for receiving the alms and other 
devotions of the congregation in the pro- 
anaphoral portion of the Communion ser¬ 
vice. The rubric runs : 

“Whilst these sentences are in reading 
the Deacons, Church-wardens, or other fit 
persons appointed for that purpose, shall re¬ 
ceive the Alms for the Poor and other De¬ 
votions of the people in a decent Basin to 
be provided by the Parish for that purpose ; 
and reverently bring it to the Priest, who 
shall humbly present and place it upon the 
Holy Table.” 

Bath-kol. (Daughter of a voice.) Really, 
a sort of divination among the later Jews. 
It was pretended that after the inspiration 
of the prophets ceased devout men were 
guided by a voice (Bath-kol); in fact, they 
put such a construction upon the first words 
they accidentally heard, after devoutly ask¬ 
ing for instruction. To give an instance: 












BEATIFIC VISION 


92 


BELLS 


“R. Iochanan and R. Simeon ben Lachish 
desiring to see the face of R. Samuel, a Baby¬ 
lonish doctor, said, Let us follow the hearing 
of Bath-kol. Traveling, therefore, near a 
school, they heard the voice of a boy reading 
these words out of the first book of Samuel: 
‘ And Samuel died.’ From thence the two 
Rabbis inferred that their friend Samuel 
was dead; and, indeed, Samuel of Babylon 
was just dead.” 

Beatific Vision. “As forme, I will behold 
Thy face in righteousness: and I shall be 
satisfied, when I awake, with Thy likeness” 
(Ps. xvii. 15). “ Beloved, now are we the 

sons of God, and it doth not yet appear 
what we shall be: but we know that, when 
He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for 
we shall see Him as He is” (1 John iii. 2). 
These texts (and many others) contain the 
fullness of the doctrine of the highest and 
final state of blessedness. There is the bless¬ 
edness of knowledge of God, the blessed¬ 
ness of a full Faith, the blessedness of seeing 
and hearing Him by every means vouch¬ 
safed to us here, but beside there will be the 
blessed joy of seeing Him face to face in 
holiness in His glory. It is not to be in 
this life. It was denied to Moses, St. John, 
and St. Paul; both declare “ no man can see 
God.” But in the hereafter we shall see 
Him face to face. “ His servants shall serve 
Him, and they shall see His face; and. His 
name shall be in their foreheads” (Rev. 
xxii. 3, 4). But the full glory of the vision 
of God will be, undoubtedly, after the 
Resurrection. 

Beatification. The declaration by the 
Pope that such or such a holy person, whose 
life was notably holy and accompanied by 
miracles, is in eternal bliss, and in conse¬ 
quence permits religious honor to be paid 
him. In beatification the Pope does not 
judicially determine the state of the saint, 
but only so far as to free the religious hon¬ 
ors paid to him from the charge of super¬ 
stition. But in canonization the Pope does 
determine officially, ex cathedra , the condi¬ 
tion of the new saint. 

Bel and the Dragon,—Apocrypha. The 
Greek translations of Daniel contain addi¬ 
tions to the original text. The most im¬ 
portant are in the Apocrypha, and are 
the Song of the Three Holy Children, the 
History of Susanna, and the History of 
Bel and the Dragon. Bel and the Dragon 
is placed at the end of Daniel, and in the 
Septuagint is headed “ Part of the prophecy 
of Habakkuk.” There is no evidence that 
the additions ever formed a part of the 
Hebrew text. It is surmised that the trans¬ 
lator of Daniel may have wrought up cur¬ 
rent traditions in these additions. The story 
of the Dragon appears like a “ strange 
exaggeration” of the deliverance of Daniel 
from the lions (Dan. vi.). The story has 
received “embellishments in later times.” 
It need not be regarded as a mere fable, but 
it was shaped for a moral purpose. While 
Cal met and the Port Royalists strive to trace 


the history in this work, it may be as well 
to consider rather its design, “to render 
idolatry ridiculous, and to exalt the true 
God.” The idol Bel is represented as the 
object of the king’s adoration, while Daniel 
is a worshiper of “the living God” (v. 5). 
The king speaks to him of the food which 
Bel eats, and Daniel declares that the idol is 
but brass and clay. A contest is brought 
on between Daniel and the idol priests, and 
when he shows their duplicity to the king 
they are slain, and Daniel destroys Bel and 
his temple. Then follows the killing of the 
Dragon by Daniel’s skill, and the story of 
the den of lions, with an addition concern¬ 
ing Habakkuk’s aid in feeding Daniel. 

Authorities: B. F. Westcott, in Wm. 
Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible, Horne’s 
Introduction, Arnald’s Commentary, in Pa¬ 
trick, Lowth, and Whitby. 

Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Belfry. Vide Architecture. 

Bells, The. They are mentioned in the 
Bible as a part of the High-Priest’s dress, 
fringing the lower edge of his robe, and by 
their tinkling the people might know when 
he went into the Holy Place, and when he 
came out, “ that he die not.” But in Chris¬ 
tian times bells are used to summon the 
faithful to the services. The earliest bells 
in use were very small ones,—hand-bells, in 
fact,—and, trusting to the shape of several 
that still remain, shaped very much like our 
cow-bells. In times of persecution a mes¬ 
senger used to summon the congregation; in 
quiet times a Deacon announced the hours 
of service. Bells or their equivalents or 
substitutes were used after Christianity was 
formally recognized by the state. The oldest 
use of bells is attributed, but probably 
wrongly, to Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, in 
Campania (409 a.d.), but he does not speak 
of bells at all in his description of his 
Church. They soon became generally used 
in the West, and were of considerable size. 
Charlemagne (800 a.d.) encouraged the 
founding of bells, and employed skillful 
founders. Of these, Tancho, of St. Gall, 
was the chief, who cast a large bell for the 
great church at Aachen (Aix). He asked 
for one hundred pounds of silver as alloy 
for the copper, from which we may infer 
that the bells may have weighed four or five 
hundred pounds. In the East bells were in¬ 
troduced from Venice, and were becoming 
general (865 a.d.), till the Turks, through 
superstition, forbade their use. So now the 
summons to service is given by hammering 
upon a board suspended from a rope or chain 
(Vide Semantron) or held by the centre in 
the hand. It was usually twelve feet long 
and from a foot to a foot and a half wide, 
and was reduced in the centre to a width suf¬ 
ficient to let it be grasped by the hand. It 
was struck with a hammer or mallet. Some¬ 
times the semantron is made of iron or of 
brass. ' 

Turketul, Abbot of Crowland (870 a.d.), 
gave seven bells to his monastery, probably 




BEMA 


BENEDICTION 


1)3 


the first peal in England. Kinsius of York 
(1051-61 a.d.) gave the Church of St. John, 
at Beverley, two great bells. 

From the time that Church utensils were 
first used there was always some act of dedi¬ 
cation of them to sacred and hallowed use. 
Forms for the benediction of bells are found 
in the later MSS. Sacramentarium of Greg¬ 
ory, and probably date from the time of Al- 
cuin ('TOO a.d.). Upon many church-bells 
was placed the Latin doggerel,— 

Laudo Deum verum, Plebem voco, congrego clerum, 

Defunctos ploro, Pestem fugo, Festa decoro. 

A peal is of seven or more bells; a chime 
of three or more. For rules for ringing- 
chimes and peals any hand-book on bells 
may be consulted. 

For churches in the country the bell 
should be selected, if possible, with reference 
to the position of the church; if upon an 
eminence or on a plain, a bell of the lowest 
tone that can be heard the farthest (and it 
should be heard at least three miles) is the 
roper one to choose. From E to A should 
e the general range of the note. 

Bema. The name of the Bishop’s throne 
in the primitive Church, or, possibly, the 
whole apse itself. The Bishop’s throne was 
anciently placed in the centre against the 
wall, and the sediliafor the Presbyters were 
ranged on either hand, while in the centre 
of the apse the altar was placed. 

Benatura. A holy water stoup. 

Benedicite. (The Song of the Three Chil¬ 
dren.) A hymn found in the Septuagint 
version of the book of Daniel, and also in 
the Apocrypha, but not occurring in the 
Hebrew Scripture. It is said to have been 
sung by Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah 
after their miraculous deliverance from the 
fiery furnace, as recorded in Daniel iii. It 
resembles very much the 148th Psalm, and 
is said by many to be only an expansion 
of it. It was probably used in the Jewish 
synagogue worship, and so passed into early 
Christian usage. It was certainly in use in 
the days of St. Athanasius (325-60 a.d.). 
St. Chrysostom (425 a.d.) calls it “ that ad¬ 
mirable and marvelous song, which from 
that day to this has been sung everywhere 
throughout the world, and shall yet be sung 
by future generations.” It was incorpo¬ 
rated into the offices, common to both the 
English and Gallican Churches, and from 
thence it passed into its present place in the 
Prayer-Book of 1549 a.d., which it has kept 
ever since. In that Prayer-Book this rubric 
was prefixed to the Te Deum: 

“ After the first lesson shall follow Te 
Deum laudamus in English daily through¬ 
out the year except in Lent, all the which 
time in the place of Te Deum shall be used 
Benedicite omnia Opera Domini Domino in 
English, as followeth.” (In the first Prayer- 
Book the hymn ran thus : 

“ 0 all ye works of the Lord speak good of the Lord : 
praise Him and set Him up forever.” 


In the second Prayer-Book (1552 a.d.) it 
was changed to the present form.) In 1552 
this restriction was removed. However, the 
rule is often followed now, but it would be 
well to use it when Gen. i. is read. It has 
been commented on in a devotional tone by 
several recent writers, for which it is admi¬ 
rably adapted, bringing forth, as it can be 
well made to do, the glory of God in all His 
works. 

Benediction. The act of blessing and 
the form of blessing. “ And without all 
contradiction the less is blessed of the bet¬ 
ter” (Heb. vii. 7). In Patriarchal days the 
blessing of the children was a most sacred 
and important act. Abraham had his chil¬ 
dren blessed of God. Isaac was deceived 
into giving Jacob the greater blessing, but 
would not alter it. Jacob left a solemn pro¬ 
phetic blessing of his twelve sons. In the 
later history, Moses had given him the form 
of blessing the people, a form the Church 
has incorporated into her Office of Visitation 
of the Sick. It was a solemn threefold ut¬ 
terance of The Name, which was then put 
upon the children of Israel: “The Lord 
bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make 
His Face shine upon thee and be gracious 
unto thee. The Lord lift up His counte¬ 
nance upon thee and give thee peace. And 
they shall put My Name upon the children 
of Israel and I will bless them/’ 

In all lands and in all times the reception 
of a benediction has always been highly 
valued, and this formal putting of God’s 
blessing upon His people is of the highest 
importance. In the Prayer-Book there are 
six formulas of benediction and three prayers 
for special benediction. The first is the 
mutual benediction of both priest and peo¬ 
ple in the versicles: “ The Lord be with 
you, R. and with thy spirit.” The second 
is the benediction taken from 2 Cor. xiii. 14 : 
“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ 
and the love of God and the fellowship of 
the Holy Ghost be with us all evermore,” 
in which the variation of “ us” for “ you,” 
though apparently slight when compared 
with the same benediction in St. James’s 
Liturgy, hints at the possibility that St. 
Paul may have quoted from the Liturgy, 
and that our own use came not from the 
form in the New Testament, but from this 
ancient Liturgy. This blessing closes both 
Morning and Evening Prayer and the 
Burial service. The third form is the beau¬ 
tiful one formed by the English Church from 
an old Anglo-Saxon form and a benediction 
by St. Paul. The first part is from Phil. iv. 
6,7:“ The peace of God which passeth all un¬ 
derstanding shall keep your hearts and minds 
through Jesus Christ,” but enlarged. The 
second part is also enlarged from this bless¬ 
ing in Leofric’s Exeter Pontifical: “The 
blessing of God the Father, and of the 
Son, and of the Holy Ghost, and the peace 
of the Lord be ever with you.” This is used 
at the Holy Communion, at ordination, and 
at the consecration of a church. The latter 









BENEDICTUS 


94 


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part was also placed by the Caroline revisers 
(1662 a.d.) after the Confirmation Office. 
The fourth form is the one divinely com¬ 
manded to be put upon the Holy People, 
and was incorporated into the Office for the 
Visitation of the Sick. The fifth form is 
the blessing (taken from Heb. xiii. 20, 21) 
in the Office of Institution. There is no 
alteration in this form. The sixth form is 
the one at the close of the Marriage service. 
It is modeled upon the one in the English 
Office, but differs from it materially. The 
English form is this : “Almighty God, who 
at the beginning did create our first parents, 
Adam and Eve, and did sanctify and join 
them together in marriage ; Pour upon you 
the riches of His grace, sanctify and bless 
you, that ye may please Him both in body 
and soul, and live together in holy love unto 
your lives’ end. Amen.” Our American 
form is : “ God the Father, God the Son, 
God the Holy Ghost bless, preserve, and 
keep you. The Lord mercifully with His 
favor look upon you and fill you with all 
spiritual benediction and grace, that ye may 
so live together in this life that in the world 
to come ye may have life everlasting. 
Amen.” 

The three prayers of benediction are, first, 
the Invocation in the Holy Communion : 
“And we most humbly beseech Thee, O 
merciful Father, to hear us; and of Thy 
almighty goodness vouchsafe to bless and 
sanctify with Thy Word and Holy Spirit 
these Thy gifts and creatures of bread and 
wine.” The second is the prayer for the 
blessing of the water in the Baptismal Office. 
The third is properly a series of prayers in 
the Form of Consecration of a Church or 
Chapel. The first being the prayer “ O Eter¬ 
nal God,” and the Collects following; the 
second, after the sentence of consecration is 
read, the prayer, “ Blessed be Thy Name, O 
Lord,” etc. ; and after the Morning Prayer 
and Communion service the last prayer, 
“ Blessed be Thy Name, 0 Lord God,” etc. 
Of course the service closes with The Peace 
of God. 

The acts of blessing are oft repeated, some¬ 
times daily, as, for instance, grace at meat. 
In the primitive Church many forms of ben¬ 
ediction were used; as of the utensils and 
furniture of a church, as well as of persons. 

It were well if a little thought were spent 
upon the value and solemnity of benedictions, 
chiefly those given to us at the Church’s ser¬ 
vices, but also on less solemn occasions. To 
have His name put upon us is no light thing, 
but of itself a rich and abiding gift, unless we 
cast it from us. Then as the acts of God’s 
officer are not mere forms, but true and effec¬ 
tual actions, we receive of God true and 
effectual blessing as we fit ourselves for it 
and give due heed to it. 

Benedictus. The second of the two hynjns 
after the second lesson at Morning Prayer. 
It is the hymn of Zacharias, the father of 
St. John Baptist, at his son’s circumcision. 
The English places it first, and recites it at 


length ; but the American Church places it 
second, and recites but four verses. If the 
tone of the hymn be noted carefully, it will 
be seen to be fitly used from Advent Sunday 
to Trinity Sunday, while the Jubilate is more 
proper for the Trinity season. It was in¬ 
tended in the English service to be used con¬ 
stantly, the Jubilate being given as an alter¬ 
nate, to avoid the repetition of the Benedictus 
when it should occur in the second lesson. 
Its ritual use has come to us from the Galli- 
can and Salsbury uses. 

Benefice. It was used to signify the gift of 
land given to the soldier out of conquered ter¬ 
ritory. “ Hence, doubtless, came the word 
benefice to be applied to Church livings ; for, 
besides that the ecclesiastics held for life, like 
the soldiers, the riches of the Church arose 
from the beneficence of princes.” (Burns, 
Eccl. Law.) In the American Church no 
such thing as a benefice is properly known, 
since our parishes and churches are erected 
and supported under different conditions of 
life from those in which the Church in Eu¬ 
rope grew. A benefice is the growth of dif¬ 
ferent customs from ours. A benefice re¬ 
quires to be erected by Episcopal authority; 
to be founded for purely spiritual purposes; 
to be conferred upon a clerk in orders; it 
must be perpetual, and given to another per¬ 
son than him who confers it. In obtaining 
a benefice, then, there must be, I. Presenta¬ 
tion by the proper person to the Bishop 
of the nominee. II. Examination by the 
Bishop. III. Refusal (generally from want 
of learning); or, IV. Admission. V. In¬ 
stitution (when the nominee is presented by 
a patron to the Bishop or Collation (when 
the Bishop presents a benefice in his own 
gift). VI. Induction, usually by the Arch¬ 
deacon. VII. Duty after induction. A 
benefice is a different thing from a cathedral 
preferment; for it has a cure of souls, which 
a cathedral preferment hath not. 

Benefit of Clergy. A mediaeval custom 
by which accused persons who proved them¬ 
selves to be “ clerks” by reading Latin 
could claim to be tried by the Bishop’s, in¬ 
stead of the King’s, Court. It was a priv¬ 
ilege originally belonging only to those 
who were actually in holy orders, but it was 
gradually extended to those in minor orders 
and to every one who could read a verse in 
the Latin Bible. The privilege was grossly 
abused, and a hindrance to the execution of 
justice and a scandal' and burden to the 
Church. It was modified and restrained at 
the Reformation, and the clergy were them¬ 
selves subject to secular tribunals for crimes 
and misdemeanors at law, and finally the 
Benefit of Clergy was abolished in 1827 a.d. 

Bible, The, is the popular collective title 
of the sacred books of the Christian Church. 
It includes the Old Testament, or the He¬ 
brew Sacred Scriptures, the ecclesiastical 
books called “ the Apocrypha,” and the dis¬ 
tinctively Christian books which compose 
the New Testament. The earliest collective 
title was the Law, which embraced proba- 





BIBLE 


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bly only the five books of Moses. Later 
the collection of the prophets was added, 
and later still the Hagiographa, or the 
Psalms. In our Saviour’s time the whole 
collection was spoken of as “the Law,” 
“ the Law and the Prophets,” or “ the Law, 
the Prophets, and the Psalms,” or more 
generally, “ the Scriptures,” and “the Holy 
Scriptures,” or “the Scripture.” With one 
or two exceptions (2 Pet. iii. 16 ; 1 Tim. v. 
10), whenever “the Scriptures” or “the 
Scripture” are mentioned in the New Testa¬ 
ment, the reference is to the sacred books of 
the Old Testament (e.g , St. John ii. 22, v. 
39; 2 Tim. iii. 15). St. Paul speaks of 
“ the old covenant” or “ testament” (2 Cor. 
iii. 14), and contrasts “the two Covenants” 
(Gal. iv. 24), so that very early these titles 
of “Old Covenant,” or “ Testament” and 
“ New Testament,” were in use. It was not 
till St. Jerome, in the fourth century, used 
the title “ Bibliotheca divina” that anyone 
term was used to include both. About the 
same time the Greeks began to use the plu¬ 
ral Biblia, or “ The Books,” which was 
afterwards borrowed in the West and used 
as a singular, and so has passed into com¬ 
mon use in the word Bible. 

While, therefore, this use expresses a pop¬ 
ular conviction and a great truth, St. Je¬ 
rome’s title, “ the Divine Litany,” or that 
which is generally used in the Prayer-Book, 
is more strictly correct, inasmuch as the 
Bible is a collection of some sixty-six (or, 
including the Apocrypha, eighty) distinct 
books or documents, scattered over a period 
of fifteen hundred years, and written in dif¬ 
ferent styles and for different purposes. 

These are arranged in our Bibles, except 
so far as the threefold general division marks 
such a distinction, without regard to order 
of time. The Law of Moses comes first in 
order, followed by the historical books, and 
many of those which, in the Hebrew, are 
reckoned among the Psalms or Hagiogra- 
ha, and those by the prophets. The He- 
rew Bible, after the Law of Moses, places 
two collections of “ the Prophets,” the first, 
priores , including Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 
Samuel, 1 and 2 s Kings, and posteriores , in¬ 
cluding those that we name the prophets, 
except Daniel, who, along with David, as 
possessing the gift of prophecy but not ex¬ 
ercising the pastoral office of the prophet, is 
reckoned among “the Writings,” or “the 
Psalms.” In the Septuagint version of the 
Old Testament, which has always been in 
use in the Eastern Church, the Apocry¬ 
phal or Ecclesiastical books are interspersed 
among the books of the Prophets and Hagio¬ 
grapha as they are also in the Vulgate, which 
is used by the Eoman Church and regarded 
as in every part of equal authority. Neither 
is the New Testament arranged chronolog¬ 
ically. The general order is the Gospels 
and the book of Acts, which supplements 
St. Luke’s Gospel, St. Paul’s Epistles, the 
General Epistles, the Revelation of St. John. 

The history of the Canon of the Old Testa¬ 


ment is very meagre. The word Canon sig¬ 
nifies a rule or measuring line , and is gener¬ 
ally used to signify the collection of those 
books which came under the rule or defini¬ 
tion of “ inspired books,” or “ Holy Scrip¬ 
tures.” Of the Canon of the Old Testament, 
it is conceded that up to the captivity only 
that portion which is called the Law (2 Kings 
xxii. 18 ; Isa. xxxiv. 16) was collected and 
reckoned as sacred and closed. A strong 
evidence of this is found in the fact that the 
Samaritans only receive the five books of 
Moses as sacred. After the return from the 
Captivity history ascribes the authoritative 
collection and use of “ the Prophets” to Ezra, 
and after him to Nehemiah (2 Macc. ii. 13). 
Ezra organized “ the great assembly” by 
which the collection of the Scriptures was 
carried on and completed. The last member 
of the great assembly was Simon the Just 
(290 B.C.), and after his time no new book 
was added to the Hebrew Canon. In Alex¬ 
andria, however, in the third century B.C., 
the Greek version, called, it is said, from the 
number of the translators the Septuagint, or 
“the LXX.,” had been made, and was in 
universal use among all Greek-speaking Jews 
in the world. To this additions were made, 
viz., those which are included in “the 
Apocrypha,” and were received and used as 
part of the Holy Scriptures by the early 
Church. As has been said, they are still so 
received by the Eastern Church, and in spite 
of St. Jerome’s protest and distinction, which 
is quoted in our VI. Article, the Roman 
Church declares all but three of them canon¬ 
ical and of equal value with the other books 
of the Old Testament, and those three being 
the two books of Esdras and the Prayer of 
Manasseh. Our own Church draws the dis¬ 
tinction of St. Jerome between “ the Canon¬ 
ical books of the Old and New Testament” 
and “ the other books (as Hierome saith), 
which the Church doth read for example of 
life and instruction of manners, but yet doth 
not apply them to establish any doctrine.” 

The history of the Canon of the New Tes¬ 
tament is of course much more complete. 
At first the Church had the living voice of 
Apostles, and with this to supplement and 
explain the Sacred Scriptures of the Old 
Covenant, it needed nothing more. But 
this state of things could not last, and partly 
by design (St. Luke i. 1-4; 2 Pet. i. 15), 
chiefly, it would appear, by the power of an 
overruling Providence, not only were the 
four Gospels written, but in a series of occa¬ 
sional letters the Apostles, and especially 
St. Paul, furnished a body of commentaries 
and instructions, which have been and will 
be the sacred legacy and the Sacred Scrip¬ 
tures of the Church for all time. Though 
these writings were at first the special prop¬ 
erty of different parts of the Church, and 
though at the very first not all Churches pos¬ 
sessed them all, still as one body the Church 
possessed them all, and within another gen 
eration had gathered them all in one collec¬ 
tion. The “Apostolic Fathers,” St. Clement 





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of Home, St. Ignatius, St. Polycarp, St. 
Barnabas, frequently quote the Gospels and 
Epistles. Marcion the heretic, Irenseus, Ter- 
tullian, recognize the Gospel “comprising 
the four Gospels.” Tatian’s Diatessaron is a 
harmony of the four Gospels, and they quote 
“ the Apostles” as collections of Epistles al¬ 
ready known. Origen mentions the hooks 
of both the Old and the New Testaments by 
name, and comments on them. Other books of 
the Apostolic Fathers were read in churches, 
but were designated as “ecclesiastical,” 
“read,” or “disputed,” though they were 
not forbidden till the Council of Laodicea, 
360 a.d. The persecution of Diocletian, 303 
a.d., was especially directed against the 
Churches and the Scriptures of the Chris¬ 
tians, “that the Churches should be razed 
and the Scriptures consumed with fire,” but it 
had the good effect to sharpen the distinction 
between “ the Holy Scriptures” and all other 
writings, and the use of the word “ Canoni¬ 
cal,” to distinguish those which were “in¬ 
spired and sacred,” may be said to date 
from this time. The controversies of the 
fourth century give frequent testimony to 
the fact that there was a general consent to 
the Canon of both the Old Testament and 
the New. 

The earliest MSS. known date from that 
century and the following,—the Sinaitic and 
Vatican Codices (fourth century), and the 
Alexandrian and Ephraemic (fifth century). 
Many hundreds, more or less complete, are 
in existence and known, dating from every 
century since that time. These which have 
been named are evidently intended for pub¬ 
lic use, and, of course, represent older man¬ 
uscripts which have perished. They con¬ 
tain more or less entirely both the Old and 
the New Testaments. 

Attempts were made very early to divide 
the books into portions for convenience of 
use, but our present division into chapters 
dates only from the thirteenth century, and 
is the work of Cardinal Hugo, of Sancto Caro. 
The division into verses is later still, and the 
work of Stephens, the printer, in the six¬ 
teenth century. 

The Scriptures were first received by the 
Church in Greek, and there is no known 
translation into Latin till Tertullian quotes 
that which was in use in Africa. The first 
attempt at translation into Anglo-Saxon 
was b 3 r Caedman, in the sixth century, 
and after him by the Venerable Bede. 
Wickliffe’s version in the fourteenth century 
was the first complete English translation. 
The first printed edition of the New Testa¬ 
ment in English was Tyndale’s, probably 
printed at Worms. Coverdale’s Bible was 
printed abroad in 1535 a.d. Cranmer’s 
“Great Bible,” in 1540 a.d., was the first 
appointed “ to be read in Churches.” The 
Genevan Bible of 1560 a.d. was for three- 
fourths of a century the popular Bible 
in England. The “ Bishops’ Bible” of 1568 
a.d. is that from which the Prayer-Book 
version of the Psalms is taken. Theauthor- 


ized version, known as King James’s Bible, 
dates from 1611 a.d., since which time till 
the year 1881 a.d. no revision by authority 
has been attempted. 

II. This bald and imperfect sketch of the his¬ 
tory of the Bible leaves upon the mind of the 
reader at first the impression of uncertainty 
and lack of the authority which we have 
been accustomed to associate with the Bible. 
The Bible is fragmentary instead of being 
one complete work, and the history is frag¬ 
mentary and as incomplete. The authors 
of many books are not named. They do not 
plainly set forth claims of their own author¬ 
ity. The record of their origin is often not 
what we would desire or expect. The Canon 
was not established at once and finally. 
There is little apparent unity of time or 
place or purpose in the different books. 

And yet out of these fragments, and under 
circumstances of the kingdom and people 
of Israel and of the early Church most un¬ 
favorable, grew and has been made up a 
collection which, without change of one 
part to adapt it to another, is so completely 
one that to many a reader of the Bible the 
knowledge comes with a kind of shock that 
it is not one in the same sense that a history 
or a treatise on arithmetic is one. The 
unity is so complete and acknowledged by 
friend and foe that it has passed into com¬ 
mon speech and thought, and the bitterest 
enemy of the “ Christian superstition” con¬ 
siders that when he has delivered a blow at 
Daniel or St. Peter’s Epistle he has smitten 
the whole fabric, while many a diligent 
reader of the Bible “reads a chapter” with¬ 
out being compelled to recognize the differ¬ 
ence between Gospel and Epistle, between 
history and poetry, or even between Old 
Testament and New. That is to say, in a 
true and deep sense the Bible is one book, 
and they who so regard it are not mistaken. 
It hras grown with the growth of a living 
thing, and the life of it has been the Spirit 
who spake by the prophets. 

The true character of this Divine Library 
can better be understood from another point 
of view. The Scriptures contain in them¬ 
selves the record of the effect which they 
have had in the world, and their work is on 
record and in sight. The history of the 
people of Israel is the story of the educa¬ 
tion of a people from the lowest beginnings 
to the highest forms of civilization and en¬ 
lightenment. In depth of thought, in pure¬ 
ness of morals, in lofty spiritual conceptions, 
and at the same time in the practical bear¬ 
ing of its wisdom upon daily life and upon 
society, no literature of any ancient nation 
compares with that of the people whom 
Moses led out of Egypt. And upon that 
foundation is built the structure of the New 
Testament. To compare the Christian Scrip¬ 
tures with the writings of their own time or 
of any other is impossible. Their character 
and their effect is one, and it is unique. 

III. ^he Old Testament is therefore the 
history of a nation, and to be understood it 





BIBLE 


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must be read as a history. The story begins 
with the beginning of tbe whole race, and 
then is narrowed to the history of a family 
which becomes a great nation. That nation 
suffers reverses and is broken up, but it does 
not perish till its work is done. This his¬ 
tory is not contained only in the historical 
books. The prophets are woven into it, 
and each of the other books and each por¬ 
tion of them falls into its place. 

The first book tells the story of the earth 
from its creation “in the beginning,” 
through successive changes until man’s crea¬ 
tion, and then goes on to relate the history 
of the race until the choice of one family, 
which henceforward becomes its almost ex¬ 
clusive subject. There is hardly a passage 
or a verse in the first part of the book of Gene¬ 
sis, i.e., that part of it which relates the early 
history of the earth and of mankind, which 
has not been the object of attack and the 
subject of controversy. The^ accounts of 
the creation, of the fall, of the flood, the 
chronology, the theology,—everything in 
the book and everything about it has been 
denied and defended. Its Mosaic author¬ 
ship has been impugned. It has been 
separated into two and three and an indefi¬ 
nite number of documents ascribed to as 
many authors. But still the book remains. 
Its account of the creation is declared to be 
“ a remarkable anticipation of the conclu¬ 
sions of science.” Its account of the fall of 
man is our only solution of the problem of 
evil in the world. The critics never have 
agreed in the results of their criticism. The 
Mosaic authorship is unshaken. And the 
historical character of the narrative rests 
on firmer ground than ever. 

The remaining four books of the Penta¬ 
teuch relate the history of that chosen 
people from the time of their great leader 
and lawgiver, Moses, down to the time of 
their establishment in the land which had 
been promised to them. 

From Moses to David marks the trial and 
failure of the theocratic system, or rather 
the failure of the people to come up to the 
lofty ideal of that system. The three char¬ 
acters of prophet, priest, and king are re¬ 
markably blended in Samuel; but they are 
never reunited. He is the one chosen to 
anoint the king over the people, and to 
establish the line of the prophets which be¬ 
comes from that time prominent. To this 
period belong the books of Joshua, Judges, 
Buth. From David to the Captivity is the 
period of the kingdom, though in the second 
generation it was divided and continued 
as two kingdoms. The worship of Jehovah 
was established at Jerusalem. The prophets 
prophesied as special messengers of tbe Lord 
to both kingdoms. To this period belong 
the historical books of Samuel, Kings, and 
Chronicles, the prophecies of Isaiah, Jere¬ 
miah, the earlier of the minor prophets, the 
greater part of the Psalms, and the books 
of Solomon. During and after the Cap¬ 
tivity, Ezekiel, Daniel, Haggai, Zechariah, 


Malachi, many of the Psalms, and the his¬ 
torical books of Ezra and ISTehemiah. The 
book of Job is one of which the date and 
author are unknown, but apparently it is 
one of the earliest, if not the very earliest, of 
all. 

These different books represent different 
stages of the national life and of the na¬ 
tional education. The state of society in 
Genesis is patriarchal. When the children 
of Israel come prominently forward in 
Exodus, they are bondmen in Egypt. The 
Law is given to a people degraded by long 
bondage. Joshua, Judges, Ruth, depict a 
state of society of the modest and most 
primitive. The books of the kingdom show 
us a nation highly cultivated and enlight¬ 
ened. From that condition they fell away, 
but the lofty spiritual conceptions and high 
moral purposes which had belonged to them 
at their best remained to them, and kept 
them from ever becoming really like the 
nations around them. There is in the his¬ 
tory a distinct advance from time to time. 
The nation is being educated, as we can see 
very clearly. 

IY. But while, say during the five cen¬ 
turies from Moses to Solomon, there is a 
continual progress and education of the peo¬ 
ple, evident in their customs, social, politi¬ 
cal, and even religious, in the evils that are 
rebuked and in the form of the rebukes, in 
the form of the instructions that are given 
to them, there is in th’e story from beginning 
to end one unchangeable element. He who 
in the beginning created the heavens and 
the earth is the Lord, who spake to Abra¬ 
ham and to Moses, who was revealed on 
Sinai, and who made the promise to David 
and to Solomon. The Law that He gave on 
Sinai embraced all the principles of all the 
law that He ever gave them. Higher con¬ 
ception of God, or of man’s duty to Him, 
than was revealed then, and later in Deuter¬ 
onomy,—“ The Lord our God is one Lord : 
and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with 
all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and 
with all thy might” (Deut. vi. 4, 5), — was 
never revealed to them or to man. All 
that was taught them, and all that was 
given them, was involved in those first com¬ 
mandments. The priesthood as being nearer 
by their office to the source of truth, and as the 
teaching caste, no doubt were always some¬ 
what in advance of the common people, but 
they had no secret knowledge, and nothing 
which did not belong alike to all and each of 
the “ kingdom of priests” (Ex. xix. 6). Moses 
expressed the view of true wisdom and the 
view of the whole law when he rejoiced that 
some were prophesying in the camp, “ would 
God that all the Lord’s people were proph¬ 
ets.” Our Saviour appeals to the saying 
to Moses at the bush, “ I am the God of 
Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob,” as 
proof of the resurrection of the dead. The 
progress and education of the nation was not 
in the way of discovery or development of 
new truth : but it was a progress and edu- 





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cation up to a standard which was set for 
them on Sinai, and in the call of Moses and in 
the promise to Abraham, and never changed. 

This thought of the perfectness and unity 
of the truth which was revealed gives us 
the key to the unity of the Scriptures. We 
can understand how the inspired words of 
the One God should be essentially one with 
each other. But we have an explanation 
more definite still. That explanation lies in 
the one purpose of God, which was first 
revealed in Eden, in the promise of the 
“ seed of the woman who should bruise the 
serpent’s head,” which was repeated to 
Abraham, “ in thy seed shall all the nations 
of the earth he blessed,” and again to David 
of the Son, who should sit on his throne 
and reign forever. “ Your father Abra¬ 
ham rejoiced to see my day,” our Saviour 
said. Of all the Law and the prophets He 
said, “ I am not come to destroy but to ful¬ 
fill.” “ The testimony of Jesus is the spirit 
of prophecy.” The children of Israel were 
chosen and kept and taught and trained for 
the fulfillment of that one promise and pur¬ 
pose of Almighty God. What was true of 
the whole system was true of every part of 
it. Every sacrifice was a type of Christ. 
Every law and every prophecy foretold 
Him. 

Still more evidently true is it of the Scrip¬ 
tures of the New Testament that they depend 
upon Christ and reveal Him. The Gospels 
are biographies of Him. The Epistles apply 
the truth as it is in Him, to establish and 
edify His Kingdom and to instruct and 
guide His followers. They are nothing with¬ 
out Him, and it is in vain to try to under¬ 
stand them without the presupposition of 
faith in Him. 

The faith in Christ is therefore the bond 
of union between the Old Testament and the 
New. Out of the Old Testament had grown 
up at our Saviour’s coming a strong and 
definite expectation of the Christ, the Son 
of David. And though many held that ex¬ 
pectation along with such errors that they 
could not recognize the fulfillment, He did 
fulfill it, and it was the purpose of the Gos¬ 
pels and Epistles to show how He fulfilled 
it. The Old and the New are, therefore, one 
“ in Him.” We could have neither without 
the other, but neither without Him. 

Y. The Bible is therefore a history, and a 
history which has one key, and which cen¬ 
tres in one Person. But there is another 
view of its historical character which is in¬ 
volved in this one, and which is not less 
necessary in order to understand either the 
history which the Scriptures relate or their 
own history as books. It would be impossi¬ 
ble for any man to understand the first sen¬ 
tence of the Old Testament who did not 
know who is the God who created, or to be¬ 
lieve it who did not believe in Him. It 
would be impossible to form any idea of the 
connection of the different portions without 
some recognition of Christ our Lord as the 
object and fulfillment of the purpose of God. 


But not less necessary than these two first 
principles of scriptural criticism is another,— 
the recognition of the kingdom of Israel and 
of its fulfillment, the Kingdom of Christ on 
earth, in their corporate and official capacity 
of the witness and keeper of Holy Scripture. 
The Old Testament Scriptures were written 
and committed to the Kingdom and Church 
of Israel (Korn. iii. 2) under all its varied 
circumstances. It is as necessary to keep 
this thought in mind in order to understand 
them as it is with regard to any history or 
public document of any nation. While they 
contain many things which are universally 
true and applicable to all times and peoples, 
they contain a great deal which is only di¬ 
rectly true and applicable to this particular 
people and perhaps to this particular time, 
and even that universal truth must be seen 
to be understood through the medium of this 
“ peculiar people.” 

This is on^practical bearing of the princi¬ 
ple. Another is no less important. These 
Scriptures are the inspired Word of God, and 
this chosen nation is the chosen people of 
God in the same sense and for the same pur¬ 
pose,—“ an inspired nation” in Dean Stan¬ 
ley’s words. To give any meaning to the 
words “ inspired” or “ chosen of God,” is to 
suppose His overruling presence with them 
as a people in the reception and preserva¬ 
tion of His words to them. He used men 
to write them. Who the men were or what 
the pen they wrote with or the material on 
which they wrote we do not know, but the 
fact that we have them proves that they were 
written, and proves also the fact of their 
preservation. The men and the names 
passed away, for they were acting officially,— 
the prophet is one who “ speaks for God,” 
—and what they spoke and wrote by vir¬ 
tue of their office, the whole living body 
acting by its various members, and through 
generations, tested, sifted, preserved by vir¬ 
tue of its office. When men neglected their 
duty God overruled their neglect, and when 
some reformation repairs the ruined Temple 
of the Lord, under the rubbish they find 
“ the book of the Law of the Lord” (2 Chron. 
xxxiv. 14). The practical bearing of this 
principle as an answer to many of the attacks 
of unbelief is very evident. History and con¬ 
stitution and laws and poetry imply and 
prove the nation to which they belonged. 
The strong proof that the Scriptures of the 
Old Testament are all that we believe them 
to be lies in the testimony which the people 
of Israel supply us by their existence as a 
people. In this wider view many of the 
smaller questions and tests of words and 
styles and imagined probabilities of men who 
read the books of three thousand years ago 
with nineteenth century eyes simply sink 
out of sight. 

We can see the bearing of this principle 
upon the Old Testament Scriptures. It is 
no less important to the understanding of 
the New Testament. The Scriptures of the 
New Testament were written and commit- 





BIBLE 


99 


BIBLE 


ted, not by chance, nor to all the world, nor 
to any miraculous agency, but to the Church 
of Christ, to which they stand related pre¬ 
cisely as do the Scriptures of the Old Testa¬ 
ment to the Church of Israel. It hardly 
needs to be suggested that the Epistle to the 
Church of God, which is at Corinth, sup¬ 
poses the existence of the Church of God at 
Corinth, and that one who would understand 
that Epistle must read it with the under¬ 
standing of a Church thoroughly organized 
and possessing all that was needed for the 
full performance of the work of a Church: 
Creed, Sacraments, Liturgy, Psalms, and 
many other things not so desirable, but all 
indicative of corporate existence. What is 
true of this one letter is just as true, though 
not always so evident, of all the rest of the 
New Testament. No one can read and un¬ 
derstand alike why some things are said, and 
some equally important are omitted, and 
many others only hinted at, who does not 
read these Scriptures with the understand¬ 
ing of the Church to which and for which 
they were written. The world receives them 
from the Church. It can only read them 
understandingly in the Church. 

The same principle clears up many difficul¬ 
ties with regard to the history of the Canon 
of the New Testament. Written to and for 
the Church, that Church preserved them. 
Fathers and Councils were the voices, blend¬ 
ing many in one, which spake the judgment 
of the living body in which the guiding 
Spirit had come to abide at Pentecost. We 
have an idea of what is meant by “ public 
Opinion,” “ the spirit of the age,” etc. The 
Canon of Scripture expresses the matured 
judgment of the Church of God, whose office 
it is to be “the pillar and ground of the 
truth,” and to which the Spirit was prom¬ 
ised, and at Pentecost was sent to abide, who 
“ shall guide you into all truth.” 

VI. In referring to these first principles 
of the truth about the Holy Scriptures we 
have not been unmindful of the recent at¬ 
tacks and the bold claims of modern criti¬ 
cism. We have had them constantly in 
mind, and this article has been shaped with 
reference to them, not with a view to avoid 
any of them, but to suggest the best way for 
the ordinary reader to meet them. There 
are two kinds of criticism,—one is the criti¬ 
cism of true, and therefore humble and 
faithful, scholarship, which regards no point 
of the truth beneath its notice, and so is not 
ashamed to busy itself with words and jots 
and points of the Scriptures, but which is 
not afraid of any truth wherever it finds it, 
but which, at the same time, recognizes the 
fact that there are weightier matters than 
these, and that there is truth which is higher 
and deeper than men can see or reach, and 
which is to be accepted not on evidence of 
right, but of reason and faith. We need 
never fear such criticism or its results. There 
is another criticism which we need not so 
much fear as shun,—the dishonest and de¬ 
structive criticism of determined unbelief, 


sometimes very learned, and sometimes very 
shallow and ignorant and boastful, which 
begins its investigations into the Scriptures 
in the spirit of the detective, with a mind 
warped and a heart hardened by determined 
prejudice. It says beforehand, There can be 
no such thing as a miracle; a real prophecy 
is impossible. There is no God, or if there 
is, He does not interfere with the order of 
nature and in the affairs of man ; the super¬ 
natural is the work of imagination, the di¬ 
vine is the unknowable, and then in this 
spirit of “free inquiry” it proceeds to con¬ 
vict the Scriptures of folly and falsehood, 
and calls its conclusions “ the results of the 
higher criticism.” So another “sweeps the 
heavens with his telescope and finds no God 
there,” and another “carves the living 
pound,” and with knife and glass and un¬ 
clean hand searches and finds no life in the 
carcass. Even so “ their witness agrees not 
together,” and the constant contradictions 
of the critics, both in their principles and 
in their conclusions, are enough to allay our 
fears if we had any. There is literally not 
a book of Holy Scripture which has not 
been the subject of such attacks, and it 
may be safely said that no book could possi¬ 
bly stand, and no evidence could be accepted, 
upon their principles. If the judge begins 
the trial of a case by declaring that all the 
witnesses are liars before he hears them, 
then no evidence can prove a case, and not 
only can no miracle and no prophecy be 
proved, but no ordinary event in life. If 
differences in style in the writings of one 
who prophesied during the reign of four 
kings proves that Isaiah could not have 
written all his prophecy, and demands a 
“great unknown” to supply his lack, and 
if the same reasons require two Zechariahs 
and two or more Daniels and two St. Johns, 
and two—the “ Elohist” and the “ Jehovist” 
—or a dozen writers of Genesis, and a forger 
of Deuteronomy, and even of St. Paul’s 
Epistles, then no great poet or author who 
ever lived ever wrote his own writings, and 
no man who “ now is old” could ever “ have 
been young.” 

The truth about such attacks is that they 
are only new in form, they are old in spirit. 
They are the trials and tests not only of 
our faith, but of the truth. The final re¬ 
sults have always been good. Small errors 
in the text have been detected and corrected, 
and there is a constant return to the very 
perfection of the original writings. But 
that we may not misunderstand the bearing 
of such an admission, let us understand just 
what it implies. Such a sifting and com¬ 
parison of hundreds of old manuscripts, and 
the existence of such errors or any errors in 
some or other of them, proves two things,— 
in the first place, the vast number of other 
manuscripts which they represent, and there¬ 
fore of other witnesses to the truth, and also 
proves the true existence of a common and 
perfect original as certainly as the converg¬ 
ing of paths into roads, and of roads into a 






BIBLE 


100 


BIBLE 


city, proves the existence of the city into 
which and out of which they lead. The 
finding and expunging of a word or a sen¬ 
tence or a passage (and especially one which 
has no special doctrinal significance, and 
which is, if not a copyist’s error, at best a 
paraphrase or comment), so far from shak¬ 
ing our faith in the rest, only confirms our 
assurance. When the expert clerk in a bank 
discovers, by the aid of eye and glass, and 
scales, in packages of bills or a pile of gold 
and silver pieces, one which is counterfeit, 
but which, by its close imitation of the 
genuine, has escaped the ordinary eye, in¬ 
stead of rushing to the conclusion that all 
are therefore counterfeit, you are assured by 
the same tests that all the rest are true. 

“Iam not aware,” says Professor San- 
day, of Oxford, “ of a single discovery of 
new documents or materials bearing, how¬ 
ever indirectly, on New Testament criti¬ 
cism, that has tended in any way to shake 
the foundations of our faith, while by far 
the larger number have tended very posi¬ 
tively to strengthen them. Nor is the pros¬ 
pect any less favorable as regards specula¬ 
tive, analytical, or reconstructive criticism. 
Here, perhaps, there is more reason for dis¬ 
quiet. Bold and revolutionary hypotheses 
have been thrown out, and will probably be 
thrown out again. But when we look back 
upon past controversies, we shall see in¬ 
deed that they have left a residuum, but a 
residuum that leaves Christianity no weaker, 
but rather stronger, than it was before. 
Errors are corrected; exaggerations are 
modified; our understanding of the New 
Testament grows in depth and fullness. 
And in the mean time, as it seems to me, 
certain positions have been placed beyond 
the reach of controversy. They are so 
much secure ground from which we can 
look out in safety, even though there may 
be obscurity outside. It is only a matter of 
time, and in the end all will come out right 
again. One truth cannot permanently con¬ 
flict with another truth.” 

There are “ things hard to be understood 
in all the Holy Scriptures, which they that 
are unlearned and unstable wrest to their 
own destruction.” But none the less we 
are commanded by our Lord to “search” 
them, only to read them in faith in Him if 
we would read them safely and profitably. 
They will be attacked, and many will deny 
and reject them. But we need neither be 
misled by their errors nor fear their attacks. 
Some of them proceed from ignorance. One 
is reminded of the anecdote of Franklin, 
who being in company with a number of 
French infidels, who were ridiculing the 
Bible, took from his pocket “ an old book 
that he had picked up at a book-stall,” and 
read to them, to their delight, the “ Prayer 
of Habakkuk,” and then compelled them to 
confess that they had never read the book 
on which they were sitting in judgment. 
Others proceed from other causes. But we 
need not fear them. We have endeavored 


to indicate some of the guards against them 
in those deeper and wider principles of 
scriptural criticism without which any stu¬ 
dent will go astray. With which we come 
down to these books from a wider view and 
a higher position. 

It may be well to remind ourselves that 
one single fulfilled prophecy, such as the 
many that cluster about our Saviour’s com¬ 
ing, is decisive agaihst the denials of proph¬ 
ecy and for the belief in it. One fact of 
definite, Messianic expectation, once so per¬ 
sistently denied and now so universally con¬ 
ceded, founded on the prophecy of Daniel, 
is enough to establish the truth of Daniel tbe 
prophet. One miracle, and above all the 
miracle of the Resurrection, justifies and 
establishes the belief in miracles. “ If all 
the rest of the Christian Scriptures were lost 
or unauthentic, the four great undisputed 
Epistles of St. Paul furnish us with all the 
essentials of the Christian Faith.” So that 
even against unbelieving criticism we are at 
liberty to choose our own ground, and to 
summon an enemy to stand upon it. But 
for our own purpose and advantage the true 
course is not even to take our stand at first 
even on such certain truth. We can come 
more safely and wisely to the examination 
even of such evidences — of which there is 
abundance — from above. Granted the be¬ 
ing of God, and the supernatural is natural, 
things hard to be understood become matters 
of course. Prophecy is the necessary declara¬ 
tion of His will, and miracles the natural 
evidence and means by which He accom¬ 
plishes it. If this is His will and His work, 
then these ways are such as are to be ex¬ 
pected. Instead of fastening on some lit¬ 
tle point and testing the passage by a word, 
and the book by a misunderstood passage, 
and the whole by a darkened past, and so at 
every step shutting out the evidence and 
truth of God, we see in the Scriptures the 
Word of Him who is higher than the Scrip¬ 
tures, and who must be believed in, in order 
to understand His Word, the revelation of 
Christ the Incarnate Word without whom 
they are naught, and the message delivered 
to “ the Church which is His Body.” They 
are not, therefore, all our religion, nor the 
sum of the trust committed to us. They do 
not lose but gain to our view when we 
understand that they are not alone, but that 
they are as the law of the Kingdom, filling 
their place and fulfilling their work in the 
great sj^stem of the Kingdom of the great 
God and our Saviour. Then we can read 
the books in their places, and each chapter 
and verse and word is magnified and enlight¬ 
ened by the light that falls upon it from the 
sun of the system. It is fully in accord with 
this principle that “ the Article of the Suffi¬ 
ciency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation 
was placed by our Anglican Fathers next 
after the Articles of the Trinity.” “Holy 
Scripture containeth all things necessary 
to salvation, so that whatsoever is not 
read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is 








BIDDING PRAYERS 


101 


BISHOP 


not to be required of any man that it should 
be believed as an article of the Faith, or be I 
thought requisite or necessary to salvation.” 
And it is in the same spirit that it goes on 
to define what is meant by Holy Scripture, j 
with an appeal to the general judgment of 
the Church,—“ those canonical books of the 
Old and New Testament of whose authority 
was never any doubt in the Church.” 

Authorities: Wordsworth’s Commentary, 
The Bible in the Church, Westcott, Aids to 
Faith, Encyclopedia Britannica, Proceedings 
of Reading Church Congress. 

Ret. L. W. Gibson. 

Bidding Prayers. To bid not only meant 
to order, but also to pray (c/. German, beten). 
Bidding prayer, then, is a monition or call to 
prayer. It is retained in our “ Let us pray.” 
In the 55th Canon of 1603 a.d., the form of 
bidding prayer was given thus : ‘ ‘ Before all 
sermons, lectures, and homilies the preachers 
and ministers shall move the people to join 
with them in prayer in this form, or to this 
effect , as briefl} 7 as conveniently they may : 
Ye shall pray for Christ’s Holy Catholic 
Church ; that is, for the whole congregation 
of Christian people dispersed throughout 
the whole world, and especially for the 
Churches of England, Scotland, and Ireland. 
And herein I require you most especially to 
pray for the King’s most excellent Majesty, 
our sovereign, Lord James, King of England, 
Scotland, France, and Ireland, defender of 
the faith and supreme governor in these 
his realms and all other his dominions and 
countries over all persons, in all causes as 
well ecclesiastical as temporal. Ye shall 
also pray for our gracious Queen Anne, the 
noble Prince Henry, and the rest of the 
King’s and Queen’s royal issue. Ye shall 
pray for the ministers of God’s Holy Word 
and sacraments, as well Archbishops and 
Bishops as other pastors and curates. Ye 
shall also pray for the King’s most honor¬ 
able Council and for all the nobility and 
magistrates of this realm, that all and every 
of these in their several callings may serve 
truly and faithfully to the glory of God and 
the edifying and well governing of His people, 
remembering the account they must make. 
Also ye shall pray for the whole Commons 
of this realm that they may live in the true 
faith and fear of God, in humble obedience 
to the King, and brotherly charity one to 
another. Finally, let us praise God for all 
those which are departed out of this life in 
the faith of Christ, and pray unto God 
that we may have grace to direct our lives 
after their good example, that this life ended 
we may be made partakers with them of the 
glorious resurrection in the life everlasting.” 
It always concluded with the Lord’s Prayer. 
The names and estates are varied, of course, 
with the times and the sovereigns, but the 
bidding prayer is still used in England. As 
it often happens that it would be very con¬ 
venient to deliver a lecture or sermon to a 
class or guild without the Evening Prayer 
preceding it, it is worth the while to con¬ 


sider whether it might not be advisable for 
the Church to permit some such form of bid¬ 
ding prayer to be used under due restric¬ 
tions. 

Bier. A portable carriage for the dead. 

Bigamy. The crime of marrying a sec¬ 
ond wife while the first is still living. In 
the early Church it meant also the marry¬ 
ing of a second wife after the death of 
the first,—an act which was discouraged in 
every way, it being sometimes an impedi¬ 
ment to holy orders. But the rule and the 
opposition varied in various parts of the 
Church and at different times. 

Birretta. The square cap worn by for¬ 
eign ecclesiastics over the zucchetto, or close 
skull-cap. It was probably a late introduc¬ 
tion after tonsure was fully enforced. 

Bishop, The Rights, Duties, and Privi¬ 
leges of a. Immediately before His ascen¬ 
sion into Heaven, in a place apart where 
He had appointed, our Lord, in the pres¬ 
ence of His eleven Apostles, asserting the 
plenitude of His power, “ All power is 
given unto me in heaven and in earth” (St. 
Matthew xxviii. 18), made this the basis of 
the fullness of the functions with which He 
sent forth His Apostles to their work : “ Go 
ye, therefore, and teach all nations. . . . 
and, lo, I am with you alway.” 11 As (/ca0 og) 
my Father has sent me, even so send 1 you” 
(St. John xx. 21). Of the fullness of the 
power with which He was Himself endued, 
according to this measure He invested His 
Apostles with authority to carry on the 
work which He had begun. Realizing the 
sole responsibility thus placed upon them, 
they fill up their number (Acts i. 26), and 
in due time constitute the subordinate 
orders of Deacon and Presbyter (Acts vi. 6; 
Titus i. 5), for the better execution of the 
task that at first rested wholly upon them¬ 
selves. With the headship of the Church 
under Christ in this office always clearly 
indicated, but under varying names, it set¬ 
tled within the first century after Christ 
upon that designation of Bishop, which 
was used at times by the Apostles, and has 
been employed ever since. At first the 
oversight was in the body of the Apostles 
jointly. Then a single Apostle had the 
care of those whom he had been the means 
of converting to the Christian faith. Soon 
after this there arose naturally the Diocesan 
Episcopate, with the immediate authority 
of Bishops restricted to their several Dio¬ 
ceses, along with a joint responsibility on 
the part of each Bishop, as a part of the 
general Episcopate, for the welfare of the 
entire Church. 

The duty of general oversight in the 
Bishop very soon compelled the designation 
of particular Presbyters to have the imme¬ 
diate spiritual care of the several districts 
or parishes as they were successively formed. 
These Presbyters at first were sent forth 
from the Bishop’s Church, and acted with 
delegated authority. As the number of 
Christians and the distance from the Bishop 









BISHOP 


102 


BISHOP 


increased, these Presbyters came gradually 
to act with greater independence, and the 
relation of their parishes with the cathedral 
became more indefinite. At the same time 
the connection of every baptized person 
with the Bishop was marked, and the sig¬ 
nificance of the sole office which was im¬ 
mediately created in the Church by our 
Lord was emphasized in the renewal before 
him of the baptismal vows, and the receiv¬ 
ing from him in confirmation the seal of 
the Holy Ghost. 

The distinct purpose declared for which 
the number of the Apostles was completed 
was that the person so chosen might be a 
witness to the resurrection of our Lord. 
This office of the Episcopate, to hold, and 
hand on, and bear witness to, the purity of 
the faith, has always been very important. 
As different interpretations of the Holy 
Scriptures appeared, and questions arose 
about the faith which had been delivered, 
the Bishops from all parts of the Church 
were called together into Councils in order 
to bear witness to what had been held from 
the beginning, and to determine questions 
of discipline and order. This was the order 
in the Church with whom the decisions as 
to doctrine rested. 

This witnessing function of the Epis¬ 
copate, coming among the other reasons 
stated, from the fact that it never died, and 
could be distinctly traced in the history of 
the several Sees, was naturally joined with 
the executive function. Whatever others 
could do the Bishop could do, and more. 
All functions ended up in him. All appeals 
might finally come to him for settlement. 
He was the visible centre of communion. 
Through him the Diocese and its members 
were connected with the universal Church. 
He was the guardian of the rights and 
privileges of the several members of the 
Diocese as against each other. 

This executive function of the Bishop 
manifested itself in several forms : 

(1) Having a seat in all General Coun¬ 
cils of the Church, he has the position of 
presidency in his own Diocese. He holds 
his own office in trust, being obliged to see 
that its powers and dignities suffer no dimi¬ 
nution while they are in his hands. He is 
also the trustee of the traditional and imme¬ 
morial immunities and privileges of all the 
clergymen and laymen in his jurisdiction. 
The interest and the greatest efficiency of 
the whole Church are involved in the* de¬ 
velopment to the highest point of all the 
capacities which are in each office, and in 
the prevention of the dishonoring of any 

osition or the diminution of its efficiency 

y the intrusion of other agencies out of 
their rightful place. This duty comes 
rightly on the Bishop. 

Apostolic example shows that this rule of 
the Bishop is not designed to be autocratic, 
but to be shared and concurred in by the 
counsel of the Presbyters and Brethren (Acts 
xv. 23). In all forms of ecclesiastical ac¬ 


tion, whether in the adoption of Canons, or 
in the election of Bishops, or in the regula¬ 
tion of the minor business of the Church, 
this initiation of the Bishop along with the 
deliberate concurrence of the other orders in 
the Church has been seen. 

(2) Outside of conciliar action the Bishop 
is responsible for the efficiency of the Church 
in all of the multiform activities of a living, 
aggressive body, all the time confronting 
new questions. Responsible for the spiritual 
interests of the Diocese, his original right 
of nomination of ministers to all parishes 
has yet its trace remaining in the need that 
he should concur in all elections of clergy¬ 
men to cures, in order to the validity of the 
action. In case of differences between the 
minister and congregation, which may not 
otherwise be appeased, with him, either per¬ 
sonally or by deputy, the business of final 
appeal and settlement lies. In case of fault 
of any sort alleged in the minister, the 
Bishop, on a formal presentation of the case 
to his notice, takes order for the constitution 
of the court, if he thinks that the matter 
should go to trial, and the pronouncement 
of sentence if guilt is found. 

The Deacon is peculiarly under the Bish¬ 
op's care. His studies, as are also those of 
the candidate for holy orders, are prosecuted 
under the Bishop’s direction. The Deacon 
is also subject to the Bishop’s control in offi¬ 
ciating in the Diocese. 

To the parish and the laity, from the 
Bishop, passed, in large degree, the power 
of nomination to the rectorship when the 
income of the parish went directly to the 
clergymen, instead of, as at first, coming to 
the Bishop for distribution. Where, how¬ 
ever, the Bishop now does not nominate, he 
generally recommends for vacant positions, 
with an influence which is increased, not 
merely by the fact of his office, but also by 
his larger knowledge and the disinterested¬ 
ness of his motives. In any event the 
choice of a rector has to be communicated 
to him and be approved by him. 

(3) As the supreme executive officer of the 
Diocese, the distribution of the moneys of 
the Diocese is largely under his influence, 
if not his control. He, in consultation with 
others, distributes the money which is con¬ 
tributed for the missionary purposes of the 
Diocese, as well all the educational and elee¬ 
mosynary funds which are at disposal. To 
him also, as having a better knowledge of 
the real condition and needs of the Diocese, 
are intrusted, from time to time, trust moneys 
for distribution according to his judgment, 
for church building and for personal and 
parochial aid. 

The relation of the Bishop not merely 
with the Diocese, but with the general 
Church, is shown in the manner of his 
election and otherwise. It is required that 
he shall receive at least a majority of the 
votes of the clergymen and parishes having 
seats in the Convention ; but his election is 
still incomplete until he receives the votes 





BISHOP 


103 


BLOOD 


of a majority of the Dioceses, as represented 
by their Standing Committees or deputations 
in General Convention; and after this the 
evidence of the consent of a majority of the 
Bishops. He may not resign his office until 
he has not only the consent of the Diocese, 
but of the House of Bishops. If charged 
with fault, he is tried by the House of 
Bishops sitting as a court. 

The official designation of the Bishop in 
this country, as recommended by the Gen¬ 
eral Convention of 1785, was “ The Right 
Reverend A. B., Bishop of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church in C. D.” 

It would not be strange that, from disuse 
on the part of the Bishop, or from ambition 
or excessive energy on the part of others, in 
the passage of time some of the original 
functions of the Episcopate may have lapsed 
or been intruded upon. 

(1) The right of ordering the Liturgy and 
the Ritual of his Diocese, which originally 
belonged to the Bishop, has passed to the 
legislation of the national Church, to which 
the Bishop has virtually ceded a portion of 
his right. A disposition, also, practically to 
regulate the Ritual, without reference to the 
Bishop, has not infrequently appeared in 
certain ministers and parishes of a Dio¬ 
cese. 

(2) The headship of the Diocese as repre¬ 
sented in Council, and the possibility of re¬ 
jecting all measures which did not meet 
with his approval, has in many instances 
shrunken to the honorary presidency of the 
body, and only such a voice in disapproval 
as belongs to any clergyman in the Diocese. 

But his authority as being the chief offi¬ 
cer, and his veto, which is inseparable from- 
his right to legislate and to discipline, being 
inherent in the office of Bishop, are not for¬ 
feited when either not used or held in abey¬ 
ance through force of circumstances. 

(3) Erom non-residence and immersion in 
other interests the right of the Bishop in 
his cathedral has declined, in many cases, to 
the concession of but a formal visitation, 
and the privilege of an honorary seat in the 
choir. 

(4) The right and the duty of giving holy 
orders, which is a primary office of the 
Episcopate, have in cases been so abridged 
by the excessive powers asserted by bodies 
having advisory functions, that it has been 
impossible for Bishops collectively or acting 
singly to give the Episcopate, or even ap¬ 
proach the question of the fitness of the 
persons proposed for admission to the lower 
orders. 

It is believed, however, that, with regard 
to these and many other functions of a like 
character, the disposition in the Church is to 
restore to the Bishop that which for the Di¬ 
vine regimen of the Church, and therefore 
the better efficiency of its work, rightly and 
originally belonged to him ; while providing 
that the wisdom and healthful influence of 
his work shall be increased by the counsel, 
the co-operation, and the necessary checks 


which come from the other constituent parts 
of the Church. 

Rt. Rev. C. F. Robertson, D.D., 

Bishop of Missouri. 

Blasphemy. Blasphemy is sometimes 
confused with profanity. A profane person 
is one who uses evil language, oaths, and 
blasphemous phrases. But a person maybe 
guilty of blasphemy without any profanity, 
for he may teach contrary to God’s honor 
or truth and yet use apparently reverent 
language. In the early Church there were 
three sorts of blasphemy distinguished: 
First, of apostates; so St. Polycarp indig¬ 
nantly replied when required to deny 
Christ: “ These eighty and six years have 
I served Him, and He never did me harm ; 
how, then, can I blaspheme my King and 
my Saviour?” Second, of heretics and 
schismatics, who yet may recommend their 
heresy by moral lives. The Church visited 
these with excommunication. The third 
sort of blasphemy was the sin against the 
Holy Ghost. What this sin was, or is, was 
much debated. At the time when our Lord 
declared it, it was a denial of the evidence by 
miracles which He worked of the power of 
the Holy Ghost. If, then, it was a sin then 
to deny,the power of the Holy Ghost, now 
it must be of the same kind. St. Athanasius 
and St. Ambrose defined it to be a denial of 
the Divinity of Christ, but St. Augustine 
defined it to be persistent and final impeni- 
tency. However this may be, the sin of 
blasphemy is committed with fearful fre¬ 
quency in this age. It is by a direct revil¬ 
ing of God a sin that marks the last age of 
the world (Rev. xvi. 9, 11, 21; 2 Tim. iii. 
2). By willfully imputing to Him attributes 
or qualities which are not possible, as injus¬ 
tice, and creation of sin, or denying His at¬ 
tributes of love, mercy, truth, and such like. 
It may be also committed by reviling His 
creatures. Thus imprecations and profane 
swearing have the nature of blasphemy. 
By the Statute Law of England the denial 
of the persons of the Trinity, of the Chris¬ 
tian religion, of the Divine authority of the 
Holy Scriptures, is made blasphemy. 

Blood. “ But flesh with the life thereof, 
which is the blood thereof, ye shall not eat” 
(Gen. ix. 4). “And whatsoever man there 
be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers 
that sojourn among you, that eateth any 
manner of blood; I will even set my face 
against that soul that eateth blood, and will 
cut him off from among his people” (Lev. 
xvii. 10). “ That ye abstain from . . . 

blood” (Acts xv. 29). 

It is very clear that in God’s sight blood 
has a sacred and significant character which 
is much disregarded. The command was 
strict, “ he shall even pour out the blood 
thereof and cover it with dust.” The Chris¬ 
tians observed it under the directions of the 
Apostolic Letter, as quoted above. Blood 
was accounted the life, and modern science 
teaches us the same. “ It is the life of all 
flesh ; the blood of it is for the life thereof.” 





BODY, MYSTICAL 


104 


BODY, NATURAL 


The loss of blood is the loss of physical life, 
and this is typical of the death of the soul. 
So Holy Scripture speaks of the “pouring 
out of the soul,” and “the offering of the 
soul.” Blood, therefore, being the life, and 
as Atonement is based upon the life of one for 
the lives of all (Rom. v. and Heb. ix. 7 sq .), 
the bloody sacrifice was the type of the one 
full sufficient sacrifice of Christ. Dor the 
life of the flesh is in the blood : “ and I have 
given it to you upon the altar to make an 
atonement for your souls: for it is the blood 
that maketh an atonement for the soul” 
(Lev. xvii. 11). If, then, the blood of the 
lamb, the heifer, or the dove could have 
such typical significance, of how much 
greater dignity must we devoutly count the 
redeeming blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
the Lamb of God, for whom were all previ¬ 
ous sacrifices and in whom their meaning 
and efficacy centred ! “ The blood of Jesus 

Christ cleanseth us from all sin.” “How 
much more shall the blood of Christ, who, 
through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself 
without spot to God, purge your conscience 
from dead works to serve the living God.” 
“ Unto Him that loved us and washed us 
from our sins in His own blood, and hath 
made us kings and priests unto God and His 
Father, to Him be glory and dominion for 
ever and ever. Amen.” “These are they 
which came out of great tribulation and 
have washed their robes and made them 
white in the blood of the Lamb.” Thence 
the blood of redemption upon the cross is 
made by Him our life. “ This is my blood” 
which is shed for you and for many for the 
remission of sins. Do this as oft as ye shall 
drink it, for the Lord Jesus had already 
said, “ Whoso eateth my Flesh, and drinketh 
my Blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise 
him up at the last day” (St. John vi. 54). 

Body, Mystical. The union between 
Christ and His members is so real, so in¬ 
timate, that St. Paul declares we are of His 
flesh and of His bones (Eph. v. 30). The 
Body into which we are so bound up is 
His Mystical Body the Church, which the 
Apostle declares we are. “ Now ye are the 
Body of Christ, and members in particular 
(1 Cor. xii. 27), but this Body hath Christ 
as its Head, “ And gave Him to be the Head 
over all things to the Church, which is His 
Body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in 
all” (Eph. i. 23). This Church, the souls and 
bodies of them that believe, He has purchased 
to Himself with His own Blood. It is a 
mystical Body, and our union in Christ is 
mystical, because it is now beyond our com¬ 
prehension, but not contrary to the analogies 
which faith supplies from the experience we 
daily have given us. ‘ It is, therefore, to be 
believed and acted upon in our spiritual life, 
for the spiritual life of the Christian is the 
Life of Christ. The Church is not only the 
fullness of Him that filleth all in all: it is 
His Bride; it is His joy. Therefore the 
joining of ourselves to Christ by baptism, 
by the Communion, by the faith, love, and 


obedience which enter into the nature of our 
spiritual life, is such and so close a union 
with Him that it is properly mystical, be¬ 
yond human knowledge, and is summed up 
in the strong words St. Paul uses : “ Ye are 
dead, and your life is hid with Christ in 
God,” and* the still more mysterious lan¬ 
guage of St. Peter: “Whereby are given 
unto us exceeding great and precious prom¬ 
ises, that by these ye might be partakers of 
the Divine nature , having escaped the cor¬ 
ruption that is in the world through lust” 
(2 Pet. i. 4). The Church is the visible ap¬ 
pointed Body for the giving and receiving 
of the gifts, graces, and influences which 
make up the mystical union of the Christian 
with his Lord. The inner mystical union 
of the life is the spiritual activity and healthy 
use of these means of grace in the man him¬ 
self. This mystical union has been treated 
of in many ways, its study and practice 
having formed a school of thought in the 
Church, which finally led into vagaries not 
warranted by Holy Scripture. 

Body, Natural. Our natural bodies, how¬ 
ever they may be viewed under the investi¬ 
gations of modern science, can finally be 
treated simply as returning to that dust out 
of which we are formed. The teachings of the 
1st and 2d chapters of Genesis are the basis, 
finally, of all that can be said of our mortal 
bodies. That we were made by God in His 
own Image, and received from Him a living 
soul from His breath, that this breath was 
the breath of lives (vide margin in A. V. and 
Ileb.), and that the subdivision of our life 
into physical, intellectual, and spiritual life, 
of which every thinking man is thoroughly 
conscious, all these are postulates with the 
Christian. The analysis of materialists can¬ 
not overthrow these, for they are aside from 
the line of study he has marked out for him¬ 
self, and the clashing comes from his effort 
to overpass the bounds between mind and 
matter. And the last analysis even of the 
materialist ends in a pre-existent ideal. 
That He can and did call our nature into 
existence by His own fiat is, of course, a 
fact that every believer in Revelation as¬ 
serts. How far, in what way it may be said 
that our body is in His Image, has ever been 
a matter of much speculation, but will be 
ever one of those mysteries solved in the 
hereafter, when we shall know even as we 
are known. Of the creation of woman, it 
may be said to be wholly of the one nature 
of man, but derivatively, and subsisting as 
subordinate, and not by original creation. 
There are in our human nature three forms 
of existence, two of them in the historical 
past, the third in the continuous flow of 
human history : Adam by original creation, 
Eve by being formed out of Adam, and 
their descendants by conception and birth. 
And this human nature thus brought into 
existence is intimately bound up in a unity 
wonderful and reacting, and typical of the 
infinite and incomprehensible unity of the 
Divine Nature. 






BODY, SPIRITUAL 


105 


BREVIARY 


The Fall, by the introduction of sin by 
disobedience into our nature, produced dis¬ 
integration where the principle of unity 
had been fundamental. Capacities and en¬ 
dowments fitted for immortality and per¬ 
fect happiness were so tainted and stained, 
and the principle of harmonic life in God 
so ruined, that death was the inevitable 
result. “ Dying thou shalt die” was the 
enouncing of a fact resulting from sin. 
Death is the final result of a prolonged dis¬ 
integration that begins with the moment of 
birth. When reparation no longer exceeds 
the waste, then death begins to win the vic¬ 
tory in the lengthened struggle. But since 
man had all things put in subjection to him, 
his fall tainted and soiled all the subordinate 
creation. Therefore St. Paul teaches us that 
“ we know that the whole creation groaneth 
and travaileth in pain together until now.” 
Our space does not permit us to point out 
the bearing of the whole passage (Rom. viii. 
19-23) upon the Fall, the interconnection 
of the natural creation and man, and the 
restoration of the one by the redemption of 
the other through Jesus Christ, and by 
the continuous presence of the Holy Spirit. 
But this outline statement of the scriptural 
facts will give the clue to a clear grasp of 
this subject. The capacity for eternal life 
will be discussed under the title of Immor¬ 
tality. The disastrous consequences of 
the Fall ruined the corporeal powers and 
beauty of the body, but we cannot know 
the height from which Adam fell. Dr. 
South’s well-known saying, that an Aristotle 
was but the rubbish of an Adam, is possibly 
the best way that we can express the extent 
of the injury. Immortality belonged since 
then only to the sinless Christ, for ‘ ‘ it was not 
possible that He should be holden of death” 
(Acts ii. 24). But as the second Adam, the 
Quickening Spirit, He restores to us this 
immortality. The forgiveness, then, of sin 
is the first step to the giving back to our 
natural bodies their original power of mor¬ 
tality, which re-endowment is to be com¬ 
pleted at the Resurrection. 

Body, Spiritual. St. Paul distinctly 
teaches that the body to be given us at our 
resurrection is to be spiritual. This diffi¬ 
culty always has been presented : how, then, 
shall we be judged in the spiritual body for 
the deeds done in the natural body ? or, in 
other words, how shall that personal identity 
which we now wear be brought up at the 
judgment-seat? That we cannot now un¬ 
derstand, but it is no greater difficulty to 
accept the future fact than it is to accept 
and act upon the present fact, that our souls 
and our bodies—two distinct and, in some 
respects, antagonistic entities—formbutone 
person, though we can never understand the 
ultimate principle of their union. Indeed, it 
is less difficult to admit that in a perfect 
state of sinlessness a spiritual body, with 
spiritual capacities now beyond us, may be 
the only fit habitation for the redeemed soul. 
But the words of Scripture are to be accepted, 


and then explanation to be patiently waited 
for. The fuller discussion of this subject 
belongs to the title Resurrection. 

Bowing, in the Creed. A reverent act of 
worship at the name of Jesus (Phil. ii. 10). 
The text upon which this bowing is based 
refers properly to a bending of the knee, 
which was an Oriental act of homage. It is 
only when His name, Jesus, is uttered that 
this reverent bowing is proper. Jesus, is 
His name as man with us. Christ is His 
title, as anointed to His threefold office as 
Prophet, Priest, and King. Therefore St. 
Paul’s arguments with the Thessalonians 
were accurately stated, “ that this Jesus 
whom I proclaim unto you is the Christ.” 
The 18th Canon of the Church of England 
makes bowing at the name of Jesus proper, 
not only in the Creed, but at all other times 
when it is mentioned. “ When, in time of 
Divine service, the Lord Jesus shall be 
mentioned, due and lowly reverence shall be 
done by all persons present as hath been 
accustomed: testifying by these outward 
ceremonies and gestures their inward humil¬ 
ity, Christian resolution, and due acknowl¬ 
edgment that the Lord Jesus Christ, the 
true eternal Son of God, is the only Saviour 
of the world, in whom alone all the mercies, 
graces, and promises of God to mankind for 
this life and the life to come are fully and 
wholly comprised.” (Canons of 1603 a.d.) 

Breviary. The Book of the Daily Offices 
of the Roman Church. The name belonged 
to the particular MSS. prepared by Gregory 
VII. (1085 a.d.), but the book, in principle, 
was in use in the Church many ages be¬ 
fore. It was made up of the Psalms, of the 
Lessons from Holy Scripture, or from the 
works of the Fathers, sentences thrown into 
the form of Versicles, Responds, Antiphons, 
Prosas, and other similar forms. Every 
Bishop had, originally, the power to alter, 
arrange, or recompile the Liturgy in his Dio¬ 
cese, but from the fifth century there was a 
tendency to unify the services, and especially 
was this done in the Provinces. Still there 
was a large degree of variation for many 
ages. In the English Church there were 
varieties in the Several leading Dioceses. 
The monasteries had their special Breviaries. 
The Roman office-books, Missal and Brevi¬ 
ary, were and are forced upon the Dioceses 
which receive the papal authority, despite 
of very determined resistance. The present 
form of the Roman Breviary was made under 
Pius V. It is divided into four parts, called 
after the seasons, Pars Hiemalis, Vernalis, 
iEstivalis, Autumnalis. Each of these parts, 
in addition to the introductory rubrics, calen¬ 
dar, and other tables, has four subdivisions : 
(I.) The Psalter, comprising the Psalms 
and Canticles, arranged for weekly recita¬ 
tion, and also the unvarying parts of the 
offices. (II.) The Proper Offices for the 
season, which vary with the season. (III.) 
The Proper Offices for the Festivals of the 
Saints. (IY.) The Common ( i.e ., unvary¬ 
ing) Office for the Festivals of the Saints. 






BRIEF 


106 


BRITISH CHURCH 


Brief. Usually applied to Letters Apos¬ 
tolic of the Pope. It is distinguished from 
the Bull chiefly from the form and nature of 
the instrument. They both have the same 
authority, hut the Brief is generally shorter 
and deals often with matters of less impor¬ 
tance, and it may be recalled or repressed at 
will. It is ordinarily written in the Latin 
character, has a wax seal attached bearing 
the impress of the so-called “fisherman’s 
ring,”—a figure of St. Peter fishing from a 
boat,—and is signed by the Secretary of 
Briefs. The form of the Brief, though now 
fixed by language, has varied in times past. 
( Vide Bulls.) In England the crown has 
from time immemorial issued Briefs for 
charitable purposes, which briefs are directed 
to be read among the notices after the reci¬ 
tation of the Nicene Creed after the Gospel. 
As the cost of issuing these briefs, though 
reduced very much from the previous 
charges, is still very great, they are not so 
frequently issued. 

British Church, The. "When or by whom 
Christianity was brought to Britain is un¬ 
known. As it was under the dominion of 
the Roman emperors until 409 a.d., it is 
probable that the Gospel was preached there 
as in other parts of the empire at a very 
early period. Direct evidence is wanting 
until the end of the second century. Clem¬ 
ent of Rome, 90 a.d., mentions that St. 
Paul, before his martyrdom, had visited the 
boundary of the West (to repfia rye 
but the expression is too indefinite to found 
an argument upon it. -The identification of 
Claudia and Pudens mentioned by St. Paul 
(2 Tim. iv. 21) with a Roman family con¬ 
nected with the government of Britain is 
also very doubtful. The story of St. Joseph 
of Arimathea and his twelve companions, 
their coming to Glastonbury, and the holy 
thorn which sprang from his planted staff, 
is a medieval legend. The earliest un¬ 
doubted testimony to the existence of Chris¬ 
tianity in Britain is that of Tertullian (b. 
160), and as he says that the Gospel had in 
his time penetrated regions in the island 
which the Romans had not visited, it is clear 
that it was no new thing. To that period 
(177 a.d.) belongs the account of a British 
chief, Lucius by name, applying to the 
Bishop of Rome for Christian instruction. 
Very little can be collected from our scanty 
records with regard to the state of the 
Church in its earliest period, its extension, 
mode of government, or life. There were 
Bishops in the principal Roman towns, in 
which places there may have been some 
churches of Roman brick, but in most cases, 
away from those centres, such buildings as 
existed for purposes of Christian worship 
were constructed of wands or wattles in the 
ancient British fashion. But it does not 
appear that much progress had been made 
during the Roman period in the conversion 
of the great body of the population. That 
the Church had her martyrs here as else¬ 
where is shown by the story of Alban, con¬ 


verted by the Christian priest to whom he 
had in pity given shelter, and in whose 
stead he gave himself up to the persecutors. 
With his name are associated many others 
at the same period, the beginning of the 
fourth century, under the merciless Empe¬ 
ror Maximian. Bishops from Britain were 
present at the Council of Arles in France, 
314 a.d., from York, London, and (proba¬ 
bly) Caerleon. During the Arian contro¬ 
versy in the fourth century the steadfast¬ 
ness of the British Church is frequently 
referred to, though British Bishops at the 
Council of Ariminum (359 a.d.) assented 
with those more learned than themselves to 
the uncatholic formulary there adopted. 
But like the mass of those who were there 
misled, their weakness was but temporary. 
St. Jerome speaks of the British Christians 
of his time as sharing in the common en¬ 
thusiasm for pilgrimages to the Holy Land. 
We obtain at this period some interesting 
glimpses of British Christianity shortly be¬ 
fore the withdrawal of the Romans. In 
North Britain, near Dumbarton, we read of 
the Deacon Calpurnius, whose father, Poti- 
tus, was a priest, and his son the famous St. 
Patrick. Ninian, from Cumberland, is ed¬ 
ucated at Rome and returns in Episcopal 
orders to establish a mission on the coast of 
Galloway. Here he built his church on the 
promontory of Whithorn, which, being of 
stone instead of the more common wood, be¬ 
came renowned as the White House,—Can¬ 
dida Casa. This mission was a centre of 
light throughout the Roman province of 
Valentia. The heresy of Pelagius, or Mor¬ 
gan, the Briton, deeply affected his native 
country, and occasioned the mission from 
Gaul of the famous St. German and his 
companion, Lupus, who succeeded in stem¬ 
ming the tide of heresy, and seem to have 
done much good of other kinds. In this 
connection comes the story of the “ Alleluia 
Victory,” when a British army, mostly con¬ 
verted from paganism and baptized by Ger¬ 
man at the Easter festival just past, rose 
from ambush shouting “ Alleluia,” and put 
to rout an army of Piets and Saxons with¬ 
out striking a blow. During his mission 
in Britain, which included two visits (429 and 
447 a.d.), German is said to have founded 
schools in Wales, and some old religious cus¬ 
toms were always referred to him. This 
mission of St. German, the still earlier one 
of Victricius of Rouen, the fact that a 
Briton was the first Bishop of Rouen, the 
character of the earliest Liturgical remains, 
are facts which point to a Gallican origin for 
the British Church. The supposed proofs 
of an Eastern origin are without founda¬ 
tion, as will be seen hereafter. 

In the fifth century came the labors of 
St. Patrick and the conversion of Ireland. 
The infant Church, owing to the circum¬ 
stances of the case, assumed in Ireland, and 
afterwards in Scotland, through the mission 
of St.Columba, a peculiar form. The country 
was peopled by wild clans, each attached to 




BRITISH CHURCH 


107 


BRITISH CHURCH 


its own chieftain, a type which remained 
longest in the Highlands of Scotland. The 
missionaries were compelled to direct their 
efforts first to the conversion of the chiefs, 
for without this nothing could be effected. 
Almost of necessity the monastic system be¬ 
came predominant. The Abbot occupied 
with reference to his society a position par¬ 
allel with that of the chief to his clan, and, 
in fact, both characters were sometimes 
united in the same person. The consequence 
of this system in a country in which other 
centres did not exist was, that the Abbot 
exercised the chief religious control of the 
district in which his house was situated, and 
the position of Bishops was inferior to that 
which they occupied generally in the Cath¬ 
olic Church. This, which grew out of the 
necessities of the earliest missions, long re¬ 
mained a striking feature of Celtic Christi¬ 
anity in Ireland and Scotland, but a little 
later we see it disappearing and the Bishop 
assuming his more appropriate functions, 
when these missions spread into the north 
of England. It would be a mistake, how¬ 
ever, to suppose that the essential functions 
of the Bishop were at any time lost sight of 
or usurped by the Abbot. The Bishop was 
always called upon to ordain, to give con¬ 
firmation and the more solemn benediction, 
and to consecrate churches. A Bishop 
might be a member of a religious house, ad¬ 
vanced perhaps to the Episcopal order for 
pre-eminent piety or learning. He would 
be subject, like the rest, to the Abbot, yet 
the Abbot never ventured to exercise any 
of his Episcopal functions. It would ap¬ 
pear that there were in Ireland a great num¬ 
ber of “ village Bishops.” To such a one 
St. Columba was sent for ordination, and 
found the good man plowing in his field. 
From such a system as this went forth some 
of the grandest missionaries the Christian 
Church has ever produced, through whom 
the conversion of Germany was well begun, 
that of paganized England mainly accom- 
lished. Such a system was, in fact, far 
etter suited for mission work among wild 
and barbarous tribes than to be the perma¬ 
nent form under which Christianity should 
occupy the land. We can only mention 
here the names of Columban and Gall, who 
labored in the Vosges and in Switzerland, 
Kilian and Vergilius in Germany, and 
many others their companions and associ¬ 
ates It was the foundation of St. Columba 
in Scotland which became the chief source 
of light for England, as we see in following 
the history of early English Christianity. 

Reviewing the interesting though scanty 
records of British Christianity, we easily dis¬ 
cern, (1) That the supremacy or even the 
primacy of Rome was unknown. St. Colum¬ 
ba and the other Irish missionaries treated 
the Pope with the respect due to the Bishop 
of the most important See in the West, hut 
nothing more; they hesitated not to differ 
with him and to rebuke him in no measured 
terms. (2) We see Christianity assuming a 


unique form of external organization among 
the Irish and Northern Celts, which, how¬ 
ever, is not seen among the Britons of the 
south until the Saxon conquest drives them 
into Wales. (3) Such characteristic marks 
as can be made out indicate a probable Gallic 
origin for early British Christianity, while 
that of North Britain and Ireland is derived 
from South Britain. 

The Saxon Period , the Conversion of Eng¬ 
land .—During the century and a quarter 
from 449-577 a.d. Britain becomes England, 
and with this change Christianity is driven 
from the land, and the worship of Thor and 
Odin reigns supreme. The only account of 
this momentous change, from the British 
side, is that of Gildas, who shows fully the 
weak and divided condition of the mingled 
heathen and Christian Britons, which made 
them on the whole the easy prey of desultory 
conquest. The remnants recover some degree 
of strength and maintain themselves long 
after the conquest in Wales, Cornwall, and 
Strathclyde along the western coast. Chris¬ 
tianity here undergoes a revival of earnest¬ 
ness aided perhaps by closer relations with 
the vigorous life of the Irish Church. Col¬ 
leges and monasteries were founded in which 
religion and learning were fostered and kept 
alive. Such were the famous Bangor Isceod 
in Flintshire; St. Asaph, founded by St. 
Mungo (Munghu); at Llancarfan the col¬ 
lege founded by St. Cadoc, who resigned a 
princely heritage for the religious life. Else¬ 
where the Angles and Saxons had occupied 
the land. The old Episcopal Sees had be¬ 
come centres of pagan worship. Then came 
the mission of Augustine and his monks (597 
a.d.), sent by Pope Gregory, the one great 
mission which came forth from Rome itself. 
The missionaries landed at Thanet, where 
the fierce Jute had first stepped upon British 
soil. Kent was soon conquered for the 
Church and the See of Canterbury estab¬ 
lished, with Augustine for its first occupant. 
Essex followed, with Mellitus as first Bishop 
of London, from which, however, he was 
soon driven, and paganism resumed its sway. 
Paulinus, another member of the mission, 
became the Apostle of Northumbria under 
the patronage of King Edwin, and showed 
himself a faithful and unwearied missionary, 
but on the death of the king be too was 
driven out. Birinus, who came later under 
the auspices of Pope Honorius, converted the 
West Saxons. 

The Celtic Missions .—But while the good 
work of the Roman missionaries was thus pro¬ 
ceeding with many vicissitudes, an independ¬ 
ent movement of even greater strength was 
setting in from the northward, and ten years 
after Paulinus was driven from York St. 
Aidan arrived to take up the work, from the 
great monastery of St. Columba at Iona. He 
established himself not at York, but, after the 
Celtic custom, selected a retired spot upon the 
coast, and founded the new House of Lindis- 
farne, from which went forth the men who 
were to convert all North and Middle Eng- 





BRITISH CHURCH 


108 


BRITISH CHURCH 


land, that is, the greater part of the land. It 
was not long before the two elements, that 
from Rome and that from Scotland, came into 
collision. Augustine, acting under the di¬ 
rection of St. Gregory, had made an endeavor 
to arrive at an understanding with the 
British Bishops of the west of England, but 
failed of success, partly through his own want 
of tact, partly through their obstinate ad¬ 
herence to their own customs. This was at 
the meeting at Augustine’s Oak near the 
Severn (600 a.d.). Here the points of differ¬ 
ence between the Roman Church and the 
Celtic first came into view, from which it 
plainly appears that the latter knew nothing 
of the supremacy of Rome. The principal 
ground of difference was the time of the ob¬ 
servance df Easter. There was also some 
difficulty in regard to the mode of baptism, 
but precisely what we have no means of 
knowing. A third point had reference to 
the tonsure. The first and last of these have 
often been adduced as proofs of the Eastern 
origin of British Christianity, but (1) the 
Celtic Easter was not the same with the 
Quortodeciman practice of Asia Minor, as¬ 
cribed to St. John, according to which the 
festival was celebrated on the 14th Nisan, 
which might fall on any day of the week. 
The Celtic Easter must always fall upon a 
Sunday, but the cycle employed was simply 
the uncorrected cycle of an earlier time. 
Neither (2) was their tonsure like that of the 
East. The Greek tonsure was total, that of 
Rome was coronal, the Celtic shaved the an¬ 
terior half of the head. 

The next great occasion when these points 
of difference came in question was at the 
conference of Whitby, 664 a.d. This was 
not so much a contest between men as prin¬ 
ciples, since the leaders of the discussion on 
both sides were men who had been trained 
originally in the Celtic system. On the 
Celtic side was Colman, the successor of 
Aidan ; on the Roman side the famous Wil¬ 
frid, then Abbot of Ripon. Wilfrid was a 
native of Northumbria, trained first at Lin- 
disfarne, but afterwards with Benedict Bis¬ 
cop, the earliest Englishman who appears as 
a promoter of religious art, he had visited 
Rome and become filled with an enthusiastic 
determination to bring his earlier friends 
into accord with the usages of the Church at 
large,especially as represented by the mother- 
Church of the West, as she now claimed to 
be. The conference was held at Whitby, 
the famous monastery of St. Hilda, who had 
become the counselor of kings. Wilfrid 
gained the victory, and Colman with a part 
of his monks from Lindisfarne, and other 
followers, withdrew to Iona and afterwards 
to Ireland, where he died in 676 a.d. This 
conference and its results constitute an epoch 
in the history of English Christianity. The 
single-mindedness and saintly lives of these 
Celtic missionaries, their utter unworldliness, 
as Bede, himself a strong Roman sympa¬ 
thizer, describes it, might make us regret the 
triumph of the Roman system. Looking at 


the later development of the papal claims, 
we might be tempted to dream of a Church 
which, taking its rise independent of Rome, 
never submitted to her domination, and thus 
in the far West might have presented a par¬ 
allel to the orthodox Church of the East. 
But such a result was probably impossible, 
when we consider the difficulties which the 
future history of England had in store for 
the Church. The Celtic Church was “ devoid 
of that unifying power, that wonderful gift 
of order and organization which was the 
strength of the Roman,” therefore it would 
not have enabled England “to endure the 
tremendous strain of the next four hundred 
years.” As it was, it was the Church which 
gave England unity and the strength which 
comes from unity. After the withdrawal of 
Colman, Wilfrid was appointed Bishop of 
York, and went into Gaul for consecration. 
During his prolonged absence the Celtic 
party obtained a temporary victory, by per¬ 
suading the king to appoint to the vacant 
bishopric Chad, one of the original disciples 
of Aidan at Lindisfarne. His consecration, 
which took place at Winchester, is interest¬ 
ing from the circumstance that ■ Bishop 
Wini of that See, who had been consecrated 
in Gaul, obtained the assistance of two 
Bishops of British race from Cornwall, and 
thus in the person of Chad the two lines 
were united. 

Another epoch in the history of England 
and its Church was the arrival of Theodore 
of Tarsus, an Eastern monk (669 a.d.), ap¬ 
pointed and consecrated Archbishop of Can¬ 
terbury by the Pope himself after the death 
of the nominee of the English kings, who had 
gone to Rome for consecration. Theodore, 
taking his seat at Canterbury, commenced 
his work by making a careful visitation of 
his whole province. He was the first Arch¬ 
bishop to whom all England submitted. 
One result of his visitation was the estab¬ 
lishment of Wilfrid in the See of York, 
Chad quietly withdrawing to become, later, 
Bishop of Lichfield. But the great work 
of Theodore was the extension and organi¬ 
zation of the Episcopate. According to 
high authority, “ by his arrangement of 
Dioceses and the way in which he grouped 
them around the See of Canterbury, in his 
national Synods and ecclesiastical Canons, 
Theodore did unconsciously a political 
work.” The spectacle of a Church at one, 
under one Archbishop, prepared the way for 
a united state under one king. The union 
of England was, however, very gradual, and 
only effected long after this time, when dan¬ 
ger threatened from abroad. Theodore is 
also thought to have taken the first steps 
towards the establishment of the parochial 
system. 

Schools and Learning .—Learning followed 
in the wake of Christian enlightenment. At 
the school of Canterbury, under Theodore, 
Hebrew, Greek, and Latin were taught. 
Here was trained Adhelm, Abbot of 
Malmesbury and Bishop of Sherborne, 







BRITISH CHURCH 


109 


BRITISH CHURCH 


who zealously promoted the cause of edu¬ 
cation in Wessex, and composed many re¬ 
ligious songs in ballad form and in the 
Saxon tongue. He is to be remembered as 
the lirst Englishman who cultivated classi¬ 
cal learning with success. He died 709 a.d. 
The poetry of Csedmon, a lay brother of 
Whitby, the great St. Hilda’s monastery in 
the north, enabled Biblical lore to spread 
among the common people of the lowest 
class. By casting the Sacred Story and the 
Creed of Christendom into the simplest ver¬ 
nacular speech, the Faith was brought home 
to the hearts of serf and shepherd. Learn¬ 
ing flourished most in the schools of North¬ 
umbria, especially at Jarrow and York. It 
was at Jarrow that Bede, called the Venera¬ 
ble, passed his life (b. about 673 a.d.). He 
is the true father of English literature, and 
through his many treatises made accessible 
to his countrymen all the knowledge of his 
day, sacred and profane; the first theologian 
and the first cultivator of science the Eng¬ 
lish race ever produced. From the school of 
York came in the next century (b. 735 a.d.) 
the famous Alcuin, who spent many years 
at the .court of Charlemagne, and aided in 
the great educational designs of that en¬ 
lightened emperor. In Alfred the Great 
Christianized England produced the perfect 
king. “ Alfred was the noblest, as he was 
the most complete embodiment of all that 
is great, all that is loveable in the English 
temper” (Green’s English People). The 
first in the line of ecclesiastical statesmen 
who have played such a large part in Eng¬ 
lish history was St. Dunstan. As virtual 
ruler of Wessex from 950-979 a.d., he did 
much by his firmness and strict even-handed 
justice to fuse the English people into one 
nation. 

The Effects of Monasticism .—In the later 
Saxon period the glory of the earlier Church 
is obscured. The galaxy of saints and 
learned men who appeared at the period 
of the conversion of England and in the 
next age left few successors. Gradually 
a certain feebleness crept over the whole 
people which made them the easy prey, first 
of the Danes, then of the Normans. The 
cause of this was undoubtedly the abnor¬ 
mal development of monasticism. Eng¬ 
land, like all Northern Europe, was con¬ 
verted by monks,—those of the rule of St. 
Columba on the one hand, and of St. Bene¬ 
dict on the other. It was inevitable that 
monasticism should be strong, and it soon 
pervaded the whole of Anglo-Saxon life. 
Immense donations of land were conferred 
upon the monasteries, more than thirty kings 
and queens ended their days in the cloister, 
and from other walks of life an innumerable 
company. The grandest and most success¬ 
ful of all missionary agencies, monasticism 
becomes a heavy burden and a grave evil 
when it dominates the whole life of a nation. 
Asceticism, which has and ever must have 
its place, and that a most important place, in 
the Christian Church, is a fruitful source of 


error and corruption when it is attempted 
to make it the only allowable form of Chris¬ 
tian life. The strength of the nation for¬ 
saking the work of common life to serve 
God in the cloistered walls, and ultimately 
to avoid the burden of duty laid upon them, 
was putting an end to progress, both in 
Church and State. The condition of things 
is well expressed by Dean Milman: “The 
Anglo-Saxon clergy, since the days of Dun¬ 
stan, had produced no remarkable man. 
The triumph of monasticism had enfeebled 
without sanctifying the secular clergy. . . . 
It might conceal much gentle and amiable 
goodness; but its outward character was 
that of timid and unworldly ignorance, 
unfit to rule, and exercising but feeble and 
unbeneficial influence.” 

England and the Pajjacy .—It is important 
to trace, however briefly, the relation of the 
Church in England to the Papacy. We 
have seen, in reviewing the history of 
British Christianity, that the Britons seem 
to have had no knowledge of any kind of 
papal jurisdiction. It would seem to be 
equally true that in the early English 
(Anglo-Saxon) Church there was but little 
notion of the rule of Rome over other 
Churches as a matter of right and law. 
They by no means submitted to the Pope as 
possessing the headship and universal do¬ 
minion over the Catholic Church. Yet 
none the less they owned his sway. It is a 
popular error to represent the Anglo-Saxon 
Christians as asserting independence of Rome 
and maintaining their rights as a branch of 
the Church. The simple truth is that the 
relation between Rome and England at that 
period did not rest upon a basis of claims 
and concessions ; it did not wear a legal as¬ 
pect. Such words as these indicate the pre¬ 
vailing sentiment: “Gregory, our father, 
who sent us baptism,” “ Though he be not 
an apostle to others, yet he is to us, for the 
seal of his apostleship are we in the Lord.” 
Notwithstanding the fact that the greater 
part of England had first received the Gos¬ 
pel from Iona and Lindisfarno, there was, 
after the reconciliation and fusion of the two 
elements under the influence of Wilfrid and 
the wise measures of Theodore, a remark¬ 
able lack of any consciousness of an inde¬ 
pendent origin among the Christian people 
of England. They leaned to Rome as colo¬ 
nists to the mother-country, without think¬ 
ing of raising any question as to what might 
some time be claimed as a matter of right. 
Their loyalty to the mother-Church was ro¬ 
mantic and childlike. A pilgrimage to Rome 
was the dream of every Christian English¬ 
man’s heart. “ From no other land did 
there flow into the papal exchequer such rich 
contributions.” Yet practically the inde¬ 
pendence of the Church was little interfered 
with. Bishops were chosen without the 
papal intervention, though sometimes that 
intervention was invited, as in the case of 
Archbishop Theodore. But in general all 
ecclesiastical appointments were in the hands 








BRITISH CHURCH 


110 


BRITISH CHURCH 


of the king. If we compare the position of 
the Church in the Anglo-Saxon period with 
that under the Norman kings, the difference 
does not consist in the greater devotion 
shown to the Papacy at the later epoch. The 
contrary is true. Doubtless the foreign ec¬ 
clesiastics who poured into England at this 
time, filling its Sees and Benefices, brought 
with them the latest forms and observances 
which the Catholic religion had assumed, 
and a perceptible change of tone. But as 
regards the Papacy, we find that the com¬ 
mon practice of the earlier period, which 
had rested only on custom, became express 
law. The dependence of the Church on the 
royal power was strictly enforced. Prelates 
were practically chosen by the king. More¬ 
over, William the Conqueror would allow 
no papal letters to be received into the realm 
without his assent. He met the demands of 
Gregory VII. with a stern refusal. “ Realty 
I have never willed to do, nor will I do it 
now. I have never promised it, nor do I 
find that my predecessors did it to yours.” 
Such principles were maintained by William 
and his successors, not for the good of the 
Church, but to strengthen their own power. 
Yet the practical result was the comparative 
independence on Rome of the realm and 
Church of England, and at most periods a 
considerable jealousy of papal encroach¬ 
ments. It seemed to many noble and devoted 
men far more natural that the Church should 
lean on Rome than be subject to the tender 
mercies of a tyrant at home, and, very dif¬ 
ferent from our view, they often identified 
the “ liberties of the Church” with subjec¬ 
tion to the Pope. Yet a deep, underlying 
feeling of independence resided in the Eng¬ 
lish people. When the most powerful of 
Popes, Innocent III., deposed even so evil a 
man as King John, the bull might have re¬ 
mained ineffectual, so far as the main body 
of the people were concerned, notwithstand¬ 
ing the great encouragement which it gave 
to all his enemies, public and private. When 
the king yielded and knelt before the papal 
legate, “ He has become the Pope’s man ; he 
has forfeited the very name of king,” was 
said to have been the indignant outcry of 
his subjects. This was the highest point 
which papal aggression ever reached in Eng¬ 
land. With the growth of a strong national 
spirit came resistance, often renewed and 
gradually embodied in the laws of the king¬ 
dom, to the papal claims (1) of a right to 
exact pecuniary contributions, (2) of eccle¬ 
siastical jurisdiction, as exhibited in ap¬ 
pointments to Bishoprics and other Benefices, 
and in appeals from English courts: The 
“Constitutions of Clarendon,” 1164 a.d., 
provided that elections of Bishops or Abbots 
should take place in the presence of the 
king’s officers, and have the king’s assent, 
and that no appeals should go further than 
the Archbishop without his consent, and to 
these measures the prelates gave their in¬ 
dorsement. In Henry III.’s time there was 
a rising throughout the kingdom against 


the papal collectors, and the barons for their 
part refused to aid the Pope in his contest 
with Erederick II. It was at this time, says 
Green, “that the little rift first opened 
which was destined to widen into the gulf 
which parted one from the other at the 
Reformation.” As Parliament rises into 
importance, the jealousy of papal aggression 
is exhibited from time to time in no uncer¬ 
tain tones. In the reign of Edward III. 
(1327-1377 a.d.) Parliament utters distinct 
protests against the corrupt and injurious 
interference of the Pope with the affairs of 
the Church of England, and supports the 
king against the Pope in the contest with 
Scotland. When a papal interdict was laid 
upon Flanders, English priests said mass in 
that country with bold defiance. Papal 
legates were threatened with stoning when 
they landed in England. In 1343 a.d. the 
Commons petitioned against papal appoint¬ 
ments to vacant livings in despite of the 
rights of patrons or of the crown, and the 
king complained to the Pope of the appoint¬ 
ment of “foreigners, mostly suspicious per¬ 
sons,” and reminds his Holiness that the 
successor of the Apostles was set over the 
Lord’s sheep to feed and not to shear them. 
The Parliament declared that they “ neither 
could nor would tolerate such things any 
longer.” 

In 1351 a.d. the Statute of Provisors for¬ 
bade any one to receive a papal provision or 
appointment; that is, a grant of the Pope 
superseding the right acquired by election, 
and conferring afresh the spiritual and tem¬ 
poral administration of See or Benefice. This 
practice had commenced in 1300 a.d., but 
had constantly been resisted. In 1353 a.d. 
the first of the celebrated statutes of “ Prae¬ 
munire” was passed, forbidding any appeal 
from the English courts, under pain of out¬ 
lawry, perpetual imprisonment, or banish¬ 
ment from the land. Both these laws were 
reiterated at later periods. By the enlarged 
statute of Praemunire, passed in 1390 a.d. , 
it was enacted that all persons procuring in 
the Court of Rome or elsewhere transla¬ 
tions, processes, sentences of excommunica¬ 
tion, bulls, instruments, or other things 
which touch the king, his crown, regality, 
or realm, should suffer the penalties of prae¬ 
munire. “ This act is one of the strongest 
defensive measures taken during the Middle 
Ages against Rome” (Stubbs). When Pope 
Urban Y. referred to King John’s submis¬ 
sion and oath of fealty as the ground of 
his demands, it was declared by Parliament 
that John’s submission had been made “ with¬ 
out their assent and against his coronation 
oath,” and they pledged themselves to resist 
such claims with all their power. That was 
the last ever heard of a papal over-lordship 
in the feudal sense over England. These 
statutes of Praemunire and Provisors re¬ 
mained the law of England, though allowed 
to fall into disuse when the policy of the 
Papacy avoided direct conflict, until in the 
hands of Henry VIII. they proved a weapon 




BRITISH CHURCH 


111 


BURIAL 


of tremendous power, and hardly any new 
legislation was necessary, but simply the 
execution of laws already long existing, to 
complete the independence of the English 
Church. Whatever theories of the Papacy 
may have been held by many or few and 
acted upon from time to time in England, 
however far at some epochs the leaders of 
the Church may have committed themselves 
to Rome’s extreme claims, history shows 
that the assertion of those claims was re¬ 
sisted whenever they came in conflict with 
the national spirit, that the general drift of 
English sentiment was towards independ¬ 
ence, and that the steps needful to achieve 
that independence were almost all taken one 
hundred and eighty years before it was at 
last effected. While we may admit the sub¬ 
jection of the English Church to the Papacy 
in ways more or less defined and admitted 
through the Middle Ages, the facts show 
that such subjection was not looked upon as 
a matter of Divine right, and that the ex- 
tremest claims of Hildebrand were not ad¬ 
mitted. The Papacy had its part to play 
under Divine Providence, in aiding the 
Church to resist the tyranny of kings, and 
when that work was done its power ceased 
in England. Even Sir Thomas More and 
those who thought with him were not 
troubled at the rejection of papal control: 
their opposition was to the royal assumption 
of supremacy over the Church. 

Conclusion .—We may fitly conclude in the 
words of Dean Church : “ The lesson of his¬ 
tory, I think, is this, not that all the good 
which might have been hoped for to society 
has followed from the appearance of the 
Christian religion in the forefront of human 
life; not that in this willful and blundering 
world, so full of misused gifts and wasted 
opportunities and disappointed promise, mis¬ 
take and mischief have never been in its 
train; not that in the nations where it has 
gained a footing it has mastered their beset¬ 
ting sins, the falsehood of one, the ferocity 
of another, the characteristic sensuality, the 
characteristic arrogance of others. But his¬ 
tory teaches us this: that in tracing back 
the course of human improvement we come, 
in one case after another, upon Christianity 
as the source from which improvement de¬ 
rived its principle and its motive ; we find 
no other source adequate to account for the 
new spring of amendment; and, without it, 
no other sources of good could have been 
relied upon.” 

Authorities: Bede’s Ecclesiastical History 
(trans. in Bohn’s Library), Irish Primitive 
Church, by Daniel De Vinne, St. Patrick’s 
Confession (Mignd), Murray’s Ireland and 
her Church, Bright’s Early English Church, 
Archbishop Trench’s Lectures on Mediaeval 
Church History, Maclear’s Conversion of the 
Celts, Maclear’s Conversion of the English, 
Churton’s Early English Church, Green’s 
History of the English People, Stubbs’ Con¬ 
stitutional History of England. 

Rev. Prof. W. J. Gold. 


Bull. The name given to the Letters of 
the Pope, whose authority, whether for tem¬ 
porary or constitutional purposes, is para¬ 
mount. The name is taken from the leaden 
seal [Bulla) attached by a silken string (if 
it be a Bull of Grace) or by a hempen cord 
(if it be a Bull of Justice). This globular 
seal bears upon one side the representation 
of the Apostles SS. Peter and Paul, and on 
the other the name of the reigning Pontiff. 
The Bull is issued from the papal Chancery. 
There are also Consistorial Bulls ; i.e., those 
issued by the advice and consent of the Car¬ 
dinals in Consistory, by whom they are 
signed. The matter of the Bull may be of 
comparatively private nature, or it may re¬ 
late to public matters of a nation, or of 
an order, or it may be binding upon the 
whole Roman obedience, or it may lay down 
certain constitutional principles, as did the 
famous Bull Unam Sanctam. 

Burial. While it was customary among 
the heathen, yet the whole surroundings ac¬ 
companying the act of burial among Chris¬ 
tians were so marked and so reverent, that 
they stamped the rite as Christian. Julian, 
the apostate emperor, 363 a.d., acknowledged 
that austerity of life, hospitality, and rever¬ 
ent burial of the dead were the powerful in¬ 
fluences that gave Christians the conversion 
of the empire. It had its motive in the 
faith in the Resurrection, and, therefore, the 
body that God would so care for as to bring 
again from its dust must be reverently laid 
away. To attack this loving care of the 
Christian for the remains of his loved one 
was a controlling cause why so many martyrs 
were burnt by heathen magistrates. The 
honorable burial of our Lord’s Body by 
Joseph of Arimathea was the pattern upon 
which the Christian based his care of his 
dead. But in times of persecution it was 
not always possible to bestow this care, and 
interment was often very hurried. Yet when 
Polycarp was burnt, his bones and ashes were 
gathered up, without hindrance, by the 
brethren. To be buried beside the remains 
of a martyr was always accounted honorable. 
At first burials were made anywhere it was 
most convenient outside of the city, as burials 
within were illegal. But care was had to 
obtain, whenever possible, a cemetery of their 
own, and their right to it was generally con¬ 
ceded. At Alexandria they had them openly. 
In Rome, where the soil was such that sub¬ 
terranean burial could be carried out, the 
Christians dug out those underground gal¬ 
leries—already begun by the heathen—for 
burial purposes, and these catacombs became 
places of refuge of safe meeting as well as 
of burial, since the tunnels as they were dug 
out ramified so as to form an underground 
labyrinth. When peace came, churches were 
frequently erected upon the tombs of saints. 
The early Christians, whenever they could 
do so, made their burial rites contrast nota¬ 
bly with those of the heathen. The body 
was kept unburied as long as convenient. 
It was decently prepared for burial by the 




BURIAL 


112 


GABALA 


friends and relatives, not by hired persons, 
swathed in linen with decent orderliness. 
It was laid out either at the house or in the 
church. The watchers over it sang hymns 
and anthems. They buried in open day, 
with something of triumphal pomp, with 
hymns of hope and faith and scriptural 
anthems. When the grave was reached 
these hymns and prayers were renewed, and 
an address closed the service. 

Burial rites must vary very much with 
the circumstances and with the development 
of the people, but the simpler and plainer 
a Christian burial can be conducted the bet¬ 
ter it is. Two chief things should be made 
prominent, the faith in the future Resurrec¬ 
tion and the loving care which for Christ’s 
sake we should show the dead. The history 
of the Order for the Burial of the Dead is 
simple and clear. It has little relation to 
the ancient offices, taking from the Sarum 
use the first two opening sentences, and 
adding the third. The corpse was to be 
carried either to the church or the grave 
at once, apparently customarily to the grave. 
Then the noble anthem, “ Man that is born 
of woman,” was recited. Its use here was 
peculiar to the English Prayer-Book. It 
was to be said either by the priest alone or 
together with the clerks. The priest was to 
cast the earth upon the body in the first 
Prayer-Book (1549 A.d.) ; this was changed 
to the present use in the second Prayer- 
Book (1552 a.d.). The sentence of com¬ 
mittal, as also the final prayer, expressed a 
strong hope in the blessedness of the de¬ 
ceased. In the first Prayer-Book, if the 
body was borne to the grave at once, the 
Psalms cxvi., exxxix., cxlvi., were to be re¬ 
cited in the church afterwards, together with 
the Lesson (1 Cor. xv. 20 sq.), and then 
the suffrages and a final prayer were recited. 
The second Prayer-Book apparently, after 


the anthem, “ I heard a voice,” ordered the 
Lesson to be read at the grave, and then, 
with the Kyries and the Lord’s Prayer, 
closed with the final prayers nearly as 
in oUr Prayer-Book. The Prayer-Book of 
1662 a.d. rearranged this material into the 
present order, which, with important verbal 
changes, we follow. These verbal changes 
consist in an entire omission of any refer¬ 
ence to hopes especially for the deceased, 
the dropping of the Kyries, and the continu¬ 
ous recital of the two Psalms (xxxix. and 
xc.), whereas the Gloria is placed at the 
end of each Psalm in the English Prayer- 
Book. 

This order for the Burial of the Dead is 
unapproached in simple and severe grandeur 
and lofty faith and perfect harmony with 
only what is revealed to us in Holy Scrip¬ 
ture. Its clear proclamation of the Resur¬ 
rection, its freedom from all that men may 
wish to believe, however naturally, yet with¬ 
out clear warrant, its solemn lesson to the 
living, make it a most noble office. And yet 
no office in the Prayer-Book has so many 
of its rubrics systematically violated, in or¬ 
dinary cases at least. Comparatively little 
watchfulness is used to observe the rubric as 
to those who can have the office read over 
them. The anthem shall be said or sung 
while the corpse is made ready for the grave, 
not after it is placed. It is not incumbent 
on the minister to recite it by himself. The 
purpose evidently is to have the choir or the 
assembled friends recite it. This is true also 
of the other anthem, “I heard a voice.” 
Then the minister alone should recite the 
Lord’s Prayer. Much of the impressiveness 
and solemnity of this beautiful office is lost 
by these infractions of the rubric. 

Burse. The case for the fair linen cloth 
with which the elements are to be covered 
when all have communed. 


C. 


Cabala. The mystic theosophy of the 
later speculative Jewish schools. Its con¬ 
tents are much older than its written docu¬ 
ments, which apparently date from the tenth 
century, though these are attributed to a 
much later age. The Cabala is based upon 
a mystic and allegorizing arithmetic, which 
is arbitrarily applied to the doctrine of the 
nature and attributes of God. It had its 
uses, doubtless, in counteracting the grosser 
anthropomorphic teachings of the Talmud, 
beside which it seems to have flowed in a 
parallel and distinct channel, though prob¬ 
ably the Rabbi of the Talmud was also a 
master of the Cabala. It may indirectly 


have had a great influence in the allegoriz¬ 
ing tendency in the interpretation of Holy 
Scripture, which overreached itself in the 
Church. The tendency to a mystical inter¬ 
pretation has always been very great in 
both the older Jewish, and in the Christian 
Church, based, indeed, upon the sanction 
and example of our Lord and of St. Paul, 
but running to a most absurd excess. The 
Cabala has many points of contact with 
Gnosticism. It was essentially pantheistic. 
That it should have some points of agree¬ 
ment with Christian doctrine is to be antici¬ 
pated, yet they are very few. It supplied 
Philo, probably, with the idea of the Logos 









CALENDAR 


113 


CALENDAR 


which prepared the way for understanding 
the revelation of the Word of God. It 
seems to hold to a triple condition of our 
soul,—the intellectual, the moral, and the 
spiritual energy of our life. The freedom 
of will in fallen man is asserted. 

Calendar. A table of the order of days in 
the year, such as is prefixed to our Prayer- 
Book. The earliest tables of this class were 
very ancient, being civil as well as ecclesi¬ 
astical. There is, however, combined with 
this calendar ecclesiastically a catalogue of 
the saints whose commemorations fall upon 
fixed days in the civil year. Our own cal¬ 
endar is a most admirably simple and clear 
arrangement for practical use. The follow¬ 
ing outline gives but the chief points. A 
thorough discussion would require a volume. 
The word calendar is derived from the Old 
Latin caleo , to call, from the custom of 
having the Pontifex announce to the people, 
called together, the holy days. Later the 
practice of posting in public places the 
proper holidays came in; hence the title 
calendce, and in late Latin calendarium. 
The division of days was necessarily solar ; 
that of weeks by Divine law. The months 
were originally lunar. Now it is remark¬ 
able that these three modes of marking time 
have no common divisor, yet are constantly 
commingled. It causes a great deal of em¬ 
barrassment, and yet there is no means of 
making a change. By intercalations and 
arbitrary enactments points of time for new 
eras can be arranged as it was by Julius 
Caesar or by Pope Gregory XIII. (1582 
a.d.), or restorations effected as the several 
rectifications of the calculation for Easter; 
but these three incommensurable measures 
of time are unalterable. 

To us the week is practically the most im¬ 
portant, but as it is incommensurable with 
the 365 days 6 hrs. 48' 46 // of the actual 
solar year, there must be some mode by 
which we can connect the two without con¬ 
fusing them. This was simply done by 
using the first seven letters of the alphabet 
for the days of the week, marking the 1st 
day of January as A, and so on. The letter 
for the 31st of December is A. Now as 
Sunday does not fall yearly in the same 
place, each letter becomes in its turn the 
Sunday letter. If Sunday fall on January 
1, as it will in 1899 a.d., then A will be 
the Sunday letter. Again, if there be a leap- 
year, as the day intercalated falls between 
the 28th of February and the 1st of March, 
the Sunday letter with which the year 
begins, as, for instance, in 1896 a.d., E, will 
fall back, as in the date just given, to D, for 
the Sunday letter being E, and the 29th of 
February lettered D, as also March 1 is 
lettered I), the intercalated day is as it were 
a dies non in the calendar, but carries back 
the Sunday letter. So that the 23d of Feb¬ 
ruary being E in 1896, the eighth day after 
is March 1, which is lettered D, and this 
will be the letter for the rest of the year. 
Whenever the Sunday letter for any year 
8 


is found, the date of any given day of the 
week can be readily found in the calendar 
by this simple contrivance. 

The rule to find the Sunday letter for the 
remainder of this century is very clear, and 
is thus given in the first of the 
Tables for finding Easter-day: 

“ To find the Dominical or Sun¬ 
day Letter, according to the Cal¬ 
endar, until the year 1899, in¬ 
clusive, add to the year of our 
Lord its fourth part, omitting 
fractions, divide the sum by 7, 
and if there be no remainder, 
then A is the Sunday Letter; 
but if any number remain, then the Letter 
standing against that number in the small 
annexed Table is the Sunday Letter. 

“Note.— That in all Bissextile or Leap- 
Years, the Letter found as above will be the 
Sunday Letter from the intercalated day to 
the end of the year.” 

But it was a small part of the work to ar¬ 
range the Dominical Letter. A more diffi¬ 
cult work was to adjust the proper time for 
the celebration of Easter. Since Easter was 
the Christian Feast standing in historical 
relation to the Jewish Passover, it was 
necessarily governed by similar rules. Then 
Easter, as did the Passover, depended on the 
full moon, or, rather, on the fourteenth day 
of the moon. The Council of Nice, 325 
a.d. , laid down four postulates concerning 
it: 

I. That the 21st of March must be taken 
as the day of the vernal equinox. 

II. That the full moon happening upon 
or next after the 21st of March is to be 
taken for the full moon of the month Nisan. 

III. That the next Lord’s Day next 
after that full moon is to be observed as 
Easter Day. 

IV. But if the full moon fall on a Sun¬ 
day, the next Sunday is to be Easter Day. 

But these are calendar, not astronomical 
full moons, since the lunar cycle being 
29.5305 days, the equation proposed by the 
golden cycle of Meton of alternate twenty- 
nine and thirty days was not accurate 
enough after a lapse of time, and this slight 
error every nineteen years was sufficient to 
produce a serious inconvenience after a time. 
It was with some trouble that the corrections 
were effected. The Paschal term is that 
period within which the moon can pass 
through her lunation before and immedi¬ 
ately after the vernal equinox. The Paschal 
moon is new at the earliest on March 8, so 
that it is full on the 21st (both days being 
counted],—that is, fourteen days after. But 
should tne full moon fall after the 21st, the 
latest date is April 18, since from March 8 
to April 5 is twenty-nine days, and April 18 
is the latest full moon, so that the latest 
Sunday on which Easter can fall is April 25. 
Easter-day, then, may fall on any Sunday 
between March 22 and April 25, both inclu¬ 
sive, immediately after a full moon. Since, 
then, the calendar date of the full moon may 


0 

A 

1 

G 

2 

F 

3 

E 

4 

D 

5 

C 

6 

B 









CALENDAR 


114 


CALENDAR 


be three days even different from the astro¬ 
nomical full moon, the two modes of calcu¬ 
lation do not always coincide. The reason 
for this discrepancy is not far to seek, since 
the new moon from which both Jew and 
Christian counted was not the one obtained 
by calculation, but by observation. But 
the calculation of the calendar moon de¬ 
pended upon the Epact, which was the 
name given to the number of days’ differ¬ 
ence between the current lunar months and 
the solar year. The difference is eleven 
days. At the beginning of the cycle the 
year and the new moon coincide; but at the 
end of the solar year the moon is eleven 
days old. At the end of the second solar 
year the difference is twenty-two days. At 
the end of the third year it is only three 
days,— i.e ., thirty-three days minus the 
thirty days of a full lunation. At the end 
of the cycle of nineteen years the same order 
recurs. Since the true lunar month is 
29.5308 days, to allow thirty days to a luna¬ 
tion is too much ; therefore upon February, 
April, June, August, September, and No¬ 
vember two epacts are assigned to a certain 
day in each of these months. This device 
serves to keep the error within bounds. The 
principal use of the Epact is to enable one 
to find the age of the moon at any required 
date of the given year, and of course its 
chief use is to determine the Paschal moon. 
The rule is, (1) Add together the day of the 
month given and the Epact, to be found in 
the third table in the Prayer-Book ; (2) if 
the date given is after March, add the num¬ 
ber of the month from March inclusive, and 
the sum is the required age of the moon. 
Let us take 1896 a.d. Easter-day for that 
year would be thus calculated : Since an 
Easter can fall between March 22 and April 
25, let us choose April 1 on which to find 
the moon’s age. The Epact for 1896 is 15; 


therefore, 

April 1. 1 

Epact. 15 

March and April. 2 


18 

The moon will be eighteen days old on April 
1. It was full, therefore, on March 29, and 
April 5 will be Easter-day. 

The Golden Number was really the same 
cycle as the Epact, i.e., one of nineteen 
years ; but there was made no provision for 
the hour and a half of gain in each lunation, 
which amounted to about a day in three 
hundred and twelve years. Therefore, when 
the Calendar was rectified in the English 
Church in 1752, the Golden Number was set 
aside practically, and the Epact substituted. 
For the order of the Golden Number was 
fixed by law, and could not be moved to its 
true place in the column whenever the error 
by increment became serious; so it was 
dropped and the Epact was substituted, 
which could be placed opposite its true 
place in the cycle. The Golden Number is 


apparently different from the Epact, as will 
be seen : 


Epact. fO 11 22 3 14 25 6 17 28 9 

Golden Number. (1234567 89 10 

Epact. f 20 1 12 23 4 15 26 7 18 

Golden Number.jll 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 


But the fact is that the Golden Number 
needed the Epact originally; and if the 
Table of Lessons for March and April be ex¬ 
amined a series of strangely arranged num¬ 
bers will be noted. These are the Golden 
Numbers, marking the days upon which the 
full moons can fall in those months, so that 
the year on which the Golden Number 
points out the full moon being found, the 
Sunday letter following such Golden Num¬ 
ber is Easter-day. Take, again, the year 
1896 a.d. The Epact is 15, the Golden 
Number corresponding is 16. This is set 
opposite March 29 as the date of the full 
moon. Easter-day will, therefore, fall on 
April 5. These computations were neces¬ 
sary to procure an accurate mode for finding 
Easter-day; yet there will always be a va¬ 
riation from the astronomical full moon, 
since it is not possible in an ecclesiastical 
calendar to make provision for the minute 
errors which the loss of a few moments or 
seconds will produce in the lapse of cen¬ 
turies. Therefore a rectification must always 
be made at stated periods. 

Easter determines the dates of all the 
Movable Feasts and Fasts which precede 
and follow it. Upon Easter depend the 
number of Sundays after Epiphany, the 
date of Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quin- 
quagesima Sundays, Ash-Wednesday, Good- 
Friday, which precede, and Ascension-day, 
Whit-Sunday, and Trinity-Sunday, which 
follow, Easter-day, and necessarily the num¬ 
ber of Sundays after Trinity are also thus 
determined. Except for the Immovable 
Feasts, which follow the solar calendar, all 
ecclesiastical calculations follow the Mosaic 
precept to regulate the feasts by the moon. 

In fact, no proposed calendar can so well 
meet all the difficulties and nice adjustments 
required as the one we now use. It is a 
memorable example of the truth that God’s 
ordinances are immutable. The French at¬ 
tempted to substitute a new calendar during 
the Revolution; but they had, in less than 
twelve years, to revert to the Church Cal¬ 
endar, which is based upon Jewish Law, 
which, again, is based upon the ordinance: 

u And God said, Let there be lights in the 
firmament of the heaven to divide the day 
from the night; and let them be for signs, 
and for seasons, and for days, and for years. 
. . . And God made two great lights” 
(Gen. i. 14, 16). 

Under any system of chronology what¬ 
ever each historian is inexorably bound by 
the conditions of Jewish computation, both 
because it is so universally received that he 
cannot escape it, and because, with all the dif¬ 
ficulties attending calculations under it, it 
i conforms to natural terms of time. Many 











CALENDAR OF SAINTS 


115 


CALIFORNIA 


facts of ancient history depend (to take hut 
a single instance) upon the calculation of 
eclipses for their verification. 

Calendar of Saints. Vide Hagiology. 

California, Diocese of, 1850 - 1884 . The 
first Convention was held in Trinity Church, 
San Francisco, in July (1850 a.d.), for the 
purpose of organizing the Diocese of Cali¬ 
fornia. The opening sermon was preached 
by the Rev. Dr. Ver Mehr, and the Rev. 
Flavel L. Mines was appointed chairman. 

It is a fact in history that the early found¬ 
ers of the Church on this coast had no idea 
of uniting with the General Church at the 
East. There is no recognition of it in any 
of their proceedings. They ignored the 
name of “Protestant Episcopal,” and called 
their organization the “ Church in Cali¬ 
fornia.” Knowing that while in this posi¬ 
tion no Bishop would be consecrated for 
them, the question was discussed of at¬ 
tempting to procure the Episcopate from 
the Greek Church. Abandoning this idea, 
the Convention elected as their Bishop the 
Rt. Rev. Bishop Southgate, who, having 
been consecrated to a foreign mission, had 
lately returned. He, however, declined the 
invitation. Three years passed away, dur¬ 
ing which time nothing further was done to 
organize the Church. In this time the Rev. 
Mr. Mines, the first minister to the coast 
and the first rector of Trinity, the mother- 
church of the Diocese, had been removed 
by death. The so-called parishes of Marys¬ 
ville, Stockton, and Sacramento had hardly 
an existence, and there were hut two live 
parishes,—Trinity and Grace, of San Fran¬ 
cisco, these constituting the “ Diocese of 
California ” 

In October, 1853 a.d., the General Con¬ 
vention met in New York, and the wants 
of this coast soon claimed their attention. 
Ignoring most wisely the past action of the 
Diocese, which was not in accord with the 
majority of Churchmen in California, the 
General Convention decided to appoint a 
Missionary Bishop for California. The elec¬ 
tion was held in the House of Bishops, and 
the Rev. William Ingraham Kip, D.D., 
rector of St. Paul’s Church, Albany, was 
nominated. The election was so unanimous, 
and the voice of the church so urgent, the 
Rev. Dr. Kip accepted the nomination, and 
was consecrated in Trinity Church, New 
York, on October 28, Festival of SS. Simon, 
Jude, 1853 a.d. The sermon was preached 
by Bishop Burgess, of Maine, and perhaps 
it will not be out of place in this brief his¬ 
tory to give a few words or passages of that 
eloquent and touching sermon, for in the 
thirty years that have passed it seems like 
the fulfilling of prophecy : 

“In this foremost temple of the great 
mart and metropolis of this new Western 
world we are assembled for a work which 
cannot be without fruit in distant days and 
in distant regions. From this spot, and from 
the act we are about to accomplish, the 
course, if Providence favors it, is straight 


to the Golden Gate, which opens towards 
Eastern Asia. He who shall enter there as 
the first Protestant Bishop will see before 
him the land which is the treasure-house of 
the republic. Behind it are the vales and 
rivers and snowy mountains, which are 
to our Far West the Farther West. And 
amidst them lie the seats of that abomi¬ 
nable and sensual impiety, the cry of which 
goes up to heaven, like that of Sodom and 
Gomorrah from the valley of the Dead Salt 
Sea. Still beyond spread the deserts which 
divide, but which will not long divide, the 
Christians of this Continent. 

“ Upon the edge of the vast field he will 
stand when he shall place his foot on the 
shore of the Pacific. There he is to be oc¬ 
cupied in laying the foundations of a Church 
which must be a pillar and ground of the 
truth for wide lands and for unborn millions. 

“ Few of the issues can he live to witness. 
But in the years to come, if years are given 
him, he must recall the prospects which 
opened upon him in this hour, and again 
when he first saw the coast of that Western 
ocean.” 

To the Bishop-elect: “Yours is an Epis¬ 
copate to be exercised where fellow-laborers 
are still to be gathered, where seminaries 
are yet to be founded, where congregations 
are mostly to be begun. You go where thirst 
for gold, impatience of restraint, the vices of 
adventurers, and all the ills of unavoidable 
lawlessness have been before you ; where the 
softening influence of old age and of child¬ 
hood can as yet be little known, and where 
female piety throws but a small measure of 
its familiar light over the surface and face 
of society. A lover of the world, a pleaser 
of men, a reed shaken by the wind, has no¬ 
where his place among the standard-bearers 
of Christ ; but least of all on such an out¬ 
post beleaguered by temptations.” 

These passages help to show not only the 
magnitude of the work before the first 
Bishop of California, but the peculiar diffi¬ 
culties to encounter. 

At the time of his arrival, January 29, 
1854 a.d. , there was but one clergyman, 
Rev. Dr. Wyat, rector of Trinity, actively 
engaged in parochial work. Rev. Dr. Clark 
was prevented by age from assuming the 
duties of a parish, and Dr. Yer Mehr, who 
was nominally rector of Grace Church, was 
engaged most of the time with his school at 
Sonoma. 

At the first Convention held by the Bishop, 
three months after his arrival, there were 
but three parishes represented, Trinity and 
Grace, of San Francisco, and St. John’s 
parish, Stockton, and the latter existed only 
on paper. 

In December, 1856 a.d., the Diocese hav¬ 
ing strength enough to elect a Bishop, a 
special Convention was called for that pur¬ 
pose. It met in Sacramento, February 5, 
1857 a.d. There were nine clergy present, 
and nine parishes represented, when the Rt. 
Rev. William Ingraham Kip, D.D., the 





CALIFORNIA 


116 


CALIFORNIA 


Missionary Bishop, was unanimously elected 
Bishop of the Diocese of California. 

In 1874 a.d. the Diocese, by consent of 
General Convention, was divided, and the 
northern portion set off as the Missionary 
Jurisdiction of Northern California, of 
which the Rt. Rev. J. H. D. Wingfield, D.D., 
is its Missionary Bishop. 

Instead of two parish ministers, as thirty 
years ago, now, with the northern portion 
of the State taken off, there are still about 
seventy on the list. 

. Never in its history has the Church in 
California been more prosperous than at the 
present. In sympathy, in Churchmanship, 
in loyalty, and devotion the clergy are 
united. Older parishes are awaking to the 
great work before them, while new missions, 
soon to be parishes, are springing up all over 
the Diocese. 

To Eastern people trained in the Church 
and Church principles it might seem that the 
progress here has been slow, and that with 
all the reputed great wealth of California 
there should be Church institutions, largely 
endowed, springing up and reaching out 
aggressively all over the broad State. But 
very little of this great wealth is in the 
hands of Church people, and the Church is 
comparatively poor, and it has been a hand 
to hand struggle at times barely to exist. 

In such a mixed population, the ends of 
the earth thrown together in a lump, as it 
were, with all shades of religion and no re¬ 
ligion, one might well exclaim, “Who is 
sufficient for these things?” Yet amid the 
lawlessness, even in its early history, there 
have always been some noble souls doing val¬ 
iant service for Christ and His Church. 
There have been earnest, self-denying souls 
going about doing good humbly, not to be 
seen of men, whose reward will one day 
come from Him in whose memory “ no good 
deed is ever lost.” Many a pioneer Church¬ 
man, of both clergy and laity, will be of 
those who shall be had “ in everlasting re¬ 
membrance.” 

The Women’s Missionary Society of the 
Diocese (Auxiliary) is doing a good work, 
and many of our missionaries are cheered 
by their timely gifts and thoughtful care, 
while the little chapel is beautiful in its 
chancel furnished from the same source. 
With nearly every parish there is connected 
a Parish or Rectors’ Aid Society, whose 
visits to the sick and sorrowing, together 
with substantial aid, do much to teach peo¬ 
ple of a living, loving Christ, as well as a 
living Church. 

Trinity, the mother-parish, is a sort of 
rallying-point. Every year in our Diocesan 
Convention she welcomes the scattered chil¬ 
dren and bids them come once more around 
her altar. Beneath the chancel of this 
church rests all that is mortal of the first 
minister of our Church to the coast, the Rev. 
Flavel L. Mines. 

Grace, formerly called the Cathedral, in 
which the Bishop labored for many years, 


and twice saved from the sheriff’s hammer, 
stands upon what is called Grace Church or 
Nob Hill, and can be seen for many blocks 
1 around, as though inviting all to come and 
worship. 

Advent, the down-town church, is next 
in age. It has its guilds, its brotherhoods, 
and its great army of choristers; its doors 
stand open to the weary laborer, as though 
saying, Come in and rest and pray, for this 
is the house of prayer. 

St. John’s, St. Paul’s, St. Luke’s, St. 
Stephen’s, and St. Peter’s,—this cluster of 
saints in these churches are in a certain way 
children of the older parishes, and are all 
doing good work for the Church. 

Of the Church institutions, there is the 
Old Ladies’ Home. The building was for¬ 
merly used as St. Luke’s Hospital; clean, 
bright, and truly home-like, it is admira¬ 
bly managed, some four ladies from each 
parish constituting the board. It is em¬ 
phatically a Home, and its inmates, some 
forty in number, are tenderly cared for and 
their declining years made happy by watch¬ 
ful care and the comforting services of the 
Church. 

The Diocese is well supplied with Church 
schools. I will not mention the very excel¬ 
lent institutions of Benicia, as they come 
under another head, viz., the Jurisdiction 
of Northern California. In this Diocese we 
have, as one of the oldest Church schools, 
St. Matthew’s Hall, San Mateo, Rev. A. L. 
Brewer, Principal and Rector, founded in 
1865 a.d. with but three pupils, until its 
rolls number about one hundred, and full. 
The school in all its appointments is well 
arranged ; the stone church covered with 
ivy, the shaded walks and profusion of fl<3w- 
ers, make a picture, one of the most beauti¬ 
ful in beautiful California. Independent 
of the thorough training, the thorough drill, 
and manly bearing of the cadets, the refin¬ 
ing, Christianizing influence thrown around 
the boys is an education in itself. 

Trinity School, in San Francisco, Rev. E. B. 
Spalding, Principal, though but five or six 
years in existence, has made splendid prog¬ 
ress, and does great credit to its founder and 
instructors. 

Irvin School forYoung Ladies, in San Fran¬ 
cisco, Rev. E. B. Church, Principal, is stead¬ 
ily growing in favor, as it so well deserves 

There are also Church schools at San Jose, 
Santa Cruz, Alameda, and Oakland, so that 
our Diocese is not only well supplied with 
Church schools, but can be congratulated 
on their high character and efficiency. 

Many of those who helped to lay the 
foundation of the Church in California have 
passed to their reward,—“ they rest from 
their labor, and their works follow them.” 
Our good Bishop, after thirty years of faith¬ 
ful doing, is still hale and erect, and as the 
years pass on is more and more beloved by 
his people. In “ journeyings often” he visits 
every parish and mission in the Diocese 
every year, and some of them, as they call 








CALL 


117 


CANON LAW 


upon him, much more frequently, and among 
all the changes that have occurred in this 
changing population is a living oracle, a 
perpetual parish and diocesan register. 

There remains yet very much land to he 
possessed, for our Church is hut as yet in its 
infancy, and if but the foundation can be 
laid deep and strong in faith, in love, and 
devotion, the future historian will look upon 
this little sketch of the Church in 1884 a.d. 
as in still greater contrast than in that first 
Convention thirty-one years ago. 

W. L. Githens. 

Call. Vide Vocation. 

Calvinism. The system of theology of 
John Calvin (1509-1564 a.d.). It was based 
upon Augustine’s system of Predestination, 
but was far more systematic, and was based 
less upon the control of the Incarnation over 
men than the subordination of the Incarna¬ 
tion and Atonement to the logical exigencies 
of a strict dogma of Predestination. Calvin 
was a master of logic, and impressed his 
conclusions upon many who studied his 
works. His system affected many who did 
not agree with him in his ecclesiastical the¬ 
ories, and Calvinism is held by a great num¬ 
ber who are by no means in sympathy with 
him, simply because it expresses most logi¬ 
cally for them the conclusions to be drawn 
from God’s justice, prescience, and omnisci¬ 
ence. The error lies, not in urging these, 
but in unconsciously subordinating to them 
the Atonement and its consequences to all 
men. In this as in so many other things, 
the Church does not interfere with any pri¬ 
vate opinions that are not pushed to the ex¬ 
tent of breaking down the Articles of the 
Creed and to the practical denial of any part 
of the teachings of Holy Scripture upon the 
only true principle laid down in the XX. 
Article: “ The Church hath power to de¬ 
cree Pules or Ceremonies and authority in 
controversies of Faith, and yet it is not law¬ 
ful for the Church to ordain anything that 
is contrary to God’s Word written, neither 
may it so expound one place of Scripture 
that it be repugnant to another. Wherefore, 
although the Church be a witness and a 
keeper of Holy Writ, yet, as it ought not 
to decree anything against the same, so, be¬ 
sides, the same ought it not to enforce any¬ 
thing to be believed for necessity of salva¬ 
tion.” Therefore, though men may by force 
of their individual temperaments need to 
form systems, the Church cannot form any 
system of theology other than the breadth of 
Scripture and the Creed allow. Calvin’s ex¬ 
treme notions, or rather statements, are not 
now so tenaciously held as formerly. The 
Five Points of Calvinism, as they are called, 
are,— 

I. That God has chosen a certain number 
in Christ to everlasting glory before the 
foundation of the world, according to His 
immutable purpose and of His free grace 
and love, without the least foresight of faith, 
good works, or any conditions performed by 
the creatures, and that the rest of mankind 


He was pleased to pass by and ordain them 
to dishonor and wrath for their sins, to the 
praise of His vindictive justice. 

II. That Jesus Christ by His sufferings 
and death made an Atonement only for the 
sins of the elect. 

III. That mankind are totally depraved 
in consequence of the Fall ; and by virtue 
of Adam’s being their public head the guilt 
of his sin was imputed, and a corrupt nature 
conveyed to his posterity, from which pro¬ 
ceeds all actual transgression : and that by 
sin we are made subject to death, and all 
miseries, temporal, spiritual, and eternal. 

IV. That all whom God has predestinated 
to life He is pleased in His appointed time 
effectually to call by His Word and Spirit 
Out of that state of sin and death in which 
they are by nature to grace and salvation in 
Jesus Christ. 

V. That those whom God has effectually 
called and sanctified by His Spirit shall 
never finally fall from a state of grace. 

The older Calvinists strenuously defended 
these propositions, but at the present day they 
are held in a much modified form. 

Candlemas. An old name for the Feast 
of the Purification of Saint Mary the Virgin 
(February 2). It was customary in the 
mediaeval Church upon this feast to bear in 
procession, and to place in the church, a large 
number of lighted candles, typifying the de¬ 
scription in the Song of Simeon of the Lord 
Jesus, —“a light to lighten the Gentiles, 
and the glory of Thy people Israel;” hence 
the name Candlemas-day. Alcuin (790 a.d.) 
speaks of the custom; St. Bernard also 
(1153 a.d.). (Vide Feasts.) 

Canon. Apparently it is a name given to 
an officer in the Cathedral staff—a member 
of the Chapter—who held the same general 
rank as the Prebend. They with the Pre¬ 
bends had their several duties in the services 
and care of the Cathedral. Possibly the 
Prebend enjoyed the income from a special 
endowment or estate, while the Canon was 
maintained out of the common income of the 
Cathedral. However that may have been, 
Canons and Prebends are now merged into 
the single title of Canons. They are mem¬ 
bers of, and vote in, the Cathedral Chapter. 
(Vide Chapter.) Minor Canons are not of 
the Chapter. They ought to be all priests, 
skilled in Church music, and are responsi¬ 
ble for the decent and solemn celebration of 
divine service in daily rotation. 

Canon. The term is from the Greek 
Canon, and means a rule or law, or the term 
is used generally for Canon Law,—i.e., the 
rule of the Church ; Canon of Scripture, i.e., 
the books which the Church accepts as in¬ 
spired and as binding; Canon of the Liturgy, 
i the rule for the celebration of the Holy 
Communion, which usually begins with the 
versicle, Lift up your hearts (Sursum Corda). 

Canon Law. All the legislation of the 
Church, enacted by her own spiritual right, 
has from the first been embodied in Canons ,— 
a word derived from the Greek, and signify- 






CANON LAW 


118 


CANON LAW 


ing Rules. The earliest example of these 
Canons is found in the Acts of the Apostles, 
where by open consultation, free discussion, 
and joint action of Apostles, Elders, and 
Brethren (or, as we should now say, “ Bish¬ 
ops, Clergy, and Laity”), the first Canons 
were made. At no time in the history of 
the Christian Church has any individual — 
not even the Pope—undertaken to enact 
Canons by his sole authority. The collective 
nature of the act, enduring to the present 
day, is an indisputable proof of the collective 
character of the law-making power from the 
beginning. 

There are three distinct sources of Canon 
Law for us,— (Ecumenical, Anglican , and 
American. 

I. The (Ecumenical Canons, besides those 
already alluded to in the Acts of the Apos¬ 
tles, include,— 

1. The Apostolic Canons,—a body of 
eighty-five Canons, of unknown antiquity, 
but certainly in large measure embodying 
the rules of action taught everywhere bjr the 
Apostles themselves, though also with marks 
of later additions. The first two, brief as 
they are, have been the rule of all branches 
of the Apostolic Church in all ages: “ Canon 
I. Let a Bishop be ordained by two or three 
Bishops.” “Canon II. Let a Presbyter, or 
Deacon, and the other clergy, be ordained by 
one Bishop.” These, as well as many others 
of the most important of these ancient Canons, 
are embodied in the “Digest” of the Amer¬ 
ican Church. 

2. The Canons passed by the undisputed 
General Councils. By the Council of Nice 
20; by the first Council of Constantinople 
7; by the Council of Ephesus 8; by the 
Council of Chalcedon 30 ;—these 65 Canons 
are of highest authority. 

3. Besides these, the Council of Chalcedon 
gave (Ecumenical approval to the Canons 
of several Provincial Synods, as follows : 
of Ancyra, 25 Canons; of Neo-Caesarea, 15; 
of Gangra, 20; of Antioch, 25; of Laodi- 
cea, 60. The last of these Laodicean Canons 
is the earliest that settles the number of the 
books to be received as Holy Scripture. This 
entire body of (Ecumenical law lies at the 
basis of the working system of the Church 
in all ages, though naturally some portions 
of these Canons have become obsolete through 
the many changes of time and circumstance. 

II. The Anglican Canons. The Canons 
adopted in various Provincial Synods in Eng¬ 
land—Lynd wood enumerates fifteen —before 
the Reformation remained in force until 1603 
a d., and still continue to be of force, except 
where subsequent legislation has expressly 
altered them. Of these Dr. Hook says, 
“ The above Canons, made by our Church 
before the Reformation, are, of course, bind¬ 
ing on our Church now, and are acted upon 
in the Ecclesiastical Courts, except where 
they are superseded by subsequent Can¬ 
ons, or by the provisions of an Act of 
Parliament.” Blunt’s “ Book of Church 
Law” says, “ The Canons passed up to the 


1 fifteenth century were collected by William 
Lynd wood (Archdeacon of Canterbury, and 
afterwards Bishop of St. David’s) in a work 
called ‘ Provincial,’ of which the best edi¬ 
tion is that printed at Oxford in 1679. They 
were published in English in Johnson’s 
‘ Collection of all the Ecclesiastical Laws, 
Canons, Answers, or Rescripts ... of the 
Church of England,’ the original edition 
of which was printed in 1720 a.d., and a re¬ 
vised one, edited by Baron, in 1850 a.d. 
Wilkins’s 1 Concilia Magnse Britanniae’ con¬ 
tains all such documents down to 1717 a.d. 
Ayliffe’s ‘ Parergon Juris Canonici Angli- 
cani,’ or, a Commentary by way of Supple¬ 
ment to the Canons and Constitutions of the 
Church of England,—a valuable work, the 
character of which is indicated by its title, 
was published in 1734 a.d. An entirely 
new and most trustworthy edition of Wil¬ 
kins’s ‘ Concilia’ has lately been issued from 
the Clarendon Press under the editorship of 
Professor Stubbs and the Rev. A. W. 
Haddon.” 

Besides the above, there was the immense 
“Corpus Juris Canonici,” the accumulated 
conglomeration of Church law as set forth 
by the Popes. In addition to the ancient 
Canons, it contains the decrees of Popes and 
Fathers of the Church, a large part of which 
are acknowledged forgeries. As edited 
under Gregory XIII. the bulk of the two 
massive folio volumes in fine print consists 
of the Decretum of Gratian, the Decretals 
of Gregory IX., the Decretals of Boniface 
VIII., the Clementine Constitutions (Clem¬ 
ent V.), the Extravagantes of John XXII., 
and the Extravagantes Communes. In Eng¬ 
land the adoption of this Roman Canon 
Law was never unrestricted or unreserved. 
More than once the attempt to introduce it 
was successfully resisted ; one such attempt 
bringing from the barons the famous reply, 
Nolumus leges Anglice mutari. Subject to 
the admitted superiority of English law, 
however, many rules of the Roman Canon 
Law have been incorporated with the Eng¬ 
lish, and the English courts have in recent 
times decided cases on no other authority 
than that of a Canon of the fourth Lateran 
Council, as accepted and recognized by Eng¬ 
lish Ecclesiastical law. 

At the Reformation settlement of this mat¬ 
ter, which took place in the twenty-fifth year 
of Henry VIII., it was expressly provided 
that so much of the entire body of ecclesi¬ 
astical legislation as did “ not stand with 
God’s laws and the laws of the realm, the 
same to be abrogated and taken away ;” 
but “such of them as shall be seen ... to 
stand with God’s laws and the laws of the 
realm, to stand in full strength and power.” 
A royal commission of thirty-two persons 
was to sift the whole, and put in tangible 
shape that which should continue in force. 
The “ Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum,” 
issued in the reign of Edward VI., was the 
work of the commission contemplated; but 
it never received any legal sanction, so that 









CANON LAW 


119 


CANON OF SCRIPTURE 


the settlement of Henry VIII. still con¬ 
tinues in force. 

In 1603 a.d. a body of Canons was pre¬ 
pared by Convocation and approved by the 
king; but they were not adopted by Parlia¬ 
ment, and therefore are not binding on the 
laity. In 1641 a.d. other Canons were put 
forth, but not with as high authority as 
those of 1603 a.d. One Canon, that con¬ 
cerning sponsors, has been altered since the 
revival of Convocation in our own day. 
Considerable portions of these English Can¬ 
ons are practically obsolete. 

III. The Canons of the American Church 
(including the Constitution) are found in 
the “Digest,” which is divided into four 
titles: Title I. is u Of the Orders in the 
Ministry , and of the Doctrine and Worship 
of the Church ,” including general directions 
for the work of Priests, Deacons, and par¬ 
ishes ; Title II. is devoted to “ Discipline ,” 
an abundance being provided for Bishops, 
Priests, and Deacons, and very little for any¬ 
body else; Title III. concerns the “ Organ¬ 
ized Bodies and Officers of the Church ;” and 
Title IV. is occupied by “ Miscellaneous 
Provisions .” 

There is no restriction on the power of 
legislation possessed by the General Con¬ 
vention ; but many things are left to the 
Diocesan Conventions, especially the mode 
of trying Priests and Deacons. Each Dio¬ 
cese, therefore, has a Constitution and Can¬ 
ons of its own, which are of subordinate 
authority to those of the General Conven¬ 
tion. 

As to the present authority of these three 
branches of Canon Law, it may be said: 

I. Of the (Ecumenical Canons, a preg¬ 
nant recognition is embodied in our Ordi¬ 
nal, where the Presiding Bishop thus ad¬ 
dresses the Bishop-elect: “ Brother, foras¬ 
much as the Holy Scripture and the ancient 
Canons command ,” etc. This recognizes a 
still abiding authority in those Canons, as 
well as in Holy Scripture. A very large 
proportion of those Canons, moreover, is 
embodied in our own “ Digest.” But no 
specific mention of them is made in that 
Canon which enumerates the causes for 
which a cleric may be presented and tried. 

II. The Anglican Canons have, by many 
of our leading canonists, been declared to be 
still binding in this country, except where 
American Canons have covered the same 
ground differently; others deny it. The 
House of Bishops, in 1814 a.d., distinctly 
affirmed it. 

This, at least, may be said, that both 
(Ecumenical and Anglican Canons are a safe 
guide to the individual conscience or judg¬ 
ment, where American Canons are silent. 

III. Among the charges for which a 
Bishop, Priest, or Deacon may be presented 
and tried, our American Canon specifies 
“Violation of the Constitution or Canons 
of the General Convention,” and also 
“ Violation of the Constitution or Canons of 
the Diocese to which he belongs.” 


It would not be safe to take for granted 
that an Ecclesiastical Court would carry its 
penal discipline beyond the two specifica¬ 
tions here made. 

It has been said that the first Canons 
were passed by the “ Apostles, Elders, and 
Brethren.” In the case of the (Ecumenical 
Councils (as in all Provincial Synods), 
though only Bishops (or the representatives 
of absent Bishops) voted, yet the discussions 
were public, and the voice of the other 
orders of the ministry was freely heard, so 
that the result may fairly be said to be the 
voice of all. Nor had those Canons the 
force of laws until they received the official 
sanction of the emperor, the embodiment 
of the lay power. During the mediaeval 
period no Council was held without some 
representation of the same secular element, 
either in the Council itself, or applied after¬ 
wards. The common rule was, that no bull 
of any Pope, and no Canon of any Coun¬ 
cil, could be published as binding in any 
country without the consent of the king. 
Under the Anglican system, where the Con¬ 
vocation includes only Bishops and clergy, 
their acts do not bind as law without the 
approval of Parliament. And, with us, no 
Canon can be enacted without the free vote 
of the order of the laity, as well as that of 
the Bishops and the clergy. The shape in 
which the principle is embodied in our 
American system is the fairest of all, and 
the least liable to any abuse. 

Rev. J. H. Hopkins, D.D. 

Canon of Scripture. A point of the 
highest importance from many points of 
view is the determination of the Canonical 
Scriptures. It has been urged latterly that 
the Scriptures are not of the essence of the 
Faith, but only inspired records of it. While 
it is very true that the Faith and the facts 
on which it rests are so woven into the very 
texture of the Christian polity that they 
would exist in all essentials without the 
record, yet the very constitution of our 
nature, our finite condition, and the rela¬ 
tions of God dealing towards us, necessi¬ 
tating a Revelation, it follows that the pres¬ 
ervation of this Revelation could not be 
left to chance, but being to men, for men, 
and deposited with men, for their instruc¬ 
tion, it must be preserved by them under 
God’s general guidance. A slight examina¬ 
tion of the distortions of the original Divine 
communication which belonged to all men 
at the first, shows us that peculiar guards 
are needed for the accurate conservation of 
such a Revelation. When the family of 
Abraham was chosen there was at first a 
transmission of the Faith by tradition. It 
was a simple plain fact. The unity of God, 
and the blessed mission for which He had 
chosen them and the inheritance of the land 
of Canaan. Doubtless the doctrine of the 
unity of God was obscured by contami¬ 
nating heathen communications, but the 
tradition was direct. But when Moses re¬ 
ceived a Revelation and a Law, and an 




CANON OF SCRIPTURE 


CANON OF SCRIPTURE 


rzo 


order to write them down, then prepara¬ 
tion was also made for their due preserva¬ 
tion. They were put beside the Ark of the 
Covenant, and were kept with the care that 
watched over that. Then the records, not 
the full records of what we may call the 
state papers and public documents of their 
history, but the records that exhibit the di¬ 
rect line of God’s dealings with and care 
for His chosen people, as Joshua, Judges, 
Samuel, and Kings,—written by men whose 
names may be traditionally connected with 
them, or which may have been forgotten, 
but who nevertheless were recognized as 
the proper persons to do this,—were also 
published in some authentic way. So, too, 
of the prophetic writings, of Proverbs, and 
Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs,—the 
Psalms as belonging to the Temple ritual 
stands somewhat apart,—these were in some 
sense recognized as holy books, though not 
gathered into an authoritative collection as 
in the present Canon. The Law apparently 
was the only collection which received from 
the first full recognition. After the Cap¬ 
tivity Ezra took up the work. He caused 
the Law to be read publicly. Jewish tradi¬ 
tion assigns to him the collection and ar¬ 
rangement of all the books up to his time, 
and Nehemiah added what was wanting, 
save the books evidently later, as Malachi. 
This tradition of the Talmud shows the 
gradual forming of the collection of the 
sacred books. Later, as we know, the 
whole list underwent severe scrutiny, and 
some, as Esther and the Song of Solomon, 
were only received after sharp discussion. 
External testimony is not wanting. The 
translation of the Hebrew into Greek, 
though a work extending over a long pe¬ 
riod, may be assigned to about 270 a.d. 
While there are books in it which are not 
from Hebrew originals, and so are rejected, 
the list otherwise corresponds to the Pales- 
tinean Canon. In the ejected books in this 
Septuagint is a confused reference to the 
tradition of the Talmud. We have next the 
indirect testimony of the Alexandrian Philo, 
who quoted largely from some portions of 
the Old Testament, and referred to the laws 
and oracles uttered by prophets, and hymns 
and the other (books) by which knowledge 
and piety are perfected. This triple division 
into the books of “ Moses, the Prophet, and 
the Psalms” (c/. Luke xxiv. 44) was com¬ 
mon then, but the contents of the three 
parts varied, from thirteen prophets of Jose¬ 
phus to the eight that the prophets now con¬ 
tain, for the twelve minor prophets must be 
counted as one book. The usual number 
was arbitrarily made to consist of twenty- 
two books, to correspond with the twenty- 
two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Thus 
Josephus classes them : The Law five books;' 
the Prophets, Joshua, Judges with Ruth, 
Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah with Lam¬ 
entations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Ezra with Nehe¬ 
miah, Esther, Chronicles, the twelve minoi 
prophets, and Job; and the Hagiographa 


Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of 
Solomon. There was a gradual transference 
of separate books from the section of the 
Prophets to that of the Hagiographa, but the 
triple division was still the current one, and 
so accepted. It in truth represented not only 
the gathering of the books into one formal 
list, but the gradual growth of it among 
the Jews, and the appreciation of the rela¬ 
tion of the Canon to their national history. 
But this is the state of the Old Testament 
at the time of our Lord. His references to 
it with approval, and His quotations from 
it, place its authority for us beyond any 
question; and, further, His quotations were 
not from every book, for from a few there is 
no quotation. Yet since He referred to this 
triple division, the Law of Moses and the 
Prophets and the Psalms, after His Resur¬ 
rection as containing all things to be fulfilled, 
and as He opened their understanding to re¬ 
ceive these Scriptures, we have a special 
seal placed upon their authenticity and au¬ 
thority. We have only to notice here that 
the lists given by Origen (220 a.d.), and Je¬ 
rome (400 a.d. ), and by the Talmud (550 
a.d.), completely correspond. Other lists in¬ 
clude some or all of the apocryphal books, but 
Origen, Jerome, and the Talmud adhered to 
the Hebrew text. These larger lists merely 
traced their lists through translations to 
the Septuagint, itself a translation, with addi¬ 
tions, as we have seen. It follows that the 
Apocrypha is to be rejected as uninspired. 

The history of the Canon of the New Tes¬ 
tament is parallel. The Revelation of Jesus 
Christ, recorded by chosen men, was first 
published and authenticated and gathered 
into a Canon, after thorough testing. It 
holds precisely the same relation to the Chris¬ 
tian Church that the Old Testament held to 
the Jewish Church. Through sixty years 
its writings were produced as the Hebrew 
writings were produced during the fourteen 
centuries of their production,— i.e., as the 
circumstances of the Church demanded. 
Persecution and difficulty of intercommuni¬ 
cation for such purposes kept the formation 
of the Canon in abeyance. The Gospels 
and other writings were circulated, exam¬ 
ined, used, tested and criticised, doubted of, 
and finally accepted as we now have them. 
The list as we now have it was the gener¬ 
ally-accepted one made by the Council of 
Laodicea (363 a.d.). But there were com¬ 
plete collections made much earlier, though 
there were so many of the books which were 
still under doubt in one part or another of 
the Church that there was no general readi¬ 
ness to accept any one catalogue, till the 
cessation of persecution gave the Church 
leisure to examine this most necessary ques¬ 
tion ; and when it was done satisfactorily, 
though by. a Provincial Council only, it was 
at once received and restated by other Coun¬ 
cils. It is out of place here to do more than 
to indicate the various lines of evidence 
which go to corroborate the genuineness of 
the several books so received as inspired and 





CANON OF SCRIPTURE 


121 


CARDINAL 


canonical. The first and most valued is the 
long series of quotations—made, as from 
books as inspired and of ultimate authority 
and of the highest value, to settle other 
points—to be found in the Christian writers, 
beginning with Clement, the fellow-worker 
of St. Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, 
and continually increasing and widening till 
the date of*the Council above referred to, 
later than which it would not be necessary 
to trace the quotations. Indeed, every verse 
in the New Testament, it is said, save one, 
can be found in the ante-Nicene Fathers,— 
t.e.,in the first two hundred and thirty years 
of Christian history. It is not that anyone 
writer quoted from all the books, but all 
these writers together did do so. And this is 
the more remarkable not merely from the 
comparatively slight means of circulating 
those writings, but from the manifold diffi¬ 
culties which persecution created for the 
diffusion of the books, and the studied con¬ 
cealment and protection of them. The sec¬ 
ond line of evidence is the translations 
which were made at an early date, as the 
Peschito and the Itala. The third line is 
the use of them in the public services, show¬ 
ing how they were received as of inspired 
authority in the worship of the Church. 

The 6th Article, after concisely stating 
the authority of Holy Scripture and the 
relation of the Apocryphal books to the in¬ 
spired Scriptures, gives the lists of the books 
of the Old Testament. This was done be¬ 
cause of the reverence which the Latin 
Church showed to the Apocryphal books, 
and to decide the question authoritatively. 

Authorities : Browne on XXXIX. Arti¬ 
cles, Smith’s Dictionar}', Wordsworth on the 
Canon, Wescott on the Canon of the New 
Testament, Schaff-Herzog Cyclopaedia. 

Canonization. The papal act of pro¬ 
nouncing upon the full sanctity of a holy 
person. In beatification the Pope only pro¬ 
nounces upon his (or her) blessedness, but 
does not decide whether he (or she) is a saint 
or not, and allows a certain cultus to be paid 
him. But in canonization the Pope ex cathe¬ 
dra announces the enrollment of the name 
upon the Calendar of Saints and the privilege 
to receive the cultus of the faithful in the 
Church. 

In early times local fame for sanctity 
placed the name upon the roll. It was a 
continuation of the still more ancient rite of 
reciting the names of the faithful departed 
in the celebration of the Eucharist. (Vide 
Diptychs.) But often, after the name was 
put upon the roll, papal sanction was sought. 
But the Roman See did not claim the exclu¬ 
sive right till the pontificate of Alexander 
III. (1181 a.d.). This right was not com¬ 
pletely established till 1625 a.d., when Urban 
VIII. issued a bull (and a second 1634 a.d.) 
detailing the manner of procedure. The 
saint was entitled to the invocation and 
adoration of the whole Church. “ The cul¬ 
tus of the beatified is permitted, the cultus 
of the canonized is enjoined.” 


Canticles. Vide The Song of Solomon. 

Cantor. The office of the singer was very 
anciently recognized in the Church, and he 
was set apart for his office with the charge, 
“ See that thou believe in thy heart what 
thou sayest with thy mouth, and approve in 
thy works what thou believest in thy heart.” 
The choir being divided into two parts, the 
Cantoris, or north side was the Precentors, or 
leaders, and was the leading side in the an- 
tiphonal singing, while the Decani side, in 
the opposite stalls, responded. 

Capital. Vide Architecture. 

Capitulary. A name for a section of the 
laws enacted by the states-general which 
Charlemagne used to gather to advise upon 
the empire. The whole series was called 
The Capitularies, from capitula—chapters— 
of such a Diet. These capitularies of Char¬ 
lemagne and his successors are well known, 
and are very important documents in the 
history of these times. They treated of 
every topic, from private matters to constitu¬ 
tional principles and ecclesiastical affairs, 
being often civil re-enactments of Provincial, 
and even (Ecumenical, Canons. 

Cardinal. The title of the highest digni¬ 
tary under the Pope of the Roman Church. 
Its origin lies far back in the history of the 
Church in Rome, but in the form and rank 
it now holds it dates only from the sixteenth 
century. Each parish in the city had its 
own mother or baptismal church, and the 
incumbent was called intitulatus incardi- 
natus , thence cardinalis. There were seven 
Deacons appointed for the charitable work 
in the several wards or parishes, a Deacon 
to each Church. These formed a council to 
the Bishop. Afterwards Stephen IV. (771 
a.d.) added the suffragan Bishops of the 
neighbor cities. These, with the people, 
had the right to nominate the Bishop of 
Rome ; but the right to confirm was exercised 
by the Franco-German emperors; finally, 
the right to elect was secured to the Cardi¬ 
nals only (1058 a.D.). The number of Car¬ 
dinals varied. In the time of Innocent III. 
there were over thirty. Death, and politi¬ 
cal intrigues and difficulties in nominating, 
of course, all had their force. The Council 
of Basle fixed the number at twenty-four. 
In 1559 a.d., under Pius V., there were as 
many as seventy-six. Sixtus V. (1590 a.d.) 
fixed the number at seventy-six Bishops, 
fifty Priests, and fourteen Deacons. A Car¬ 
dinal priest of a city church in Rome may 
also be a Bishop of a See elsewhere. 

The Pope nominates the new Cardinal in 
one secret Consistory, who is confirmed in a 
second by vote of the Cardinals present; 
when the creation is publicly announced, 
installation with the red hat, the ring of 
office, etc., takes place. There must be 
some regard paid to the rights of other na¬ 
tionalities to a share in holding the office, 
but the majority of the Cardinals are Italians. 

A Cardinal is alone eligible to election 
to the papal throne; his title is Eminentis- 
simus. Offense against him ranks as trea- 




CARTHAGE 


122 


CASUISTRY 


son. The oldest resident Cardinal Bishop is 
Dean of the College of Cardinals. 

Carthage. The Councils of Carthage and 
the Councils of Africa are frequently inter¬ 
changed by historians, and as they were 
often composed of the same Bishops and 
gathered in the same place, and even in the 
same year, it is possible that independent 
partial accounts of the same Council may 
have come to be reckoned as accounts of sep¬ 
arate Synods. It will not be necessary to 
notice more than two or three in any detail. 
A Council was held at Carthage, or rather 
several Councils were held, in the year 255 
a.d., on the question of baptizing those who 
had already been baptized by heretics. The 
uniform decision was that there was no valid 
baptism out of the Catholic Church, and 
that all who had once been baptized by her¬ 
etics must be baptized again for admission 
to the Church. St. Cyprian maintained 
this opinion without wavering, and there 
was a long dispute between him and Pope 
Stephen on the matter of rebaptism, which 
was decided finally at the Council of Arles 
in 314 a.d. In the year 411 a.d. a Council, 
or perhaps a Conference, was held at Car¬ 
thage on the schism of the Donatists. After 
considerable discussion, decision was made 
that the Donatists were entirely refuted by 
the arguments of the Catholics, and though 
their leaders appealed from this decision, it 
was in vain, and the sect from this time de¬ 
clined in number and influence. Several 
Councils were held in Carthage in the years 
412, 416, 418, and 419 a.d. Some of these 
are called Africa, some Carthage, some by 
both names ; and as they were composed 
largely of the same Bishops, they are more 
like several sessions of one Council than sep¬ 
arate Councils. In the Councils of Car¬ 
thage, held in 412, 416, and 418 a.d., the her¬ 
esy of Pelagius was discussed and answered, 
and Pelagius and his disciple, Celestius, were 
condemned and excommunicated. From 
the last of these assemblies the Bishops ad¬ 
dressed a very strong letter on the heresy of 
Pelagius to Zosimus, the Pope, who seems to 
have been imposed upon somewhat by Pela¬ 
gius and Celestius. The Council of Africa, 
held in 419 a.d., is also called Carthage, and 
is numbered by some the fourth, by others 
the sixth, of Carthage. Aurelius, Bishop 
of Carthage* called the Council and presided 
over it. There were present two hundred 
and seventeen Bishops, among whom were 
the Primate of Numidia, St. Augustine, 
Bishop of Hippo, and St. Alypius, of Tha- 
gaste. A legate of the Pope was also pres¬ 
ent. The business of the Council was on 
the question of appeals to the Pope. Faus- 
tinus, the legate, produced a Canon, pur¬ 
porting to be one made at the Council of 
Nice, to show that all Bishops have a right 
of appeal to the Pope; it was denied that 
there was such a Canon, and in order to de¬ 
termine the dispute, authentic copies of the 
acts of Nice were sent for from Alexandria 
and Constantinople. In the mean while 


the affair of Apiarius, a priest of Sicca, was 
discussed. He had been deposed and ex¬ 
communicated by his Bishop, but had ap¬ 
pealed to Pope Zosimus, who had received 
the appeal, contrary to the decisions of sev¬ 
eral Councils, and readmitted him to com¬ 
munion. The African Bishops refused to 
admit this pretension of the Pppe with re¬ 
gard to the right of appeal to Rome, and 
great contentions arose upon the subject. 
Five years later another assembly, or per¬ 
haps the same Bishops, came together on 
the business of Apiarius. It appears that 
he had been a second time excommunicated, 
and had afterwards fled to Rome, where he 
was received by Pope Celestine (for Zosimus 
was dead, and his successor Boniface), who 
gave credit to his statements, received him 
into communion, and gave him a letter to 
the Bishops of Africa. Accordingly, Apia¬ 
rius appeared at this Council with Fausti- 
nus, who wished to have him received into 
communion. But the Council proceeding to 
inquire into his conduct, Apiarius confessed 
his crimes and was cut off from the body of 
the Church. By this time an answer had 
been received from Cyril of Alexandria and 
Atticus of Constantinople, certifying that 
the Canons cited by Zosimus were not made 
at Nice; so the Council addressed a letter to 
Pope Celestine, in which they complained 
of his conduct in the matter of Apiarius ; 
begged him not to listen so easily to those 
who came to him from Africa ; not to re¬ 
ceive into communion those whom they had 
excommunicated, as this was contrary to 
Nice, which decided that all cases should be 
settled in the province where they arise, and 
could not be carried elsewhere without the 
especial direction of the Church; they 
added that the aid of the Holy Spirit 
might be hoped for to assist several Bishops 
together as much as one alone ; and finally 
they begged the Pope to send no more leg¬ 
ates to Africa to execute his judgments, as 
likely to introduce too much of the pride 
of the world into the Church of Christ. 
A hundred years later, a Council was held 
at Carthage under Bonifacius, when certain 
Canons were passed forbidding without dis¬ 
tinction all appeals beyond the sea. The 
Church of Africa maintained her right of 
judging her priests without appeal until the 
time of Gregory the Great. 

Cassock. A long straight gown of some 
kind of stuff, or cloth. In the Church of 
Rome it varies in color with the dignity of 
the wearer. Priests wear black ; Bishops, 
purple ; Cardinals, scarlet, and Popes, white. 
In the Church of England black is worn by 
all the three orders of the clergy, but Bishops, 
upon state occasions, often wear purple coats. 
The lxxiv. English Canon enjoins that 
beneficed clergymen, etc., shall not go in pub¬ 
lic in their doublet and hose without coats or 
cassocks. Jebb. (Hook’s Church Diction¬ 
ary.) 

Casuistry, or Cases of Conscience. Casu¬ 
istry is the name that is given to that science 




CASUISTRY 


123 


CASUISTRY 


which aims to show how to resolve “cases 
of conscience,’’ as they are called. They are 
cases in which we are in doubt as to what is 
our duty, the doubt or hesitation arising 
from the fact that there are two or more du¬ 
ties, each of which has claims upon us, 
which are so situated that we can perform 
only one of them. The aim was legitimate 
and good; but the science, this branch of 
Moral Philosophy and Christian Ethics,— 
for it was included in both alike,—has fallen 
into neglect and some measure of disrepute, 
so that it is now seldom or never included in 
any treatises on these subjects. The disre¬ 
pute into which it has fallen has resulted 
from two causes. In the first place, the 
views of Christian life and duty taken by 
Protestant denominations generally give 
but little occasion for the application of any 
of the principles of casuistry as it was taught 
by writers before the Reformation, and as it is 
still taught in the books of Roman Catho¬ 
lics on the subject. The other reason, which 
was perhaps much the most influential on 
the whole, was the fact that casuistry was 
too often used and regarded as a means of 
finding out how to escape the performance 
of some duty that was distasteful or incon¬ 
venient, rather than as a means for finding 
out in a conflict of several duties, which 
one of them was really the duty that ought 
to be performed. 

Still, however, casuistry, properly regarded 
and properly treated, has its place and its 
use, and it ought not to be omitted from any 
work that undertakes to show a man what 
his duties are, or to help him to find out how 
he ought to deport himself, and what he 
ought to do under all conditions and in all 
the circumstances of life, whether it claims 
to be a treatise of Moral Philosophy based 
on reason and the light of nature alone, or 
a treatise on Christian Ethics based chiefly 
on the truths and doctrines of Revelation. 

In the one case, that of Moral Philosophy, 
the rule is one of law, the fulfillment of 
which is exact and complete righteousness, 
with always a possibility of going beyond the 
requirements of duty and doing what will 
thus become works of “ supererogation.” 
In the other case,—Christian Ethics,—where 
the attention is directed both to the purity of 
heart and the uprightness of the motives, it 
is hardly recognized as a possibility that one 
can go beyond the requirement of the law— 
the law of liberty and of grace—and do more 
than is needed to fulfill one’s obligations. 
Nay, only one Being in “the form of man” 
is supposed to have ever done so much as to 
fulfill the requirements of the law. In this 
code there are but two great duties,—love to 
God and love to man ; these, when properly 
understood, can never be in conflict by any 
possibility or in any case. No human being 
can, in fact, come fully up to the require¬ 
ments. 

Still, however, there is a place and a 
sphere for casuistry even here. Eor although 
there can be no conflict between our duty to 


God and our duty to our fellow-men, when 
both are rightly understood, there will be 
many cases in the life of an earnest and con¬ 
scientious man when he will be in doubt 
about his duty, even from a Christian point 
of view. 

As specimens of the questions that have 
been discussed under the head of casuistry 
take the following. Under the head of the 
duty of truthfulness, “ how far is one justi¬ 
fiable in withholding the truth and mislead¬ 
ing others by telling what is known to be 
false, when the telling of the truth would 
put the man who tells it to inconvenience or 
loss, or damage to his friends, his country, 
or his Church ?” Or, again, as coming under 
the head of honesty, “ how far may a servant 
whose wages are either insufficient to sup¬ 
port him and his family or below what they 
ought to be, take the property of his em¬ 
ployer without his knowledge or consent to 
make up the deficiency ?” It will readily be 
seen how and why the subject of casuistry 
should fall into disrepute when it is occupied 
with such questions. 

Still, however, as we have already said, 
there will be occasions for the exercise of 
genuine casuistry in its proper and higher 
sense, whether we regard the matter as one 
purely of Moral Philosophy or as one of 
Christian Ethics. 

As a matter of Moral Philosophy I think 
we may get a very important help from a 
recognition of the fact that our duties may 
be referred to those classes, with reference to 
their grade of importance or claim to prefer¬ 
ence in making our selection. In the first 
place, we may speak of those duties which 
each one of us may be said to owe to himself ; 
second, those that he owes to his fellow-men ; 
and, thirdly, those that he owes in the sev¬ 
eral orders to his country, to humanity, and 
to God. 

Among the duties that one owes to him¬ 
self are temperance, sobriety, care of health, 
moral and intellectual culture, and such like. 
Now it is hardly possible that- there should 
occur any conflict between those duties one 
owes to himself and the duties of either of 
the higher grades. On the contrary, the per¬ 
formance and perfection of these duties are 
a help towards the performance of the higher 
duties. Health, temperance, purity, and a 
high state of culture make us mo$e valuable 
to others and enable us to render duties of a 
higher grade, or to perform them more fully 
and more acceptably, than we could if we were 
deformed and degraded by the vices which 
are the opposites of those virtues and accom¬ 
plishments. Then as between our duties to 
our families, our friends, and our country, 
humanity, and to God, there is less often a 
conflict than we are apt to imagine. But 
when there is really a conflict, there can be 
no doubt that the objects rise in superiority 
the one to the other, in the order in which 
they are named above. One who is fit to be 
a martyr for truth, for his country, and his 
God should have no hesitation about being 




CASUISTRY 


124 


CASUISTRY 


a martyr. But no man of a mean or cow¬ 
ardly disposition has any such call, or any 
qualification for the calling. Men who are 
worthy to be martyrs are always the men 
who have the respect and esteem of their 
fellow-men, for their moral excellence and 
mental superiority. Of the foremost and 
most worthy of all the martyrs the world has 
ever had it was “ He who has done nothing 
amiss,” there was no cause of death in Him, 
“not even so much as a word of guile was 
ever found in His mouth.” No one can 
render effective and acceptable service to 
any cause as a martyr who does not com¬ 
mand the respect and confidence of his fel¬ 
low-men. 

We can well understand how one should 
enter upon a course of heroic devotion to his 
country or the service of God without even 
a regret for the comfort, the ease, and the 
occasions for selfish and sensual indulgence 
which the duties he undertakes to perform 
may compel him to sacrifice. But we can¬ 
not understand how any one should enter 
upon such a course without regret and pain at 
the thought of the sacrifices which others must 
make, or the losses which this course may 
entail upon them,—the loss of society and 
companionship, and, as it will often happen, 
the loss of much needed help and support. 
Hence one should well scan his motives be¬ 
fore entering upon such duties, involving, 
as it does, the neglect or non-performance.of 
other duties that are in a way and to a cer¬ 
tain degree, at least, due to one’s relatives 
and neighbors. He should carefully consider 
whether any help that he can render to the 
higher cause will compensate in the general 
balance for the loss of those duties which by 
a different course he could certainly perform 
for the good of man and the glory of God. 

As a matter of Christian ethics the solu¬ 
tion of questions of conscience or of duty 
becomes a very different thing. Here we 
have not only the Scriptures but also the 
Church in general, and each one his own 
immediate and particular Christian pastor, 
to inform, advise, and to guide him. But 
the Scriptures themselves have put the mat¬ 
ter in such a light that the solution of such 
questions becomes comparatively easy. Chris¬ 
tianity directs attention to the motives by 
which one is actuated in what he does as a 
chief and controlling element. It distinctly 
recognizes the fact that one may do from the 
best of motives what ought not to be done, 
and may, on the other hand, do from very 
bad motives the very thing that ought to be 
done. St., Paul will furnish us an example 
of both cases,—the one in his own person, 
and the other in that of some of the people 
with whom he was brought into contact in 
the course of his ministry. Before his con¬ 
version, and when he was persecuting the 
Christians, in a spirit of determined opposi¬ 
tion to the very Gospel which he afterwards 
so effectively preached, he, as he himself in¬ 
forms us, did it from a zeal for God and the 
truth. The act was about the worst that 


could be done as he came to regard it after¬ 
wards, while the motive was of the highest 
order, and that one which of all others he 
regarded as the most holy and commendable. 
For an example of the other class of cases 
we may refer to his Epistle to the Philip- 
pians, chap. i. 15, where he says that some 
have preached Christ “ of envy and strife,” 
“not sincerely,” but from mere “conten¬ 
tion,” supposing and intending to add “ af 
fliction to his bonds.” “What then?” he 
asks, “ notwithstanding, every way, whether 
in pretense, or in truth, Christ is preached ; 
and I therein do rejoice, yea, I will rejoice.” 
Hence manifestly the motive was bad, al¬ 
though the act was a very proper thing to 
be done. And so in fact in a large share of 
what we undertake there is always the pos¬ 
sibility of some element of bad motive. 
However good and commendable the work 
in which we engage, the enforcement of law 
and the administration of discipline may be 
prompted or pursued more intensely than it 
would otherwise be from motives of anger 
or dislike towards those who are the objects 
of our activity and our zeal. So too in 
the highest, noblest works we can under¬ 
take,—even those that seem most noble and 
heroic, even in those cases where martyrdom 
may appear to be the inevitable result, there 
may be something of an unholy feeling, 
something of pride, of ambition, some 
thought of the halo of glory that will accom¬ 
pany our name in all the future generations 
of men. 

Christianity does not teach, as it is some¬ 
times claimed, that the character of our 
acts depends wholly and exclusively on our 
motives. It recognizes the fact, as we have 
just said and seen, that the motive may be bad 
while the act is good, and the reverse, which 
will happen far more frequently. The mo¬ 
tive may be perfectly pure and good, while 
the act we perform is one that ought not to 
be done. And although we may hope for 
pardon from God, as St. Paul did, and ob¬ 
tain it, as he assures us he did, there are 
often certain natural consequences that will 
follow our acts which no repentance can 
avert, and from which, so far as we know, 
God will not grant us any exemption. The 
broken constitution that comes from a life 
of dissipation and vice will not be restored, 
although, as we may hope and believe, the 
final penalty for the transgression which is 
to follow in the next world will be remitted, 
and in fact many of the purely essential 
and psychical consequences may be averted 
by Divine grace, so that peace and hope will 
come as the result of the Divine favor and 
forgiveness. 

We have spoken of three guides which 
the Christian believer has to a knowledge 
of his duty in the order of their‘authority 
and importance,—the Holy Scriptures, the 
Church, and the immediate pastor of each 
one as a member of some congregation of 
Christians. Ample provision is thus made 
for all classes and conditions of men. For 




CASUISTRY 


125 


CASUISTRY 


the very lowest in the scale of culture, the 
most ignorant and least intellectual, per¬ 
haps, this order should be reversed, so as to 
put the pastor first, then the Church, and 
finally the Holy Scriptures; for, as a mat¬ 
ter of fact, what these people learn of Christ 
and of duty they learn from their pastor, 
and through him they may come to know 
of the teachings of the Holy Scriptures or 
of the Church, without distinguishing or 
knowing any difference between the two 
elements, or in fact that these are the 
two sources from which this instruction 
has come to them. Such is the provision 
foi*the very lowest and those who have the 
least opportunity to learn and judge for 
themselves. Now we may well believe that 
for such persons God will not hold them re¬ 
sponsible, to any considerable extent at least, 
for the errors that may be taught them, if 
any such should have entered into the in¬ 
struction that has been given them. But 
for those of larger endowments there can 
be no doubt that God will hold them respon¬ 
sible for any errors they may hold, whether 
in doctrine or in regard to their duty, which 
they might have avoided by such a study of 
the Church and the Holy Scriptures as it was 
in their power to make. The Bible is for all, 
and all who can do so should read it. But 
it needs interpretation, and there are none, 
even the most learned and the wisest, who 
do not find in it many things that are “ hard 
to be understood,” and for the right under¬ 
standing of which they would be glad of 
help that they have not yet received. But 
with regard to duty—the minor details of 
our actions—I think there are two princi¬ 
ples or rules of the greatest importance. I 
speak now not of doctrine, or the doctrines 
of the faith, but of duty, what we are to do, 
and chiefly of those minor points of duty in 
regard to which there is most likely to be 
doubt, difficulty, or in which there may arise 
conflicts of duties, so that we are in doubt 
which to perform in order to serve God 
most acceptably. 

1. The first principle is that it is always 
better to err, if we must err at all, or are in 
danger of erring, on the side of self-denial 
and generosity than in the direction of self- 
indulgence and selfishness. Most of us 
need restraint in the indulgence of our ap¬ 
petites and the enjoyment of our pleasures. 
Periods of prayer, abstinence, and self-denial 
are prescribed, and they are found necessary 
for most persons, and beneficial, I doubt not, 
for all. Now whenever a case of doubt oc¬ 
curs, in which it is merely a question of a 
little more enjoyment or ease on our part, 
and a duty of charity or of forbearance for 
the good of others, this principle will help 
us to a very ready solution. By abstinence 
and self-denial in order to do a deed of 
charity or to promote the happiness and 
welfare of some other person, we may be 
doing a double duty and conferring a two¬ 
fold benefit,—one on ourselves and one on 
some brother in this common humanity of 


ours, on some one of those in reference to 
whom Christ has said, “ Inasmuch as ye 
have done it unto one of those ye have done 
it unto me.” 

Of course there is a possibility of carrying 
our abstinence and self-surrender, not to 
say self-sacrifice, too far. There may be an 
abstinence and self-neglect that will impair 
the health or endanger the life. And there 
are cases of course in which one will have 
duties to perforin that will require self-sacri¬ 
fice to that extent. In the case of the parent 
and the professional nurse, as well as that of 
the physician, it sometimes becomes a clear 
duty to do what the case requires even at the 
risk of health and of life. And there are cases, 
as we cannot doubt, in which persons who 
are not supposed, and cannot be supposed 
on any general principles of duty to run 
such risks, have nevertheless done so, with 
the approval of God, and, as we doubt not, 
the approval of all right-minded persons and 
with, at any rate, the admiration of all sub¬ 
sequent ages. 

And so with generosity. If in a matter 
of doubt whether I owe a man six pence or 
ten pence, on the principle I have stated it 
is safer, and, in a Christian point of view, it 
is better, to pay the ten pence. Most of us 
have constitutionally and naturally quite 
enough of selfishness. We need rather to 
check than to cultivate and encourage it. By 
acting on the rule suggested we may, and 
most likely we shall, be gaining more in a 
spiritual way than we lose in our temporal 
affairs. 

This principle, however, should not be so 
understood and applied as to inculcate sub¬ 
mission to wrong and extortion when the 
right is clearly known. We are speaking 
of cases of doubt, and not at all of those in 
which the right is clearly seen and known. 
How far we may submit to what is clearly 
wrong and unjust is another question, and 
one, too, that we are not considering now. 
There are -cases, doubtless, in which it is a 
duty to resist wrong, not necessarily from 
any motives of self-interest or hope of gain 
or advantage to ourselves, but in the cause 
of truth, and of those great principles of 
righteousness without which there can be 
no peace on earth and on which happiness 
in the kingdom of heaven itself is founded. 

2. The other great principle to which I 
referred is that of spiritual guidance in an¬ 
swer to prayer. In the state of nature our 
natural instincts are suggestive. In almost 
any circumstances, and in view of our duty 
before us, which is to be either done or to 
be left undone, those instincts will suggest, 
each one according to its nature, what we 
shall do. The instincts of a generous man 
will suggest and incline him to act gener¬ 
ously, and he will decide and act accord- 
ingly; while the man of a different nat¬ 
ural tendency in this respect will as readily 
choose and act in the other way under pre¬ 
cisely the same circumstances. In this way 
we all show what is our natural disposition. 






CASUISTRY 


126 


CATECHISM 


And these differences in natural disposition 
constitute the difference in natural character 
which we all exhibit in daily life, and 
which, to some extent, remain and underlie 
as a basis and the ground-soil the character 
that we carry or maintain through life, 
notwithstanding all the natural culture we 
may receive. But Christianity and Chris¬ 
tian conversion changes our nature in this 
respect. It implants new instincts, gives 
new aims in life, and especially does it es¬ 
tablish the idea of God, as omnipresent, 
knowing the very secrets of our thoughts 
and hearts, as a Being to be supremely loved 
and to be feared more than all else that we 
can have thought or conception of, and this 
puts its natural instincts and propensities to 
a very large extent into abeyance or into a 
state of inactivity, just as one may be so ab¬ 
sorbed in some earthly pursuit that he be¬ 
comes unconscious of pains, and even of 
bodily needs. One may even be so much 
overcome by fear as to be incapable of anger 
or of lust. Now, whatever of supernatural 
there may be in the religious experience, there 
is a change of this kind in our thoughts and 
feelings in consequence of the rise into ac¬ 
tivity of the religious emotions awakened 
in us by our Christian faith. Through the 
influence of this faith, and by perseverance 
in the acts and mode of life which Christi¬ 
anity prescribes and requires, these new mo¬ 
tives become constantly prominent and pre¬ 
dominating. They become habits, and super¬ 
sede the old, constitutional, and natural 
instincts of the individual, so that after a 
period of confirmed experience and acquired 
habit, he acts as promptly, as unconsciously 
of his motives, and in a certain sense as nat¬ 
urally in the new way as he did in the old 
way—“ after the flesh,” as the Apostle calls 
it—before the change. 

Now, the Bible teaches that in and along 
with this change the Holy Ghost works on 
our hearts. And not only so, but Divine 
guidance, the sacred influence of the Holy 
Spirit, will be given to guide us in all 
questions of doubt and uncertainty in an¬ 
swer to our prayers. When we pray for 
specific objects we are apt to confine our de¬ 
sires for those objects, and to encourage and 
strengthen our hopes of realizing them. But 
when we subordinate our wills to the will of 
God, and in praying for any object, pray 
also, and still more earnestly, that His will 
may be done, whatever may become of the 
object we desire, this is pretty sure to cause 
a clear, settled, and abiding conviction as to 
what we ought to do. On such a conviction 
we find that we may act, and have no cause 
to repent of our action ; and seldom, per¬ 
haps never, if we want to see all the conse¬ 
quences of our act, shall we come to regret 
it or to wish that we had done otherwise, or 
in any respect differently from what we 
were led, as we shall believe, to do by the 
guidance of God, working within by His 
Holy Spirit, and without and around us 
by His overruling providence. In the light 


of Christian Ethics, therefore, one does 
wrong only when (1) before the conscious 
adoption of the Christian Faith he follows 
those natural instincts which are had, or in 
the degree and form in which they are bad, 
or (2) when, after having come under the 
influence of the Christian Faith and the 
guidance of the Holy Spirit, he allows 
himself to choose an act without consulting 
and allowing himself to be guided by the 
Divine influence; and the only practical 
difficulty in this latter stage of our experi¬ 
ence seems to be in silencing our own hearts 
and its promptings,—the promptings of that 
“ corruption of our nature,” “ the infection 
of which doth remain even in those that are 
regenerate,” and will remain until we are 
wholly transformed into the image of “ Him 
who is our Resurrection and our Life.” 

Rev. Wm. D. Wilson, D.D. 

Catechism. To give instruction , to teach , 
is an essential part of the spiritual teaching 
every Christian should receive. It was based 
upon the rule our Lord gave the Apostles: 
“ Go ye, therefore, and make disciples of all 
the nations, baptizing them into the name 
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
Holy Ghost : teaching them to observe all 
things whatsoever I commanded you” (St. 
Matt, xxviii. 19, 20). Whenever the Church 
made converts she instructed each specially 
in the doctrines of the Faith. From this 
grew up the Creed, and for this schools were 
everywhere established for the training of 
the catechumens. Several of these schools, or 
rather the teachers of them, became famous. 
The Alexandrian and Antiochean schools 
bore an important part in the early Church 
teaching, and most disastrously since Arius 
the heretic was trained in Antioch under 
Lucian the martyr, where he imbibed those 
principles of dialectics which resulted in his 
heretical doctrines, and was master for a 
time in the Alexandrian school, before his 
heresy became so flagrant. Pantsenus, Clem¬ 
ent of Alexandria, and Origen, were famous 
instructors in this school. Cyril of Jerus¬ 
alem delivered in the Church of the Holy 
Sepulchre the valuable Catechetical Lectures 
that have come down to us. Everywhere the 
office of the Catechist was an important one, 
intrusted to him who was fittest. It was 
not properly confined to any order ; a Lay¬ 
man, Deacon, Priest, or Bishop, as he had 
the gift and the opportunity, could fill it. 

So St. Augustine wrote for a Deacon his 
elements of catechising (De. Rud. Catech.). 
There was ever a watchful care to see that 
children were properly catechised, and we 
have frequent enactments by Councils and 
Synods upon this importantduty. Tberough, 
strong missionary sermons of St. Boniface 
(740 a.d.) have a catechetic force and direct¬ 
ness. So, too, in a missionary journey into 
Pomerania, Bishop Otho catechised the con¬ 
verts to the number of seven thousand, it is 
said (1124 a.d.). A great activity in this 
work was developed by the Reformation, 
and nearly every leading Reformer compiled 




CATECHISM 


127 


CATECHUMENS 


a catechism which contained his own pecu¬ 
liar doctrinal views. Injunctions were made 
by Cranmer, and issued by Henry VIII. 
(1536 a.d.), enjoining the clergy anew to 
train the children in the Creed, Lord’s 
Prayer, and Ten Commandments. In Ed¬ 
ward VI. Primer (1553 a.d.) a long cate¬ 
chism was set forth. In the Confirmation 
Office was prefixed the first half of our present 
Catechism. Who its author was is not cer¬ 
tain. It has been claimed for Alexander 
Howell, second master in Westminster 
school in 1549 a.d., but Dean of St. Paul’s 
from 1560 to 1602 a d. ; also for Bishop 
Poynet, who was Bishop of Rochester in 
1550 a.d. Bishop Goodrich, of Ely, has 
also been urged as its author, since the duty 
towards God and the duty towards my neigh¬ 
bor are on tablets in the walls of a spacious 
bow-window which he added to the Palace 
of Ely. The catechism in Edward’s Prayer- 
Books ended with the explanation of the 
Lord’s Prayer. At the Hampton Court 
Conference, 1603 a.d., the Puritans com¬ 
plained that the Catechism was too short. 
In consequence the latter part, upon the Sac¬ 
raments, was drawn up. Its author is claimed 
by Bishop Cosin to have been Bishop Over¬ 
all, at that time Dean of St. Paul’s. It is 
probable that he translated from some Latin 
catechism. 

The present system of Sunday-schools 
usurps too much the place of proper catechet¬ 
ical instruction or thorough drill in the Cate¬ 
chism. It should be made a much more 
important part of the parochial work, in 
accordance with the plain language of the 
rubric at the end of the Catechism. The 
•failure to do this lies of course mainly upon 
the rector, but the laity are not free. But 
little pains are taken to see that the children 
are so instructed at home that they can be 
profitably sent to the church to be catechised, 
and but little more care is taken to see that 
they do go at all whenever there is this 
duty discharged. Were the parents them¬ 
selves to come, or were the open catechising 
directed by the Prayer-Book held after the 
second lesson in the evening service, when 
the parents and guardians could make it a 
duty to be present, there would be more 
energy and zeal shown. It is true that not 
all have the gift to catechise happily, but it 
can always be made most profitable to all 
engaged. The rubrics demand the earnest 
attention of every layman : 

“ g The minister of every Parish shall dili¬ 
gently, upon Sundays and Holy-days, or on 
some other convenient occasions, openly in 
the Church instruct or examine so many 
children of his Parish sent unto him as he 
shall think convenient in some part of this 
Catechism. 

“ g And all fathers, mothers, masters, and 
mistresses shall cause their children, servants, 
and apprentices who have not learned their 
Catechism, to come to the Church at the 
time appointed, and obediently to hear and 
to be ordered by the minister, until such 


time as they have learned all that is then 
appointed for them to learn. 

“ $ So soon as children are come to a com¬ 
petent age and can say the Creed, the Lord’s 
Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, and 
can answer to the other questions of this 
short Catechism, they shall be brought to 
the Bishop. 

And whensoever the Bishop shall give 
knowledge for children to be brought unto 
him for their Confirmation, the minister of 
every Parish shall either bring or send in 
writing, with his hand subscribed thereto, 
the names of all such persons within his 
Parish as he shall think fit to be presented to 
the Bishop to be confirmed.” 

The plan of the Catechism is very obvious. 
It is a most comprehensive summary, setting 
forth clearly the Baptismal Covenant, and 
our duty to assume it; the Creed and its 
summary ; the Covenant of duty in the Ten 
Commandments, with a noble exposition of 
it; the Law of Prayer, and the grace of the 
Sacraments. As the Bishops at the Savoy 
Conference replied to Puritan objections, 
“ The Catechism is not intended as a whole 
body of divinity, but as a comprehension of 
the Articles of Faith and other doctrines 
most necessary to salvation.” 

Catechumens. In the early Church those 
who were preparing for baptism, or who 
sought instruction in Christian doctrine for 
that end, were admitted into a class by some 
significant rite, by the laying on of hands 
and the sign of the cross. They were, be¬ 
sides receiving special instruction from the 
catechist, allowed to attend the public ser¬ 
vice and to listen to the Scriptures and to 
sermons, probably from some allotted place 
in the church. They were dismissed from 
the church with some special prayer, as this, 
from St. Chrysostom’s Liturgy: 

“ Lord our God who dwellest on high and 
beholdest the humble, who didst send forth 
the salvation of the race of man, Thine only- 
begotten Son, our God and Lord Jesus 
Christ, look down upon Thy servants the 
Catechumens who have bowed their necks 
unto Thee; and make them worthy, in due 
season, of the laver of regeneration, of the for¬ 
giveness of sins, of the robe of immortality ; 
unite them to Thy Holy Catholic and Apos¬ 
tolic Church, and number them together 
with Thy elect flock, that they also together 
with us may glorify Thy honorable and 
majestic Name, Father, Son, and Holy 
Ghost, now and ever and to ages of ages. 
Amen.” 

As they were better prepared they were 
instructed in the great facts and dogmatic 
truths, but were not intrusted with the 
words of either the Creed or the Lord’s 
Prayer till just before baptism. The teach¬ 
ing was clear and as full as the condition of 
the catechumen would permit. But if the 
catechumen was approaching death or was 
in danger of martyrdom, the regular season 
of baptism was anticipated, and he was bap¬ 
tized without hesitation or delay; or if bap- 






CATHEDRAL 


128 


CATHEDRAL 


tism could not be administered in cases of 
martyrdom, the Church held that the baptism 
of blood supplied the grace of the laver. 

Cathedral. Society in the first of the 
Christian centuries was urban, and the poli¬ 
tical organization was municipal. A man’s 
country was not a region but a city; his 
patriotism did not embrace a whole nation of 
the same language and blood as himself, but 
those only who with him were shut up within 
the walls of a single town. A man was not 
a Greek or Italian, but an Athenian or a 
Roman. Within the walls of each city were 
the schools of philosophy, the political assem¬ 
bly, the sharp activities of commerce, the 
glorious works of art, and the magnificent 
_ temples and the worship of the gods. They 
who lived in the midst of all this urban cul¬ 
ture, excitement, and strife could but grow 
in mental vigor, sensitiveness of spirit, and 
eagerness for what was new. On the other 
hand, they who were shut out and con¬ 
demned to the drudgery of daily and endless 
toil, born to labor and with children doomed 
to the same hard lot, grew with the years 
and the generations more and more stolid, 
clinging unreasoningly to the past and ready 
to adopt what was unwonted and new. 

When they to whom the august com¬ 
mand was given, to go into all the world 
and preach the Gospel to every creature, set 
about its obedience, they followed of neces¬ 
sity the lines on which they found society 
organized. They passed through the fields 
and villages, and the scanty and stolid pop¬ 
ulations there, into the city. They did so 
because here the multitudes were gathered. 
And these multitudes by education, culture, 
refinement, and long, daily, and anxious 
reasoning about the soul, its nature and des¬ 
tiny, had outgrown the mythology of their 
fathers and were ready to hear, heed, and 
accept a new solution of the mysteries of 
life, death, and immortality. But an itiner¬ 
ant apostleship, that blessed one city for a 
little while, and then, before what there had 
been won was well assured, was under the 
necessity of passing on to another, was un¬ 
equal to the exigencies. As each city was a 
whole country unto its citizens, and com¬ 
manded of them a patriotism as enthusiastic 
and narrow as the love of home, it followed 
that a local, stationary resident and muni¬ 
cipal Episcopate was the only institution 
which could effectually work upon such pop¬ 
ulations. A Bishop of Greece or Italy was 
impossible. The autonomy of a Church in 
each city was a necessity by reason of the 
nature of every municipality. It was for 
this reason that the Apostles appointed elders 
in every city. 

The actual work of obedience to the Divine 
command was conducted in the way we 
should expect. Going to his own city, the 
Bishop established himself in a certain place 
of residence and ministration. Here he 
gathered about him his Priests and Deacons 
in numbers according to circumstances ; all 
living together, their hearts aflame with a 


common zeal, their intense activities devoted 
to a common life and work and destiny. 
Each of those whom he had gathered around 
him was assigned by him to some special 
task,—e.y., labor among a class ©f the people 
whom he could more readily reach, or a sec-: 
tion of the city which he could more con¬ 
veniently serve, or a function of preaching 
or teaching or disputing or writing to which 
he was specially fitted. Each goes to his 
place and work, and returns to the Bishop 
with reports of what he has done and seen 
and heard, and to receive new orders, in¬ 
structions, and assignments to duty. This 
common home of all his people, where all 
the ways of all their work begin and end, 
whither, after all toils and dangers and per¬ 
secutions, they turn their weary feet for rest 
and their weary hearts for solace, is the 
Cathedral. It was not only the first Church 
in order of time: It was long the only Church, 
and it held its primacy among the institu¬ 
tions of the Christian state because it was 
the focus of all the work of the Diocese. 

In Saxon England society was very dif¬ 
ferently organized. There were few towns. 
The population was sparsely scattered over 
the country. Each family, with its branches 
and dependents living by itself, held wide 
tracts of land, and much of the country lay 
vacant. The people were devoted to agricul¬ 
ture and pasturage. Their manners were 
rude and simple, and they were disinclined 
to the exactions of compact society. The 
polity was loose and easy ; the country was 
divided among many tribes with indefinite, 
democratic institutions. Each had its king, 
but he was king in little else than name, ex¬ 
cept for purposes of defense and war. 

The Bishop entering upon the work of 
converting a tribe fixed his seat, his Bishop’s 
stool, as it was called, at any convenient 
place of his choice, and with no regard to 
population. Sometimes, as, for instance, at 
Ely, he planted it by itself in a vacant re¬ 
gion, the religious colony afterwards draw¬ 
ing the people around it. Accordingly, he 
was the Bishop, not of a city, but of a tribe. 
This is illustrated by bis title. On the Con¬ 
tinent the Bishops were called after their 
city, as the Bishop of Jerusalem, of Antioch, 
of Rome. On the island, on the other hand, 
society being rural and the polity tribal, the 
Bishops took their style from their people. 
For instance, there was a tribe called the 
Somersaetas, from which the name Somerset 
comes. The Bishop, whose seat was at 
'Wells, was the Bishop, not of Wells, but of 
the Somersaetas. There was also the tribe 
of the West Saxons, who had the royal 
city of Winchester. Their Bishop was not 
the Bishop of Winchester, but of the West 
Saxons. 

But, however interesting this difference 
in circumstances, the work in Britain was 
the same as elsewhere, and was carried on 
in the same way. The Bishop having made 
choice of the place where he should live, 
built there the church, houses, gardens, 




CATHEDRAL 


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farms, and all necessary conveniences for 
his clerical colony. Here he gathered about 
him his Priests and Deacons in considerable 
numbers, giving them homes in his own 
houses, and* supporting them from his reve-- 
nues. The life was not necessarily celibate, 
nor under one roof, nor at one table; but it 
was in community. He was the head of the 
family, and he ruled it as a father his house¬ 
hold. He apportioned the work among his 
clergy, giving to each his place, office, and 
task. To this one he gave this circuit to 
travel in the country of the tribe, and to 
another that; to one he appointed this sta¬ 
tion or mission, and to another that; and so 
on through all the work of the Diocese. The 
sphere of duty whose centre was here em¬ 
braced all ministrations, charities, instruc¬ 
tions, and interests; and the service which 
went forth hence was circumscribed only by 
the boundaries of the whole Diocese. This 
centre of work was the Cathedral. For four 
centuries this was the polity of the Church, 
as well among rude and rural tribes of Eng¬ 
land as in the intense life of the great cities. 
Everywhere the polity of the primitive 
Church was the Diocesan system, just as 
everywhere the administration was Episco¬ 
pal. The centre of the Diocese was the 
Cathedral, and from thence, the work was 
conducted. 

Throughout all the course of history, in 
all parts of the world, the polity of the prim¬ 
itive times has controlled the whole of the 
development of the constitution of the Chris¬ 
tian Church. Its principles, modes, and ad¬ 
ministration have at all times been founded 
on what the Apostles and their immediate 
successors adopted and established. Under 
the pressure of circumstances there have been 
modifications in incidents and details, but 
never in what was essential and organic. 
When Christianity became the religion of 
the people, and the Cathedral could not con¬ 
tain them, nor be served directly from it, 
parishes sprang up as separate independent 
points of work. But the Bishop exercised 
his jurisdiction from his own Church as 
from the capitol of his Diocese. Thence 
proceeded the authority, the administration, 
the service by which the Diocese in city and 
country alike, and all the people, urban and 
rural, were ruled and served. The body of 
the clergy who hitherto had held a direct, 
ersonal, and constant relation to the Bishop, 
ecame now divided into two classes, one 
the Parochial, the other the Cathedral, 
clergy. The active work among the people 
was assumed by the former; the powers 
which all the Presbyters had exercised in 
assisting the Bishop in the administration 
of his office devolved upon the latter. The 
Diocesan system became accordingly sepa¬ 
rated into the Parochial and the Cathedral 
system ; each of which was the complement 
of the other, and the whole still having a 
perfect union in the Episcopal function. 

The Clergy of the Cathedral were now 
consolidated into a compact and highly-or¬ 

9 


ganized body. We shall define their duties 
and powers hereafter. We have now to 
direct our attention to their organization. 
They were first called Canons in the eighth 
century. Their corporation was called the 
Chapter. Their number differed at differ¬ 
ent Cathedrals and at different times. At 
Wells there were in the tenth century four 
or five; in the twelfth at first ten, then 
twenty-two; afterwards the number was 
raised to fifty. At St. Paul’s, London, there 
were thirty, and at Lincoln fifty-two. It 
was necessary that these great societies should 
have officers charged with special duties. 
The principal officer of the Cathedral body 
after the Bishop was called the Dean. Dean 
Milman in his Annals of St. Paul’s, Lon¬ 
don (p. 132), thus defines his duties and 
office : “ The Dean had supreme authority ; 
was bound to defend the liberties of the 
Church ; was bound by his oath to observe 
and to compel others, from the Canons down 
to the lowest officer and servants, to observe 
the laudable customs of the Church, to 
watch overall the possessions of the Church, 
and to recover what might have been lost or 
alienated. He had authority also over all 
who inhabited the manors and estates; an 
authority which singularly combined the 
seignorial and spiritual jurisdictions. He 
was the guardian at once of the rights and 
interests of the poorer tenants, and, it may 
also be said, vassals, as well as of their 
morals and religion. The Dean presided in 
all causes brought before the Chapter and 
determined them, with the advice of the 
Chapter. He corrected, with the advice of 
the Chapter, all excesses and contumacies. 
Lighter oljenses of inferior persons were 
punished by the Chancellor. The Bishop 
had no authority in capitular affairs, except 
on appeal. The Dean, for more heinous of¬ 
fenses, could expel from the choir, and cut 
off all stipends and emoluments, with dis¬ 
cretion, to the edification, not the destruc¬ 
tion, of the Church. These words are in 
Colet’s unaccepted code ; but the same spirit 
prevails throughout the older statutes, only 
in different forms. The Dean had a Sub¬ 
dean to perform his functions when abroad 
or incapacitated from duty, with authority 
over all the inferior members of the Church 
except the Canons.” 

Next in rank to the Dean was the Pre¬ 
centor, who had charge of the choir of the 
Cathedral, and all the services which were 
performed in it, and the schools of music. 
He directed the music and had the discipline 
of all the choristers and singers. His deputy, 
where he had one, was called the Succentor. 

Next after the Precentor came the Chan¬ 
cellor, who was charged with the care of 
the library, and the grammar and divinity 
schools. It was also his duty to lecture to 
the Cathedral clergy on divinity, and to 
organize theological instruction given by 
others. In some places, as at St. Paul’s, he 
had “ charge of education, not only for the 
Church, but for the whole city ; all teachers 




CATHEDRAL 


130 


CATHEDRAL 


of grammar are subject to him.” His dep¬ 
uty was the Vice-Chancellor. 

The last of the officers of the Chapter was 
the Treasurer. “ The Treasurer was the 
responsible guardian of the treasures of the 
Church, and ample indeed they were. Rel- 
iques, first in value and importance; books, 
of which there is a curious catalogue; ves¬ 
sels of gold and silver, vestments, chalices, 
crosses, curtains, cushions, and palls. He 
was answerable to the Dean and Chapter 
for the safe custody of all these precious 
things, and could not lend any of them 
without the consent of the Dean and Chap¬ 
ter. Under the Treasurer was the Sacrist. 
His office was to superintend the tolling of 
the bells, to open the doors of the Church at 
the appointed times, to dress the altars, and 
take care that the vessels and vestments 
were clean and in good order. The Sacrist 
was to take care that there was in the 
Church, even on the festivals, no crowd, 
noise or singing, neither talking, quarrel¬ 
ing, nor jesting, neither business nor sleep¬ 
ing. He was to maintain order and con¬ 
duct every one to his proper place.” 

There was another body of the Cathedral, 
clergy who cannot be passed over, namely, 
the Vicars. When non-residence became 
common it was required of each Canon that 
he provide a clergyman who should take his 
place in his absence ; and the rule sprang up 
making it his duty to always have a deputy. 
Just as the Dean had his JSubdean, the Pre¬ 
centor his Succentor, and so on, each Canon 
had his deputy, who was called his Vicar. 
There were therefore as many Vicars as 
there were Canons. When the Canons for¬ 
sook the Cathedral for their prebends, the 
Vicars carried on the services and work per¬ 
haps as efficiently and decorously as those 
whom they represented. An old writer of 
those times, seeking to show the superiority 
of the monks over the secular Canons, says 
that the former praise God with their 
mouths, the latter through their Vicars. 
There is a story of Thomas a Becket, when 
Archbishop of Canterbury, sending a man 
with a bull of excommunication against the 
Bishop of London, who went to Bt. Paul’s 
Cathedral on Ascension-day, and on that 
great festival found the officiating priest 
neither Bishop, Dean, nor Canon, but only a 
Vicar. The Vicars of each Cathedral hav¬ 
ing common employment, interests.and life, 
were naturally drawn together. First, they 
acquired estates separate from those of the 
Canons; then they had houses of their own, 
dormitories, refectories, and chapels; at 
last, unmarried and living a purely colle¬ 
giate life, they were formed into a corpo¬ 
ration, so that, as there was the corporation 
of the Dean and Canons, so there was a cor¬ 
poration of the Vicars. They were now 
no longer each the deputy of a Canon, but 
were the assistants of the residentiaries in 
the service and work of the Cathedral. Then 
a distinction came in,—there were priest 
Vicars and lay Vicars. But the latter were 


not merely singing men paid each as stipen¬ 
diaries, but members of the college, with 
equal rights with their clerical brethren. 

For many centuries all the Canons resided 
continuously at the Cathedral, and found 
their sole occupation in service there and in 
service proceeding therefrom. But alter a 
time the Chapters acquired the right to ap¬ 
point the Priests of certain Parishes, who re¬ 
ceived its tithes and other revenues, and 
naturally they appointed their own members 
to those places. Clergy holding such bene¬ 
ficiaries had thus two offices,—one, that of 
Canon ; the other, that of Parish Priest, his 
title in the latter capacity being that of Pre¬ 
bend. The two functions were united in 
one person, but were distinct. By and by 
some of the Canons lived most of their time 
in their Parishes, leaving their duties at the 
Cathedral to their Vicars. Others lived most 
of the time at the Cathedrals, leaving their 
parochial duties to Priests whom they em¬ 
ployed. At length the separation between 
the two classes became so fixed that the 
name of Canon was borne only by the 
Cathedral clergy, while that of Prebend was 
applied to those who remained on the benefi¬ 
ciaries. The distinction was further marked 
by the names residentiary Canons, that is, 
those who retained duties at the Cathedral, 
and non-residentiary Canons, that is, those 
who had only incidental or slight or no duties 
there. 

The Chapters were composed only of the 
residentiaries. But there was also a general 
Chapter to which the non-residentiaries of 
most Cathedrals were summoned. The duties 
of this larger body were those of electing 
Bishops and representatives in Convoca¬ 
tions. 

This highly-organized system existed in its 
perfection in the twelfth, thirteenth, and 
fourteenth centuries throughout Europe and 
in Great Britain without material differences 
between them. But some of the Cathedrals 
were Monasteries, the Abbot holding the 
place of Dean, and the monks the places of 
the Canons. 

When Henry VIII. suppressed the Mon¬ 
asteries in England he made no exceptions 
of the Cathedrals which were served by 
monks. These were Canterbury, Winches¬ 
ter, Worchester, Durham, Norwich, Roch¬ 
ester, Ely, and Carlisle. He found him¬ 
self compelled to re-establish Chapters at 
these Cathedrals. The organization which 
he provided for them was much simpler than 
that which we have described. Each had a 
Dean and from four to twelve resident Can¬ 
ons, who formed the Chapter. Each also 
had honorary Canons, but this was only an 
empty title. Instead of Vicars there were 
Minor Canons, who performed the same 
duties. There were no Precentors, Chancel¬ 
lors, or Treasurers, but their duties were im¬ 
posed on the Minor Canons. These Cathe¬ 
drals are called Cathedrals of the new founda¬ 
tion. The others are called Cathedrals of 
the old foundation. The latter are London, 





CATHEDRAL 


131 


CATHEDRAL 


York, Exeter, Salisbury, Wells,. Lincoln, 
Lichfield, Hereford, and Chichester. 

In 1840 a.d. Parliament passed an act re¬ 
ducing the number of Canons at each Cathe¬ 
dral to four, except at Canterbury, Durham, 
and Ely, where there were to be six, and at 
Winchester, where there were to be five, and 
the endowments of all other Stalls were di¬ 
verted to other purposes. The act also di¬ 
verted the prebendal estates, leaving the Pre¬ 
bends in Cathedrals of the old foundation 
without compensation. The number of 
Minor Canons or Vicars was to be not more 
than six nor less than two. In 1874 a.d. an 
act was passed permitting the endowment of 
new Canonries by the munificence of private 
individuals and the appointment thereto of 
encumbents. The appointment of Deans is 
in the Crown, of the Canons, Prebends, and 
Honorary Canons, as a general rule, in the 
Bishop, and the Minor Canons in the Dean 
or the Chapter. 

During the last fifteen years the attention 
of English Churchmen lias been drawn to 
the Cathedrals, and an agitation has been 
going on with a view of giving them a 
larger place in the practical activities of the 
Church. A royal commission is now sitting. 
Its reports upon the several Cathedrals con¬ 
tain the statutes of their organization and 
government which are to be adopted by the 
Queen in Council, and are a vast body of in¬ 
teresting matter. Perhaps the most notice¬ 
able feature of the new statutes is the sev¬ 
eral provisions looking to a more direct and 
active relation of the Cathedra's with the 
Diocese and its administration. 

In all except those for St. Paul’s, London, 
provision is made for three Chapters ; one 
called simply the Chapter, composed of res- 
identiaries ; one called the General Chapter, 
composed of the non-residentiaries, whether 
they are called Prependiaries or Honorary 
Canons, the Archdeacons, and (generally, 
but not always) of the Proctors in Convo¬ 
cation ; and a third called the Diocesan 
Chapter, composed of the members of the 
General Chapter and all of the Diocesan 
officers. This latter body, newly created in 
these statutes, is a revival of the Chapters 
of the times when the Cathedrals were the 
most active and efficient agencies of the 
Church. It is so in its organization, and 
more especially in its functions. It is con¬ 
vened by the Bishop, and its duties are to 
advise and assist him in the administration 
of his office. In some of the statutes the 
same duties are enjoined upon the Chapters 
and the General Chapters; in others they 
are imposed on the General Chapters alone, 
but these provisions do not supersede the Dio¬ 
cesan Chapter. Provision is made for that 
body in all of the statutes except in those for 
St. Paul’s, London, where the General Chap¬ 
ter is charged with the duties and service else¬ 
where committed to the Diocesan Chapter. 

The importance of the introduction of 
these provisions into the statutes of the 
Cathedrals of England cannot be over-esti¬ 


mated. But they are only formulated state¬ 
ments of opinions which have been set forth 
in many writings of very eminent men, and 
especially in communications of Cathedral 
Authorities to the commission, which are 
appended to its reports. In these writings 
the contention has been earnest in behalf of 
the essentially Diocesan character of the 
Cathedrals. 

In the statutes for Truro, provision is made 
for a force of men called Missioners, whose 
duty is to go up and down the Diocese as¬ 
sisting the parochial Clergy by preaching, 
lecturing, holding missions and other simi¬ 
lar services. The first Bishop of Truro, 
now the Archbishop of Canterbury, origi¬ 
nated the idea of this body, and speaks of 
them as the successors of the Prebendaries 
of the earlier times in the services above 
mentioned. 

We pass now to consider the proper func¬ 
tions of the Cathedral and its Clergy. The 
first and most obvious of them is the mainte¬ 
nance of the constant, elaborate, and impres¬ 
sive worship of Almighty God. Speaking 
on this subject, Dean Goulburn, of Norwich, 
says,— 

“I trust that I have opened a way by 
these remarks for the discernment of the 
true character of the Cathedral Church. It 
is a building specially and prominently ded¬ 
icated to the glory of Almighty God. I 
say specially and prominently; and it is by 
this specialty and prominence that I believe 
a Cathedral to be distinguished from other 
Churches. All Churches are, of course, in 
one aspect of them, offerings to God for the 
honor of His Name. But then this is not the 
leading, but the subordinate idea in a paro¬ 
chial Church. The primary object there is 
the dealing with human souls, the convert¬ 
ing and softening of human hearts, the stir¬ 
ring and awakening of human consciences, 
the initiating the worshiper into the knowl¬ 
edge of God, and the gradual drawing of 
him up into communion with God. Nor is 
this end in the least degree foreign to the 
functions of a Cathedral; rather it is a part 
of its functions, only not the most promi¬ 
nent part, not the great characterizing idea. 
The Cathedral is a place rather where God 
is worshiped than where man is impressed, 
though it is a most blessed thing indeed 
where the latter end is secured along with 
the former. The very core of its work is 
the daily office in the choir, solemn, effect¬ 
ive, dignified ; rendered as perfect as possi¬ 
ble by the accessory of beautiful music, and 
ever striving and yearning to represent 
more perfectly upon earth the adoration 
which ceaselessly goes on in the courts of 
heaven. The anthem is quite in place in 
such worship; nor surely should anthems 
ever be discontinued in Cathedrals, though 
unsuited (in my judgment) to the worship 
of parochial Churches. To discard anthems 
from Cathedrals would be to discard some 
of the grandest efforts of music to praise 
the Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, from 




CATHEDRAL 


132 


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those very houses of prayer which are, in a 
more especial manner, dedicated to the cele¬ 
bration of the glories of His Name.” This 
is a service which has been always faith¬ 
fully discharged by the Cathedrals and does 
not need further remark. 

The second function of the Cathedral 
Chapter is to aid the Bishop by advice and 
labors in the administration of the Episco¬ 
pal office. We have already seen how the 
Christian community was gathered by the 
Bishop about himself and directed and ruled 
by him in all their work. By the very cir¬ 
cumstances of the situation it was a compact 
body : its members were all driven from the 
outside into the society for help and comfort 
and support. Without, society was unut¬ 
terably corrupt and vile; sensuality, super¬ 
stition, atheism, were on every hand. Popu¬ 
lar amusements were altogether ungodly ; 
the gravest thought, the noblest aspirations, 
were of the earth, earthy. The national 
religion, which multiplied the divinities, 
deified the emperors, and denied the one 
only and true God, was abhorrent. Against 
this wickedness it was the mission of the 
early Christians to protest with their life¬ 
blood. Their Lord of Lords, and King of 
Kings, was the Eternal Trinity worshiped 
through the Incarnate Son ; and in propor¬ 
tion as the Roman state was leagued to up¬ 
hold its adulterate cultus , so the Christian 
Commonwealth was banded around the uni¬ 
versal Church of Christ. Their very depths 
of veneration and passionateness of devotion 
made these men and women recoil from the 
touch of the vile world, and drove them to¬ 
gether and bound them by the most sacred 
ties. Their society, isolated in the midst of 
the multitudes, took a corporate character 
and had a polity of its own, and was in truth 
a civitas Dei. 

In this sacred family the Bishop was the 
father, and all were his children. It was 
not only love theygave him for his tender¬ 
ness and wisdom, but veneration also for his 
high office and his character, which the 
office sanctified. Now let us ask how this 
holy man must have carried himself among 
his brethren. He shared their intensity of 
devotion ; he shrank with them from the sin 
without; he awaited the same destiny that 
they foresaw for themselves; and besides, 
ever in his ear rang the voice of Jesus, 
“ Feed My Sheep”; “ By this shall all men 
know that ye are My disciples, that ye love 
one another.” He was their ruler. Did he 
lord it over them ? Being what he was, and 
they what they were, all brethren together, 
/he could not help but take them, or at least 
those who were competent, into his counsels, 
and listen patiently, respectfully, reverently, 
gladly, to what each had to say. There, in 
those first days, under the pressure of the 
sin without and the love within, this custom 
grew up, of the Bishop taking counsel of his 
Clergy. 

When afterwards the purely Diocesan 
system became modified by the parochial 


system, the Clergy who were about the 
Bishop at his Cathedral succeeded to this 
right to share the Episcopal consultations, 
as they succeeded to almost all the other 
corporate rights of the whole clerical body. 
It became universal Canon Law that the 
Bishop must on certain subjects consult his 
Chapter before acting upon them. 

Hence the Chapter has been called “the 
Senate of the Diocese,” and the Canons have 
been called “ Brothers of the Bishop.” In 
some statutes the duty of the Chapter is 
declared to be, “ to aid the Bishop when the 
See is full, to supply his place when it is 
vacant.” One great writer on Ecclesiastical 
Law concludes from a mass of evidence, 
that everywhere “ the Clergy of Cathedral 
Churches formed one body with the Bishop, 
and entered into their share of the anxiety 
and into some association with his sacred 
sway.” Another speaking of the Canons 
says, “ their principal duty was,to assist the 
Bishop by their work and their counsels 
in the government of the Church.” Regi¬ 
nald Pole says, “ the rationale and ground 
of instituting Canonries and Prebends in 
Churches was, that they who are appointed 
to them, may assist the Bishop and aid him 
with counsel and work in the discharge of 
his office and divine things.” 

A third function of the Cathedral Clergy 
was to supplement and reinforce the paro¬ 
chial Clergy in their active and practical 
labors among the people. This includes the 
strictly missionary work, of which, as done 
by the Cathedral Clergy in the early days, 
enough has been already said. And of the 
assistance they did, and may render to the 
parochial Clergy, nothing need be added to 
the explanation of the society of Missioners 
formed by Archbishop Benson, at Truro, in 
the Diocesan Kalendar for 1881 a.d. 

“ Cathedral Missioners. Sanctiftcatio in 
veritate. The object of this association 
is to provide a staff of preachers, who, not 
being bound by parochial or other ties, may 
be entirely at the disposal of the Bishop for 
any work to which he may see fit to send 
them, at the call of the parochial Clergy. 
Besides undertaking and arranging for mis¬ 
sions (technically so called), where the 
Bishop and parochial Clergy think desir¬ 
able, they will endeavor, as far as their num¬ 
bers may permit, to give courses of sermons 
or lectures at populous centres, to supply 
spiritual ministrations during the absence or 
sickness of encumbents, and to help in the 
gathering of Candidates for confirmation ; in 
the formation of branches of the Church 
Society for the advancement of holy living, 
or other societies approved by the Bishop; 
in the instruction or supervision of Lay 
preachers; in the promotion of Mission 
Chapels, and in other works which aim at 
the spiritual and moral improvement of the 
people.” 

A fourth function of the Cathedral was 
the establishment and maintenance in close 
connection with it of institutions of charity 




CATHEDRAL 


133 


CATHEDRAL 


and education. The custom has been uni¬ 
versal to establish grammar schools for boys 
in connection with the Cathedrals. In Eng¬ 
land some of these schools have attained 
very great reputation. So, too, readerships 
and lectureships on divinity were general. 
The duty of hospitality was enjoined upon 
the Clergy, and this included care of the 
sick and unfortunate. These duties and ser¬ 
vices have devolved upon the modern insti¬ 
tutions and cannot consistently be neglected. 
They are not essential, but they are practi¬ 
cally so related to them that they ought to 
find a place in every scheme for their effi¬ 
cient organization. 

After this review we are able to answer 
the question, what, then, is a Cathedral ? How 
does it differ from any other Church ? The 
name is derived from the Latin. The seat 
of a Bishop in a Church was his Cathedra. 
In and from this his seat he especially exer¬ 
cised his office. He had but one seat in his 
Diocese, which was in his Church ; he had 
none in parish Churches. Soon what was 
peculiar to one Church gave it a distinctive 
name, and the Bishop’s Church was called a 
Cathedral. Properly, the word is an adjec¬ 
tive and qualifies Church. Speaking exactly 
we would say Cathedral Church, Cathedralis 
ecclesia. In common parlance the adjective 
is used as a noun, and dropping the word 
Church we say Cathedral. 

The Cathedral, then, is the Church in 
which is the Cathedra , Sedes , See, or Seat of 
the Bishop. It is his Church. He is sometimes 
said to be the pastor, and sometimes the 
rector, of his Diocese. And his Cathedral 
has been called the parish Church, and the 
matrix of the Diocese. These words may be 
not always descriptive of the fact, but they 
convey one idea, that the Cathedral is the 
Bishop’s Church and has relations of some 
sort to and connection in some way with the 
Diocese. Many suppose that it must be a 
large and beautiful building ; that the ser¬ 
vices must be choral, and that the Clergy 
must be numerous. It is natural to expect 
all these of a Bishop’s Church. But the 
Anglo-Saxon Bishops generally built their 
Churches of wood, small in size and rude 
in construction ; and they were truly Cathe¬ 
drals. The choral service has long since 
ceased to be peculiar to Cathedrals, and one 
priest serving at the altar with his Bishop 
may be the only clergyman. Size of build¬ 
ing, mode of service, and number of Clergy 
are accidents, accessories, circumstances; 
they are not essential to the Cathedral. 
What is essential is that the Church should 
be the peculiar place of the Episcopal func¬ 
tion. 

But when the Bishop has planted his See 
in any Church, other things naturally and 
necessarily gather around it. Especially 
will be collected a number of Clergy to whom 
he will resort for aid and advice in carrying 
on his work. The Episcopal function is the 
primary, and a number of Clergy, larger or 
smaller, who assist him in the administra¬ 


tion of the Diocese is the secondary, element 
of a Cathedral. 

In the scheme upon which the Church in 
this country was organized the Cathedral 
had no place. Several reasons may be as¬ 
signed for this departure from Catholic 
usage, but it is not within our purpose or 
our space to mention them. About thirty 
years ago an attempt was made to engraft 
the Cathedral upon the organization of the 
Church. Not long after he was sent out to 
California, Bishop Kip placed his Episcopal 
chair in Grace Church, of San Erancisco, 
and called that Church his Cathedral. He 
did this in his right as rector of the parish, 
and when his incumbency ceased, the name 
of Cathedral was dropped. He afterwards 
held the rectorship of the Church of the 
Advent, and there again set up his Episcopal 
seat and gave its edifice the same name, and 
withdrew both when he resigned the position. 

Afterwards other Bishops setup their Epis¬ 
copal chair in parish Churches. Usually 
they have secured from the parochial or¬ 
ganization the right to occupy the seat, to 
preach, to direct the ritual, and to use the 
building for Episcopal services. Examples 
of Cathedrals of this class are St. Paul’s, 
Buffalo, and St. Paul’s, Indianapolis. To 
the same class may also be referred other 
Cathedrals, such as St. Peter and St. Paul, 
Chicago, and Our Merciful Saviour, Fari¬ 
bault. At these institutions, the title to the 
property, and the entire power of administer¬ 
ing it, and directing the services and work, 
are in the Bishop. But beyond this, these 
Churches have little to distinguish them 
from parish Churches. They have no Chap¬ 
ter or function not local to the building ; nor 
organic relations to the Diocese. This is ex¬ 
plained by Bishop Whipple in a letter to the 
writer. He says the Cathedral “ should be 
solely in the Bishop’s care, that he may set 
forth such a ritual as may be a model for 
the Diocese. It needs only such machinery 
as may help him.” 

A second class of Cathedrals have Chap¬ 
ters but no Diocesan relations. The Epis¬ 
copate, as in the class first mentioned, is the 
primary, active, and central function, but 
not the sole and unqualified authority. The 
Bishop holds his office apart, sharing it 
with none, and aided in its exercise by 
none, but within the precincts of the Ca¬ 
thedral he has the aid of his Presbytery. 
All-Saints’, Albany, and Davenport, Iowa, 
are examples of this class. In the institu¬ 
tion at Albany there is a Chapter composed 
of the Bishop, Dean, Precentor, Chancellor, 
Treasurer, four Minor Canons, and six lay¬ 
men. None of them except the Bishop has 
any Diocesan relations, duties, or rights other 
than those possessed by any clergyman or 
layman. The body has no care of the Mis¬ 
sions of the Diocese, and whatever it at¬ 
tempts in that service is in subordination to 
the Diocesan Board of Missions. The funds 
and property of the Diocese are not in its 
bands, but in those of special Committees 





CATHEDRAL 


134 


CATHEDRAL 


of the Diocesan Council. The Schools and 
Hospitals are independent of it; there is no 
duty on the part of the Bishop to ask the 
Chapter for advice in the administration of 
his office, nor on its part any duty to give 
him advice when asked for it. It is a body 
as local in its character and service as any 
parish Church. There is what is called a 
Greater Chapter, composed of the Archdea¬ 
cons, the members of the Standing Com¬ 
mittee, of the Board of Missions, and of the 
deputations to General Conventions, the 
officers of the Diocesan Council, and the rec¬ 
tors of the two oldest churches in the city. 
In its personnel it is Diocesan; but the 
only function of this body is to elect the 
members of the Chapter proper and to at¬ 
tend the Bishop upon certain special occa¬ 
sions. It has no direct and active relations 
with the Diocese. 

The same is true of the scheme of the 
Cathedral at Davenport. Bishop Perry, 
retaining in his own hands the title to the 
property in order to preserve it as a Bishop’s 
Church, has erected a Chapter, with a Dean, 
who is the head of the educational institu¬ 
tions, a Senior Canon, who has the pastoral 
care of the congregation, other Canons whose 
special duties are in the parish Churches 
of the city and in the schools, and Curators 
of the Cathedral, who are laymen charged 
with the temporalities. Its work is, first, 
to maintain the worship in the Cathedral in 
rich, abundant, and appropriate services ; 
secondly, to conduct the work of the parish 
Churches and missions in the See city; 
thirdly, to carry on the schools there; 
fourthly, to extend missionary efforts into 
the Diocese as fully and as far as possible. 
But the Diocesan administration is here, as 
at Albany, distributed among the Board of 
Missions, the Trustees of the funds of the 
Diocese, and the Trustees of the Episcopate 
funds. It is not proposed to bring the pow¬ 
ers and duties of these bodies within the 
jurisdiction of the Chapter. 

Cathedrals of the third class are equally, 
with those last described, local as to the ser¬ 
vices or public worship and of charities ; 
but they also have direct practical and con¬ 
stant relation with the Diocese. The Omaha 
Cathedral is an example. Its Chapter con¬ 
sists of the Bishop, Dean, three Canons, five 
honorary Canons, the Standing Committee, 
and all the other officers of the Diocese. It 
is charged with the care of the missions, 
funds, property, schools, and hospitals of the 
Diocese. It meets quarterly and deals with 
every subject of administration. In several 
Missionary Jurisdictions and also in several 
of the younger Dioceses it has been adopted. 
It comes much nearer to a restoration of the 
polity of the early Church than either of 
the two classes of institutions above de¬ 
scribed. 

We have to-day in the American Church 
Cathedrals organized on three plans. The 
first are those based on the Episcopal office 
alone. The second are those based on the 


See principle, and have Chapters but no Dio¬ 
cesan relations. The third have the Episco¬ 
pate as the primary element, with Chapters 
for the assistance of the Bishop in the ad¬ 
ministration of the Diocese. 

In order to an intelligent view of the con¬ 
ditions in which the Cathedral in this coun¬ 
try must be developed into a vigorous, 
efficient, and practicable agency in the 
American Church, something more than 
these descriptions are necessary. We have 
seen that the essential object of the Chapter 
is to'provide from the Presbytery a compe¬ 
tent body to assist the Bishop in the exercise 
of his office : which assistance is first by ad¬ 
vice, and, secondly, by labors not parochial. 

As the Cathedral was not recognized by 
those who framed the Constitution of the 
American Church, so nobody was provided 
for the assistance of the Bishop by advice. 
The need of such body was not felt at first. 
We need not concern ourselves with the rea¬ 
sons. But after a time it began generally 
to be felt that some authority ought to be 
provided to which the Bishop might resort, 
and which should also to a degree control 
the Episcopal function. Accordingly, in 
1835 a.d. the General Convention by Canon 
provided that “ in every Diocese where there 
is a Bishop the Standing Committee shall 
be a Council of Advice to the Bishop. They 
shall be summoned on the requisition of the 
Bishop whenever he shall wish for their ad¬ 
vice, and they may meet of their own accord 
agreeably to their own rules when they may 
be disposed to advise the Bishop.” 

This was the restoration of the Chapter 
under another name. And if the functions 
of the Bishop extended to all the matters 
properly belonging to the Chapter, there 
would be little need of reviving it. But 
such is not the case. The duties of the 
Standing Committee are of the very highest 
and most solemn nature; but they are very 
limited. Por instance, the Committee does 
not have the care of the missions of the 
Diocese. That is an interest the most ac¬ 
tive, urgent, and pressing of all. It is in¬ 
trusted to the care of another separate, dis¬ 
connected, and independent body called 
variously the Board of Missions, the Com¬ 
mittee on Missions, or the Missionary Soci¬ 
ety. When a question touching missions 
has been determined by the body charged 
with their care, it would be not only un¬ 
seemly, but mischievous in every way, for 
the Bishop to go to the Standing Committee 
for advice on the subject. It would be rais¬ 
ing the Committee to an appellate jurisdic¬ 
tion, and subordinating to it all other bodies. 
Confusion and irritation would follow which 
would be intolerable. And what is true of 
missions and the Board charged with them, 
is true of all other interests of the Diocese, 
which are parceled out among different sim¬ 
ilar bodies. It thus appears that most of 
the administration of the Diocese being 
given into the hands of other bodies than 
the Standing Committees, it is impractica- 




CATHEDRAL 


135 


CATHEDRAL 


ble for it to be a Council of Advice to the 
Bishop on only a modicum of the subjects 
in the discussion, consideration, and deter¬ 
mination of which he needs assistance. It 
is very clear, therefore, that the Standing 
Committee of a Diocese does not answer all 
the needs which the Bishop may have for 
assistance in the way of advice. As his 
Council, as the Senate of the Diocese, it does 
not fill the place of the Chapter. 

We pass on to consider the assistance 
which the Chapter may give the Bishop by 
clerical labors not within the province of fhe 
parochial Priest. A body of Clergy resi¬ 
dent at the Cathedral, under the personal 
and active direction of the Bishop, going 
out to the missionary stations, serving them 
and returning to him for report and new 
orders, works in the same way as the forces 
by which the world was first conquered to 
the sway of the Church. It is a mode not 
only sanctified by primitive and Catholic 
usage, but in its nature fitted to the condi¬ 
tion of modern missionary labor. Let this 
be explained by a view of the work done in 
this way. Suppose there were at the Ca¬ 
thedral a hall, and twice, or four times, or a 
dozen times a year, as should be appointed 
him, the Missionary should come up for a 
brief residence in it. Here he would meet 
and know and learn to love those who, like 
him, were devoted by vow and habit and 
zeal to the service of their common Lord ; 
here he would find companionship and sym¬ 
pathy and affection and a freshened life and 
an animated spirit, such as come only from 
the warmth and fervor of association ; here 
he would find the guidance and direction 
and counsel of his Bishop, and the elder and 
wiser of the Clergy ; here he would see the 
need of reading to keep pace with the prog¬ 
ress of others by whose conversation he 
would be stimulated to exertion; here, 
above all, he would have the altar at which 
to kneel in the highest act of worship and 
the splendid services of the temple. And 
so he would be strengthened against the 
trials of his lot among the people to whom 
he is sent, and against those other trials of 
the spirit. His stay need not be long ; even 
a few days might suffice to return him to his 
work & new man. 

But the Missionary is not the only person 
who would be blessed by this relief. Com¬ 
ing up at stated times, he would, either by 
express rule or in the natural course, report 
to the Bishop of his work, his field, and his 
life. The peculiar needs of the stations he 
serves, and his aptness.to answer them, would 
become known ; and he would be instructed 
by wise counsels and encouraged to go on, 
or be reinforced by others or withdrawn to 
some other place for which he would seem 
better fitted, as the case required. Mission¬ 
aries thus organized and working from the 
Cathedral would in a very few years be¬ 
come a homogeneous body, having com¬ 
mon interests, modes, sentiments, and aspi¬ 
rations. There would soon grow up among 


them an esprit de corps , without which no 
society was ever efficient. 

The uses to which the Cathedral Clergy 
may be put in sections where the Church is 
well planted and rooted is admirably ex¬ 
plained by Bishop Sweatman, of Toronto, in 
Canada, in his address to his Synod in 1881 
a.d. Hesays, “ Supposing that I had resident 
in Toronto, say four Canons, men of thorough 
practical parochial experience, of true mis¬ 
sionary spirit, of a high order of pulpit power, 
of intense sympathy, and, above all, full of 
earnest spiritual life,—for they would need 
to be ail this,—the value of such a body of 
men would be incalculable, as counselors 
and advisers. But—here is the point I wish 
to bring out—a mission in the Diocese is, 
for some cause, evidently in an unprosperous 
condition ; the clergyman complains that he 
cannot obtain support from the people; or 
the Church is losing ground, and so forth. 
I direct one of my Canons to go to this 
place, to inquire into what is wrong, to 
stay a week, two weeks, or three weeks, to 
rouse up the people, and put new life 
into the Chi^rch's work. A young and 
inexperienced clergyman meets with dif¬ 
ficulties he does not know how to deal with ; 
he needs advice and guidance; another 
of the Chapter is sent to help him, to put 
him in the way of doing his work better; 
with the loving words and mature wisdom 
of an elder brother to give him confidence 
and cheer. Or a clergyman writes me for 
help in an emergency ; his parish is invaded 
by a new sect, preaching strange doctrines 
and drawing his people away from the faith ; 
he had spent himself in labors to counteract 
the mischief, but finds that it is an unequal 
task to cope with single-handed, or his argu¬ 
ments are exhausted, and he wants another 
mind to reinforce him with fresh arguments. 
Here is help for the emergency,—a well- 
learned, and well-equipped, and zealous 
member of the Cathedral Staff ready to go to 
the rescue. Have I justified my assertion? 
I feel sure that every earnest and faithful 
parish clergyman will confess that such a 
system, by which the clergy might occasion¬ 
ally be stirred up to more diligence, cheered 
in their isolation, aided in their difficulties, 
by a visit from a brother such as I have de¬ 
scribed, would go a long way to break down 
the Congregationalism, to awaken the spirit¬ 
ual torpor of the people, to arouse to activity 
the missionary indifference, to systematize 
the inefficient diffusion of forces,—the chief 
difficulties and evils under which we suffer. 
To carry out this system fully will require 
-means and time ; but a small beginning may 
be made. I shall not touch this question of 
means; but I cannot forbear a concluding 
remark, that it is tantalizing to be taunted 
with aping titles and dignities, and at the 
same time to feel that no colonial Diocese 
ever had so nearly within its grasp the power 
to erect and maintain a real living Cathedral 
Establishment, with its active Chapter and 
Staff of officers, as the Diocese of Toronto 





CATHOLIC 


136 


CATHOLIC 


with its richly endowed Church in the capi¬ 
tal.” 

It needs no words to show the advantages 
of bringing the schools and charities of the 
Diocese together at the Cathedral, and con¬ 
ducting them by its Clergy under the eye of 
the Bishop. 

It is a vision which may not be vouch¬ 
safed to us of this generation, but not beyond 
our reasonable hope : a Cathedral once more 
the Bishop’s Church, in which the Episco¬ 
pate shall be the primary function, but 
surrounded by a band of Clergy for its assist¬ 
ance, a body of well-learned, experienced, 
devout men, maintaining in its due dignity 
and beauty the worship of God ; sharing the 
sacred sway and labors of the chief pastor in 
his administration in spreading the knowl¬ 
edge of the truth in new parts, and holding 
up the hands of those who are set among the 
people teaching and vindicating the great 
truths of the Gospel to those who are igno¬ 
rant or perverse, training the children in the 
knowledge they need in this world, and the 
knowledge that fits them for another world, 
and serving the poor, sick, a$d unfortunate 
in Homes, Asylums, Hospitals, and Retreats 
of whatever sort. 

The numbers vary according to the needs 
of each place, its organization as may be 
found convenient, the apportionment of 
work among them as their fitness and other 
conditions may require; but the whole form¬ 
ing a community co-operative, compact, effi¬ 
cient, with one heart and one mind, serving 
the great Bishop and Shepherd of souls with 
a holy fervency. 

Authorities : “ The Cathedral; its Neces¬ 
sary Place in the Life and Work of the 
Church,” by Edward White Benson, Lord 
Bishop of Truro, late Chancellor of Lincoln. 
London, John Murray, Albemarle Street, 
1878. “ The Principles of the Cathedral 

System vindicated and enforced upon Num¬ 
bers of Cathedral Foundations. Eight Ser¬ 
mons preached in the Cathedral Church of 
the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Nor¬ 
wich,” by Edward Meyrick Goulburn, D.D., 
Dean of Norwich. Rivington’s, London, 
Oxford, and Cambridge, 1870. “ The Eng¬ 

lish Cathedral of the Nineteenth Cen¬ 
tury,” by A. J. B. Berresford Hope, M.H. 
D.C.L. With illustrations. London, John 
Murray, Albemarle Street, 1861. “ Essays 

on Cathedrals by Various Writers,” edited 
by the Very Reverend J. S. Howson, D.D., 
Dean of Chester. London, John Murray, 
Albemarle Street, 1872. “Annals of St. 
Paul’s Cathedral,” by Henry Hart Mil- 
man, D.D., late Dean of St. Paul’s. John 
Murray, Albemarle Street, 1869. “ The 

Cathedral in the American Church,” by 
James M. Woolworth, LL.D., Chancellor 
of the Diocese of Nebraska. New York, E. 
P. Dutton & Co., 1883. 

Hon. Jas. M. Woolworth, LL.D. 

Catholic. The word Catholic, as its 
etymology shows, was of Greek origin. It 
is compounded of two words (Kata and 


olos, K ad’ oAou), and means literally “ on the 
whole,” or, as applied to the Church, “ Uni¬ 
versal.” St. Cyril, Patriarch of Jerusalem, 
before the middle of the fourth century, and 
Alexander, Patriarch of Alexandria earlier 
in the same century, both used it. It prob¬ 
ably came rapidly into use throughout the 
Church after the second General Council, 
held in Constantinople 381 a.d., which gives 
the whole article, as follows : “ In One Holy 
Catholic and Apostolic Church.” 

Catholic was used commonly as one of the 
names of the Church from the time of the 
first General Council, held at Nice in 
Bithynia 325 a.d. j though it does not appear 
in the original Creed of Nice. It designated 
those who adhered to the ancient faith as 
defined at Nice. They called themselves 
Catholics, hut named the Heretics after their 
most prominent leaders,— e.g ., Cerinthians, 
Marcionites, Montanists,Arians, Nestorians, 
Eutychians, etc. 

Catholic was not long coming into all 
forms of the Creed, and became a signifi¬ 
cant and distinguishing title of the Church 
in common use both among Greeks and 
Latins. It was and still is accepted as one 
of the four notes of the Church. “ The 
Body of Christ,” from its very nature and 
constitution, was, is, and ever must continue, 
One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic; One, 
as being the organic body in mystical but 
real union with “ Him, who is Head over 
all things to the Church:” Holy, as the 
depositum of the truth and dispenser of the 
sacraments, by which holiness is begun, nur¬ 
tured, and increased: Catholic, as sent into 
all the world to preach the Gospel, to bap¬ 
tize and feed with the “ Bread of Heaven” 
every one, and all who would be saved : and, 
finally, Apostolic, as built upon the founda¬ 
tions of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus 
Christ Himself being the chief corner¬ 
stone.” 

The word has been sadly misused in the 
course of history, and most signally by the 
assumptions of the Roman Church. In very 
early times the Bishop of Rome was ac¬ 
counted one of the five Patriarchs of the 
Catholic Church, each one officially equal to 
the other. These patriarchates differed in 
numbers and influence; those of Rome and 
Constantinople being the greatest. Indeed, 
so long as Christian emperors ruled the 
Roman Empire, from the throne in Byzan¬ 
tium, the See of Constantinople was the 
chief in power, though on account of the 
dignity of old Rome a kind of respectful 
priority was allotted to the Roman Bishop. 
Still the assumption of the exclusive right 
to the name Catholic was never made by 
Rome in early times, and is not yet even in¬ 
cidentally confessed, much less allowed, in 
the East. Incidentally it has come into com¬ 
mon use in the West, so that sectarians and 
the world call the Roman Church Catholic ; 
but no careful and well-taught English or 
American Churchman ever gives her that 
ancient, significant, and almost sacred title. 






CATHOLIC 


137 


CELIBACY 


Although the Continental Reformers did 
not take the term Catholic to themselves, 
yet the Church of England and her daughter, 
the American Church, have adhered to it 
most tenaciously. It sets forth their claim 
to oneness with the primitive Church. It is 
the sign, warrant, and assurance that their 
ministry is derived in unbroken descent 
from the Apostles ; that the faith they pro¬ 
mulgate and bear witness to is the one faith 
which has been from the beginning ; that 
the sacraments they administer are Christ’s 
own, wherewith He is ever present to bestow 
specifically the grace He attached to each; 
and that the Holy Spirit continually in¬ 
dwells Her, making Her witness acceptable 
and Her ministrations effectual. 

The term Catholic is so set forth among 
the gems of truth in the Creed that it de¬ 
mands solemn use. They who make it a 
designation of party, either do not recognize 
or feel its devotional significance, or do not 
perceive the fullness of its meaning. It 
may be contended for earnestly when de¬ 
nied us, as even the very name of our Lord 
may be ; but its ordinary use is a devotional 
one. When spoken it should bring up in 
grateful souls the rich and dear conscious¬ 
ness that 

“Living saints and dead 

But one communion make, 

All join in Christ, their living Head, 

And of His life partake.” 

The ancient, though not primitive, appli¬ 
cation of the name Catholic to the Church 
and its universal use for more than fifteen 
hundred years, have induced the desire, which 
has been often warmly expressed on the floor 
of General Convention, to change the title 
of the American Church from the present 
“Protestant Episcopal” to “The Catholic 
Church in America.” It is argued that we 
do not weakly protest against Rome, but 
that we firmly and resolutely reject her un¬ 
catholic assumptions. It is said that Epis¬ 
copal, as a distinctive appellation, may be 
interpreted as a negative confession that the 
Episcopacy is not essential to the legitimate 
propagation of the Church. However the 
controversies about the name may fare, it is 
at least a fact that the American Church is, 
as the Creed she recites sets forth, a true and 
unsevered outgrowth from the stem of the 
One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church ; 
and that she has the right, whether she ex¬ 
ercise it or not, to call herself by the old 
name. 

Her children are not disposed to lose the 
title to their own legitimacy. The growing 
knowledge and serious appreciation of the 
fact that they are born through and nur¬ 
tured by the Bride of Christ is causing a 
wide and deep perception of the value of 
their Catholic heritage. They are more 
and more accounting the Church as in 
truth Catholic, and thereby perceiving 
more intelligently and feeling more pro¬ 
foundly their common union with all the 


early and late Christians, in life or death, 
who are in the immortal Catholic Church, 
of which Christ was, is, and ever will con¬ 
tinue the Living Head. 

Catholic Epistles. The Epistles of St. 
James, the two of St. Peter, the three of St. 
John, and the Epistle of St. Jude are so 
called. There is no very satisfactory reason 
for the title, which yet is felt to be most 
appropriate. Perhaps the title as it is trans¬ 
lated in our Authorized Version gains its 
true explanation, The General Epistles, as 
encyclical and not to local Churches; and 
since it may be objected that this cannot 
apply to the second and third of St. John, it 
may be naturally not refused to these short 
epistles, since it is proper to the longer first 
epistle. 

Celibacy. The virgin state; but the word 
is now used generally to denote the vow of 
never marrying exacted from members of 
the Roman Church, who enter either some 
monastic order, or take ecclesiastical office. 
It has no real defense, and is productive of 
much evil. It is true, however, that under 
some circumstances even St. Paul com¬ 
mended the unmarried state, but this has 
no true relation to the question. The New 
Testament says nothing that bears upon this 
except that several of the Apostles were mar¬ 
ried, and in the direction to Timothy (1 
Tim. iii. 12), that the Bishop should be the 
husband of one wife. But there arose at an 
early date a strong feeling that the clergy 
should remain unmarried. Voluntary vows 
of virginity were common and increased as 
the Church grew, till the women were numer¬ 
ous enough to be put into a general organi¬ 
zation under Episcopal rule. The tendency 
was strong to urge the clergy to remain un¬ 
married. This increased so that the clergy 
were usually unmarried; but there was no 
imperative rule beyond continuous efforts by 
the Bishops, both East and West, to carry 
out this purpose, till the Civil Law forbade 
the priest to marry after ordination. It is 
needless here to recount the conditions per¬ 
mitted or the disabilities incurred. The 
Eastern Church was contented with this re¬ 
striction ; but the Latin Church went fur¬ 
ther, and after a long and severe struggle 
broke up the marriage of those in orders. 
It was disastrous in many ways, and the 
only gain was the dependence of the clergy 
upon the Church alone by the severance of 
all family ties. The Reformation was the 
only shock the system has received. The 
Church of England at once threw off the 
yoke, and permitted marriage to her clergy. 

The person in the Roman Church who 
takes a monastic vow is bound by this 
promise, and so too every Deacon, Priest, 
and Bishop. It is probable that many clergy, 
living in apparent concubinage, were secretly 
bound by a marriage vow ; at least, there is 
proof that many on their death-bed, by ac¬ 
knowledging the woman, attempted to es¬ 
tablish a marriage and to salve their con¬ 
science. 





CEMETERY 


138 


CENTRAL NEW YORK 


Cemetery. A sleeping-place. This name 
was used by Christians to denote the place of 
burial. It was a new and beautiful use 
of a word that Christianity introduced. 
(“ Death is not death among Christians, but 
is called a sleeping and a resting.”) It was 
in use before the year 222 a.d. The early 
Church was very careful, if possible, to sep¬ 
arate its dead from those of the heathen, and 
so acquired burial-grounds at the earliest op¬ 
portunity. In Rome the burials were made in 
the underground galleries of the catacombs. 
The cemeteries were seized in times of per¬ 
secution, but were very generally promptly 
restored. The word has long since lost its 
old sense, and now means simply a burial- 
place. 

Censer. A light vessel, swung by chains, 
and in which incense is burnt. In mediaeval 
and later times in the English Church, at 
the time of the celebration of the Holy Com¬ 
munion it is always used. 

It was one of the vessels used in Jewish 
worship. It contained the live coals upon 
which incense was put to incense the altar 
and the sacrifice, morning and evening. 
The censer was.specially used when the High- 
Priest, on the great day of Atonement, went 
into the Holy of Holies. Its use in the 
Christian Church, while indicated, is not de¬ 
fined at an early age. The earliest censers 
(thurible) mentioned weighed thirty and 
fifteen pounds respectively, and so could not 
have been swung. They were said to be 
gifts of Constantine to the Church of Rome. 

Censures, Ecclesiastical. The penalties 
by which, for some notable sin, Christian lay¬ 
men are deprived of communion, or clergy¬ 
men are prohibited to execute their sacred 
office. These censures are excommunica¬ 
tion, suspension, and interdict, and (lesser in 
rank) irregularity. All sentences incurred 
by any disobedience or sin are censures of 
the Church. They involve the withholding 
of those gifts fur the spiritual life which she 
has to give; and if the sentence be justly 
incurred, the loss to the guilty party of all 
that they would convey. The Church may 
cut off from communion, or inflict lesser 
punishment, but she cannot expel from it 
and deprive the sinner of the entrance into 
the visible Church which the sacrament of 
baptism has given. She cmii discipline, and 
that, too, severely, but she cannot finally 
disinherit: that is 1 the sole privilege of 
Christ alone at the day of judgment. 

Central New York, Diocese of. In 18G5 
A.D., Bishop Coxe called the attention of his 
Convention to the need of greater provision 
for Episcopal work in the limits of his See. 
During 1866 a.d., the subject was further 
discussed, and in 1867 a.d. it was reported 
to the Convention by a committee appointed 
for that purpose that steps be taken to have 
the General Convention permit the erection 
of the counties of Broome,Cayuga, Chemung, 
Chenango, Cortland, Jefferson, Lewis, Mad¬ 
ison, Oneida, Onondaga, Oswego, Seneca, 
Tioga, and Tompkins into a new See. A 


further resolution was offered looking to a 
Federate Council of the Dioceses in the 
State. The General Convention of 1868 a.d. 
concurred, and a primary Convention was 
called at Utica on November 10, 1868 a.d. 
Fifty clergy and eighty-seven lay depu¬ 
ties met in Trinity Church, Utica, to effect 
the organization. Rev. Dr. F. Rogers was 
chosen President, and Rev. A. B. Goodrich, 
Secretary. A minute upon the separation 
and cordially recognizing the pastoral care 
of Bishop Coxe in the past and tendering 
him their thanks was passed. On Novern- 
ber 11 the election of Bishop was made the 
order of the day. After five ballots Rev. 
Dr. A. H. Littlejohn was duly elected. 
Dr. Littlejohn declined the election, and a 
special Convention was summoned on Jan¬ 
uary 13, 1869 a.d. Bishop Coxe presided 
over fifty-seven clergy and one hundred and 
forty-seven lay deputies; Rev. Dr. Little¬ 
john preached the opening sermon. At the 
third ballot the Rev. Dr. F. D. Huntingdon 
was elected. He was consecrated in the 
parish church which he was leaving, Em¬ 
manuel, Boston, by Rt. Rev. Bishop Smith, 
on April 8, 1869 a.d. Bishops Eastburn, 
Potter, Clark, Coxe, Neely, and Doane joined 
in the act of consecration. 

The Constitution which had been proposed 
and acted on in the previous special Con¬ 
vention was adopted June 14 at a special 
Convention in Grace Church, Utica, which 
Convention immediately adjourned and or¬ 
ganized as the second Annual Convention. 
The reports at that Convention were chiefly 
upon the needs of the Diocese in the work 
of education, a work which has been pushed 
forward in that See with great energy. An 
excellent report was made upon Education 
in the Family, the Means of Church Educa¬ 
tion, the Practicability of Parochial Schools, 
and a statement of the resources of the Dio¬ 
cese in this important work. The following 
pregnant resolutions were adopted : 

“ Resolved , That the chief seminary of 
Christian education is the Christian family, 
and that all parents connected with the 
Church should endeavor to realize the priv¬ 
ileges and obligations of the baptismal cove¬ 
nant, both as respects themselves and their 
children ; should aim to fulfill its pledges 
by the faithful inculcation of those things 
which a Christian child ought to know and 
believe for its soul's health : by a watchful 
supervision over their children’s studies, 
reading, and associations; and by such care, 
in reference to their places of resort tor secu¬ 
lar teaching, as may be necessary to guard 
them not only against contamination of 
morals, but also the undermining of their 
faith in the doctrines and practices of the 
Church. 

“ Resolved, That we recommend the es¬ 
tablishment, whenever practicable, of paro¬ 
chial, infant, and grammar schools, at least 
for children from seven to twelve years of 
age. 

“ Resolved , That the clergy be requested 





CENTRAL PENNSYLVANIA 139 CENTRAL PENNSYLVANIA 


to take cognizance and to include in their 
parochial reports the mention of such pri¬ 
vate schools in their parishes as may be con¬ 
ducted or controlled by communicants of 
the Church, provided the proprietors of such 
schools shall give their consent to the pub¬ 
lication of such statement. 

“ Resolved, That as the fear of the Lord 
is the beginning of wisdom, and all true 
morality is founded upon religion, in the 
judgment of this Convention any system 
of secular education that is not supplemented 
in some manner by an inculcation of the 
fundamental doctrines and precepts of Chris¬ 
tianity, must in the end fail to secure the 
real welfare of society and the permanent 
prosperity of the State.” 

Principles as outspoken and as strongly 
stated as these show how thoroughly awake 
the Diocese of Central New York is to the 
current evils in the popular education, and 
how miserably the present system fails in 
meeting all the needs of a Christian common¬ 
wealth, and of giving what the Church is 
bound to try to give her children, the lambs 
of the flock of Christ. It is in this line that 
the Bishop has recently written upon the de¬ 
fects and dangers of the system of education 
the State attempts to provide. It is under 
such leadership that the educational efforts 
in the Diocese have increased and deepened. 

In 1869 there were 98 parishes and mis¬ 
sions ; in 1883 there were 138 ; in 1869 there 
were a total of 83 clergy at work; in 1883 
there were 96 clergy ; in 1869 there were 877 4 
communicants; in 1883 there were 12,848; 
in 1869 there were 1074 confirmed ; in 1883 
there were 1880; in 1869 there was a total 
of $249,116.20 contributed; in 1883 there 
was a total of $292,564.75 offered for God’s 
work. 

Summary of Statistics (from Living 
Church Annual).—Clergy, 96 ; parishes and 
missions, 138; familie,s 7699; individuals, 
33,362; baptisms, infants, 901, adults, 364, 
total, 1265; confirmed, 1880; communi¬ 
cants, 12,848; marriages, 432; burials, 873; 
parish schools, teachers, 2, scholars, 42 ; Sun- 
da\ T -schools, teachers, 1063, scholars, 8308 ; 
contributions, $292,564.75. 

Central Pennsylvania, History of the 
Diocese of, 1871-1883 a.d. In 1866 a.d., 
at the next Convention after the formation 
’of the Diocese of Pittsburg within the orig¬ 
inal limits of the Diocese of Pennsylvania, 
the subject of another division of the latter 
Diocese was brought up by a resolution and 
referred to a committee of seven, to report 
thereon at the next annual Convention. 
The report of the committee, when pre¬ 
sented in 1867 a.d. , showed that out of 75 
parishes in the district proposed to be set 
off, only 29 wished division, and out of 58 
clergymen, only 26 approved the measure. 

At that Convention it was resolved, the 
Bishop of Pennsylvania concurring, that 
consent be given to the proposed division of 
the Diocese, on condition that two-thirds of 
the clergy and of the parishes now entitled 


to representation therein, and being in that 
portion of the Diocese proposed to be set off, 
do give official information to the Standing 
Committee of their desire for such divis¬ 
ion, and that they have provided sufficient 
means for the support of their Bishop, the 
proposed division being all that portion of 
the present Diocese of Pennsylvania which 
lies outside of the counties of Philadelphia, 
Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Bucks. 

By the same Convention, all the docu¬ 
ments touching the division of the Diocese 
were referred to the Committee on Division, 
appointed at the last Convention, and the 
said committee continued. It was also re¬ 
solved that the committee confer with the 
Bishop of the Diocese of Pennsylvania and 
embody the result of their conference in a 
report to the Convention. This the com¬ 
mittee did in 1868 a.d., and the consent of 
the Convention was given to a division on 
what is called the fourteen-county line upon 
certain conditions and restrictions. The con¬ 
ditions were not complied with, and the plan 
failed. 

The Bishop of Pennsylvania, in the Con¬ 
vention of 1870 a.d. , again called attention 
to the subject, and asked for a division of 
the Diocese, declaring that he should not 
withhold his consent from any line which 
the Convention, after full discussion, should 
in its wisdom fix upon, provided that it 
should leave in the Diocese of Pennsylvania 
not less than the five counties aforesaid. 

In accordance with this portion of the 
Bishop’s address the Convention of 1870 
a.d. gave consent to the formation of a new 
Diocese to be thus composed ; and also in¬ 
structed their deputies to the next General 
Convention to present their resolution, duly 
authenticated, to that body, and request its 
consent to, and ratification of, the same. In 
June, 1871 a.d., the Bishop of the Diocese 
of Pennsylvania appointed the following 
gentlemen a Committee of Clergymen and 
Laymen to take charge of the preparation 
of the necessary documents concerning the 
division of the Diocese, and to lay the same 
before General Convention, viz. : The 
Rev. Messrs. A. A. Marple (chairman), 
Wm. P. Lewis, D.D., Leighton Coleman, 
R. J. Keeling, D.D., and Wm. P. Orrick; 
the Hon. Messrs. Frederick Watts, T. E. 
Franklin, Judge Eiwell, Messrs. A. Rick¬ 
etts and Henry Coppee, LL.D. (secretary). 

In General Convention, held at Balti¬ 
more during the month of October, 1871 
a.d. , the House of Bishops and the House 
of Clerical and Lay Deputies duly concurred 
in giving consent to and ratifying the for¬ 
mation of the new Diocese from date of the 
6 th of October, 1871 a.d., admitting it into 
union with the General Convention from 
and after the 8 th day of November, 1871 a.d., 
and directing that the name of the new 
Diocese be determined by the Primary Con¬ 
vention thereof, with the consent of the 
Bishop of Pennsylvania. 

Canonical action being thus complete, the 





CENTRAL PENNSYLVANIA 140 CENTRAL PENNSYLVANIA 


Bishop of Pennsylvania issued a call for the 
assembling of the Primary Convention of 
the new Diocese at St. Stephen’s Church, 
Harrisburg, on Wednesday, the 8th of No¬ 
vember, for organization, and appointed 
Robert A. Lamberton, Esq., of Harrisburg, 
to act as temporary Secretary. 

In the Primary Convention 59 of the 
clergy were entitled to seats, of whom 57 
were present, and 193 of the laity, of whom 
134 were present, representing 75 parishes, 
situated in 26 counties. The Rt. Rev. Wm. 
Bacon Stevens, D.D., LL.D., Bishop of 
Pennsylvania, was President. There were 
present also the following-named visitors 
from the Church of England : the Rt. Rev. 
Dr. Selwyn, Lord Bishop of Lichfield (the 
Apostle of New Zealand), with his son, the 
Rev. John R. Selwyn, and the Very Rev. 
Dr. Howson, Dean of Chester, and the Rev. 
J. H. lies, Rector of Wolverhampton. The 
Bishop of Lichfield delivered the sermon, 
and divine service being concluded, the 
clergy and lay delegates present and claim¬ 
ing seats in the Convention were called to 
order by Bishop Stevens, who introduced 
the English Churchmen, the Convention 
rising to.receive them. On proceeding to 
name the new Diocese, the following desig¬ 
nations were put forward by various mem¬ 
bers, viz., Central Pennsylvania, Harris¬ 
burg, Williamsport, Bethlehem, Eastern 
Pennsylvania, Lichfield, and Middle Dio¬ 
cese of Pennsylvania. On the fourth ballot 
the first name was chosen by a concurrence 
of both orders, and received the consent of 
the Bishop of Pennsylvania. On the even¬ 
ing of the first day the Lord Bishop of Lich¬ 
field and Dean Howson addressed the Con¬ 
vention on “ The Work of Women in the 
Church.” 

The Committee on the Endowment of the 
Episcopate of the Diocese made report that 
they had obtained $41,000 in cash and 
pledges; that they considered it expedient 
to raise the sum to the amount of $75,000. 
The Convention resolved that until the in¬ 
come from the Endowment Fund should 
fully meet the Bishop’s salary (which was 
fixed at $4500), an equitable assessment 
should be made upon. the parishes for the 
whole amount of the same, each parish being 
credited upon the said assessment with the 
interest accruing on its subscription to the 
Endowment Fund; and the committee was 
requested to solicit additional subscriptions 
to that Fund. 

Nominations for a Bishop being in order, 
the Rev. Dr. Keeling nominated the Rev. 
Mark Antony DeWolfe Howe, D.D., rec¬ 
tor of St. Luke’s Church, Philadelphia ; 
the Rev. Dr. Paret nominated the Rev. 
George Leeds, rector of Grace Church, Bal¬ 
timore. The vote of the clergv having 
been taken, on the first ballot the Rev. Dr. 
Howe was declared duly nominated by the 
clergy to the laity ; and on the first vote of 
the laity, a majority having voted for ap¬ 
proval, the Chair declared that.the Rev. 


Mark Antony DeWolfe Howe, D.l)., was the 
choice of the Convention for Bishop of Cen¬ 
tral Pennsylvania. Whereupon the Rev. 
Dr. Paret moved and it was 

“ Resolved , That the members of this 
Convention, clerical and lay, do unanimously 
accept the election of the Rev. M. A. De¬ 
Wolfe Howe, D.D., to be the first Bishop of 
this Diocese ; and do, without exception or 
reserve, earnestly entreat his acceptance of 
the same, pledging him in his work for 
Christ and the Church their zealous and 
loving co-operation.” 

The Convention also elected the following 
Standing Committee of the Diocese : Cleri¬ 
cal members—the Rev. Messrs. A A. Mar- 
pie, D. Washburn, William P. Orrick, Wil¬ 
liam C. Leverett, and R. J. Keeling, D.D. 
Lay members—the Hon. Messrs. J. W. 
Maynard, Y. L. Maxwell, E. O. Parry, Asa 
Packer, and Mr. R. A. Lamberton. 

The Constitution and Canons of the Dio¬ 
cese of Pennsylvania were adopted by this 
Diocese with such few alterations as were 
necessary or expedient. 

The Standing Committee having been in¬ 
structed by the Primary Convention to take 
the necessary steps for the consecration of 
the Rev. Dr. Howe, appointed the Rev. Dr. 
Keeling to make the proper communications 
to the Standing Committees of all the Dio¬ 
ceses in the United States, and to the presid¬ 
ing Bishop. When the canonical consents 
had been received, the presiding Bishop, the 
Rt. Rev. Benjamin Bosworth Smith, D.D. 
(a maternal uncle of the Bishop-elect), ap¬ 
pointed his consecration to take place on the 
Feast of the Innocents, in St. Luke’s Church, 
Philadelphia. Of the House of Bishops 
there were present and taking part in the 
consecration on that day the presiding 
Bishop and Bishop of Kentucky, the Rt. 
Rev. Drs. Lee, of Delaware, Mcllvaine, of 
Ohio, Bedell, assistant Bishop of Ohio, Pot¬ 
ter, of New York, Kerfoot, of Pittsburg, 
Clark, of Rhode Island, and Morris, Mis¬ 
sionary Bishop of Oregon and Washington 
Territory. The attendant Presbyters of the 
Bishop-elect were the Rev. Mr. Washburn 
and the Rev. Dr. Paret. The sermon was 
delivered by the Assistant and Bishop of 
Ohio, and the presentment made by the 
Bishops of Rhode Island and of Pittsburg. 
The Rev. Mr. Marple read the testimonial 
of the Convention of Central Pennsylvania, 
the Rev. Mr. Leverett, the certificate of the 
consent of the majority of the Standing 
Committees, and the Rev. Benjamin I. 
Haight, D.D., that of the majority of the 
Bishops. 

During the twelve years of its existence 
the Diocese has increased in the number of 
its clergy from 59 to 96. Twenty-eight 
new church buildings have been consecrated, 
some of which stand noted among the rural 
Dioceses of the United States for their cost¬ 
liness and remarkable beauty. In the same 
period 13,945 baptisms have been adminis¬ 
tered by the parochial and mission clergy, 




CENTRAL PENNSYLVANIA 141 


CHALICE 


and Bishop Howe has confirmed 8217 persons 
within his own jurisdiction. The whole num¬ 
ber of parishes and mission stations is 114, 
containing 7486 communicants, and 12,063 
Bible-class attendants and Sunday-school 
pupils. Forty-eight of the parishes possess 
rectory-houses, 12 have also school-houses, 
and 10 own cemeteries. In the same twelve 
years the total sum of offerings made in the 
young Diocese for all Church objects is 
$2,531,790.10. So vastly has the work of 
this jurisdiction increased that in consid¬ 
eration thereof, joined with the advanced 
age of the Bishop, who has declared his 
inability to fulfill all the duties of his office 
without the help of a coadjutor, the last 
Annual Convention, 1883 a.d., appointed a 
committee to report at the next Convention 
on the subject of the election of an Assistant 
Bishop. 

Central Pennsylvania is divided into four 
Convocations, named respectively the Read¬ 
ing, the Harrisburg, the Williamsport, and 
the Northeastern ; the Presidents of which 
constitute the clerical members of the Board 
of Diocesan Missions. The Secretary of Con¬ 
vention is Mr. R. A. Lamberton, LL.D.; 
the Treasurer of the Convention and Episco¬ 
pal Funds is Mr. P. R. Stetson ; of the Board 
of Missions, Mr. Robt. H. Sayre ; the Regis¬ 
trar of the Diocese is Mr. Wm. H. Chandler, 
Ph.D. ; and the Chancellor, Hon. Thomas 
E. Franklin. 

The Diocese has seven Church institutions, 
viz. : the Lehigh University, at South Beth¬ 
lehem, founded and endowed by the Hon. 
Asa Packer, of Mauch Chunk, in 1866 a.d., 
of which Robt. A. Lamberton, LL.D., is 
President, with a faculty of thirteen mem¬ 
bers. The library building, which is one of 
the finest and most substantial in the coun¬ 
try, was built by Judge Packer in memory 
of a deceased daughter, Mrs. Lucy E. Linde- 
man, and is called the “ Lucy Packer Libra¬ 
ry.” It contains at present 35,000 volumes, 
and is endowed with $500,000. Judge 
Packer also endowed the university with 
$1,500,000. St. Luke’s Hospital, at South 
Bethlehem, incorporated in 1872 a.d., re¬ 
ceived from the same great benefactor of the 
Diocese an endowment of $300,000. The 
Bishopthorpe School for Girls, also situated 
at South Bethlehem, was founded in 1867 
a.d. Selwyn Hall, at Reading, is the Dio¬ 
cesan school for boys. Cottage Hill Semi¬ 
nary, York, is a home school for young ladies 
and children. The Yeates Institute is a 
Church school for boys, at Lancaster. The 
Church Home and Orphanage, the latest es¬ 
tablished institution, is at Jonestown, Le¬ 
banon Co. 

The Bishop resides at Reading, where he 
has a Cathedral church, the front elevation 
of which is regarded as being one of striking 
beauty. The tower contains a fine chime of 
bells; and the chancel—choir and sanctu¬ 
ary—is capacious enough to seat nearly the 
whole of the Diocesan staff, the Bishop and 
his clergy. Rev. W. B. Morrow. 


Ceremony. The primary meaning is that 
of a corporeal act giving expression to a 
spiritual act. For instance, in marriage, 
the whole office is a series of ceremonies, 
but is itself a rite. In Confirmation the im¬ 
position of hands is the ceremony, but the 
whole conduct or action of the office is a 
rite. So of the other offices and sacramental 
acts of the Church. But this distinction 
cannot be always accurately followed from 
the lax usage of the proper terms; and the 
ritual is often called the ceremonial of wor¬ 
ship. These rites, or ceremonies, are prop¬ 
erly completely under the control of the 
Church, and while we may not alter aught 
that Christ has instituted by word and ex¬ 
ample, yet the Church, as a living power, 
and ministering to the spiritual needs of all 
men, must have power to alter, amend, or 
control rites and ceremonies suitable to the 
tendency of the peoples she ministers to. 
The ceremonial of one part of the Holy 
Catholic Church maybe an example for, but 
is not an authority to, another independent 
part, ministering to a population with to¬ 
tally different habitudes. 

The charge so often made, that the Church 
seized upon and used pagan festivals, while 
much exaggerated as to the facts, is rather a 
mark of her wisdom and adaptability, that 
she is to save men, not to cast them through 
some single mould. This rule holds under 
all circumstances. Therefore, however much 
individual tastes may regret the departures 
made in our Prayer-Book from the exact 
English order, the changes themselves were 
made upon this first and proper principle, 
and the fathers of the first General Conven¬ 
tion, which adopted our present book, are to 
be commended for their wisdom and moder¬ 
ation, and were surely under the guidance 
of the Holy Spirit. 

Chaldee. The language spoken by the 
peoples inhabiting the alluvial plains of the 
Euphrates and Tigris. It was a cognate 
language, or more nearly a dialect of that 
family of the Shemitic language to which 
the Aramaic and the Hebrew belonged. It 
could not be readily understood by the He¬ 
brews (2 Kings xviii. 26, 28). They came 
in direct and continuous contact with it dur¬ 
ing the Captivity. Parts of Jeremiah (ch. 
x. 11), of Daniel (ch. ii. 4; vii. 28), and 
Ezra (ch. iv. 7 ; vi. 18; vii. 12-26) are pure 
Chaldee, but many words and phrases are to 
be found in the later portions of Holy Scrip¬ 
ture which are closely connected with the 
Chaldee. 

Chalice. The Cup used in the administra¬ 
tion of the wine in the Lord’s Supper. The 
word is from the Latin calyx. It was made 
of any material accessible. At first, of glass, 
of wood, of silver, or of gold ; but soon wood 
was forbidden (though still used in places 
till a late date), and glass, pewter, gold, 
silver, bronze were used. These chalices 
were often of very beautiful workmanship, 
finely polished and chased, and in many 
cases incrusted with precious stones. 




CHANCEL 


142 


CHARGE 


Chancel. The space in a church which 
contains the choir and sanctuary, and which 
was generally separated from the nave by a 
rail or grating (cancelli), from which it 
derives its name. It is a characteristic dif¬ 
ference between the Eastern and Western 
Churches that in the former the distinction 
between the bema, or sanctuary, and the 
choir is so much more strongly marked 
than that between the choir and the nave, 
in the latter the distinction between the nave 
and the choir is much more strongly marked 
than that between the choir and the sanc¬ 
tuary. (Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, 
Smith & Cheetham, sub voc.) Legally, the 
chancel is the parson’s freehold, and he is 
obliged to keep it in repair by English Ec¬ 
clesiastical Law. 

Chancellor. In England he is the law 
officer to the Bishop, advising him in all 
legal matters and holding courts for him. 
He may be either a layman or a clergyman 
(Blackstone, i. 382). It was not of very an¬ 
cient introduction into the English Church, 
being rather an imitation of the like title by 
the state. It includes two other offices,— 
Official Principal and Vicar-General. “ The 
Official hears causes between party and party 
concerning wills, legacies, marriages, and 
the like . . . The proper work of the Vicar- 
General is the exercise and administration 
of jurisdiction, purely spiritual, by the au¬ 
thority and under the direction of the 
Bishop, as visitation, correction of manners, 
granting institutions, and the like, with a 
general inspection of men and things, in 
order to the preserving of discipline and 
good government in the Church.” (Burns, 
Ecclesiastical Law, vol. i. 289.) 

In fifteen of our Dioceses there is a law 
officer bearing this official title of Chancel¬ 
lor, who is appointed or elected to advise the 
Bishop and the Standing Committee upon 
all legal matters which affect the interests 
of the Church as his professional counsel 
may be asked or required. But his duties 
are by broad construction often so extended 
as to make him also law adviser to the Dio¬ 
cesan Conventions. 

Chant. Vide Music. 

Chantry. In the English Pre-reformation 
Church, the endowment or founding of a 
small chapel or separated place in the 
church, for saying Masses for the soul of 
some person departed this life. Wolsey was 
in the beginning of his career a chantry 
riest. When such foundations were given 
y act of Parliament to the king, in the last 
year of Henry VIII. (1545 a.d.)‘, at his 
death Cranmer tried to obtain from Edward 
VI. the remnant that had not been confis¬ 
cated for the relief of the poor parochial 
clergy, but failed. 

Chapel. The derivation of the word 
is very doubtful. It may be from the fact 
that the kings of France upon their cam¬ 
paigns carried with them St. Martin’s cloak 
(cappa), and the tent in which it was kept 
and where service was held was called the 


Capella. The English Church distinguishes 
between chapels royal, domestic chapels, 
collegiate chapel, chapels of ease for those 
parishioners who live at a great distance 
from the parish church, parochial chapels, 
which are endowed apart from the mother- 
church, free chapels,— i.e., exempt from 
Episcopal jurisdiction,— chapels belonging 
to guilds and corporations, and chapels which 
were built adjoining to the church building. 

Chaplain. Originally a Priest attached 
to a chapel. Then a Minister rendering 
service to some person empowered to em¬ 
ploy one, as an Archbishop, who may 
have eight chaplains, and so too others who 
according to their rank may maintain a 
proper number. Clergymen officiating in 
the army and navy, or in prisons, hospitals, 
or public corporations, who are serving Leg¬ 
islative bodies, are called Chaplains. So too 
the clergy who are appointed to examine 
candidates for Holy Orders are called Ex¬ 
amining Chaplains. In fact, it is a general 
title applied to any clergyman serving any 
corporate body in his ministerial capacity. 

Chapter. (Vide Bible.) The word is 
derived from the Latin Caput. It is the 
name for one of the principal divisions of a 
book; —in the Bible, one of the larger sec¬ 
tions into which the separate books are di¬ 
vided. It was the work of Cardinal Hugo 
(1240 a.d ), who divided the Bible into con¬ 
venient sections for the purposes of a Com¬ 
ment which he wrote upon it, and his divis¬ 
ion has been the one followed ever since. 

Chapter. Vide Dean, and Cathedral. 

Character. In theological language “ the 
seal.” The special graces stamped upon the 
soul by the gifts and graces of the various 
means of salvation given to us in the 
Church. The seal of the Spirit of the 
Lord is spoken of in such connection by St. 
Paul, and in one or two places in the Rev¬ 
elation. (Compare 2 Cor. i. 22 ; Eph. i. 13; 
iv. 30; Romans iv. 11 ; Rev. vii. 3-8; Rev. 
ix. 4 ; 2 Tim. ii. 19 ; in all of which a spir¬ 
itual impress of some indelible character 
is more or less clearly asserted. Of these, 
2 Cor. i. 22; Eph. i. 13; and iv. 30, refer 
clearly to confirmation.) It is not to be 
doubted that there is an impress made upon 
our spiritual nature by the gifts of Baptism, 
of Confirmation, and of Ordination. If the 
grace is given, it is bestowed once for all, 
however we may afterwards misuse it or 
abuse it. 

Charge. The address of the Bishop to 
his Clergy and Laity. In the English 
Church Archdeacons do also deliver charges. 
In the American Church it is usually a 
weighty discussion of some important ques¬ 
tion relating either to the Church at large 
or to the Diocese. It is generally delivered 
separately, but is sometimes read, together 
with the address, containing his report of 
work done during the conventional year, to 
the Clergy and Laity in convention. Often, 
apart from their ability, these charges make 
a step forward in the Church’s work. 




CHASUBLE 


143 


CHOREPISCOPUS 


Chasuble. An ancient vestment which 
was and is often worn by the Priest at the 
celebration of the Holy Communion. The 
chasuble was at first the out-of-door dress of 
the ecclesiastic when it had become distinct¬ 
ively a Church garb. But by the ninth 
century it became a part of the Vestment 
worn at a solemn service. It was circular, 
with an aperture in the centre by which, 
slipped over the head, it could be worn upon 
the shoulders, and it was wide enough when 
falling from the shoulders to cover the hands. 
It is one of the Vestments ordered by the 
famous Ornaments Rubric of Edward VI. 
to be worn at the celebration of the Holy 
Communion. It was laid aside for a long 
time, but has in recent years been revived. 
The use of it is not very general in this 
country. 

Cherub. The wondrous spirits of Ezek¬ 
iel’s vision who spake not, though the beat 
of their wings was as the voice of speech ; 
but there was a Voice from the firmament 
above them. The number in Ezekiel is 
four. The Cherubim were set in front of 
the Garden of Eden to keep it. Two were 
imaged over the mercy-seat of the Ark in 
the Tabernacle. Two of colossal size over¬ 
shadowed it in Solomon’s Temple. The 
Cherubim are first mentioned as guarding 
the gates of Eden. Their images were to 
be put upon the mercy-seat, probably in 
solid wrought-work. They were spoken of 
in the Psalms xviii. 10; lxxx. 1. In Ezek¬ 
iel’s first vision they are called Living Crea¬ 
tures and described as similar to the four Liv¬ 
ing Creatures in Rev. iv., but are identified 
both as Cherubim and as the Living Crea¬ 
tures of the first vision in Ezekiel’s second 
vision (ch. x. 20). Mysterious and incom¬ 
parable, yet likened to creatures of earth, 
the bearers of the Throne, voiceless, yet 
with harmonious flight, whose beat is as the 
voice of a mighty host. 

Cherubic Hymn. This name is often 
given to the Tersanctus. But, in fact, it is a 
hymn which has no parallel in the Western 
Church. The Hymn and its preface, as it 
stands in the Liturgy of St. Chrysostom, is 
this : “ Let us who mystically represent the 
Cherubim, and sing the hymn to the quick¬ 
ening Trinity, lay by at this time all 
worldly cares, that we may receive the King 
of Glory invisibly attended by the angelic 
orders. Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!” It 
really is later than St. Chrysostom’s day, 
and is an insertion, as it was composed in 
the time of Justinian (530 a.d.). It also 
has its place in the service of the protheses, 
and therefore cannot be identical with the 
Tersanctus which is sung in the Canon. 

Chimere. The under robe of a Bishop. 
(Vide Vestments.) 

Choir. In the Church, the place of the 
choristers without the chancel-rail, but upon 
the dais between the nave and the chancel. 
But the name is ^transferred popularly with 
us to the band of singers who have charge 
of the music of the Sanctuary. They have 


a long history behind them, for they are the 
representatives of the organization of the 
singers and musicians under David (1 Chron. 
xxv.) and under Solomon. They were reorga¬ 
nized by Nehemiah (ch. xii. passbn). Every 
choir, properly appointed, should be large 
enough to be divided into two parts, that 
whenever necessary there may be antiphonal 
singing. Its members, if possible, should 
be communicants, and should have set before 
them, very clearly, the duty and the glory 
of their work in the worship. It was cus¬ 
tomary in the early Church to set apart the 
singers with the charge, “ What thou be- 
lievest in thine heart that sing with thy 
lips.” There are two or three fundamental 
principles too often lost sight of that should 
rule the conduct of the music by the choir. 
They are the leaders of the musical part of 
the service of God’s Sanctuary; therefore 
they should lead in such music only as the 
congregation can follow. They are under 
the authority of the Rector , and his will 
should be their wish. When they are ready 
to keep out all light and unseemly music, and 
to repress all indecency and irreverence in 
the performance of it, they will find his au¬ 
thority but a name. The music, at least of 
the hymns and chants, should be only from 
some one well-known book, with which such 
of the congregation as choose to do so can 
provide themselves. It is sometimes allowed 
the choir to select an elaborate setting for 
the Te Deum, and to sing an anthem or an 
offertory sentence as an offering of their mu¬ 
sical skill to the Giver of their talent,—a 
very appropriate and devout custom when 
it is kept within due limits. 

The composition of the choir is often so 
difficult to arrange satisfactorily that it may 
be impossible to put any hint here given 
into practice. But it would be well, whenever 
it can be done, to select boys with a musical 
ear and good voice for the choir. Two 
men and four or six boys would make a 
good basis, though it is the least number 
that could be used. Sixteen voices form 
such a mass of sound that, whenever suffi¬ 
cient enthusiasm is shown, the congregation 
will always join in. But if not, devout 
women can more readily be obtained who 
will make an offering of their work and 
skill. There are two or three desiderata 
which should be attended to in country 
choirs,—to have but one Hymnal from which 
to sing; to be taught the responsibility rest¬ 
ing upon them ; to have full punctual at¬ 
tendance at practice; to feel that it is little 
short of an insult to Him, before Whom the 
innumerous choirs of heaven are ever sing¬ 
ing, to offer a hasty, ill-prepared, irrever¬ 
ently-performed service of song. 

Chorepiscopus. Local Bishops in the 
ancient Church. They were Bishops hav¬ 
ing a jurisdiction in the country unde r the 
Bishop of thecitv who had supreme juris¬ 
diction, but was himself under the Metro¬ 
politan. It was, in fact, a local missionary 
extension of the Episcopate. Its powers 






CHRISM 


144 


CHRISTIANITY 


were defined to be nearly what our Bishops 
now practically exercise upon a Visitation. 
They confirmed, consecrated churches, ap¬ 
pointed readers and subdeacons, but could 
only ordain by license from the Bishop,— i.e ., 
they had spiritual authority, but by the 
terms of their work and jurisdiction only 
exercised it by special license. They could 
not administer the affairs of the Diocese, and 
could not intrude for any official work into 
a city Parish. Individual chorepiscopi as¬ 
sumed so much at times, and gave so much 
trouble latterly in the West, that they were 
suppressed. In the East, the Council of 
Laodicea (360 a.d.) dealt a blow which was 
followed up, till in about a century ora little 
more they disappeared. But there was a 
long, stout struggle in the West, and finally 
they were destroyed as an order by the 
tenth century, though there are instances of 
the office as late as the thirteenth century. 
Theirs was essentially a missionary exten¬ 
sion of the Episcopate, which was suppressed 
with more or less difficulty when the Church 
became National. But an attempt to estab¬ 
lish this order, the memory of which seems 
to have lingered in England, was made 
under Henry VIII. (1534 a.d.) by appoint¬ 
ing several towns as seats for such Bishops, 
entitled Suffragan Bishops. The act, after 
slumbering nearly three, hundred and fifty 
years, has been revived and has been acted 
upon. There are four Suffragans,—Dr. 
Parry, of Dover, under the Archbishop of 
Canterbury ; Dr. How, of Bedford, under 
the Bishop of London ; Dr. Trollope, of 
Nottingham, under the Bishop of Lincoln; 
and Dr. Bloomfield, of Colchester, under the 
Bishop of St. Albans. 

Chrism. An anointing oil used from 
early time in the Church in Baptism and in 
Confirmation. It was more prominently 
used in mediaeval times in the Oriental and 
Latin Churches. In Confirmation it has 
often been held by Latin ritualists that 
chrism is of the essence of the rite; but 
from the inspired record (Acts viii. 18, 19; 
xix. 6 ; Heb. vi. 2) it is certain that prayer 
and imposition of hands are only essential. 
In the Oriental Church the Priest confirms 
with the chrism blessed by the Bishop. 

Chrisome. In the office of Baptism it 
was a white vesture which the priest put 
upon the child, saying, “ Take this white 
vesture for a token of innocency,” etc. It 
was ordered in the Anglo-Saxon Church 
(736 a.d.) that chrisomes be used for mend¬ 
ing surplices or for the wrapping of chal¬ 
ices. The Prayer-Book of 1549 a.d. orders 
that the woman shall offer the chrisome 
when she comes to be churched. But if the 
child died before her churching she was ex¬ 
cused from offering it. It was the custom 
to bury the child in the chrisome, but by an 
abuse of words the chrisome child meant a 
child that died before it was baptized. 

Christian. The name given (possibly in 
jest) by the people of Antioch to the Disci¬ 
ples ; but it was so perfectly appropriate 


that it supplanted the earlier name entirely. 
A Christian is a baptized member of 
Christ’s Holy Church. He can only be¬ 
come so by Baptism, for Baptism is the sac¬ 
rament of entrance, the Door, by which we 
are admitted. But there has arisen a too 
common perversion of the term Christian 
in modern times, referring to the unchris¬ 
tian, inconsistent conduct of too many who 
bear the name but practically deny its power. 
Baptism makes a person the Child of God 
whether he is an obedient or a disobedient 
child, as birth makes a child a citizen of the 
state whether he prove to be a good citizen 
or not; or as the oath of allegiance makes 
an alien a citizen and gives him the protec¬ 
tion of the state whether he prove faithful 
to his oath or not. Therefore to say, as 
many Christian people do, when bewail¬ 
ing their short-comings, “I wish I were a 
Christian,” is a serious misleading phrase 
at least, if not involving much more. To 
say, “Would I were a better Christian !” is 
but a confession that we all should devoutly 
utter. 

Christianity is usually defined as the Re¬ 
ligion of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is 
correct, but not in the same sense as when 
we say the Religion of Buddha or of Mo¬ 
hammed. The origin of Christianity was, 
in fact, the founding of the organized 
Church from which, in its beginnings and 
in its continuance, it is not rationally sepa¬ 
rable. There can be no greater error than to 
regard Christianity as derived from the 
Bible, or the Church as a development of 
Christianity. It is strange that these relations 
are not generally or clearly understood, so 
patent are they to any thoughtful examina¬ 
tion. Even the elementary doctrines com¬ 
mon to all orthodox believers, those con¬ 
tained in the Apostles’ Creed, were not all 
originally taught by the Divine Founder of 
Christianity in any recorded words. His 
birth of the Virgin Mary He does not allude 
to, and the great facts of His life, death, res¬ 
urrection, and ascension were at most only 
predicted by Him. He never substituted 
Christianity for Judaism, nor declared the 
formal repeal of the law of Moses. What 
He did was to choose twelve men, organize 
them as a corporation in perpetuity, endow 
them with a charter, authorize them to teach 
certain doctrines which He had privately 
taught them, and which the Holy Ghost 
was to recall, and intrust them with the 
mysterious sacramental rites of initiation 
(Baptism) and full membership (Holy Com¬ 
munion) in the society thus formed. He 
then made them a promise, to be and co-oper¬ 
ate with them until the end of the world. 
“ Receive ye the Holy Ghost. As my 
Father has sent Me, even so send I you.” 
There was the Charter with its enabling act. 
“ Go ye into all the world and make disci¬ 
ples of all nations, baptizing them,” etc. 
These were the mission and authority to in¬ 
itiate. “ Lo, I am with you alway, even 
unto the end of the world.” There was the 





CHRISTIANITY 


145 


CHRISTIANITY 


promise of perpetuity and continued author¬ 
ity. That was Christianity when He left 
the world. Nothing more whatever. But 
that was the Church. It is clear that if all 
this was said, to the Apostles only as indi¬ 
viduals, no other individuals could ever lay 
claim to any rights or privileges under it, 
or to any promises made only to them. It is 
equally clear that if it was said to them as a 
chartered corporation, the rights, privileges, 
and promises so given can belong only to 
“ them, their heirs and assigns,” on condi¬ 
tion of the charter not being vitiated and 
the corporation not lapsing. It is clear also 
that as the individuals were not to exist 
until the end of the world, the promise to be 
with them until the end of the world must 
have been made to them as a perpetual cor¬ 
poration. It is thus evident that all author¬ 
ized and authoritative Christianity is neces¬ 
sarily bound up in that corporation, which 
is the Church. But further, it was this cor¬ 
poration, and this only, that formulated, 
elaborated, and propagated Christianity, and 
upon this authority alone its doctrines have 
been accepted. A very singular and solemn 
authority had been conferred upon it: 
“Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are re¬ 
mitted unto them ; and whosesoever sins ye 
retain, they are retained.” It matters not 
what the exact meaning of these words may 
have been. They certainly conveyed a 
most solemn and unique authority of some 
kind upon those to whom they were said. 
That authority was to withhold or inflict 
some penalties upon those who should be¬ 
come members of the organization. But 
the individuals did not at once proceed to 
exercise such functions or to perform, the 
duties assigned. They passed fifty days in 
close consultation, during which, as a rec¬ 
ognized duty, they elected a new member to 
complete their corporate number. Then, al¬ 
ways acting together, they perfected the or¬ 
ganization of the society by selecting and or¬ 
daining Deacons, Presbyters, and Apostles 
(as Timothy and Titus), and by instructing 
these and sending them out with authority 
to teach doctrines and initiate members. 
These new Apostles were authorized to pro¬ 
ceed in the same way to perpetuate the cor¬ 
poration, the original twelve exercising dis¬ 
cipline, organizing and administering the 
Church, and putting into writing, personally 
and by the aid of two authorized assistants, 
the whole body of Truth now accepted as 
Christianity. In this organization, therefore, 
Christianity consisted, and must continue to 
consist. If the corporation has lapsed,—if 
the original organization has ceased to exist, 
or become essentially altered in its form and 
methods,—there can be no authorized or 
authoritative Christianity now among men. 
All this is recorded in the Bible. But it 
amounts to nothing unless we remember 
that Christianity is not derived from the 
Bible , and further remember how it is that 
we know the Bible to be true. The simple 
fact is, that when the Church of Christ 

10 


was organized the Bible did not exist. Even 
the Old Testament, as accepted by the Jew¬ 
ish Church of our Lord’s time, was not the 
Old Testament of the “ Protestant” Bible. 
It contained what is known as the “ Apoc¬ 
rypha;” not all together in separate books, 
but dispersed among the Canonical Books, 
and in some cases interpolating their text. 
It is to be carefully noted that our Lord 
Himself used and quoted this interpolated 
Septuagint Version without one recorded 
word of dissent. The New Testament Seri ;>- 
t.ures were not yet written. These consist of 
Four Gospels, written by two Apostles and 
two Evangelists working under their imme¬ 
diate oversight; the book of “Acts,” writ¬ 
ten by one of these Evangelists to record 
the doings of the Apostles; twenty-one 
Epistles, being letters addressed by five of 
the Apostles at various times to organized 
Churches, or to individuals, or to the Chris¬ 
tian society at large ; and one book of “ Rev¬ 
elation,” whether a poem, a prophecy, or a 
rhapsody has never been fully determined. 
This also by the last of the original Apos¬ 
tles. But these “ Books” were written dur- 
ing a period comprising at least forty years, 
and after probably twenty years of oral 
teaching. In this period there were extant 
(as St. Luke tells us) “many” other Gos¬ 
pels, and at least one other Epistle, i.e., that 
to the Laodiceans. Thus there was cer¬ 
tainly no “ Bible” up to the time when the 
last Apostle died. But there was Christi¬ 
anity. Hence Christianity is not derived 
from the Bible. But after that last Apostle 
was dead some organized authority—cer¬ 
tainly not the simple agreement of the mass 
of Christian people—determined what was 
and what was not God’s revealed truth to 
man ; rejected all the Apocryphal books and 
passages of the Old Testament,—which our 
Lord Himself had not done,—all extant 
“ Gospels” save four, and all Apostolic Epis¬ 
tles except twenty-one. The same author¬ 
ity determined the “ Revelation” to be in¬ 
spired Scripture. Could that authority be 
aught else than the continued Corporation, 
the Church? Not possibly. Could any 
higher power be claimed or exercised by a 
human organization, or could such organ¬ 
ization thus act except by a conceded Di¬ 
vine authorization ? Clearly, then, it is the 
Church which is acknowledged by all Chris¬ 
tian people to have given the Bible to the 
world, and the terms Christianity and “ the 
Church” are convertible. But this being 
so, the definition of Christianity is not com¬ 
plete until we determine what is meant by 
“ the Church.” About this there can be no 
uncertainty or indefiniteness. It must be 
the perpetuated Corporation established and 
chartered by our Lord in person, which has 
come down in unbroken succession from the 
original Corporators, with its charter un¬ 
vitiated and its constitution diligently ob¬ 
served and regarded. It must possess the 
essential form of the original organization ; 
it must hold and practice the faith and sacra- 





CHRISTMAS 


146 


CHRISTOLOGY 


merits intrusted to the Apostles for preser¬ 
vation, dissemination, and perpetuation ; it 
must show its authority and that of its offi¬ 
cers derived in unbroken succession and 
in the prescribed form from those Apos¬ 
tles ; and it must prove its faithful perform¬ 
ance of all the objects for which it was or¬ 
ganized and perpetuated. Otherwise there 
can be no Christianity and no divinely-ad¬ 
ministered religion or reliable Divine prom¬ 
ises left to mankind. Wherever these notes 
are found there is the historic Church of 
Christ, which in its universal organization 
is identical with Christianity, and upon the 
unbroken testimony of which rests the only 
authority for believing and accepting the 
Christian Bible with all that it contains. 
No Christian sect or communion which 
lacks the Apostolic form and constitution 
of Bishops (or Apostles), Priests (or Pres¬ 
byters), and Deacons, no properly organized 
Church which has vitiated the Creed or aban¬ 
doned the two original sacraments of Bap¬ 
tism and the Lord’s Supper, nor any single 
and separate part of the Corporation, whether 
Roman, Greek, or Anglican, can justly 
claim to be that Church whose charter and 
mission was “ to all nations.” The Church 
Universal in her integrity, in her authorita¬ 
tive Episcopal order, in her orthodox and 
pure faith, and in her duly administered 
sacraments is the perpetuated corporation in 
which Christianity consists, and thus when 
we express our belief in Christianity we 
only express our belief in the One, Holy, 
Catholic Church. 

Rev. Robert Wilson, D.D. 

Christmas. This Feast falls on Decem¬ 
ber 25. Though this date is now uni¬ 
versally observed, yet at first there was a 
diversity of practice. In Egypt April 20 
and May 20 were observed. In Palestine, 
and the East generally, the 5th of January 
was kept, while the West observed the 
present day. But about the first part of the 
fifth century the East accepted the West¬ 
ern feast-day, and it became universal. St. 
Chrysostom has a homily which is very im¬ 
portant upon this topic. The outline of the 
reasons for supposing the 25th of December 
to be the true date is this: Most probably 
Zacharias took the place of the High-Priest 
upon the great day of Atonement (such sub¬ 
stitution, when some unforeseen accident 
prevented the High-Priest from executing 
his office himself, has been abundantly 
proven out of Josephus and Maimonides), 
which fell that year upon September 23. It 
was while he was within the veil the message 
of the angel came to him. This would place 
the nativity of St. John Baptist on June 24 ; 
and as he was six months older than our 
Lord, his cousin according to the flesh, 
it places the nativity of our Lord upon De¬ 
cember 25. The celebration has always 
been observed with great solemnity and re¬ 
joicing, though too frequently with other 
than sacred and festal customs. There are 
in other than the English Church two cele¬ 


brations of the Communion, with separate 
Collects, Epistles, and Gospels. Whenever 
there are two with us, it is because of the con¬ 
venience of the communicants and to shorten 
the length of the services. Three festivals 
stand in immediate connection with it: 
those of St Stephen (December 26), the first 
martyr ; of St. John (December 27), “ whom 
Jesus loved;” of the Innocents’ day (De¬ 
cember 28), the cocetanei of our Lord. 

Christology is the doctrine contained in 
the Scriptures concerning the Person and 
office of Christ. The subject may be con¬ 
veniently considered under two heads; the 
first containing the prophecies of the Mes¬ 
siah in the Old Testament, and the Mes¬ 
sianic hopes of the Jew based upon them ; 
and the second the revelation of the Christ 
made by Jesus in the New Testament, and 
the teaching of the Church upon the relation 
of the divine and human natures in His Per¬ 
son, together with some mention of the here¬ 
sies which were the occasion of the more 
exact definition of this teaching. 

1. The Christology of the Old Testament 
falls naturally into the three divisions of 
Patriarchal, Legal, and Prophetic Christol- 
ogy; just as the history of the chosen peo¬ 
ple presents the same stages, and just as the 
history advancing along these stages passes 
from outlines covering long intervals to 
more minute details of shorter periods, so 
does the doctrine of the Messiah in the 
successive divisions become more frequent, 
more definite, and more precise. To treat 
this topic at any length would require a vol¬ 
ume, and it must suffice here merely to men¬ 
tion some of the chief passages of Scripture 
which are understood to form a connected 
chain of promise and prophecy concerning 
the Christ, and to indicate the outlines 
of the conception of the Messiah and His 
office inferred from them. The first of these 
passages is found in the story of the fall of 
man, where, with the curse pronounced upon 
the serpent, is joined the promise of the seed 
of the woman to be at enmity with the ser¬ 
pent : “ it shall bruise thy head, and thou 
shalt bruise his heel.” This promise of a 
deliverer, which, no doubt, had a fuller and 
deeper meaning (than its form now con¬ 
veys) to those who received it, was for them 
the basis of faith and hope in a Saviour to 
come, until the promise was renewed in the 
blessing pronounced upon Shem, “blessed 
be the Lord God of Shem” (Gen. ix.), and 
in the blessing of Abraham, “ in thee shall 
all families of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 
xii.), which are remarkable as having their 
fulfillment not at the time spoken, nor for 
those to whom they were addressed, but in 
the far future and for others, even the whole 
family of man. But the promise becomes 
much clearer in the inspired words of the 
dying Jacob addressed to Judah, “ The scep¬ 
tre shall not depart from Judah, nor a law¬ 
giver from between his feet until Shiloh 
come; and unto him shall the gathering of 
the people be” (Gen. xlix.), centering as it 




CHRISTOLOGY 


147 


CHRISTOLOGY 


does in one Person, who is to he a man of 
peace (Shiloh), to be a prince, and to whom 
the nations shall be obedient. The prophecy 
of Balaam (Numbers xxiv.), and the passages 
of the Pentateuch, which relate to the angel 
of the Lord (Gen. xii. 7; xviii. 1, etc.), 
have been thought also to refer to the Mes¬ 
siah. But the next step in the revelation 
of the Messiah, is the typical meaning of 
the Mosaic law of sacrifices, and of the 
High-Priest who offered them. Sacrifices 
were not a new thing with Moses, and no 
doubt the patriarchs who offered them did 
so with a sufficient conception of their hid¬ 
den meaning; but the full system and 
elaborate ritual appointed by Moses were 
designed to be a shadow of the good things 
to come (as St. Paul declares), and to serve 
unto the example and shadow of heavenly 
things. Again, after a long interval, prob¬ 
ably because primitive tradition was forgot¬ 
ten, and typical meanings had become ob¬ 
scure, the promise is renewed by messages 
to the prophets continually more definite 
and precise. In the Psalms (xxii., lxxii., 
etc.), and in the prophets (Isaiah xi., liii., 
lxiii. ; Jer. xxiii. ; Zech. ix., xiii., etc.), we 
read fuller and more personal descriptions 
of the Messiah, which, joined with the for¬ 
mer revelations, furnish a conception of 
Him as a Person who should rescue His 
people from sin by making an expiatory 
offering for it, Himself at once Priest and 
Victim, and after triumphing over the ene¬ 
my of righteousness, and destroying his 
power, should rule forever as the Prince of 
Peace. But in this conception there were 
such contradictory points that the Jews, 
despairing of reconciling them in one per¬ 
son, came to the conclusion that the prophets 
foretold two Messiahs, one to suffer and the 
other to triumph ; and missing the true sense 
of their Scriptures, it is probable that in time 
they came to look for an earthly king only, 
who should triumph over the nations which 
had conquered and oppressed them, and 
restore again a temporal kingdom to Israel. 

2. But in the fullness of time God sent 
forth His Son, made of a woman, made 
under the Law, to fulfill all the Father’s 
promises, and to reconcile in His own Per¬ 
son the conflicting predictions of the birth, 
rank, and appearance, of the reception and 
treatment, of the death and burial of the 
Messiah. Him the Jews rejected, refusing 
to see how He made true in Himself all the 
words of promise ; but Him have Christians 
—His faithful followers—ever honored with 
divine worship as the Messiah, the Christ 
of God, yet God Himself; as the Saviour 
of men, yet a true Man. The New Testa¬ 
ment, i.e. the words of our Lord in the Gos- 
els, the doctrines published by St. Paul and 
is brother Apostles in their Epistles, supple¬ 
ment the revelation contained in the Old 
Testament, and furnish the key to the true 
interpretation of the prophets, as well as 
the basis for the Christian doctrine of the 
Person of Christ, of the Son of God be¬ 


come the Son of Man. The reader will not 
need any reference to these Scriptures, nor 
any analysis of their contents, before admit¬ 
ting this statement; and he will as readily 
admit that they contain the premises from 
which follow as logical consequences the 
decrees of the first general Councils defin¬ 
ing the right faith concerning the Person 
of Christ. The definition of this faith, in 
the first days of Christianity, was negative 
rather than positive; the earlier Fathers 
contenting themselves with combating the 
errors of heretics on the one hand or on the 
other, and denying that the doctrine of the 
Christ was not as stated by them ; while 
they did not undertake to set forth exactly 
what the true doctrine was, more fully than 
in the words of St. John, “the Word was 
made Flesh.” Still the process of logical 
inference and development went on, and 
men saw more and more clearly how to sum 
up the separate assertions of Scripture—the 
faith once delivered to the saints—in a care¬ 
fully defined philosophical statement. This, 
however, was not done at once, but as it 
were step by step, as the vagaries of heresy 
made more explicit definitions necessary ; so 
that it was six or seven hundred years before 
the Person of Christ ceased to form the 
chief question in the Councils of the Church. 
The decisions of the first six general Coun¬ 
cils (Nice against Arius, 325 a.d.; Con¬ 
stantinople against Macedonius, 381 a d., 
Ephesus against Nestorius, 431 a.d. ; Chal- 
cedon against Eutyches, 451 a.d. ; Constan¬ 
tinople supplementary of Ephesus, 553 a.d.; 
and Constantinople supplementary of Chal- 
cedon, 680 a.d.), the substance of which is 
expressed by the (so-called) Nicene Creed, 
set forth the Person of Christ as embracing 
truly and perfectly both the nature of God 
and the nature of man, inseparably and with¬ 
out confusion. It will be observed that this 
was the work of the Eastern Church ; in the 
West, however, thinking men were not idle, 
and in like manner as the faith of the 
Church concerning the Person of Christ 
was thus gradually expressed with accuracy 
and precision, so the doctrine of His office 
and work was from time to time more 
clearly defined, as philosophical speculations 
ending in heresy made it desirable to do so, 
until the Christology of the Church was 
completed by the doctrine of Christ in His 
office as the Atonement for sin, the Restorer 
of man to the original dignity of his nature 
lost in Adam, and by the doctrine of Divine 
grace repairing human sinfulness. The 
subject of Christology, the doctrine of the 
Person of Christ, is sometimes treated as 
the development of a purely natural Mes¬ 
sianic idea, of subjective or self-originated 
conception, to which there was no corre¬ 
spondent Divine Promise. Or it is discussed 
as the development of a Messianic idea 
which was both natural and supernatural, 
which was not purely subjective or self-origi¬ 
nated, but had its origin in a Divine reality, 
and was fostered by a supernatural Provi- 





CHRONICLES 


148 


CHRONOLOGY 


dence until the revelation of that reality in 
the Incarnation.— God manifest in the flesh. 
Add to this second mode of considering 
Christology the teaching that the doctrine 
of the Person of Christ was made known 
to the patriarchs and prophets from the 
earliest ages by some knowledge of what 
His work should be, and the third and true 
method is reached ; a method which has 
been called dogmatic, and is that commonly 
adopted by theological writers on Chris¬ 
tology. For anything like a proper treat¬ 
ment of this subject the reader must turn 
to special works on Christology (Horner, 
Hengstenberg), and on such subdivisions of 
it as the Atonement (Magee), or the Divin¬ 
ity of Christ (Liddon’s Bampton Lectures): 
but the articles in Smith’s “ Dictionary of 
the Bible” on Messiah, Jesus Christ, Son 
of God, Son of Man, etc., may be consulted 
with advantage. 

Authorities : Dictionary of the Bible, Ha- 
genbach’s History of Doctrines, Chambers’ 
Cyclopsedia, Blunt’s Dictionary of Histori¬ 
cal and Doctrinal Theology. 

Chronicles, First and Second Books of. 
These two books, like those of the Kings, were 
in the Hebrew originally but a single book, 
but in the Greek translation they were di¬ 
vided for convenience, and so the Vulgate 
received them; thence they passed into the 
modern translations as two books. They 
have been attributed, with almost positive 
certainty, to Ezra ; and all the circumstances 
and the contents of the books agree very well 
with this. They contain genealogies, espe¬ 
cially those of the Priests and Levites. 
They have much of a national tone in them ; 
they give other and parallel accounts to 
those in the books of the Kings of the same 
events. In these we may see Ezra’s pur¬ 
pose to infuse a national tone in the rem¬ 
nant brought back from Babylon, and the 
need of exact genealogical records of the Le- 
vitical families, that the details of the Tem¬ 
ple worship may be restored to those who 
alone were competent to conduct them ; and 
also to give independent and corroborative 
narratives of the facts recorded by Jeremiah 
in the books of the Kings. These facts have 
stood much in the way of those who wish to 
show that the books of Moses were an inven¬ 
tion of a forger after the “ Captivity for if 
this were so, then the books of the Chronicles 
are still later. To destroy the credibility 
of the Chronicles the date of their composi¬ 
tion would have to be placed later still. But 
the date and probable authorship have been 
abundantly established by competent critics. 
The authenticity of the Chronicles has been, 
then, the pivot upon which a great deal of 
critical acumen has been expended with an 
equivalently valuable result. The contents 
begin with the genealogies from Adam; 
and, after a rapid outline, come on to* the 
later history of the two kingdoms ; and 
while not always identical with, still trav¬ 
erse much the same ground as those of the 
books of the Kings. They are not sup¬ 


plementary or intentionally explanatory of 
the Kings, having another purpose in view ; 
but they do indirectly throw much light 
upon them. 

Chronology is the art of recording histori¬ 
cal events in their proper order and succes¬ 
sion, by expressing the interval of time 
which has elapsed between their occurrence 
and the occurrence of some other event 
chosen as a standard of reference. To treat 
this subject fully some explanation of the 
calendar, or mode of measuring time, and 
regulating the year, would be proper, but 
limited space forbids any such digression, 
and attention will be given here only to a 
brief mention of those systems of chronology 
most commonly met with in history. By a 
system of chronology is understood a scheme 
of historical events arranged in their proper 
sequence, and at their proper intervals, either 
before or after a chosen standard of refer¬ 
ence ; and it is easy to see how different sys¬ 
tems may have been suggested and adopted 
in ancient times. Eor as tribes of men at 
first loosely associated together gradually 
developed a common national life, a need 
would arise of some fixed point of reckon¬ 
ing to which to refer in recording or com¬ 
paring events. The most important charac¬ 
teristic of such a fixed point of time would 
be some event associated with it, of such 
moment as to be generally known and long 
remembered. Hence we find events referred 
to earthquakes or eclipses, the accession of 
kings and other like occasions commonly 
known, or of common interest. Different 
nations would naturally have their own 
standards of reference, and their own sys¬ 
tems of chronology based upon them ; hence, 
as is well known in ancient history, the 
Greeks used one method of recording events, 
the Romans another, and the nations of the 
East, and of Egypt, used various systems at 
different times ; while in modern history, 
Christians, Mohammedans, Hindoos, and 
Chinese all have their own peculiar systems 
of chronology. As some six or eight of these 
are frequently mentioned in history, it will 
be well to notice them more particularly, 
and to explain how they may be connected 
with the Vulgar or Christian era. 

In Greece the common life of the Hellenic 
race was kept alive and fostered by the four 
great national games, of which those at 
Olympia seem to have become prominent at 
an early day. It was the custom to name 
these games, which were celebrated every 
fourth year, early in July, from the win¬ 
ner of the foot-race; and at a later time 
to record his name in the gymnasium of 
Olympia. The first to be distinguished by 
this last honor was Corsebus ; and naturally 
the event of his triumph having a fixed 
name of its own, and being brought regu¬ 
larly to the attention of the whole people 
every four years, became a ready standard 
to which all other events might be referred. 
Thus originated the era of the Olympiads, 
which are computed to have begun 776 years 




CHRONOLOGY 


149 


CHRONOLOGY 


before the Christian era. But as the year 
of the Olympiads begins in July, it is neces¬ 
sary in reducing Olympiads to years before 
Christ, to subtract the year of the Olym¬ 
piad from 777 if the event befell from July 
to December, but from 776 if from January 
to June. For example, Rome was founded 
in the third year of the sixth Olympiad, in 
April; then taking 5 X 4 +3 = 23 from 776, 
we have 753 b.c. for the date of the founda¬ 
tion of the city ; but if the year of the 
Olympiad is greater than 776, to find the 
year of the Christian era subtract from it 
776 if the event befell from July to Decem¬ 
ber, 777 if from January to June. 

The Roman system of chronology refers all 
events to the founding of the city of Rome, 
which is generally fixed in April, 753 b.c., 
though it is also placed in the years 752, 751, 
750, and 747 b.c. A simple subtraction of 
the year of the city from 753 should give 
the year before Christ of any event re¬ 
corded in the era of Rome ; but owing to the 
different dates assigned for the beginning of 
that era, the reduction is not always at¬ 
tended with certainty; nor is the difficulty 
lessened by the fact that the Romans em¬ 
ployed two sorts of years, the civil year and 
the consular year, and further that the year 
of Rome does not coincide with the civil 
year, the latter beginning January 1, the 
other April 21. 

The era of Nabonassar is that used by 
Ptolemy in his records of Assyrian and 
Babylonian history. Its chief merit is that 
it begins at a definite moment of time, viz., 
"Wednesday at noon, February 26, 747 b.c., 
and for that reason is famous in astronomy; 
but on account of a difference in length of 
the Julian and Babylonian years, it is no 
easy matter to convert dates from the era of 
Nabonassar to the Christian era. 

Before the Exodus the Jews began their 
year in September; but to commemorate 
that event the beginning of the year was 
changed to about the time of the vernal 
equinox (Exodus xii. 2) for ecclesiastical 
matters, the former year being still retained 
in civil affairs. There is reason to believe 
that the Exodus formed a chronological era 
with the Israelites (1 Kings vi. 1), but it is 
well known that they recorded historical 
events by referring them to the year of the 
reigning king or conqueror. In the later 
history of the Jews, and until comparatively 
modern times, they used the Macedonian 
era, which they styled the Era of Contracts, 
because their Syrian governors compelled 
them to use it in making contracts. They 
are said, however, to use now a Mundane 
era, reckoning from the creation of the 
world, which they set about 3760 years be¬ 
fore Christ. (Vide article Chronology in 
Dr. Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible.) 

The Macedonian era, just spoken of, called 
also the Era of the Seleucidae, was reckoned 
from the occupation of Babylon by Seleucus 
Nicator (311 b.c.). It was for a long time 
in general use in all the Greek countries 


bordering on the Levant; but as those who 
used it varied much in their time of begin¬ 
ning the year, it is hard to determine with 
readiness dates recorded in it. 

The Vulgar or Christian era is that in 
common use in Europe and America, and 
largely in Asia. It was proposed some 500 
years after Christ by Dionysius Exiguus, 
and gradually came into use by all Chris¬ 
tians. Being designed to reckon from the 
4 Incarnation of Christ, its author chose 
4 March 25 in the year of Rome 752 b.c. (?) as 
its initial point, but after a time this was de¬ 
ferred to the following January; and the 
Vulgar era now begins January 1 in the 
year of Rome 753 b.c. Besides the 25th of 
March and the 1st of January, the 25th of 
December has been taken as the beginning 
of the year; a fact to be remembered in 
reckoning and comparing dates in early 
Christian ages, and in late history, too, for 
that matter, because the 25th of March was 
retained as New Year’s Day in England, 
together with the Old Style, until 1752 a.d., 
at which time a change of both year and 
style was made; hence, though we now say 
that George Washington was born February 
22, 1732 a.d. , those who recorded that event 
wrote it February 11, 1731 a.d. However, 
historical writers had already reckoned the 
year to begin at January 1. For an ex¬ 
planation of these matters, and for rules for 
avoiding error and confusion in dates, the 
reader must refer to the subject of the Cal¬ 
endar as treated in the various cyclopaedias. 

The era of the Hegira is that used by the 
Mohammedans, and dates from the flight of 
Mohammed (the Hegira) from Mecca, or 
rather from a day shortly before the actual 
flight; so that it begins July 16, 622 a.d. 
But it is not used in Persia, where time is 
reckoned from the accession to the throne 
of Yezdegird, June 16, 632 a.d. 

It remains now to speak of an important, 
and at the same time very difficult, branch 
of chronology, viz., that of Biblical chro¬ 
nology. The basis of such a system is of 
course the text of the Bible; and it might 
seem at first a simple matter to reduce its 
records to a tabulated scheme, but there are 
difficulties presented by the text itself, and 
in addition the Septuagint, or ancient Greek 
version, differs from the Hebrew text; and 
again, the Samaritan Pentateuch differs from 
both these. Now two of these must have 
been altered, and as certain alterations are 
suspected in the Hebrew text, whether by 
design or by accident, it has become impos¬ 
sible to determine which of the three is 
right on those points where they differ. 
Hence there have been so many discrep¬ 
ant opinions and contradictory conclusions 
among those who have given attention to 
this subject, that from over-confidence in 
treating it in a positive manner, men have 
gone apparently to the opposite extreme of 
thinking that nothing whatever can be done 
with it. These remarks apply of course 
only to that part of Biblical chronology 







CHRONOLOGY 


150 


CHURCH 


which cannot be corroborated by contem¬ 
porary profane history ; but the truth about 
it, as in so many other cases, lies probably 
between two extremes, and a careful digest 
of the records of the Bible will afford a sys¬ 
tem of chronology which may be accepted 
as final; because, though not absolutely cer¬ 
tain for the earliest ages, it is better than 
any other yet obtained; and in later times 
is confirmed by contemporary history, and 
especially by the wonderful disclosures of 
modern research and discovery. 

The different systems of Bible chronology 
which have been advocated by the most 
learned and able men may be arranged (to 
take no notice of the Rabbinical systems) in 
two classes, the long systems and the short 
systems; though all long systems do not 
agree with one another, neither do all short 
systems agree together. The advocates of the 
short systems base their calculations on the 
genealogies of the antediluvians and patri¬ 
archs as given in the Hebrew text (and in 
our version of the Bible), while those who 
prefer the long systems choose the correspond¬ 
ing genealogies in the Septuagint, which 
are greater by one hundred years in the age 
of nearly every patriarch at the time when 
his successor was born. For this reason, and 
for certain other peculiarities of interpreta¬ 
tion and reckoning, there is a very consider¬ 
able difference between the two classes of 
chronologies, until they practically agree 
in the date of the destruction of Solomon’s 
Temple. Taking Hales as a representative 
of the long systems and Ussher of the short, 
the two may be compared by the following 
table of six principal dates : 

Hales. Ussher. 


Destruction of Solomon’s Temple. 586 B.o. 588 b.c. 

Foundation “ “ “ .1027 1012 

Exodus.1648 1491 

Call of Abram.2078 1921 

Flood.3155 2348 

Creation.5411 4004 


Out of all the many systems which have 
been published and advocated, that of 
Ussher, Archbishop of Ireland, has received 
the most favor, and is best known, at least 
to English-speaking men ; owing, no doubt, 
to the fact that it is inserted in the margin 
of the Authorized Version of the Scrip¬ 
tures, completed and published under James 
I. of England ; and the dates of such events 
as the Creation, the Flood, the Exodus, etc., 
are commonly given in accordance with it. 
Perhaps it is as well to adopt it as any, both 
because it is based upon the Hebrew text of 
the Bible, and because it has been so long 
received and used. But there are many 
able advocates of the long system, and in 
particular the learned writer of the article 
Chronology in Smith’s “ Dictionary of the 
Bible,” to which reference has already been 
made, appears to favor the long system; 
and he suggests a scheme nearly the same 
as that of Hales as the most probable, mak¬ 
ing, however, a correction of four years in 
the date of the Exodus (and of the preced¬ 
ing dates), based upon a theory that the 


14th day of the month Abib (when the 
Passover was instituted) corresponded to 
the 14th day of an Egyptian month, Pha- 
meneth, and upon the fact, as shown by as¬ 
tronomy, that a full moon fell upon the 14th 
of Phameneth in the year 1652 b.c. His 
statement of the dates above given would 
therefore be,— 


Destruction of the Temple. 586 B.c. 

Foundation of the Temple. ? 

Exodus.1652 

Abram.2082 

Flood. 3159 or 3099 

Creation.5421 or 5361 


The article spoken of must be again re¬ 
ferred to for the explanation of the writer’s 
grounds for his conclusions ; and in it also 
will be found a full consideration of the whole 
subject of Biblical chronology. For the 
more general subject, the “ Chronological 
Introduction to the History of the Church” 
and the “ Church of the Redeemed,” by the 
late Dr. Samuel F. Jarvis, may be consulted. 

Authorities: Chronology and Calendar 
in Chambers’s, Appleton’s, and Metropoli¬ 
tan Encyclopaedias. 

Rev. R. A. Benton. 

Church. The word has usually been de¬ 
rived from the Greek adjective Kyriaki, 
belonging to the Lord, through the Teu¬ 
tonic changes of (Anglo-Saxon) Circ 1 Cyric ; 
O.Germ. Chirichu ; Icelandic, Kyrhia ; while 
the Latin races usually retained the other 
Greek word, Ecclesia. The deviation has 
been challenged, but not on probably accu¬ 
rate grounds. It has three broad uses which 
are quite distinct: (A) the church building ; 
(B) the Church in a city or a Diocese (in the 
New Testament in a household); (C) the 
Mystical Body of Christ in its Unity; 
these are quite distinct and definite uses and 
are generally well understood. It is only 
to the last two that this article refers. And, 
first, of the Mystical Body of Christ, which 
he purchased with His Blood (Acts xx. 28). 
Its Founder and Foundation is the Lord 
Himself. “ Upon this Rock I will build my 
Church” (Matt. xvi. 18), and that Rock is 
Christ. Before its foundation He describes 
it, and calls it a Kingdom, His Kingdom, 
His Father’s Kingdom, the Kingdom of 
God, of Heaven, which He appoints to His 
Apostles. Men are bidden to enter it; it 
suffers violence and the violent take it by 
force; it is an open organization, yet it 
works as leaven in the soul. Parables best 
foreshadow its varied extent, power, and 
gifts. A net to gather all men, good and 
bad ; a pearl, a treasure worth all else ; the 
service of a great King which has great re¬ 
sponsibilities and eternal rewards; a tree 
which shall shadow and lodge many. It 
is to be in the world, not of the world, but 
to lift men out of the world. It is a power 
in the heart and life. It is a kingdom with 
a Divine policy and bestowing an immortal 
citizenship. It admits without distinction 
babes and old men, bond and free, simple 
and learned, rich and poor. It is founded 

















CHURCH 


151 


CHURCH 


on love and in love, and its citizenship is re¬ 
tained by loving obedience. These intima¬ 
tions of it are part of the training the Apos¬ 
tles receive. Then offering the redemption 
on the Cross, He rises from the dead, and 
upon Himself as Eternal God and Immor¬ 
tal Man He founds His Church. It is a 
Covenant through Him, a union with Him, 
a worship of Him. Emphatically, it is the 
Church of Christ our God, who has bought 
it with His blood. 

But in many ways Christ’s Church is 
not governed as secular kingdoms are. He 
governs it as its Head (Eph. i. 22, 23 ; iv. 
1-16 ; Col. i. 15-22). By the Holy Ghost 
(St. John xv. 7-15) ; by the Apostolic office 
(Eph. iv. 11, 12; St. Matt, xxviii. 20). For 
its purpose is to reconcile sinful man to the 
Father through the Son (2 Cor. v. 18, 19) 
by the pleading of the Holy Ghost (Rom. 
viii. 26) in our hearts. It follows that the 
ministry of reconciliation in the Church is in 
Christ’s office as Apostle (Heb. iii. 1) and 
High-Priest, and He must appoint His own 
officers, who share in His authority (St. 
John xx. 21). He gives gifts and offers sal¬ 
vation. He must select His own messen¬ 
gers (St. Mark iii. 13 ; St. John xv. 16). 
This Apostolic office continues while the 
world lasts (St. Matt, xxviii. 20). But it 
exists only for His purposes and His work 
(St. John xv. 14; St. Mark xvi. 15, 16; 
St. Mutt, xxviii. 18-20). But again, the 
work is for men. It reaches from the Throne 
of God the Father, from the Holiest Pres¬ 
ence of Christ’s unceasing intercession, to 
the life and happiness of the least of His 
loved race of men. This wondrous organi¬ 
zation is for the salvation of men, soul and 
body (Eph. ii.). This King has laid down 
certain conditions on which He receives our 
allegiance in baptism. He assigns duties 
and responsibilities upon His citizens. He 
governs by eternal law of love, mercy, and 
justice. He has rights, privileges, and im¬ 
munities to confer, offices to grant, defenses 
to place about them. The conditions are 
faith (St. Mark xvi. 16 ; Rom. x. 9 ; Heb. 
xi. 6; Acts viii. 36, 37) and repentance 
(Acts ii. 38 ; St. Luke xxiv. 27 ; 2 Peter iii. 
9). The oath of allegiance in baptism is 
the renunciation of the world, the flesh, and 
the devil, the vow of Faith and of obedience. 
The gifts are forgiveness (Luke xxiv. 47; 
Acts xxii.16), cleansing (1 Cor. vi. 11 ; Titus 
iii. 5), a new creature (Gal. iii. 27 ; Col. iii. 
10; Eph. iv. 24), and life immortal (Rom. 
vi.). This is the first sacrament (military 
oath) to the Captain of our salvation (Heb. 
ii.). By it we become citizens of His king¬ 
dom (Eph. ii. 17-22 ; Phil. iii. 20, 21), sons 
of God (Rom. viii. 14-17 ; 1 John iii. 1, 2 ; 
St. John i. 12), heritors of his royal rights 
(Gal. iv. 1-7; Rev. iii. 21; Epb. ii. 6). 
These are the privileges and gifts with which 
His citizens are clothed. But in a second 
act He conveys His Holy Spirit for guid¬ 
ance and help (Heb. vi. 2 ; Acts ii. 38 ; viii. 
17; six. 1-6; Eph. iv. 30), whereby we be¬ 


come sanctified and are temples of the Holy 
Ghost (1 Cor. iii. 16, 17; vi. 19; Eph. i. 
13, 14). And a renewal of our vows is ap¬ 
pointed in the Holy Communion (St. John 
vi. 51, 57 ; 1 Cor. xi. 23-26) for forgiveness 
(St. Matt. xxvi. 26-28) ; and direct power of 
absolution is given to His officers (St. John 
xx. 22, 23), or of discipline (1 Cor. v. 4, 5; 
1 Tim. i. 20) and of blessing (Heb. xiii. 
20, 21 ; 2 Cor. xii. 14). And He gov¬ 
erns according to a Law part of which 
is revealed, and part lies behind the veil 
of eternal life. For He cannot govern 
but by Law, being the fount and source 
of all Law to us ; and by perfect purity, holi¬ 
ness, and justice He governs us. The Law 
of Christ is drawn in part from the Law 
He gave on Mount Sinai, and whose princi¬ 
ples are immutable, and in part from His 
own revelation of mercy and of justice 
(Gal. vi. 3; St. Matt, v., vii. ? x. ; St. Luke 
vi.; St. John xiii. 34,35; xiv., xv., xvi.). 
As the visible Church is, as it were, a polity 
and a colony from the eternal kingdom in 
heaven, it is governed not by laws of this 
world, but by Laws from thence (Phil. iii. 
20, 21, and the Epistles in the New Testa¬ 
ment generally); and the Law of Faith, of 
Righteousness, of Sanctification, the Law 
of Love and Forgiveness, the Law of Jus¬ 
tice and of Good Works, are intermingled 
in the sacred writings left to His Church, 
that they become the rule of our daily life 
as citizens governed by Him in His kingdom. 

But this citizenship, here probationary 
and disciplinary, involves certain respon¬ 
sibilities and duties. The conditions of en¬ 
trance never cease to be binding. Faith in 
Him as a Person having power of life and 
death (St. John v. 20-27; St. Matt. xi. 
27-30; St. John xi. 25, 26; xiv. 6; St. 
Matt, xxviii. 18), as one with God (St. 
John, i. 1, 2; x. 28-30; xiv. 9-11), as to 
be worshiped (St. John ix. 35-38; St. 
Luke xxiv. 52). Daily repenting. Increas¬ 
ing life in holiness (Gal. v. 22-25; Rom. 
viii.; Phil. iv. 8; Rom. xii.; 1 Cor. iii. 
11-23). Good works (Rom. xii.-xv. 7; 
Eph. ii. 10; Phil. ii. 12-15). Service to 
others (St. John xiii. 34, 35; St. Matt, 
xxv. 31-46; Rom. xii. 18-21; Gal. v. 9, 
10). Service of worship (Heb. x. 24-31; 
1 Tim. ii. 1-4; Phil. iv. 6, 7; Eph. v. 19, 
20). We have traced out the conditions of 
admission, the sacraments and their gifts, 
the rights and privileges, the heirship, the 
duties, the responsibilities, the blessing, and 
the strength, with an abundant reference to 
the Scripture, which is yet infinitely fuller of 
all of these. But again, all these gifts are 
contained in one Body. Our Lord’s prayer 
for unity (St. John xvii.) cannot be 
meaningless. The Scripture is full of this 
unity, one net, one narrow way. For 
there is but one Atonement, one Resurrec¬ 
tion, one Mediator, one King, one kingdom, 
one citizenship, one Lord, one Faith, one 
baptism. For God is one, and our calling 
is one in the unity of the Holy Ghost. 




CHURCH 


152 


CHURCH 


This kingdom so «reated, so governed, 
composed of such citizens and having aims 
not of this earth, and a certainty of dura¬ 
tion beyond the continuance of this earth, 
more,—expecting only its completion when 
this earth shall pass away, dependent upon 
an immortal King who holds eternal power, 
who is planning, shaping, fitting together 
by so many modes so many diverse lower 
interests, sanctifying men and giving them 
immortal hopes, must not merely give its 
gifts to us upon our consent to join it, but 
this consent must express, on our part, a 
deep conviction of our needs, of our fatal 
danger in rejecting it and Him it represents, 
and of the glorious benefits it confers upon 
every one belonging to it. For it is a 
peculiar kingdom ; it exists in the subjects 
of earthly kingdoms, a spiritual state within 
a secular one, lifting up and purifying the 
secular state ; a state that binds into one all 
the kindreds of the earth, yet does not inter¬ 
fere with, nay, sanctions their political con¬ 
dition (Rom. xiii. 1-7; St. Matt. xxii. 21) ; 
yet binds them by an oath and by mutual 
pledges to the Person of their King, who 
rules them by the law of love and obedience. 
It is therefore a bounden duty to become 
citizens of it. 

But this organization, so compacted, gov¬ 
erned, and equipped, must be considered as a 
polity, having definite ends and employing 
definite instruments. But, it must have 
historic continuity. This is essential to it. 
It must have it, for it is part of God’s plan 
for the world throughout time as well as for 
all men ; and, too, it cannot fail. It may be 
maimed and injured at times, but it must be 
perpetual, and have power of self-perpetua¬ 
tion in its visible organization. Its assured 
perpetuity rests in the Person of Christ, 
its visible perpetuity in the Apostolic office, 
which perpetuates itself. These facts of its 
historic continuity, of its perpetuity under 
all disasters, must be necessarily noted and 
accepted as fundamental: first, for our 
own faith (Heb. xi. 10; 1 Pet. v. 4), and, 
secondly, as relating to the general proof of 
the certainty of this kingdom (Matt. xxiv.; 
St. Mark xiii. ; 1 Cor. xv.). For its doc¬ 
trines have been and are borrowed, its 
authority imitated, its polity copied, its 
laws transferred, its citizenship promised. 
But in the past such organizations have 
failed, and all similar present ones we may 
be assured will fail also as soon as the forces 
so borrowed, not being self-sustaining, shall 
be expended. This Body, this Church, this 
visible kingdom, this Divine organization, 
this state within all, and permeating all 
earthly states, yet not of them, endowed 
with supremal vitality, inheriting a per¬ 
petuity, must have granted to it, as a body, 
certain powers, both because of its Founder 
and because of the abiding presence of the 
Holy Ghost. Its Founder had a definite 
purpose, the Holy Spirit has a definite 
mission in and through the Church. There¬ 
fore it becomes a politeia in the fullest sense 


of the word. Every state is founded to ex¬ 
press some mighty political truth in behalf 
of and through the people who compose it. 
This heavenly kingdom is founded that men 
might know the only true God and Jesus 
Christ whom He has sent (John xvii. 
2).. It is therefore Trinitarian, (Athan. 2 
Ep. ad Serapion), because of the baptismal 
words, which are the germ of this principle. 
It must, for itself and for its citizens, obtain 
the defense and continual blessing of the 
Holy Trinity ; it is the public depository 
and the sole defender of this Faith. Its 
polity is framed for that end. It involves 
the use of all the means which can set forth 
before men'the truth of the doctrine, its 
vital relation to the lives of men, and the 
necessity of believing in and therefore act¬ 
ing on all the consequences that flow from 
it. It must be the keeper and defender of 
this Faith, neither adding to it nor subtract¬ 
ing from it. It must proclaim before all 
men this Faith, and it must not exaggerate 
nor yet weaken the conditions of accept¬ 
ance and the gifts that shall flow from it. 
As its government is framed upon this fact, 
the Holy Scriptures are given to it as an in¬ 
spired record of it, and its historic develop¬ 
ment and continuity, the history of God’s 
teachings by it, and the results of its being 
received or rejected extending over a long 
section of its career, (a) in the Patriarchal, 
( b ) the Mosaic, (c) the Christian revelation. 
This sacred inspired series of documents 
must be held and defended intact; and 
under the lines of action suggested by and 
contained in them, its policy must be carried 
out. This involves the arrangement of a 
Creed (Apostles’, Nicene, the Psalm Qui- 
cunque Vult), the formation of a worship,— 
divinely indicated,—with rites and ceremo¬ 
nies and a ritual which shall offer to the king 
the renewed homage of his subjects, and 
also serve as an instruction and a teaching, 
and a public confession of this Faith in 
ways that shall attract all men. For as 
these rites, this Creed, and these documents, 
each, rightly used, shall train men, they 
mould their lives into a heavenly type, and 
so lift them up above other men, therefore 
the lives of the citizens of this kingdom 
should show the truth and sanctifying power 
of its laws, and the glorious love and mercy 
of its King. But the very fact of such a 
deposit made in a state so founded, and 
having its increase by a spiritual birth and 
given such a polity, determines for it another 
characteristic. It must be aggressive, for it 
is missionary, and this aggressiveness flows 
from the purest source—love. Its Founder 
was aggressive from utter love. The Holy 
Spirit abiding in it is an aggressive love, 
and it is the sole and magnificent peculiarity 
of the Church to be aggressive, to seek to 
gather all in its fold through love. 

Again, the extension throughout all races 
and in all states leads to another peculiarity 
in its Divine constitution. Intrusted with 
a positive Faith, having a special law, gov- 




CHURCH 


153 


CHURCH 


erned by a mode which possesses the greatest 
flexibility and power of adaptation, having 
a universally accepted Creed and broad 
foundations of a common ritual, it has points 
of unity and community among all these, 
and it is joined together by many bands and 
sinews to its, for the present, unseen Head. 
The Church as a state within other states is 
peculiarly placed. It has to protest boldly 
against sin. It has to be aggressive. These 
are points of moral antagonism. If, then, 
these widely spread parts of the Church were 
to be gathered as one body under a visible 
head, the friction, to call it by no stronger 
name, thus created would be a hindrance 
almost fatal to the discharge of its true 
functions. The fear of this, when as yet it 
could not possibly exist, led heathen em¬ 
perors upon political principles of mistaken 
self-defense to persecute it, a danger that 
threatened its existence, but was divinely 
turned into a means of strength and of greater 
growth. When such an organization was 
effected contrary to all the traditions of its 
Divine founding, it has awakened the jeal¬ 
ousy and antagonism of the several secular 
kingdoms, and has in itself led to assertions 
of the faith unwarranted, unfounded, and, 
were they logically carried out, subversive 
of its existence. This, then, leads us to the 
second and equally correct use of the title 
Church used with reference to the Church 
in each secular state. (B) To appoint a sin¬ 
gle visible Head when its Founder appointed 
none, and left no provision in its constitution 
for such Headship, is then opposed to and 
wellnigh fatal to the lofty ends for which 
the Church is established. But, on the con¬ 
trary, in the Apostolic College together, He 
established this Headship; to them all in com¬ 
mon He gave his own Apostolate (St. John 
xx. 21) in full. They were to be, as they yet 
are, in a common bond, yet as sufficiently in¬ 
dependent to care for the necessarily separate 
interests of the Church in each nationality. 
They were to have the power of holding 
counsel. Nor yet was the Church solely vested 
in them, but also the people were to be an 
integral part of it. The interdependence of 
the several parts of the Church by their 
nationalities was secured through the Apos¬ 
tolate ; the independence of the several 
nationalities was secured through their race 
or tribal peculiarities and customs,—non-es¬ 
sential in themselves, but the outgrowth of 
their mental dispositions, and of their forms 
of life and of government, and therefore an¬ 
tagonistic and creating jealousies and bick¬ 
erings, were they to clash through the too 
close proximity of their diverse interests. 
So there was at the first the greatest freedom 
of play allowed the several portions of the 
Church in their own regions. Every por¬ 
tion was allowed to have its own modes of 
acting and of legislating within the great 
lines of a common Faith. Causes arose 
which providentially drew the different parts 
of the Church together, when it became sd 
widely spread as to appear in danger of fall¬ 


ing apart by its mere extent. Heresies oc¬ 
casioned Councils, and Councils bound the 
Churches together in the defense of a com¬ 
mon Faith and in the unity of a common 
worship. So that it was not, it is not now, 
permitted us to admit a visible Head, but a 
visible common executive office. A bond of 
unity in the common Faith, common Law, 
which results from the needs of the time, a 
common worship of our one Lord. It also 
follows that as it exists whole and complete 
in each and every part, that the Episcopate 
held in common is equally present in each 
one of its members, that the Faith is com¬ 
plete in the Creed and the Scriptures, and the 
Law of government and identity of policy, 
both of aggression and conservation, and 
unity of worship, are complete in each part 
of the Church. So it is not arrogance, not 
presumption for any part of the Church to 
say that it is the Church as regards the 
nation to which it is established, and that it 
must be so as regards the necessity for each 
man to be within its pale, and the responsi¬ 
bility of the Church to gather into its pale 
all who are yet without. It follows that 
missionaries from one nation to another not 
having the Faith, when they have estab¬ 
lished the Church and given to it what in¬ 
strumentalities and officers the Head of the 
Church has left, have thereby effected an ex¬ 
tension of the old historic Church, and it 
must become national and independent, yet 
in closest union of all the common traditions 
which belong to that Church. This was 
precisely the principle of the national 
Church of America at the close of the Rev¬ 
olution, when, by 1789 a.d., it had received 
the Episcopate from the English line. What¬ 
ever the English Church had of the common 
Catholic Faith and use became ours as heirs 
taking from a common estate under a com¬ 
mon will which had made provision for our 
inheriting. “Go ye into all the world.” 
“ Make disciples of all the nations.” There¬ 
fore we, though but a century old, justly 
claim from our Founder a historic continuity 
in the Episcopate, in the Deposit of the 
Scriptures, in the Common Creeds, in the 
broad unity of the Liturgies, in the govern¬ 
ment under the Canon Law of the universal 
Church. We hold these by the right of a 
common heritage. If it be the duty of the 
One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church 
to make disciples of all nations, that portion 
of it becomes the national Church in that 
country which it enters under this historic 
law of independence. 

The topic broadens at every step, and we 
must stop here, for much which could be 
properly said here will be found under other 
headings, —Episcopacy, Bishop, Apos¬ 
tolic Succession, Apostle, British and 
Anglican Churches. To these the reader 
must go for further information. But we 
cannot close without repeating that Christ’s 
Church is founded upon Himself by Him¬ 
self, in His Resurrection, officered by His 
appointment, equipped by His gifts, sent by 




CHURCH CONGRESS 


154 


CHURCH CONGRESS 


His mission, and having His own continual 
presence and the abiding indwelling of the 
Holy Ghost, that He might present it to 
Himself a glorious Church, not having spot 
or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it 
should be holy and without blemish ; and in 
it He cherishes each of us. “For we are 
members of His body, of His flesh, of His 
bones.” 

Church Congress. The Church Congress 
in the Protestant Episcopal Church in the 
United States is a voluntary organization, 
in its membership co-extensive with the 
communion of that Church. In the main 
features-of its purpose and plan similar to 
the kindred institution in the Church of 
England, its history also, although measured 
by fewer years than that of the former, 
like that has been one of half-doubtful ex¬ 
periment, eventually illustrated and vindi¬ 
cated by signal success. Originating in a 
small conference of clergy and laity, held in 
Trinity Church, New Haven, some ten years 
since, it took permanent form and title at 
a succeeding meeting, held in the parish of 
Christ Church, “ Riverdale,” New York 
City. At the latter meeting permanent offi¬ 
cers were elected, as also the members of the 
General and Executive Committees. Sub¬ 
committees also were appointed, for the selec¬ 
tion of topics, writers, and speakers for the 
first annual session, to be held in Association 
Hall, New York. On that occasion, in Octo¬ 
ber, 1875 a.d., memorable for the Churchly 
order of its proceedings, the scholarly and 
eloquent character of the papers and ad¬ 
dresses, and, as at all succeeding sessions, 
the thoroughly catholic comprehensiveness 
of opinion and representation at the several 
discussions, it wrought conviction, even in 
the minds of its earlier opponents, of the 
rightfulness, the wisdom, and expediency of 
such a deliberative organization within the 
Church in the United States. 

Inclusive of the first meeting in New 
York, and excepting, as is now the rule of 
the Congress, the years in which a General 
Convention is held, eight sessions of the 
Congress, each occupying four or more days, 
have been held. Two of these have been in 
New York, and others in Philadelphia, 
Boston,Cincinnati, Albany, Providence, and 
Richmond. The opening service is uni¬ 
formly that of Holy Communion, with an 
address by some one of the Bishops. On the 
same day, and at the place appointed for 
the discussion of topics, the Bishop of the 
Diocese has, with one exception, delivered 
the inaugural address. This has been fol¬ 
lowed by a service, memorial of deceased 
officials, with an address by the General Sec¬ 
retary. 

The presiding officer at any meeting is 
the Bishop of the Diocese in which any 
Congress is held. The permanent officers 
are all the Bishops, thirteen of other clergy 
and of the laity, thirty-one as Vice-Presi¬ 
dents, together with a General Committee 
of forty, and an Executive Committee of 


twenty, clerical members. This latter, for 
convenience, is in the main composed of 
gentlemen residing in the city of New York, 
and holds its meetings semi-monthly during 
the greater part of the year. Vice-Presi¬ 
dents and members of the General Commit¬ 
tee are, to a considerable extent, represen¬ 
tatives of the different Dioceses throughout 
the country. Two Honorary Vice-Presi¬ 
dents, by election, are the Very Rev. Canon 
E. H. Plumptre, D.D., and the Rev. Arch¬ 
deacon Emery, both of the English Church, 
and the latter one of the founders, and the 
present Honorary Secretary of the English 
Congress. The General Secretary, Rev. 
Geo. D. Wildes, D.D., of New York, is as¬ 
sisted by four clerical Secretaries, one of 
whom is the Secretary of the Executive 
Committee. A permanent Treasurer, whose 
office, with that of the Congress, is at 2 
Bible House, completes the list of officials. 

The annual meetings extend over four 
days, with three daily sessions, and a dis¬ 
tinct topic, selected by the Executive Com¬ 
mittee. Usually two writers, three appointed 
speakers, and such volunteers as may pre¬ 
sent cards, occupy the time of the session. 
All these are limited as to length ; the rule is 
in every instance unvaried, and the expira¬ 
tion of the limit is signified by the bell of the 
Secretary. By the rules none but members 
of the Protestant Episcopal Church, or of 
Churches in communion with the same, can 
address the Congress, and no person is per¬ 
mitted to speak twice upon the same subject. 
All questions of order are in the discretion 
of the Chairman, and his decision is final. 
Persons offering themselves as volunteer 
speakers are required to send their cards to 
the General Secretary, and are called upon 
in the order in which these are received. 
The Chairman only is to be addressed in 
speaking, and no question arising out of any 
paper or subject can be put to vote. The 
rules, so fitted for public deliberation, and 
realized as admirable in their working, em¬ 
brace also some minor specialties, com¬ 
pleting a system of order unexceptionable 
in the regulation of debate. 

The several daily sessions are opened 
with Collects and the singing of a hymn. 
Three of the latter are used on every occa¬ 
sion. Printed, as are the hymns, on pro¬ 
grammes, with the Collects also, the large 
audiences, filling the music-halls or opera- 
houses in the various cities, have been en¬ 
abled to join in response and singing with a 
grandeur of effect seldom realized in any 
other assembly of Church people. 

A Local Committee appointed by the 
Bishop and others in the Diocese in which 
any Congress convenes, initiates and takes 
charge of the immediate local arrangements 
through sub-committees. The hospitalities 
of Church and other Christian people have 
been uniformly abounding and cheerfully 
dispensed. Not the least worthy among no- 
'ticeable things is the fact that families con¬ 
nected with other Christian bodies have, as 







CHURCHING OFFICE 


155 


CLERGY 


in England, extended generous welcomes to 
their homes to large numbers of attendants 
at the various meetings. 

The Church Congress in the United 
States, while thus manifesting its thorough 
loyalty to the Church in her seemly order 
and rightful authority, is also a voluntary 
association for the free discussion of great 
questions pertaining to both Church and 
State. It lays no claim to official authority 
or responsibility. It takes no votes, it passes 
no resolutions, it seeks no influence in legis¬ 
lation. Represented in its membership, 
its debates, and its working forces by a 
large proportion of distinguished and in¬ 
fluential laymen, it thus becomes represen¬ 
tative also of the whole Church. A chief 
feature in its aim, and a foremost and 
healthful characteristic of its history, has 
been illustrated in bringing together men of 
diverse and opposing schools of thought 
within the bounds of the Church. Such have 
found themselves drawn nearer together by 
the close contact of the Congress platform, 
and, as a distinguished Bishop has well said, 
“ The discussions, instead of widening the 
breach between brethren, have tended to 
narrow it.” 

The proceedings, papers, addresses, and 
speeches of the several sessions are em¬ 
bodied in annual reports, under the editor¬ 
ship of the General Secretary. These form 
a thesaurus of ripe learning, vigorous 
thought, and eloquent utterance upon great 
questions of the times, of which the Prot¬ 
estant Episcopal Church may well be proud. 
To the student in theology and its cognate 
topics, no less than to the clergyman and 
thoughtful layman, these volumes will be 
found most valuable. 

The Ninth Church Congress is to be held 
in October, 1884 a.d. in Detroit, Michigan, 
under the Presidency of the Bishop of Mich¬ 
igan, the Rt. Rev. S. S. Harris, D.D., L.L.D. 

Rev. George D. Wildes, D.D. 

Churching Office. (The thanksgiving of 
women after childbirth, commonly called 
the Churching of Women.) A deep sense 
of the protection of Providence in her great 
peril has always filled the hearts of devout 
mothers. While this office, then, may be 
founded upon the Jewish law, and continued 
in imitation of the purification of the Holy 
Virgin Mary, yet it really lies farther back, 
in the thankfulness of deliverance from 
danger. The service as it stands in our 
Prayer-Book is somewhat changed, but in 
no material point, from the English office. 
The Kyries are omitted, and only one Psalm 
(cxvi.) in place of two (the cxxvii. also) in 
the English book. The “ decently appar¬ 
eled,” meant coming in with a veil of white 
material, but this is disused. The conven¬ 
ient place, or as the ordinary shall direct, is 
all that is left of the early office, before the 
church door. Bishop Andrews directed be¬ 
fore the choir, Bishop Wren at the chancel 
rails. There is less change from the old 
Salisbury use than in many other services. 


There should always be an offering made, 
whether the prayer alone is used in behalf 
of the woman at the place of the thanksgiv¬ 
ings, or whether this office is used. 

Circumcision. The Jewish Covenant rite 
of cutting off the foreskin of the male child 
upon the eighth day, when also the child re¬ 
ceived its name (Gen. xvii. 23; xxi. 4; Ex. 
xii. 48; Lev. xii. 3; Josh. v. 2). 

Circumcision, Feast of. The day was 
kept as the octave of the Nativity at first. 
Of the feast of the circumcision there is 
early observance, but after the seventh cen¬ 
tury there appear distinct directions for it. 
As it fell upon the 1st of January, which was 
a festival of mad riot among the heathen, 
it was natural that it should not be kept 
as a feast among Christians when the ex¬ 
cesses of the heathen were so uncontrolled. 
There should be a celebration of the Holy 
Communion upon this feast, as upon all days 
when any part of our Lord’s life and ac¬ 
tions are commemorated. 

Circumincession. The indwelling of the 
Three Divine Persons of the Holy Trinity 
in each other. It is expressly taught (St. 
John xiv. 10-11), “ Believest thou not that I 
am in the Father and the Father in me? 
. . . but the Father that dwelleth in me. 
He doeth the works. Believe me that I am 
in the Father, and the Father in me.” 
So in xvii. 11, 21-23, and often implied, as 
in i. 1; Col. ii. 9. For in Him dwelleth all 
the fullness of the Godhead bodily. But 
it is a reasonable sequence from the myster¬ 
ious doctrine of the Holy Trinity. For 
though the Three Persons are distinct and 
separate, they are One in the Divine Nature, 
and the Divine Nature is entire in each Per¬ 
son, yet there is but one God ; which neces¬ 
sarily follows from the immutability and 
indivisibility of the Godhead. Yet the dis¬ 
tinction of Persons is shown by it, while 
the deep mystery of the Divine Unity is 
kept, for, saith Bishop Bull, “ in order to 
that mutual existence (in each other) which 
is discerned in the Father, Son, and Holy 
Ghost, it is absolutely necessary that there 
should be some distinction between those 
who are thusjoined together,— i.e., that those 
who mutually exist in each other should be 
different in reality and not in mode of con¬ 
ception only, for that which is simply one is 
not said to exist in itself or to interpene¬ 
trate itself. . . . No similitude can be de¬ 
vised which shall be in every respect apt to 
illustrate it; no language avails worthily to 
set it forth, seeing that it is a union which 
far transcends all other unions.” (Bull’s De¬ 
fense of the Nicene Creed, L. iv. ch. iv. § 13, 
14.) 

Citation. A precept or a summons from 
the proper officer or Ecclesiastical judge, cit¬ 
ing the person against whom complaint is 
made to appear before him on a certain day 
at a certain place to answer to the complaints 
made against him. 

Clergy. (Clergy, from Jderos , a lot, as 
men having chosen God for their heritage.) 





CLERGY 


156 


CLINIC BAPTISM 


They were also called Canonici, from being 
under a rule or a canon. The name was 
made to include readers, acolytes, subdea¬ 
cons. The title, however, properly belongs 
only to the three orders, the Bishops, 
Priests, and Deacons. In the Scriptures 
St. Paul, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, im¬ 
plies theirs to be an office of authority ; so 
in his Epistles to Timothy and Titus. And 
again, St. Peter (1 Pet.v. 3) warns the clergy 
against a vainglorious use of their office. 
This rank comes out clearly immediately 
after Apostolic times. In the Epistles of St. 
Ignatius, “ without these (the Bishops, 
Presbyters, and Deacons) it cannot be called 
a Church” (to the Trallians, c. ix.), and 
Clement of Alexandria (Stro., 1. vi. c. v. in 
fin.). “ For I suppose that the developments 
in the Church of the Bishops, Priests, and 
Deacons are imitated from the angelic glory, 
and of that economy which the Scriptures 
declare belong to those who live in the foot¬ 
steps of the Apostles, in perfection of right¬ 
eousness according to the Gospel.” The 
appointment of Timothy and Titus over 
the Churches of Ephesus and of Crete to 
order and ordain, is an early proof of the 
development of Episcopal order in the 
footsteps of the Apostles. For if the Pres¬ 
byters thus were competent to arrange these 
things and to perpetuate their order by or¬ 
dination, why give Timothy and Titus such 
special instructions ? why send them at all ?” 
(But vide articles Bishop, Presbyter, 
Deacon, Ordination.) The clergy were 
from the Apostolic times regarded as a sepa¬ 
rate order, with special responsibilities and 
special immunities. In the Acts of the Apos¬ 
tles (xv. 23), “ The Apostles and Elders- 
brethren,” seems to be the soundest form of 
the words, segregating them from the laity. 
The Bishop exercised the highest adminis¬ 
trative and spiritual office, held in himself all 
the minor offices, and was (Rev. ii., iii.) held 
personally responsible for the growth, purity, 
discipline and orthodoxy of the Church 
committed to him. Certain of his preroga¬ 
tives he reserved to himself, chief of which 
were the ordination of fit persons to the 
Diaconate and to the Presbyterate; and the 
admission by consecration of the elect to the 
office, to his own Episcopal rank ; confirma¬ 
tion, excommunication. As administrator 
of jurisdiction he gave letters dimissory to 
Presbyters going to other Dioceses, adminis¬ 
tered the revenues, enforced the discipline 
of the Canons upon his clergy and laity, and 
was the officer with whom lay the last appeal 
in all Ecclesiastical cases in his Diocese ; but 
if he were too arbitrary other Bishops could 
interfere. He sat as presiding officer in his 
Diocesan Synod, and had his place accord¬ 
ing to the precedence of his See (usually ac¬ 
cording to its political importance) in the 
Provincial Synod. 

The Presbyter shared with the Bishop, or 
had committed to him, the right to celebrate 
the Eucharist, to administer baptism, to give 
the benediction and the absolution, to conse¬ 


crate churches, and, in case of great need, to 
reconcile penitents. He was also Counselor 
to his Bishop upon all Diocesan matters. 

The Deacon had the collection and dis¬ 
pensing of the moneys of the Diocese; he 
could baptize, assist in divine service, ad¬ 
min ster the cup at the Communion, could 
preach and aid in parochial work ; but of 
these offices, baptizing and preaching were 
exercised when neither Bishop nor Presbyter 
were present. The clergy were supported 
at first, and for many centuries, from the 
common fund of the Diocese, which was 
divided usually every month. This common 
fund came from tithes and gifts, bequests 
and endowments, which were often made; 
the Bishop or Presbyter, if rich, often giv¬ 
ing all of his property into the common 
treasury, as did Cyprian and many others. 

The clergy had many immunities. Before 
the Empire was Christianized their immuni¬ 
ties were only within the Church. They 
were supported by the Church, and were 
forbidden any secular employment. They 
received the respect and honor due to 
their office. After the Empire became Chris¬ 
tian the civil law gave the Bishops certain 
prerogatives, as a share in municipal affairs 
and a power to pardon criminals, and also 
gave donations and revenues from the public 
treasury for the building of churches and 
the support of charitable work, till finally 
Bishops had their own Courts, and at last 
withdrew the inferior clergy from the secu¬ 
lar jurisdiction of the courts for crimes or 
misdemeanors. It was one of the causes of 
the Reformation to do away with the abuses 
that flowed from the exemption of the clergy 
from secular trial for secular causes. The 
power of the clergy was always very great, 
as with their monopoly, as it were, of the 
learning of the Middle Ages, and with their 
authority under the laws, civil and feudal, 
the churches and religious houses were the 
seats both of learning and of asylum. 

To-day, with the impressions that Inde- 
pendentism has made upon the minds of 
the majority of people, there is less than 
proper regard paid to the office of the clergy. 
While the cleric must, so far as his personal 
ability and character reach, only receive the 
consideration due him from them, yet his 
office and his teaching in that office need to 
be more reverentially received than they are. 
Surely something of the force of our Lord’s 
solemn words still rests upon His officers: 
“ He that heareth you heareth Me, and he 
that despiseth you despiseth Me, and he that 
despiseth Me despiseth Him that sent Me.” 

Clerk. (From clercius, a clergyman.) It 
is sometimes used to designate a clergyman, 
but has gradually received the meaning of 
the lay clerk, who, in the English Church, 
does yet, and many years ago did in the 
Church in this country, lead the responses 
and otherwise assist in the due conduct of 
divine service. 

Clinic Baptism. Baptism administered 
upon a sick-bed, or to one in imminent 







CLOYESHOO 


157 


COLLECT 


danger of death. But since it often hap¬ 
pened that baptism so administered was 
given to one who, through fear of persecu¬ 
tion, had deferred it, the person so bap¬ 
tized, if he recovered, could not be admitted 
to any sacred office. It was one of the 
charges against Novatus that he had de¬ 
ferred baptism till he was perilously sick, 
and yet on his recovery, being debarred 
from clerical office, ho procured his conse¬ 
cration by deceitful practices. 

Cloveshoo. A Council was assembled at 
Cloveshoo by Ethelbald, king of the Mer¬ 
cians. There is considerable difficulty in de¬ 
termining the date, and more in identifying 
the place, which is thought to be Rochester 
or Abingdon, or, perhaps, Tewksbury. The 
date is given 742 or 747 a.d. ; it is possible 
there may have been two Councils; and if 
so, the first was chiefly concerned in inquir¬ 
ing how matters of religion, especially the 
Creed, were ordered in the early Church 
in Britain, and in confirming the privileges 
of the Church. In the Council of 747 a.d. 
two letters were read from Zacharias, “ the 
Pontiff and Apostolic lord to be venerated 
throughout the world,'’ and it is “ acknowl¬ 
edged that the recital of these documents, 
in which he exhorts the English of every 
degree to reformation, under the threat of 
an anathema, was in obedience to his ‘ Apos¬ 
tolical authority.’ ” Thirty Canons were 
passed at this Council, in which clergy and 
laity are enjoined to more careful living, 
and greater diligence in public worship and 
in the observance of holy-days. 

Not long after this Council certain Dioceses 
were taken from the Province of Canterbury 
and joined together into a new Province for 
an Archbishop of Lichfield. But Kenulf 
having annexed Kent to the kingdom of 
Mercia, and wishing to conciliate the clergy 
of his new territory, seconded Athelhard, 
the Archbishop of Canterbury, in his wish to 
recover these Dioceses to his Province. The 
matter was pressed at Rome, and Leo III., 
on attaining the popedom, gave his consent 
that the new archbishopric should be abol¬ 
ished. This was done accordingly by a 
Council held at Cloveshoo in 803 a.d., which 
decreed “ that the Archiepiscopal See, from 
this time forward, should never be in the 
monastery of Lichfield, nor in any other 
place but the city of Canterbury.” Two 
other Councils were held in Cloveshoo in 
822 and 824 a.d. 

Coadjutor. He was a Bishop ordained to 


assist another Bishop in case of infirmity or 
old age, was to assist him as long as he lived, 
and to succeed him when he died. In our 
Church he bears the title of Assistant Bishop. 

Ccena Domini. The Supper of the 
Lord, — i.e ., the Holy Communion. 

Collect. Collects are short, comprehen¬ 
sive prayers, which are found in all known 
Liturgies and public devotional offices. 
There is no certain explanation to be given 
of the origin of the word, only that it is 
very ancient, as is the Collect itself. 

(a) The oldest Liturgies contain prayers 
upon this model, but in the Greek Liturgies 
it is called the Ectene—intense prayer—or 
the Exapostellaria. The latter being origi¬ 
nally a kind of precatory hymn invocating 
the grace of God, which is a characteristic 
of the Collect. The oldest collections of 
offices contain numerous short prayers. 
These sacramentaries of Leo I., Gelasius, 
and Gregory I. contain the originals of the 
major part of our present Collects, with 
some notable exceptions. As for the model 
on which they are framed, we may compare 
them with the two short prayers recorded in 
the Acts (i. 24, 25 ; iv. 24 sq.), to which they 
bear much resemblance, but they may be 
compared at an humble distance with the 
compactness and terseness of the Lord’s 
Prayer. There is so definite and concise a 
structure in the Collect that it may be re¬ 
duced as it were to rule. The Collect is 
said to contain,— 

First, a single period; forming a single 
intense sentence. 

Secondly, only a single petition is offered 
in it. 

Thirdly, our Lord’s mediation or atone¬ 
ment is pleaded; or, it closes with an as¬ 
cription of praise to God. 

These mark its difference from the long 
rhetorical prayers with which the Eastern 
Liturgies are filled, and their intensity and 
terse pointedness make them very marked. 
They are the arrows of prayer which Tertul- 
lian says Christians shot towards heaven. 

The structure of the Collect may be seen 
by studying the similar points of two beau¬ 
tiful ones composed—the first by St. Gregory, 
about 600 a.d. , and the other by Bishop 
Cosin, 1660 a.d. —a thousand years apart,— 
the Collect for Whitsunday by St. Gregory, 
and the Collect for the sixth Sunday after 
Epiphany by Bishop Cosin. They are both 
noble prayers, worthy of the holy men who 
composed them. 


Invocation. God, 

Reason on which the who as at this time didst teach the 
petition is founded. hearts of Thy faithful people by 
sending to them the light of Thy 
Holy Spirit, 

Petition. grant us by the same Spirit to have a 

right judgment in all things, 

Benefit. and ever more to rejoice in His holy 

comfort, 


0 God, 

whose blessed Son was manifested that 
He might destroy the works of the 
devil and make us the Sons of God 
and heirs of eternal life, 
grant us, we beseech Thee, that hav¬ 
ing this hope we may purify our¬ 
selves even as He is pure, 
that when He shall appear again with 
power and great glory, we may be 
made like Him in His eternal and 
glorious kingdom, 






COLLEGE 


158 


COLOR 


Ascription or merits through the merits of Chkist Jesus where with Thee, 0 Father, and Thee, 
pleaded. our Saviour, who liveth and reign- 0 Holy Ghost, He liveth and reign- 

eth with Thee in the Unity of the eth, ever one God, world without 
same Spirit, one God, world without end. 
end. 


(b) The title Collect does not belong 
only to the proper Collect tor the Sunday or 
holy-day, but is also given to the two prayers 
immediately after the Creed in morning and 
evening prayer, to the five at the end of the 
Communion office, and also to the special 
prayers in the several offices in the Prayer- 
Book as may be rubrically noted therein. 
There are one hundred and eleven Collects 
in our Prayer-Book. Eighty-five belong to 
special Sundays and holy-days, with Epistle 
and Gospel, and therefore imply a Commun¬ 
ion. Seven others, for occasional services, 
have also Epistle and Gospel for the same 
end. The remaining nineteen belong to 
special services, but without any Epistle or 
Gospel following. 

College. (From the Latin collegium , a 
community.) It was an old Roman rule that 
not fewer than three persons could form a 
college. Hence it needs at least three Bish¬ 
ops to form a house competent to transact 
business and to administer affairs. Corpora¬ 
tions are in England often called colleges. 
The House of Bishops is also the College of 
Bishops. 

Color. Colors were not used in the 
Church at first with any but the most gen¬ 
eral reference to their symbolism. The 
reference to the spiritual meaning attached 
to the several hues in common use was of the 
most general way. The modern use seems 
to date from the time when vestments and 
altar-cloths and Ecclesiastical decoration 
received a remarkable development, 850- 
1300 a.d. It was also the date of the great¬ 
est development of Church architecture. In 
the Mosaic ritual God directed the use of 
color : The blue and the white, the purple 
and the scarlet, of the Tabernacle hangings, 
and of the veil of the Most Holy Place; 
the gold, the blue, the purple, scarlet, and 
white of the Ephod; the gold chains, the 
many-hued breastplate, the mitre of blue, 
the curious girdle of the dress of the High- 
Priest; the white robes of the ministering 
Priests. Occasional allusions to the purity 
of white (Ps. cxxxii.) and the symbolic hues 
in Ezekiel’s vision (Ezek. i.) occur. But 
there and in the New Testament there is 
little allusion to symbolism of color, except 
in the Revelation (ch. iv. 3-5; xxi. 19- 
22). Color was used as a matter of course, 
but there was apparently no. figurative, 
but only a decorative use of it at the differ¬ 
ent seasons of the Church’s year. Of course 
vestments were of some color, but appar¬ 
ently of white, seldom of any other hue. 
But from the ninth to the thirteenth cen¬ 
tury there was a development of the mean¬ 
ing to be assigned to colors. Throughout 
Europe there was a great variety of usages, 
some of which may be preserved in the Sarum 
use. However, there is no law or authori¬ 


tative rule upon the use of colors in the 
Church of the Anglican communion. The 
inventories of Edward VI.’s Commission 
show a variety of usages in the colors of the 
vestments and in the altar-cloths. The 
Sarum use had probably a larger influence 
than any other in England, but its rubrics 
were not rigidly enforced. So we may sup¬ 
pose that in reality the earlier English 
Church practically continued the earliest 
prominent use of white, at least in her vest¬ 
ments. After the Reformation white was 
ordered for the vestments of the Holy Com¬ 
munion. The Bishops wore a white rochet 
and a scarlet chimere. But as good old 
Bishop Hooper thought scarlet too gay a 
color for a Bishop,—probably connecting it 
with the scarlet woman of Revelation,— 
black was afterwards substituted. The stoles 
are usually of black. The old Sarum colors, 
which prevailed in the English Church till 
the Reformation, and were in use in very 
many places after till 1640 a.d., were as 
follows: 

From Christmas to Septuagesima, for 
Sundays, white. 

From Septuagesima to Easter-eve, for 
Sundays, red. 

From Easter to Whit-Sunday, for Sun¬ 
days, white. 

From Whit-Sunday to Christmas, for 
Sundays, red. 

All-Saints’ days not martyrs, and festi¬ 
vals of our Lord, white. 

Martyrs, Invention of the Cross, etc., 
red. 

Black was not used, at least bv order, 
except in services for the dead. White 
and red are the only colors spoken of in the 
rubric of the Sarum missal. The inventories 
of the vestments in the return made in 1549 
a.d., give blue as the color next frequently 
used, but green and yellow are also found. 
The colors for the altar-cloths very probably 
followed the sequence of the colors of the vest¬ 
ments ordered for the seasons. That some 
series of colors appropriate to, and symbolic 
of, each season of the Christian year should be 
used is reasonable enough. It is used with 
much variation, indeed, everywhere in other 
parts of the Church, and such a usage is not 
contrary to, or interfered with by, any rubric 
or order in the Prayer-Book. The white 
linen for the vesting of the Holy Table for 
the Holy Communion is the proper and 
rubrical color at the celebration of that 
sacrament. Whether Sarum or Rome, or 
the Eastern use, or the caprice or taste of 
influential individuals be the rule followed, as 
taste develops and more surely as reverence 
for God’s house, and care for its decent 
order and the honor to be paid Him in it, 
deepens, there must be a desire to use all 
proper and fit symbolism. As God Himself 




COLORADO 


159 


COLORADO 


has indicated the law of its uses, we can 
safely follow its suggestions, under our con¬ 
stituted authorities. It has already found 
expression in the generally correct, though 
wholly unauthoritative, directions found in 
many of the Church almanacs. It is a 
feeling which should be guided and trained 
rather than discouraged or repressed, or it 
may fall under the direction of some undis¬ 
ciplined taste or aimless caprice, or ignorant 
wilfulness. Either of these tempers lead to 
disorder, and might possibly lead to dis¬ 
obedience to lawful authority. 

Appended is a part of the temperate 
statements made in Scudamore’s “Notitia 
Eucharistica” : 

“ The English colors appear to have been 
as follows: 

“ White, daily from the eve of the Nativity 
to the octave of the Epiphany inclusive, 
except when another color is especially ap¬ 
pointed, as below ; also daily from Evensong 
to the Friday before Whitsuntide inclusive; 
on Trinity Sunday and its Eve; the con¬ 
version of St. Paul, the Purification of 
St. Mary ; the Annunciation, St. John Bap¬ 
tist, St. Michael, and all Saints, with their 
Eves; and the colors retained when they 
fall on a Sunday. 

“Red, on all Sundays except those for 
which white is ordered, as above; on Ash- 
Wednesday, Maundy-Thursday, Good-Fri- 
day, Holy Saturday, till Evensong, all Whits 
week, with the Saturday before; the Festi¬ 
vals of Martyrs, whose death is commemo¬ 
rated unless falling between Easter and 
Pentecost. 

“ Orange tawney (croceus ) was prescribed 
for the Festivals of all Confessors. 

“ Green, or blue, on week-days from the 
octave of the Epiphany to Septuagesima 
Sunday ; from Trinity Sunday to Advent, 
except on Festivals, their Eves and Vigils. 

“ Violet, brown, or gray, on week-days from 
Septuagesima Sunday to Maundy-Thursday, 
and throughout Advent, except on Festivals 
and their Eves ; also on the Ember-days and 
the Vigils of the Purification, the Annun¬ 
ciation, the Ascension, and the fasted Vigils 
of Saints’ days.” (Scudamore’s Notitia 
Eucharistica, p. 108 sq. q.v.) 

It is said that cloth of gold supersedes all 
other colors. 

Authorities : Blunt’s Annotated Prayer- 
Book, Stephen’s Sealed Books, vol. i., 
Smith’s Dictionary of Antiquities. 

Colorado, The Missionary Jurisdiction 
of. Colorado, Wyoming, and New Mexico 
were part of the jurisdiction of the North¬ 
west under Bishop Talbot, 1859-65 a.d. 
Bishop Randall was elected for these Terri¬ 
tories in October, 1865 a.d. The name of 
Colorado was, popularly, Pike’s Peak. Set¬ 
tlements began in 1859 a.d. Wyoming was 
not known under that name till after Bishop 
Randall took charge. These three Territories 
formed one jurisdiction during Bishop Ran¬ 
dall’s eight years’ Episcopate. The follow¬ 
ing year, October, 1874 a.d., New Mexico 


and Arizona were made a separate mission¬ 
ary district, the Bishop of Colorado contin¬ 
uing to have jurisdiction in Wyoming. 
During Bishop Talbot’s six years’ charge 
of the Northwest the Church was established 
in Denver, 1860 a.d., Rev. J. H. Kehler, 
rector; in Central City, 1864 a.d., Rev. 
Francis Granger, rector; and in Idaho 
Springs, 1864 a.d., Rev. William O. Jar¬ 
vis, missionary. The two former parishes 
had secured church buildings. Of course 
other points were visited by the Bishop and 
his clergy. 

Bishop Randall began his work (conse¬ 
crated December 28, 1865 a.d.) with charac¬ 
teristic energy in the spring of 1866 a.d. 
With an increase of missionaries he pushed 
on the work of the Church at new points,— 
Nevadaville, Black Hawk, Georgetown, 
Pueblo, etc. In 1867 a.d. he took steps 
looking to the establishment of a school for 
girls. In 1868 a.d. he began like efforts for 
a boys’ school. The former was built in 
Denver in 1868 a.d. The latter at Golden 
in 1869 a.d. In 1870 a.d. he built, in con¬ 
nection with the bo}^s’ school, a school of 
mines, the Territory contributing most of 
the cost of its erection, afterwards deeded 
back to the Territory, and now one of the 
best of the State institutions. In 1871 a.d. 
he secured the means, $10,000, from Nathan 
Matthews, Esq., for the erection of Mat¬ 
thews Hall for a divinity school at Golden. 
The girls’ and the boys’ schools were named 
respectively for Mr. John D. Wolfe and 
Mr. Geo. A. Jarvis, who largely aided in 
their foundation. In 1873 a.d. a wing was 
added to Wolfe Hall, and an Episcopal resi¬ 
dence erected in Denver. Bishop Randall, 
during his active Episcopate, increased the 
number of parishes and missions to nineteen 
or twenty, and erected twelve churches. 
Besides these he bought and converted into 
chapels two or three saloons or “stores,” 
for temporary use, in places that subse¬ 
quently became depopulated. In 1881 a.d. 
work was begun on behalf of the Christian 
education of the Shoshone Indians in Wy¬ 
oming, and a teacher, a layman, was em¬ 
ployed. He had resigned, however, before 
the Bishop’s death, on September 28, 1873 
a.d., and the work was temporarily sus¬ 
pended. 

Bishop Spalding (consecrated December 
31, 1873 a.d.) entered upon the work in 
February following. Some of the clergy 
had left or had abandoned their posts ; there 
were seven at work. Matthews Hall had 
seven divinity students under a competent 
instructor, with nothing to support them. 
Debts to a considerable amount had accrued 
against the school, and the income from 
pupils was greatly deficient. The financial 
panic beginning in the fall of 1873 a.d. was 
severely felt here from 1874 to 1878 a.d. It 
was with no little difficulty and not without 
the generous aid of friends of missions that 
all indebtedness was met and the schools 
put upon a better basis. Wolfe Hall from 





COLORADO 


160 


COLORADO 


1876 to 1882 a.d. was more than self-sup¬ 
porting. By liberal aid from Miss Wolfe 
and others, and the earnings of the school, 
enlargements were made in 1878-80 a.d., 
costing |18,000. Jarvis Hall and Matthews 
Hall were both destroyed by fire in May, 
1878 a.d. The insurance, $8903.72 on 
Jarvis Hall, $6430.51 on Matthews Hall, 
and $989.34 on the library, was all that was 
left us. The site was abandoned and re¬ 
verted to the donor under the terms of the 
deed. 

These schools were the next year removed 
to Denver. Jarvis Hall rebuilt here has 
had much better success. It is under the 
most effective organization and discipline 
under the wardenship of Dean Hart of the 
Cathedral, assisted by five masters. Its spe¬ 
cialty is the fitting of boys for the best col¬ 
leges. The girls’ school is one of the best 
in the country; the principal, Miss F. M. 
Buchan, is assisted by a corps of ten teach¬ 
ers. The studies embrace all those usual in 
such seminaries, music and art being spe¬ 
cialties. Both schools greatly need better and 
ampler buildings, and libraries and appara¬ 
tus for scientific studies. 

When the present Bishop took charge 
the work was confined to the two principal 
towns in Wyoming, Cheyenne and Laramie 
City, and to the eight or nine principal 
places east of the main range of the Rocky 
Mountains. For four or five years, during 
the “ hard times,” the growth of population 
though steady was not rapid. The Church 
was making real progress, though the first 
object was to strengthen the foundations 
already laid, and to set in order the things 
that were wanting. A memorial church to 
Bishop Randall, Trinity, was built in Den¬ 
ver, 1874 a.d. , churches in West Denver, 
Greeley, Canon City, Boulder, Rosita, were 
erected, and the churches at Colorado Springs 
and Central City were completed. All in¬ 
habited parts of the jurisdiction were often 
visited and missions established wherever 
practicable. In 1878 a.d., with the dis¬ 
covery of the silver mines of Leadville and 
the impetus given to railway building, a 
new era of temporal prosperity was dawn¬ 
ing. The church built in that city cost 
$15,000, on which a debt remained of $3000. 
The Church has been planted in Ouray, La 
Plata, San Juan, Rio Grande, Conejos, Cus¬ 
ter, Saguache, Gunnison, and other counties, 
and strengthened in Pueblo, El Paso, Boul¬ 
der, Wild, and Arapahoe Counties in the 
more eastern parts of the State. Seven par¬ 
ishes are self-sustaining. In Wyoming three 
new missions are well established on the 
Union Pacific Railroad, and at Lander, in 
Sweetwater County, while the parishes of 
Cheyenne and Laramie City are self-sup¬ 
porting. The .Indian Mission at the Sho¬ 
shone and northern Arapahoe Agency is 
under the charge of an able missionary, who 
is about to build a chapel. The govern¬ 
ment is building a school costing $12,000. 
Three more churches are to be built in Wyo¬ 


ming and several in Colorado, if the means 
can be secured, in 1884 a.d. 

The Cathedral was begun in Denver in 

1880 a.d. , and ready for use in November, 

1881 a.d. It will seat 1200. Its cost was 
$90,000, some $25,000 of which came from 
the sale of lots owned by the congregation. 
The Bishop secured and gave the site, its 
value at the time being $12,000. The cor¬ 
poration, which is the board of trustees of 
the schools and mission and most parish and 
other property, the title of which is “The 
Bishop and Chapter of the Cathedral of St. 
John the Evangelist, Denver, Colorado,” 
was organized as early as 1879 a.d. The 
Cathedral organization is practical and ef¬ 
fective. 

In February, 1879 a.d., St. Luke’s Hospi¬ 
tal, Denver, Colorado, was organized. A 
suitable block of four acres, with a large 
frame building originally used as a hotel, 
was purchased and put in order, with ac¬ 
commodations for thirty-five to forty pa¬ 
tients. The property is valued at $12,000,. 
and the debt thereon is $4000. The hospi¬ 
tal is under strictly Church management, 
and its benefits are extended to all without 
regard to sect or religion. It has treated 
over seven hundred patients and is under 
excellent management. It will long need 
aid in its charitable work. It has strong 
claims on Eastern communities, whence 
many of its patients come. 

Bishop Spalding has been in charge of the 
jurisdiction ten years. The gains are as 
follows : 

The population of Colorado and Wyoming 
in 1870 a.d. was 50,000, in 1880 a.d. 214,000. 
The per cent, of increase was 328. It was 
hardly to be expected that in so new and 
rapidly growing a frontier country we could 
keep pace with the secular growth. In some 
respects we have fallen short. In other im¬ 
portant respects our statistics show a greater 
proportionate growth of the Church than of 
the Territories. 

In 1873 a.d. the number of Church fami¬ 
lies reported was 360. In 1883 a.d. it was 
1921; increase, 433 per cent. The number 
of souls for whom the clergy were caring was, 
at the respective dates, 620 and 13,141; in¬ 
crease, 2019 per cent. The infants baptized 
were, in 1873 a.d. 117; in 1883 a.d. 390; 
increase 233 per cent. Of adults in the years 
respectively, 17 and 61 ; increase 258 per 
cent. In 1873 a.d. there were confirmed 48 ; 
in 1883 a.d. 127. Since June 1, 20 more 
have been confirmed, making the number 
for the last year 147; but these are not 
counted, not being yet reported. Without 
these the increase is 164 per cent. In the 
ten years previous to 1874 a.d. 466 were con¬ 
firmed. From then to June 1, 1883 a.d., 
1081; increase, 131 per cent. The gain 
in 'the number of communicants is also 
especially gratifying. There were reported, 
in 1873 a.d. 550; in 1883 a.d. 2112 ; an in¬ 
crease of 284 per cent. So of Sunday-school 
teachers and scholars; in 1873 a.d. the re- 





COLORADO 


161 


COLOSSIAN3 


port gave 658 ; in 1883 a.d. 2082 ; a gain of 
216 per cent. 

The ordinations to the priesthood and di- 
aconate number 32. There had been pre¬ 
viously ordained in and for Colorado 13 ; an 
increase of 146 per cent. There were here 12 
churches ; the report now shows 32 ; increase, 
166 per cent. Three of those built before 
1874 a.d. are unused ; not one built since is 
unserviceable. The usual proportion—not 
greater than in Eastern dioceses—will, in 
time, from decay of towns and changes of 
population, become useless. There were, 
ten years ago, 2 rectories, omitting 1 that 
was subsequently alienated and lost by the 
vestry ; there are now 16 ; a gain of 700 per 
cent. The number of sittings in the churches 
at the former date was 1600; at the latter 
date, 8281 ; an . increase of 417 per cent. 
There were 7 clergymen at work in the juris¬ 
diction. There were two or three others not 
belonging here or not employed. The report 
now shows 28; a gain of 300 per cent. The 
number of parishes and missions was 19. It 
are now 53 ; per cent, of increase, 179. There 
were 2 self-supporting. There are now 9 ; 
increase, 250 per cent. The offerings for all 
purposes of the jurisdiction have increased in 
much greater proportion. They were, 1873 
a.d. $5086 ; in 1883 a.d. $52,509 ; a gain of 
932 per cent. The value of churches and 
rectories was, at the first date, $26,300; at 
the present, $249,350 ; increase, 848 per cent. 
The Episcopal residence was worth $9000. 
Its value now is $25,000; increase, 177 per 
cent. "Wolfe Hall (building, grounds, and 
furniture) was valued at $30,000. Its value 
now is $80,000 ; an increase of 166 per cent. 
Jarvis Hall had cost, with its furniture and 
apparatus, $19,781. Notwithstanding the 
disastrous fire, which left only the insurance 
of $8903.72, the value of its present lands 
and buildings is $50,000 ; an increase of 310 
per cent. Matthews Hall, at Golden, cost 
$10,000. Matthews Hall, in Denver, is 
worth $15,000 ; increase, 50 per cent. Jar¬ 
vis Hall endowment for theological educa¬ 
tion was estimated, in 1874, at $12,000. 
Nine years later its value is $75,000 ; an in¬ 
crease of 477 per cent. The increase in value 
of all our school property is from $73,000 to 
$220,000,—201 per cent. 

Such have been some of our gains. It is 
a fair showing. It gives good grounds for 
encouragement and confidence as to future 
growth and prosperity. There is much that 
cannot be gathered from statistics. The 
great results for which we should be, above 
all things, solicitous, the coming of Christ’s 
spiritual kingdom, the souls gathered in and 
saved in Christ and built up in Him and 
edified, the fulfilling of the number of His 
elect,—no figures can tabulate these more 
substantial gains. 

Very little special aid has been received 
during the last three years from individuals 
or parishes at the East. And yet the mis¬ 
sionary ground now open to us and inviting 
us is four times as large as it was ten years 

11 


ago. To keep our present missionaries will 
require $1000 more than the Board of Mis¬ 
sions appropriates, and with several mission 
chapels to build at once, and many in the 
near future, there are no funds available 
but such as may be secured by solicitations. 
Mistake is made in withholding assistance 
that may, unless corrected, be fatal to our 
continuing to lead in pioneer work as in the 
past—to our becoming strong as heretofore, 
relatively to all other Christian bodies, in 
the vast wildernesses that are yet to be 
evangelized within the limits of the two 
jurisdictions. We are not receiving more 
than a fourth part of the amount of aid that 
is given to each of two or three leading de¬ 
nominations for Colorado and Wyoming. 
And we are expected to be even more suc¬ 
cessful than they ! Whether our friends who 
have hitherto helped the work in this por¬ 
tion of the great New West come to see 
and rectify the mistake or not, it is clearly 
our interest and our duty to rely more and 
more for the support of all our work upon 
the active efforts and generous offerings of 
our own people. Our strength is in what 
we do and in what we are. 

We cannot expect the same proportionate 
increases as in the past. There is much in 
the immediate outlook that is discouraging. 
The times are again becoming hard. There 
is no sale for mines. Owners of valuable 
properties are unable to develop them. We 
are discovering by sad experience that the 
work in all our mining districts, and these 
embrace a large portion of the country, 
must always be of a missionary character. 
The population in mining districts is mi¬ 
gratory. Miners are hard-working men; 
dependent for daily bread upon daily wages. 
The few who acquire wealth move to lower 
altitudes and to cities that promise greater 
comforts and advantages. Still we shall 
have for generations good tqwns in the min¬ 
ing regions, and it is in these that much of 
our best work must be done. 

The jurisdiction of Wyoming, as separate 
from Colorado, was established by the House 
of Bishops in October, 1883 a.d. The Mis¬ 
sionary Bishop of Colorado is the Provisional 
Bishop. But little has been done for Wyo¬ 
ming by the Church at large. It being now 
the latest formed of the missionary districts, 
it is to be hoped that its needs will excite 
new interest. They are chiefly for the build¬ 
ing of churches and parsonages and the 
support of missionaries. 

Rt. Rev. J. F. Spalding, D.D. 

Colossians. This Epistle to the Colos- 
sians—one of the three doctrinal Epistles 
which St. Paul sent out to the Churches 
from his own hired house in his first im¬ 
prisonment— forms a strong link in the 
chain of doctrinal statements he makes con¬ 
cerning the Church as the body of Christ, 
the fullness of Him that filleth all things. 
It is not merely a restating of what had 
been eloquently put forth in the Epistles to 
the Ephesians, but it was something more, 





COLOSSIANS 


162 


COMMENTARIES 


or rather different. The dangers of the 
Church at Colossae required him to warn 
them of their being misled and drawn from 
the unity of the Faith (c/. ch. i. 23, with ii. 
8 and 18-23), dangers which have not ceased 
to assail the members of the Church, to 
alienate them from their true Lord and 
Head. In it he uses terms which passed 
into early Liturgic usage (ch. ii. 13-15 and 
St James’ Liturgy). There is considerable 
resemblance upon many points in this Epis¬ 
tle compared with the doctrines and the di¬ 
rections upon our social duties which occupy 
the Epistle to the Ephesians. These are 
largely repeated in this Epistle; indeed, 
there are nearly forty places where the two 
Epistles coincide and mutually illustrate 
each other ; but the Church at Colossae had 
many evils of a local character to contend 
with. Under a pretended philosophy and 
spiritual wisdom, the heresies of will-worship 
and of worship of angels, and a pretense to 
pierce into things hidden, some claimed a 
false humility and made a show of asceti¬ 
cism. A claim to supernatural powers and 
to a supernatural knowledge is ever most 
attractive to many minds, and the Colossian 
Christians were in great danger of being 
greatly misled. St. Paul wisely and boldly 
meets the danger by using the words which 
might have, and afterwards did, become 
freighted with false meaning, such as the 
word “fullness,” and by setting forth the 
true supernatural teaching of Christ. He 
recounts his own former preaching upon the 
fullness of the reconciliation our Lord has 
effected. He warns them that these teachers 
do not hold fast by the “ Head from which 
all the body by joints and bands, having 
nourishment ministered and knit together, 
increaseth with the increase of God.” 

He foresaw so much of the later Gnostic 
vagaries, and met them by using the word 
“ fullness ” (pleroma), and by reciting the 
heavenly orders and ranks, so anticipating 
the aeons of these Gnostics ; the will-worship, 
the claim to an esoteric knowledge, the vain 
deceits of later heresies, are all, as it were, 
provided for by the Apostle’s peculiar phrase¬ 
ology. 

The Epistle bears every mark of the 
Apostle’s own hand. It is within the broad 
scope of the Apostle’s thoughts and teach¬ 
ings before alluded to and elsewhere im¬ 
plied, but here in the leisure of the prison 
brought together and set forth with his own 
peculiar enthusiastic energy. The Apostle, 
chained to his guards, has lost none of the 
energy and force which he possessed when 
free, and he was as fully alive to the needs 
of the Colossians as though he were present 
and ministering to them. The practical 
hortatory portion, which occupies the last 
two chapters, is Pauline throughout in the 
clearness, directness, and delicacy with which 
sin is reproved and love, forbearance, and 
forgiveness are urged. The salutation and 
messages are all unmistakably from him 
who forgot no friend and overlooked no 


need of the Church to which he was writ¬ 
ing. 

Comes. An old collection of Epistles 
and Gospels, which has been ascribed to St. 
Jerome (380 a.d.), but may be probably later. 
It contains the Epistles and Gospels very 
nearly as we now use them, and whenever 
it disagrees from the Roman rite it agrees 
with the English use, except when the Re¬ 
formers (1549-52 a.d.) or devises (1662 a.d.) 
may have arbitrarily changed. The Comes 
is mentioned as far back as 471 a.d. Its ar¬ 
rangement corresponds to the Salisbury use 
so very closely, and differs from the Roman 
use in so many ways, as to show that it was 
received and appropriated independently of 
any Roman influence. Several slight circum¬ 
stances point to the probability that it belongs 
to St. Jerome’s time at least. Before his time 
there was no special series of selected Scrip¬ 
tures ; after the date above given the Scrip¬ 
tures begin to be cited as though such a lec¬ 
tionary were in use, by St. Ambrose, Augus¬ 
tine, Leo, etc. In the part appropriated to 
the saints none are commemorated after St. 
Jerome’s day. Therefore it is exceedingly 
probable that this selection of Epistles and 
Gospels came to us from the East through the 
Gallican Church, and may have been in use 
before the days of Augustine of Canterbury. 

Commemorations. ( Vide Diptychs.) In 
England, at Oxford and Cambridge, certain 
commemoration days are kept, on which the 
names of all known benefactors to the uni¬ 
versities are proclaimed, special psalms and 
lessons appointed, and special collects and 
versicles recited. These days werp observed 
before the Reformation. 

Commendam. A living given in charge 
to a clergyman till a proper pastor is ap¬ 
pointed. A living is then held in com- 
rnendam. They are held by Bishops whose 
incomes are of small amount. 

Commendatory Letters are very ancient 
in use. Such were the letters Apollos 
brought from Ephesus to the Church in 
Corinth and Achaia, and such that St. Paul 
referred to in 2 Cor. iii. 1, as well known 
and of constant use ( cf . 1 Cor. xvi. 3). 
(For further notices, see Literas Forma- 
tus.) 

Commentaries. Expositions or explana¬ 
tions of Holy Scriptures. It is one of the 
most difficult tasks ever set before men, 
since it is so difficult to grasp the whole 
nexus of revelation, to understand its ex¬ 
ceeding breadth and yet its positiveness, to 
reach up to its strictness and yet its love, its 
unswerving statements yet its tenderness to 
all mankind. The task requires a prayerful, 
submissive mind, and a thoroughly trained 
logical power, and a full command of all the 
important learning that can illustrate or 
explain the Holy Scriptures. It demands 
that Scripture shall be diligently compared 
with Scripture and not against Scripture, 
and that there should be no prepossessions, 
no theories formed to be narrowly carried 
out, and above all that the expositor should 





COMMINATION OFFICE 


163 


COMMUNION (HOLY) 


lay down for himself and strictly adhere 
to the rule that the Church is the keeper 
and witness of Holy Writ. 

For this purpose much of the ancient com¬ 
mentaries is most useful. St. Chrysostom 
and Augustine and Jerome form a valued 
series. Origen has some very valuable ex¬ 
positions, but is not to be trusted. Theophy- 
lact has compressed much of St. Chrysostom 
and added useful comments of his own. 

The “ Critici Sacri ” is the work of 
Bishop Pearson and other English divines. 
But it is useless to go on with the list, so 
many new and valuable commentaries have 
appeared. Perhaps for general use the Cam¬ 
bridge Bible for the use of schools, pub¬ 
lished in separate volumes, on each book of 
the Old and New Testaments, is the best for 
those who wish for special commentaries 
upon single books. 

Burgon’s “ Plain Commentary” and 
Isaac Williams’s “Devotional Commen¬ 
tary” are beyond praise. The “Speaker’s 
Commentary,” and Alford on the New 
Testament, are excellent. But while admit¬ 
ting the excellence of separate writers, it 
will be well to take only those who adhere 
most strictly to what has ever been received 
in the Church. 

Commination Office. An office in the 
English Prayer-Book appointed for Ash- 
Wednesday. It is one of the last remnants 
left of the older penitential offices that 
carried out the disciplinary system of the 
early ages. Then offenders were deprived 
for a given length of time of their rights 
and privileges in the Church, not only till 
they proved their repentance but till the set 
time was expired. The English office has 
adapted the very old Salisbury service for 
Ash-Wednesday, prefacing it with an ad¬ 
dress and a recital of the curses of Mount 
Ebal, and then with an exhortation uses the 
older service very nearly as it stood. It 
was an endeavor to preserve something 
of the old disciplinary system and to re¬ 
mind men, by its reciting the denouncing of 
God’s anger and judgments against sin¬ 
ners, that justice has not lost its stern vigor. 
The service was dropped out of our Prayer- 
Book, but the three last prayers were trans¬ 
ferred to their present place after the Ash- 
Wednesday Collect, and the seven Peniten¬ 
tial Psalms (with the oversight of omitting 
the 51st Psalm) were ordered for the proper 
Psalms for the day. The oversight occurred 
by not noting that it was used at length in 
the Commination, and therefore was not put 
into the table for proper Psalms for Ash- 
Wednesday. 

Commissary. An officer sent by a Bishop 
to make inspections of parishes for him and 
to report thereon. 

Common Prayer. In its proper place 
will be found the history of the Prayer- 
Book. But here it is well to mark the 
meaning of the word Common, what belongs 
to, and is to be used by, also that it may be 
joined in and understood by the congrega¬ 


tion ; not only that, but that all have a com¬ 
mon share in its petitions, so that none are 
left out, of all estates and conditions of 
men, and that there are in it no petitions 
that any one may refuse to say Amen 
to, and that there are in it all the parts 
of worship and praise and confession, as 
well as of prayer, which all can join in, and 
in which, as Christians holding a common 
heritage, all can claim a portion. It is 
Common in the highest and noblest sense of 
the word. 

Communion. Vide Lord’s Supper. 

Communion (Holy), Office of. The ear¬ 
liest descriptions which we have of the Com¬ 
munion office of the early Church prove 
that from the beginning it contained these 
parts: The reading of Holy Scripture, with 
exhortation based upon it; the kiss of peace, 
with prayer for all men ; the offering of 
bread and wine; the thanksgiving, ending 
with the Triumphal Hymn (“Holy, holy, 
holy”); the recital of the words of Institu¬ 
tion ; the Oblation of the elements to God, 
and the Invocation of the Holy Ghost 
upon them ; the administration of the conse¬ 
crated elements in both kinds ; the dismissal 
of the people (presumably after a thanks¬ 
giving). There is no ancient Liturgy* in 
which these parts do not appear, whatever 
else may be added, and no description of one 
which does not seem to imply them all. 
And, besides, they are always found in the 
order in which they have just been men¬ 
tioned, the only variation of importance 
being that the great Intercession for all 
men, and especially for the whole Church, 
occupies different parts of the service. In 
the Liturgy of the Greek Church it has 
stood for many centuries after the Invoca¬ 
tion of the Holy Ghost,— that is to say, at 
the end of the consecration ; in the ancient 
Liturgy of Gaul and Spain, which is be¬ 
lieved to have been brought almost in Apos¬ 
tolic times from Ephesus, it stands early in 
the service, soon after the lessons from 
Scripture; in the Roman Liturgy, which, 
though much older than the doctrine of 
transubstantiation, and bearing in its text 
no indication of it, yet shows many traces 
of being mutilated and confused, it is di¬ 
vided. One other difference may be noted 
here as of interest in the study of our own 
service: the Greek Liturgy has no proper 
Prefaces to the Triumphal Hymn ; the Gallic 
or Ephesine (so called) has more than a hun¬ 
dred and fifty for different occasions ; the 
Roman was once as rich in its variations, 
though now it has but eleven. 

Our Liturgy came to us from the Churches 
of England and Scotland, and it was theirs 
by descent from the Church of ancient days 
in England, modified in Scotland by Eastern 
influences. It is impossible to go into its 
early history here. It must suffice to say 
that the Liturgy of the Church of England 


* This word is used in this article in its strict sense, 
as applying only to the office of the Holy Communion. 





COMMUNION (HOLY) 


1G4 


COMMUNION (HOLY) 


was never identical with that of the Church 
of Home, and that it always showed that it 
was in part an inheritance from the Church 
of Gaul, which had, in its turn, taken its 
form of Eucharistic worship from the East. 
At the time of the Reformation there was 
first added to the Latin form of Consecra¬ 
tion an English form for the preparation of 
the communicants, and for administration 
to them ; then a complete service was pub¬ 
lished in English (in 1549 a.d.), adding to 
the defective Koman form certain things 
from the ancient Liturgies, though not in 
the ancient order, together with certain 
others peculiar to itself; and then (in 1552 
a.d.) the service was put into nearly its 
present shape, the form of the prayer of con¬ 
secration being carried back more nearly 
into conformity with the Roman, in part, 
as it seems to the writer, from a feeling that 
a wrong order had been adopted three years 
before. The American Liturgy is taken 
almost exactty from that in the English 
Prayer-Book, with the important exception 
that the Prayer of Consecration follows the 
Scotch form,—not that in the Scotch book 
of 1637 a.d., which never went into use, but 
that which was taken from primitive sources 
by the non-jurors in 1718 a.d., and which 
was borrowed from them by the Scotch 
Bishops. 

These things being premised, the mean¬ 
ing of the several parts of the service may be 
readily seen. First, after this recital of the 
Lord’s Prayer, and the Collect for Purity as 
preparatory to the whole service, comes, as 
in the earliest days, the reading of Holy 
Scriptures. The lesson from the Old Testa¬ 
ment (called in some services the Prophecy) 
is with us invariable throughout the year, 
consisting of the Ten Commandments, 
which also serves, a proper response being 
provided to lead to a confession of sin and a 
prayer for grace. The Epistles and the Gos¬ 
pel are two lessons from the two parts of the 
New Testament, and are read by us in ac¬ 
cordance with a very ancient calendar, 
which the Church of Rome has confused, as 
she has almost everything else in the Lit¬ 
urgy. To these the Collects, most of which 
are also very ancient, serve as a fitting and 
devout introduction. The Creed is the pro¬ 
fession of our Faith as based on the Scrip¬ 
tures, parts of which have just been read, and 
the Sermon is an explanation of them and 
an exhortation based upon them. The offer¬ 
ing of alms shows our charity, corresponding 
to the kiss of peace ; and the offering of bread 
and wine is like the ancient presentation of 
the first fruits of the earth. The Prayer for 
the Church Militant is our great Interces¬ 
sion, keeping the position which it had in 
the old Liturgy of Gaul, and reminding us 
that English Christianity came in part from 
the East, and very probably from Ephesus 
and from St. John. The Exhortation is a 
continuation of the Sermon, having for its 
purpose to begin the special preparation of 
the people for receiving the Holy Sacrament. 


It leads to the Institution, which is followed 
most naturally, we may say necessarily, by 
a humble Confession of sins and an Absolu¬ 
tion, the latter having its most solemn form 
—that of a prayer. The Comfortable Words 
which follow are peculiar to our office and 
to those from which it was taken, and are 
in a translation made (it is thought) by 
Archbishop Cranmer expressly for the first 
English Prayer-Book ; they serve to confirm 
the faith of the worshipers in God’s prom¬ 
ises of pardon. Then comes a form of words 
which can be traced back to the very earli¬ 
est days, brief versicles and responses pre¬ 
paring the way for the Angelic or Trium¬ 
phal Hymn (it is not strictly correct to call 
this the Trisagion); and in certain days the 
form of thanksgiving is made longer and 
adapted to the special commemoration, our 
number of proper prefaces being, however, 
probably owing to Roman influences, very 
small. The Prayer of Humble Access comes 
in as a parenthesis, though very suitably, 
between the Triumphal Hymn and the lofty 
strain of praise with which the Prayer of 
Consecration begins (which, by the way, 
first appears in the Scotch service of 1764 
a.d. ). The essential parts of this prayer are, 
through God’s good providence, in their 
proper order, in our book, as they were in 
every ancient Liturgy, as they are to-day 
in those of the Greek Church, and as so 
many of the earnest divines of the Church 
of England have wished that they might be 
in hers. The Words of Institution are fol¬ 
lowed by an Oblation of the elements to 
God, as a memorial of the one sacrifice of 
Christ ; and after it is the Invocation of 
the Holy Spirit, which completes the Con¬ 
secration. But the prayer goes on with a 
brief intercession, which reminds us of that 
in the Greek Liturgy, an offering of the 
souls and the bodies of the worshipers to 
God, a prayer that their sins may not pre¬ 
vent the acceptance of their worship, and a 
doxology, which latter is prolonged and 
echoed in a hymn. Then comes the admin¬ 
istration in both kinds, according to Christ’s 
institution. The Post-Communion, as it is 
called, is more elaborate in our offices than 
in almost any other. It includes the Lord’s 
Prayer as offered by those who have now 
renewed their covenant with God, a prayer 
of Thanksgiving, the venerable Gloria hi 
Excelsis , and the Blessing of Peace. No 
other service than the English and our own 
has the Lord’s Prayer in this part of the 
service, all others placing it before the Com¬ 
munion. The other peculiarities of our 
Liturgy, which we share with those from 
which it is derived, are the Comfortable 
Words (a peculiarity of which we have no 
need to be ashamed), and the position of the 
Gloria in Excelsis; and in regard to the lat¬ 
ter, though there are reasons for placing it 
as the Hymn of the Incarnation, at the be¬ 
ginning of the offices, as in the English ser¬ 
vice of 1549 a.d., use seems to commend its 
present position very strongly. The place 




COMMUNION IN ONE KIND 165 


CONCORDANCE 


of the Prayer of Humble Access in our 
books, as to which we follow the English, 
makes a break in the strain of thanksgiving, 
which is not found in the ancient offices ; 
but it is, as has been said, of the nature of a 
parenthesis, and most fittingly expresses the 
feeling of humility with which we take 
upon our lips the praises of God. 

It does not come within the scope of this 
article to speak of the rubrics of the ser¬ 
vice or of the doctrines of the Eucharist. 

Authorities : Hammond’s Liturgies, East¬ 
ern and Western ; Keeling’s Liturgae Bri- 
tannicae, Freeman’s Principles of "Divine 
Service, Marshall’s Ancient Liturgies of 
the Church of England, Hall’s Fragmenta 
Liturgica. Rev. Prof. S. Hart. 

Communion in One Kind. The admin¬ 
istration only of the bread and not the wine 
in the Lord’s Supper. This practice, which 
is contrary to the express command, “ Drink 
ye all,” and to the continual usage of the 
Church everywhere else, has been the rule 
of the Roman Church for the last seven 
hundred years only. 

Communion of Saints. The latter part 
of the IX. Article of the Creed. It forms a 
complement to the former part,—the Holy 
Catholic Church, and serves to partly ex¬ 
plain it. It was a later addition to this 
Article. It adds to and carries on the con¬ 
fession of the outer visible union with 
Christ in the Holy Catholic Church, and 
confesses the inner mystical union with 
Him. It is best understood in this con¬ 
nection with the first verses of the first 
Epistle general of St. John, and adds the 
doctrine of the union of all his saints living 
and departed, which is brought out so nobly 
in the eleventh and twelfth chapters of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews, especially in the 
22d and 24th verses of the twelfth chapter, 
which form an inspired exposition of its true 
meaning in the Creed. 

Communion-Table. The name synony¬ 
mous with the altar in the Christian Church. 
The Order for the Holy Communion in 
the Prayer-Book calls it, as does the Greek 
Church, the Holy Table and the Lord’s 
Table, and so in the Ordinal. In the form 
for the Consecration of a Church or Chapel, 
which was compiled by the Bishops of this 
Church in 1799 a.d., the altar is called the 
Communion-Table. In the Office of Insti¬ 
tution, framed in 1804 a.d. and revised in 
1808 a.d., it is called Altar. It is both an 
altar and table, for as the place for offering 
the oblation of bread and wine it is an altar, 
and with respect to the feast it is a table. 
In the New Testament the use is indifferent 
in the few allusions made to it. Heb. xiii. 
10 : “ We have an Altar whereof they have 
no right to eat which serve the Tabernacle.” 
1 Cor. x. 21: “Ye cannot be partakers of 
the Lord’s Table and the table of devils,” 
“ where what was on the table of devils was 
from the altar of devils.” And throughout 
table and altar are used indifferently. In 
strictness the table is the Lord’s Table, the 


Holy Table, not the Communicant’s Table, 
so that the term Communion-Table is in¬ 
correct. 

Compline, in the English Church, before 
the Reformation, was the last service of the 
day. When the two services of Morning 
and Evening Prayer were arranged, the 
services of the first hours were joined together 
to form the morning services, and the Vesper 
and Compline of the last hours were con¬ 
joined into a fixed form for the Evening 
Prayer. It was not intended that the public 
worship should interfere with the use of pri¬ 
vate prayer, an idea which has often been 
put forth, but she intended that the public 
worship should be common, and “ under- 
standed of the people.” 

Conception. The truth of the conception 
of Christ by the operation of the Holy 
Ghost is of fundamental importance to the 
Christian. Unless it be so, the ancient 
prophecy (Is. vii. 14) has failed, the records 
of the Evangelists St. Matthew and St. Mark 
are false, the first chapter of St. John 
meaningless, and our faith vain ; not merely 
this, but the whole career of the Christian 
Church an effect without a cause, if Christ is 
not the pre-existing Eternal Son of God, of 
one substance with His Father, begotten 
of His Father before all worlds. 

Conclave. A room that can be locked, 
then an assembly-room, and, lastly, the as¬ 
sembly itself, generally the assembly of 
Cardinals, and more especially that assembly 
convened for the purpose of electing a new 
Pope. Up to the eleventh century the peo¬ 
ple as well as the clergy had a voice in the 
election, but under the guidance, it is said, 
of Hildebrand, afterwards the famous Gre¬ 
gory VII., Pope Nicholas II. arranged that 
the Cardinals, i.e ., the Presbyters of the 
Cardinal Churches, should hold the election 
to the exclusion of the rights of the other 
parties to the election, 1059 a.d. The elec¬ 
tion is conducted under certain very minute 
rules, the chief of which is the absolute 
seclusion of the Cardinals from all external 
communication. 

Concomitance. The doctrine that in 
transubstantiation the Blood inheres in the 
Body in the Eucharist, and therefore that 
there is practically no withholding of the 
grace and value of the Cup in the Commun¬ 
ion. This strange and erroneous doctrine 
was invented to parry the proofs that the 
Cup must by the New Testament rule be 
given to the laity in the administration of 
the Lord’s Supper. 

Concordance. (From concordare , to 
agree.) A dictionary and reference book 
of all the words which occur in an author. 
It is most generally applied to a verbal con¬ 
cordance of the Bible. There are many con¬ 
cordances, some of subjects (topical) and 
others of words (verbal), in the Hebrew, 
Greek (Septuagint), Latin (Vulgate), Eng¬ 
lish, French, and German. Those in English 
claim our attention. The earlier concord¬ 
ances were quite defective, as they gave 






CONCORDAT 


166 


CONFESSION OF SIN 


but the leading words. But they were su¬ 
perseded by the great work of Alexander 
Cruden (1737 a.d.). It is in many re- 
pects the completest, and is arranged in very 
convenient form. It was incomplete in 
proper names, but that has been supplied in 
late editions. The most ambitious, and in 
many respects the most exhaustive, concord¬ 
ance is the recent one by Dr. Young, of 
Edinburgh, 1879 a.d. It gives the Hebrew 
and Greek words. It arranges these by sub¬ 
jects under the separate use of each word, 
not merely as noun or verb, etc., but in its 
several senses. It is probably the most per¬ 
fect concordance that can be prepared. 

Concordat. An agreement between 
powers relative to some subject. This word 
is usually restrained to agreements made be¬ 
tween the Papacy and the contracting power 
acknowledging the Roman obedience, and it 
will be found that very often it was entered 
into to prevent the government from assert¬ 
ing and enforcing the just independence of 
the national Church. Such is the history of 
at least one concordat in France, the Prag¬ 
matic sanction (1516 a.d.), under Francis 
I., who was in correspondence with Melanc- 
thon. A second concordat was formed be¬ 
tween Napoleon I. and Pius VII., which, 
however, did not give anything to the Roman 
See. It is now in force, after having been 
abrogated in 1817 a.d. to give place to a vain 
effort to restore the concordat of 1516 a.d. 
The interval between these concordats is 
filled with most instructive history. So in 
Spain the liberties of the Church were secured 
in the concordat of 1762 a.d., but in 1851 a.d. 
another not so favorable was made. But 
Portugal is noted upon the Peninsula for the 
firmness with which it has defended the prac¬ 
tical independence of the Portuguese Church. 
In Germany the etforts of Joseph II. pro¬ 
duced a great deal of excitement, but the in¬ 
tervention of the French Revolution and the 
treatment Napoleon inflicted upon Pius VI. 
produced a reaction in favor of the Roman 
See, and concordats were formed with the 
several states of Germany more or less 
favorable to the Roman See. The most 
favorable one (Austria in 1855 a.d.), proved 
to be a failure; many provisions in it could 
not be carried out, and those which were 
worked unfavorable results politically, so 
that in 1870 a.d. it was abolished. The his¬ 
tory of the concordats from 1516 a.d. to the 
present day is the history of the effort to 
reconcile the National Historical Independ¬ 
ence of the several Churches of Europe with 
the desire to remain, for varying, and often 
narrow, political reasons, in the obedience 
of the Roman See. 

Condignity. A topic in the prereforma¬ 
tion discussion as to the relation of works 
done before, and those under the gracious 
influences of God. Some works, it was held 
by some, could be done so well that thereby 
a man could deserve salvation (congruity). 
On the other hand it was contended that a 
man under only divine influence could 


deserve eternal life (condignity). The error 
in each case was the insisting (whether wit¬ 
tingly or not) that man could deserve or 
merit eternal life. Compare the Xlllth of 
the Articles upon this. 

Confession. A word used with a wide 
signification and many applications. It 
means an acknowledgment of either an act 
or a belief, therefore it may be used to sig¬ 
nify (a) The acknowledgment of any sin 
or sins, (b) The avowal of a belief. ( c) The 
public documents containing such avowals 
which have been put forth with authority. 
It often is used simply as meaning auricular 
confession of sins to a priest. 

Confession of Faith. The great Confes¬ 
sion of Faith is made in the Creed. The 
Church can recognize no other Confession of 
Faith, though documents bearing that title 
have been put forth, and the XXXIX. Arti¬ 
cles of the English and American Churches 
are popularly so styled. It is really an 
error, though the XXXIX. Articles contain 
decisions upon theological points and pro¬ 
tests upon errors in vogue at the time (1562 
a.d. ), and upon some points of Church 
Polity. The Confession of Faith is properly 
the one made at Baptism : “ Dost thou be¬ 
lieve all the Articles of the Christian Faith?” 
Anciently it was necessary to recite the Creed 
at that time. But this does not cover all 
that is now placed under this title. It refers 
now to those documents which were pub¬ 
lished during the first century of the Refor¬ 
mation (and is made to include those since), 
containing declarations upon points of faith, 
protests against errors, or malpractices in 
religion, and assertions upon controverted 
or undetermined articles. The first and 
most notable of these is the Confession of 
Augsburg, presented to the Emperor Charles 
V. (June 25, 1530 a.d.) in full diet at Augs¬ 
burg. It was read to the Diet in German, 
and made a very deep impression. This and 
its Defense (Apologia) against the attempted 
refutations of Eck, Cochlseus, and other 
Roman theologians have become one of the 
standard authorities of the Lutheran Com¬ 
munion. The Calvinistic Confession of Basle, 
which took shape from a speech by (Ecolam- 
padius 1531 a.d., and was written out by 
Myconius in 1534 a.d. ; the Helvetic Con¬ 
fession of 1536 a. d., in Basle, to unify the 
Swiss Reformers; the Genevan Catechism, 
the work of Calvin, 1536 a d., takes rank as 
a confession,—are documents of this rank for 
the Calvinistic communion on the Continent; 
the Westminster Confession of Faith for 
the Presbyterians. These constitute only a 
very few of the many symbolic books,—i.e., 
collections of standard Confessions of Faith 
of the various religious bodies which receive 
them. 

Confession of Sin. It is one of the es¬ 
sentials of repentance. “ I said, I will con¬ 
fess my transgressions unto the Lord ; and 
thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin” (Ps. 
xxxii. 5). It is, however, a question as to 
manner and before whom this confession of 




CONFESSION OF SIN 


167 


CONFIRMATION 


sin is to be made. As to manner, it is to be 
complete and unreserved, so far as memory 
and conscience can render this confession; 
the Holy Scriptures are full of it, and so are 
the writings of all the best and holiest men 
of all times. This confession is to be un¬ 
shrinking in owning the character and hein¬ 
ousness of sin. But before whom is this 
to be made? To God beyond a doubt; but 
David’s confession, which was finally re¬ 
corded so fully, and for all ages, in the 
51st Psalm, was first before Nathan : “ And 
David said unto Nathan, I have sinned 
against the Lord, and Nathan said unto 
David, The Lord also hath put away thy 
sin.” Here we see confession before a Priest 
and absolution, but it is equally clear that it 
was open, and before all who were present 
in the Royal chamber, and that this was no 
secret confession, concealed, and never to be 
divulged. There is no example recorded 
of such auricular confession in the Bible ; 
on the contrary, the most open and public 
acknowledgment of wrong-doing is urged, 
not only in the Psalms, the great Peniten¬ 
tial authority for the Church, but also by 
the conduct of the Primitive Church during 
the first centuries, when she kept up her 
strict discipline (vide Discipline) in ac¬ 
cordance with the precept of St. James: 
“ Confess your faults one to another, and 

a one for another that ye may be 
^d.” With these and other directions be¬ 
fore us (St. Matt. iii. 6-8 ; Acts xxx. 18, 19), 
we may compare (not contrast) our Lord’s 
commission in St. Matt. xvi. 19; xviii. 
18 ; and most explicitly repeated in St. John 
xx. 23: “Receive ye the Holy Ghost: 
whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted 
unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, 
they are retained,” made to the eleven 
Apostles, as a committal of His own author¬ 
ity as Son of Man to forgive sins. This in 
nowise conflicts with the public confession, 
nay, rather agrees with it. Indeed, while 
it was clearly recognized that there were 
cases in which it were better that there 
should be no public confession,—we are not 
speaking of the ordinary wearing fretful¬ 
ness of daily occurrence,—yet these were 
few and of rare occurrence, and they were 
exceptional cases. But we have full and 
clear information as to this. In this line 
and upon the best precedents the Church 
has given her children the public confes¬ 
sions of sin she places in her public formu¬ 
laries. They are three: the one in the 
Morning and Evening Prayer, the one in 
the Communion service, and the Prayer in 
the Ash-Wednesday service. Other confes¬ 
sions, in phrase, not in form, occur in the 
Collects; but these are the outlines upon 
which the Church instructs her children to 
frame their self-examination and confession, 
and she looks for an honest and devout de¬ 
sire on their part to give a hearty meaning 
to the lowly words she puts into their 
mouths. The public use of forms of con¬ 
fession was not intended to interfere with 


any private and devotional forms for the 
closet. 

But while the Church thus publicly and 
openly avows her use of public confession, 
she does not interfere with the unburdening 
of the heart and its troubles to her minis¬ 
ters. Confession in private is urged upon 
the condemned convict in his cell, and at the 
close of the exhortation in the Communion 
service she uses these words : “ And because 
it is requisite that no man should come to 
the Holy Communion but with a full trust 
in God’s mercy, and with a quiet conscience, 
therefore, if there be any of you who by 
this means cannot quiet his own conscience 
herein, but requireth further comfort or 
counsel, let him come to me or to some other 
minister of God’s Word and open his grief, 
that he may receive such godly counsel and 
advice as may tend to the quieting of his 
conscience and the removing of all scruple 
and doubtfulness.” So far she exhorts 
and advises the confidence which should 
ever exist between a faithful Priest and his 
people in any case of conscience or of 
scruple. The use of absolution under such 
cases must always be decided by £he cir¬ 
cumstances. (Vide Absolution.) 

Confession (Auricular), that is, confes¬ 
sion into the ear of the Priest, who is bound to 
absolute secrecy, and who is at liberty to ques¬ 
tion the penitent in any way upon any part of 
his or her conduct. The practice arose upon 
the cessation of making public confession, 
and grew gradually till, after having been 
recognized by the Western Church, in 
several enactments of local Synods it was 
enjoined as a necessary preliminary to re¬ 
ceiving the Communion and as obligatory 
on every one once a year on pain of excom¬ 
munication, and therefore refusal of Chris¬ 
tian burial. (IV. Council of Lateran, Can. 
21, 1215 a.d. ) 

Confessor. One who at the risk of his 
life confesses his faith in Christ. For the 
use of the word, compare St. Matt. x. 32, and 
1 Tim. vi. 13. The confessors were held in 
great esteem, and obtained so much influence 
that St. Cyprian, while admiring them and 
their constancy, had to oppose their ill-ad¬ 
vised relaxations of the discipline of the 
lapsed. The title confessor properly belongs 
to him who at any time at the danger of his 
life because of it has confessed his faith in 
the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Confessor. The title given to the Priest 
who hears confessions. 

Confirmation. The imposition of the 
Bishop’s hands, whereby the gift of the 
Holy Ghost is given to the person con¬ 
firmed ; the strengthening of the soul by 
the graces of the Spirit. It bore several 
names in the works of the Fathers,— e.g ., the 
Seal, the Chrism, the Imposition of Hands. 
The seal from Eph. iv. 30; the chrism 
from 1 John ii. 27 ; the imposition of hands 
from Heb. vi. 2. The term confirmation or 
strengthening appears to come from Eph. 
iii. 16. The rite without doubt was typified 






CONFIRMATION 


168 


CONFIRMATION 


by the descent of the Holy Spirit upon 
Him at our Lord’s baptism. He declared 
constantly that He came not only for the 
Redemptive acts which He alone could effect, 
but also to give the Holy Ghost, which gift, 
including all other gifts in that, He gave to 
the Apostles when He breathed on them, 
and afterwards when at the day of Pente¬ 
cost He sent Him upon the Apostles. 

It was emphatically the Rite for that gift, 
as Baptism was the appointed Sacrament for 
our entrance and birth into Christ ; so it 
was implied in St. Peter’s words : “ Repent, 
and be baptized every one of you in the name 
of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, 
and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy 
Ghost. For the promise is unto you, and to 
your children, and to all that are afar off, 
and to as many as the Lord our God shall 
call” (Acts ii. 38, 39). Now this promise 
is the pouring out of the Spirit, as St. Peter 
in the first part of his sermon had shown. 
The words of St. Peter imply then, that 
those who should be baptized were also to be 
confirmed. So, too, when Philip the evan¬ 
gelist went down to Samaria and baptized 
lie coufd not confirm, but the Apostles sent 
Peter and John thither to confer that grace 
(Acts viii. 14-17). So, St. Paul confirmed 
the disciples at Ephesus (Acts xix. 6), a gift 
to which he repeatedly refers in his Epistle 
to the Ephesians (ch. i. 13,14 ; iii. 16 ; iv. 4, 
30). So laying on of hands is made a foun¬ 
dation act (Heb. vi. 2). So the anointing 
and sealing of the Holy Spirit in 2 Cor. 
i. 21. There is a series of texts which 
derive their chief if not their full sense 
from this laying on of hands; the fore¬ 
most places are the viii. chapter of Ro¬ 
mans, Galatians vi. 6-8, and the references 
in 1 Corinthians to the body being the Tem¬ 
ple of the Holy Ghost. In the study of 
these passages comparison should also be 
made with the two leading prophecies, the 
text from Joel ii. 28, 32, and Isaiah xi. 1, 2. 

It is not at all necessary to bring a long 
array of quotations from the Fathers to prove 
the fact that Confirmation—the laying on 
of hands—was the practice of the Church 
from the first. It may be necessary, how¬ 
ever, to remark that Confirmation followed 
baptism immediately, and for that reason is 
the less often alluded to in the earliest Pa¬ 
tristic writings, since it was, as it were, 
bound up in baptism. With baptism and 
Confirmation followed the receiving the 
Holy Communion, and so was not dwelt 
upon as discursively as other rites of the 
Church. The ancient formulas used both 
laying on of hands and the unction with 
consecrated oil. The laying on of hands was 
with the words, “Almighty Father of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, who hast regenerated 
Thy servants by water and the Holy 
Ghost, who hast given them remission of 
all their sins, do Thou, O Lord, send upon 
them the Holy Ghost, Thy Comforter; 
and give them the spirit of wisdom and un¬ 
derstanding, the spirit of counsel and grace, 


the spirit of knowledge and true godliness. 
Fill them with the spirit of the fear of God, 
in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
with whom Thou livest and reignest ever 
God with the Holy Ghost for ever and 
ever. Amen.” Then the Bishop signed 
them on the forehead with the chrism, say¬ 
ing, “The sign of Christ to eternal life. 
Amen.” (The Gelasian Sacramentary, c. 
500.) This form, as we see, is directly on 
the same line as our own service, with the 
one important omission of the chrism. 

In our office the versicles are from the 
ancient Salisbury use. The words which 
accompany the act of the laying on of hands 
are drawn from several sentences of Holy 
Scripture. The Collect was framed after 
the pattern of one by Hermann, Archbishop 
of Cologne (1545 a.d.). The rubric on the ad¬ 
mission of those ready and desirous of being 
confirmed to the Holy Communion was 
taken from a Constitution by Archbishop 
Peckham, 1281 a.d. 

The blessings of Confirmation are to be 
received with a prepared and devout heart, 
not hastily or without instruction. To this 
end it is usual to deliver lectures upon Con¬ 
firmation as a necessity in the Christian life, 
and because of its Apostolic appointment in 
the economy of the Christian Church, upon 
the duties of a devout and prayerful prepa¬ 
ration, together with instruction about the 
Church and her office, and the duties laid 
upon the person confirmed in that act. 
These blessings and the position of this holy 
rite are well set forth in a homily dated 
before the Reformation : “ In Baptism he 
was born again spiritually to live, in Con¬ 
firmation he is made bold to fight. There 
he received remission of sin, here he re- 
ceiveth increase of grace. There the Spirit 
of God did make him a new man, here the 
same Spirit doth defend him in his dangerous 
conflict. There he was washed and made 
clean, here he is nourished and made strong. 
In Baptism he was chosen to be God’s son 
and an inheritor of His heavenly kingdom ; 
in Confirmation God shall give him His 
Holy Spirit to be his mentor, to instruct 
him and perfect him, that he lose not by his 
folly that inheritance which he is called 
unto. In Baptism he was called and chosen 
to be one of God’s soldiers, and had his 
white coat of innocency delivered unto him, 
and also his badge, which was the red cross, 
the instrument of His Passion set upon his 
forehead and other parts of his body ; in 
Confirmation he is encouraged to fight and 
take the armor of God put upon him, which 
be able to bear off the fiery darts of the 
devil and to defend him from all harm, if he 
will use them in his battle and not put him¬ 
self in danger of his enemies by entering the 
field without them.” 

It is often asked, Is Confirmation as neces¬ 
sary to salvation as Baptism ? A careful ex¬ 
amination of the Scriptures quoted and re¬ 
ferred to above—especially the viii. of Ro¬ 
mans and the iv. of Ephesians—will show 





CONGREGATION 


169 


CONNECTICUT 


that it is, for it is part of the means of grace 
for our resurrection (cf. Rom. viii. 11; Enh. 
iv. 30). 

Congregation. A word to which several 
meanings are attached. In the Old Testa¬ 
ment it means (as does also the word Con¬ 
vocation) the whole people, whether in the 
wilderness, where they were always easily 
gathered, or in Canaan. It meant either a 
Congregation for worship, or a Congrega¬ 
tion for deliberation, and so generally re¬ 
presented by the heads of the families. In 
the New Testament it meant the Ecclesia, 
whether merely a local congregation or the 
whole body of the Faithful. But except in 
one place the Ecclesia is translated Church 
in the A. Y. In later Church usage it was 
restricted to the local gathering or to the 
organized body receiving ministration from 
a Pastor. It is a modern error, refuted by all 
early Church History, to give to the Congre¬ 
gation the formative voice, and to make it the 
source of authority to its officers. Through¬ 
out the New Testament, the Apostles exer¬ 
cised independent authority and ordained as 
men answerable to God for their authority. 
So, too, in the subapostolic record in Rev. 
ii. and iii. The Congregation had many 
privileges, which of need modified the action 
of the ruling body. The officers were not 
despots, but acting in God’s behalf to the 
Congregation, and bearers and executants 
of His Covenant. They exist only for the 
sake of the Congregation, but from God. 
The Laity in Congregation had the right to 
nominate to the vacant Bishopric, to assent 
or object to the ordination of Deacons (Acts 
vi. 3) or Presbyters (1 Tim. iii.) ; as largely 
controlling the finances its influence was 
weighty. St. Cyprian’s consultation of the 
Congregations in Carthage is a good illus¬ 
tration. But these primitive Congregations 
were not so wholly regulated as our own 
modern ones are; the clergy being more a 
body gathered around .their Bishop, and 
directed by him, than a number of Presby¬ 
ters and Deacons scattered over the Diocese 
and holding their Parochial cure at the 
hands of the Congregation. The Congrega¬ 
tions themselves were not so markedly 
parted, even when much more scattered, 
and certainly in the city Churches, though 
there were many Churches and Congrega¬ 
tions, they really formed for all minor 
legislative purposes but one body. 

But our Congregations now are nearly 
identical with their Parishes. A Congre¬ 
gation may contain many individuals other 
than those in nonage, who cannot take any 
part in the management of the affairs of the 
Parish, or may be merely attendants on the 
services. But apart from these, generally a 
Congregation is made up of persons per¬ 
manently members of the Parish, and for 
all proper purposes the two names apply to 
only one body. Yet in some particulars the 
modern Congregation is still endowed with 
the same privileges as the older. In an or¬ 
dination the consent of the Congregation is 


had. The Congregation being offended by 
the scandalous conduct of a member he is 
proceeded against; and the Congregation 
has to be satisfied of his repentance and 
amendment. (Rubric to the Holy Commun¬ 
ion.) In the Prayer-Book throughout, the 
people present at a service are distinguished 
from the Congregation. So properly at the 
office of Consecration of a Church or Chapel. 
As the Church is consecrated for the Parish, 
the Congregation , not the People , is the 
term used. So, too, in the office of Institu¬ 
tion, in the Prayers and in the first of the 
two closing Rubrics. 

In the Digest of Canons the words “ Par¬ 
ish or Congregation” seem to imply a 
slight difference in the use of the two, the 
one not completely coinciding with the 
other. The Yestry sign testimonials as 
representatives of the Parish or Congrega¬ 
tion (Tit. i., Can. ii., \ 3 ; Can. vi., $ 2). A 
clergyman can be rector of a Parish or Con¬ 
gregation (Tit. i., Can. xiv., g 2, $4). The 
term “ Congregation ” is a broader term here 
than “ Parish,” for a Congregation must ex¬ 
ist in a Parish, but a Congregation may not 
be organized into a Parish, therefore all 
general directions about music, about Con¬ 
gregations within the Territory of one 
Bishop placing themselves under the juris¬ 
diction of another, use simply the term Con¬ 
gregation. The mere gathering of a Congre¬ 
gation needs the authority of no Canon, but 
when this Congregation attempts to organ¬ 
ize, then it must take the steps pointed out 
by the Canons, both of the Church at large 
and the special ones of the Diocese, in order 
to become a Parish. Still, since the Parish 
is a regular organization, and the Congre¬ 
gation is a body with looser cohesion, and 
since for certain purposes the Church rightly 
speaks of the Congregation, the Parish, 
which can often act solely through its re¬ 
presentatives, the Yestry, must in some 
capacities act as a Congregation also. 

Connecticut, Diocese of. Connecticut 
was not, like some of her sister colonies, 
first settled by companies of Churchmen, 
nor had she, like others, royal governors 
who brought with them the forms of the 
national Church and in some sense estab¬ 
lished it within their jurisdiction. To be 
sure, the Rev. Messrs. Hooker and Stone, 
who led the settlers of Hartford in 1635 a.d., 
and the Rev. John Davenport, who was the 
founder of New Haven in 1638 a.d., had all 
received Holy Orders in the Church of Eng¬ 
land ; but it was far from their purpose to 
build up in the forests of Connecticut and 
by the side of her pleasant waters a Church 
which should extend to a new land her doc¬ 
trine, discipline, and worship. It need 
hardly be said that the colonists were of one 
mind with their teachers, that it was in¬ 
tended that each of the towns which were 
organized in the early days should contain 
(or, to use the words of the theory, should 
Tbe) a “ Church of Christ,” of the pure 
Congregational type. Yet it was as early as 




CONNECTICUT 


170 


CONNECTICUT 


1664 a.d., a year before the New Haven col¬ 
ony was united to Connecticut,—Saybrook 
had been merged in this latter at an earlier 
date,—that "William Pitkin and others peti¬ 
tioned the General Assembly in regard to 
privileges which they claimed as members of 
the Church of England, but which were with¬ 
held from them by the ecclesiastical author¬ 
ity here. But the first expression of a wish 
for the services of the Church seems to have 
come from a few Churchmen in Stratford 
about 1690 a.d., though it does not appear 
that any petition for a missionary was made 
till 1702 a.d., in which year two missionaries 
of the recently founded Society for the Propa¬ 
gation of the Gospel, the llev. Messrs. George 
Keith and John Talbot, visited New London 
and preached there. Three years later, the 
Stratford Churchmen applied to the Rev. 
Mr. Vesey, rector of Trinity Church, New 
York, for his assistance, and in 1706 a.d. 
the Rev. George Muirson, missionary at Rye 
in New York colony, began to officiate for 
them, being ably encouraged by a layman 
whose name should always be held in honor, 
Col. Caleb Heathcote. In April, 1707 a.d., 
the parish of Christ Church, Stratford, was 
roganized ; but Mr. Muirson soon died, and it 
was left without a settled clergyman for more 
than fifteen years. In 1708 a.d. occurred two 
events of interest in the ecclesiastical his¬ 
tory of Connecticut; the Congregational and 
the Presbyterian elements in the colony were 
united under the Saybrook platform of gov¬ 
ernment, and the General Assembly in¬ 
cluded in the act which authorized it a 
clause for “the relief of sober dissenters,” 
not freeing them from taxes for the support, 
of the standing order, but removing the 
penalty for non-attendance at its services. 
But we do not hear of any sign of activity 
and hardly of life on the part of the Church 
until on Trinity Sunday, 1722 a.d., the Rev. 
George Pigot took charge of the parish at 
Stratford. 

In this year (1722 a.d.) is properly dated 
the foundation of the Church in Connecticut; 
yet not from Mr. Pigot’s labors, but from a 
most remarkable event, which is almost, if 
not quite, unparalleled in history, and which 
had its origin in the influence of “ the first 
missionary of our Church in Connecticut, 
the Book of Common Prayer,” and in par¬ 
ticular of a copy of it which belonged to 
Mr. Smithson, of Guilford. That book had 
been studied, while he was yet a boy, by 
Samuel Johnson, who was graduated at 
Yale College and became for several years its 
tutor, and then Congregational pastor in 
West Haven, being held in high reputation 
for his abilities and his learning. With him 
other ministers of the standing order had 
joined in the study of the questions sug¬ 
gested by the Prayer-Book ; and they had 
met in the college library to read and to 
discuss such books as Archbishop King’s 
“ Inventions of Men in the Worship of 
God,” Scott’s “ Christian Life,” and other 
writings of English divines. Among these 


ministers were Mr. Timothy Cutler, the 
Rector of the College, for ten years (1709- 
1719 a.d.) pastor at Stratford ; Mr. Daniel 
Brown, its only other officer of instruction ; 
Mr. James Wetmore, of North Haven ; Mr. 
Jared Eliot, of Killingwood; Mr. John 
Hart, of East Guilford; and Mr. Samuel 
Whitlesey, of Wallingford. The result of 
their studies appeared on the day after the 
Commencement in 1722 a.d., when the seven 
ministers just named made a declaration that 
“ some of them doubted of the validity, and 
the rest were more fully persuaded of the 
invalidity, of the Presbyterian ordination in 
opposition to the Episcopal.” The declara- t 
tion caused great consternation and excite¬ 
ment. A public disputation was held, 
which was moderated by Governor Salton- 
stall, himself a Congregational minister, who 
had had great influence in the framing and 
adoption of the Saybrook platform, and who, 
it may be noted, had entertained Keith and 
Talbot at their visit to New London twenty 
years before. The result was that some of 
the doubters were persuaded to remain in 
their former positions ; but Messrs. Johnson, 
Cutler, and Brown were not moved from 
their determination to seek holy orders at 
the hands of a Bishop ; they sailed for Eng¬ 
land, where they were ordained in March, 
1723, and they were soon followed by Mr. 
Wetmore. Mr. Brown died in England 
soon after his ordination, but the others re¬ 
turned as missionaries of the Society for the 
Propagation of the Gospel, Mr. Johnson be¬ 
ing authorized to take up the work at Strat¬ 
ford, while Dr. Cutler (he had received the 
Divinity degree at Oxford) was sent to Bos¬ 
ton, Mass., and Mr. Wetmore to Rye, New 
York. The progress of the Church in Con¬ 
necticut was worthy of this wonderful be¬ 
ginning. Based on earnest conviction, fos¬ 
tered by earnest devotion, led by men of 
learning “ well reported of among all the 
people,” who testified their sincerity by 
giving up all they had and risking the dan¬ 
gers of si£ thousand miles of sea-voyage, be¬ 
sides the no less real dangers of pestilence 
and the violence of enemies, it was strong 
and courageous in itself, and it commanded 
the respect of its adversaries. With scarce 
an exception its clergy were natives of the 
colony and educated among their own peo¬ 
ple ; at first they came from the ranks of 
the ministry of the Congregational order or 
from among those who were preparing for 
it; and all that was excellent in the charac¬ 
ter or in the religious convictions of the peo¬ 
ple was exhibited in them. In Connecticut, 
if anywhere, the Church was accepted on her 
own merits, and on her own merits she stood. 
Within eleven years after Johnson’s return to 
Stratford five other parishes were organized : 
one at Eairfield in 1727 a.d., another at New 
London under Samuel Seabury (father of 
the Bishop) in 1732 a.d., at Newtown and 
Redding under John Beach, and at Hebron 
in 1734 a.d. , and in 1736 a.d. it was estimated 
that there were seven hundred Church fani- 




CONNECTICUT 


171 


CONNECTICUT 


ilies in the colony. Meanwhile, in 1727 a.d., 
the Legislature had passed a law which al¬ 
lowed the members of any settled ecclesi¬ 
astical society to pay their ecclesiastical 
taxes for the support of their own services 
instead of those of the standing order. The 
visit of Dean Berkeley to America had not 
been without its effects in Connecticut. He 
had resided in Rhode Island from 1729 a.d. to 
1731 a.d. , and though he was disappointed 
in his project of establishing a college in Ber¬ 
muda and founding Bishoprics in the colonies, 
his influence had been great, and the books 
which he gave to Yale College and the schol¬ 
arships which he endowed there extended 
that influence after his return. Soon great 
theological and religious controversies were 
rising in the colony. A period of irreligion 
and ungodliness had come upon the descend¬ 
ants of the pious settlers; and then in 1740 a.d. 
the great awakening began. In the midst 
of the excitement Mr. George Whitefield 
visited the eastern part of Connecticut and 
gave much encouragement to the “ New 
Lights,” as those were called who favored a 
change from the former religious beliefs and 
methods. Many irregularities attended the 
whole movement; and the strange speeches 
and actions of Whitefield and James Dav¬ 
enport, encouraging separation,and after a 
while finding it necessary to purify the sep¬ 
aratists, distressed and alarmed devout peo¬ 
ple and threw many into a most unnatural 
and unhealthy frame of mind. The harm 
produced by the New Lights or feared from 
them was so great that in 1742 a.d. the law in 
favor of sober dissenters was repealed. In 
all these troubles the calm teaching of the 
Church was able to save many from undue 
enthusiasm or from utter recklessness, and 
her influence was constantly on the gain. 
Thirty years later, in 1774 a.d., the Congre- 
gationalists estimated that the Episcopalians, 
with their twenty clergymen and forty 
churches, were one-thirteenth part of all the 
inhabitants of the colony. It need hardly 
be said that all along the need of a Bishop 
was keenly felt, and petitions were sent again 
and again to the Bishops of the English 
Church,—formally as early as 1742, and in 
a more informal manner in the letters and 
reports of the missionaries. Many brave 
lives were sacrificed, one-fifth part of those 
who left Connecticut to apply for holy 
orders never returning. The ^ause of Amer¬ 
ican Episcopacy had friends in England, 
but the constant reply to the petitions was 
non possumus. Then came the political 
troubles and the war of the Revolution. 
Most of the clergy were faithful to the Brit¬ 
ish crown, as well from principle as from the 
obligation of their ordination vows, and per¬ 
sisted for a time in the use of the Prayer- 
Book with all the state prayers. Their suf¬ 
ferings were great and were patiently en¬ 
dured, and they suffered sometimes as much 
from the violence of the British troops as 
from the patriotism of the revolutionists. 
During the war two of the clergy died, 


three went within the British lines, and one 
to England, leaving thirteen within thelimits 
of the State, and one in Great Barrington, 
Mass., which was reckoned ecclesiastically 
with Connecticut. Of these fourteen, it is 
worthy of mention, twelve were born in 
Connecticut, one in New Hampshire, and 
one in New York, and none of them had 
had any other than Episcopal ordination, 
though two had been Congregational licen¬ 
tiates. 

A preliminary treaty of peace was signed 
November 30, 1782 a.d., and news of it 
was received on this side of the ocean early 
in 1783 a.d. The Connecticut clergy doubt¬ 
less thought much on the course of events 
and consulted with each other ; and they 
were ready to act. Moreover, they were 
alarmed at the tenor of a pamphlet published 
by the Rev. Dr. (afterwards Bishop) White 
in 1782 a.d., advocating, at least as a tem¬ 
porary expedient under their existing cir¬ 
cumstances, the adoption by American 
Churchmen of a Presbyterian form of gov¬ 
ernment. They therefore came together at 
the earliest possible day. Ten of the four¬ 
teen clergymen met at the rectory in Wood¬ 
bury on the festival of the Annunciation in 
1783 a.d., the rector, the Rev. John Rutgers 
Marshall, probably presiding, and the Rev. 
Abraham Jarvis acting as Secretary. They 
decided to do two things : to elect a Bishop 
and to reply to Dr. White’s pamphlet. 
Their first choice for the Episcopate was the 
venerable and honored Rev. Jeremiah 
Learning, till lately of Norwalk, a defender 
of the Church and a sufferer for her sake; 
and, in case (as seemed likely) his age and 
infirmities should force him to decline the 
burden, they decided to ask the Rev. Dr. 
Samuel Seabury to undertake it. Dr. Sea- 
bury was the son of a faithful clergyman, 
a native of New London, of strong and vig¬ 
orous character, well known and highly 
esteemed in the State. The Secretary was 
to go to New York, to consult with Mr. 
Learning and Dr. Seabury, and to arrange 
as to testimonials and letters of commenda¬ 
tion ; and the clergy directed him to instruct 
the one who should go to England to ask 
for consecration, that, if his petition was 
unsuccessful there, he should go to Scotland 
and seek the Episcopate at the hands of the 
bishops of the disestablished Church in that 
country. The clergy also authorized Mr. 
Jarvis to write a letter to Dr. White, point¬ 
ing out the dangerous consequences of the 
ideas which he had advanced in his pam¬ 
phlet, assuring him that they were utterly 
opposed to the principles of Connecticut 
Churchmen, and urging that at least noth¬ 
ing of the kind ought to be advanced until 
a request for the Episcopate had been made 
and rejected. It was found that Mr. Learn¬ 
ing felt it impossible for him to accept the 
election which was offered him ; and Dr. 
Seabury sailed for England not far from the 
time when the formal proclamation of peace 
was made, and arrived in London July 7 , 




CONNECTICUT 


172 


CONNECTICUT 


1783 a.d., several months before the evacu¬ 
ation of New York. The story of his 
sojourn in England cannot be told at length 
here. The English Bishops sought and ob 
tained from Parliament permission to ordain 
Deacons and Priests for the United States ; 
but the Erastian notions which prevailed in 
this Church, the machinations of English 
politicians, and the arguments of influential 
Congregationalists in Connecticut prevented 
the consecration of a Bishop. Yet Dr. Sea- 
bury waited for more than a year, till at 
last, losing all hope of an English consecra¬ 
tion, he decided to act upon the instructions 
given him at the time of his election, sec¬ 
onded as they were by the advice of Eng¬ 
lish friends, and to make application to the 
Bishops of the Scotch Church. The answer 
came from them almost at once, that they 
would freely give him what they had, “a 
free, valid, and purely Ecclesiastical Episco¬ 
pacy, ” and he turned his steps to Aberdeen. 

There, on Sunday, November 14, 1784 
a.d., in the chapel within Bishop Skinner’s 
house in Long Acre, the worshiping-place 
of a large congregation, he was consecrated 
Bishop of Connecticut by three of the four 
Bishops of Scotland,—the Rt. Rev. Robert 
Kilgour, Bishop of Aberdeen and Primus, 
the Rt. Rev. Arthur Petrie, Bishop of Ross 
and Moray, and the Rt. Rev. John Skinner, 
Bishop Coadjutor of Aberdeen. On the fol¬ 
lowing day Bishop Seabury signed a “ Con- 
cordate” with his consecrators, in which 
they covenanted communion in faith and in 
ecclesiastical matters, and Bishop Seabury 
promised to use his influence for the intro¬ 
duction of the Scotch Eucharistic office into 
his Diocese. The Bishop returned to Con¬ 
necticut to find but nine clergymen left, one 
having gone to another State and four hav¬ 
ing withdrawn, under British influence, to 
Nova Scotia. On the 2d of August, 1785 
a.d., the clergy met their Bishop at Mid¬ 
dleton ; on the 3d they formally acknowl¬ 
edged and received him, and he ordained four 
candidates to the diaconate ; on the follow¬ 
ing day he delivered his primary charge; 
and on the 5th a committee was appointed to 
act with the Bishop in setting forth such 
changes as should be thought necessary in 
the Prayer-Book, in consequence of which 
appointment a few amendments, relating to 
the State prayers, were duly published a 
week later. There was a strong disinclina¬ 
tion to make any other changes in the ser¬ 
vices, and it does not appear that any action 
was taken upon the further recommenda¬ 
tions of the committee. But almost imme¬ 
diately after the publication of the “ Pro¬ 
posed Book” drawn up by the Philadelphia 
Convention of 1785 a.d., and probablyin con¬ 
sequence of it, Bishop Seabury set forth and 
recommended for use a Communion office, 
almost identical with the Scotch office, dif¬ 
fering from the English in matters of ar¬ 
rangement, and especially in having a dis¬ 
tinct and formal Oblation and Invocation 
in their primitive order after the words of 


Institution. (This Scotch office must not be 
confused with that in the so-called Arch¬ 
bishop Laud’s book of 1637 a.d., which was 
quite different; it is a lineal descendant of the 
Non-Jurors’ office of 1718 a.d.) Many things 
seeming to prevent a union between Connect¬ 
icut and the Dioceses to the south, the clergy, 
in February, 1786 a.d., decided to elect a 
coadjutor Bishop, thinking that it might be 
necessary to have a complete College of Bish¬ 
ops in the Scotch line ; and Mr. Learning and 
Mr. Mansfield both declining, Mr. Jarvis was 
elected. But he did not decide at once, and 
the whole project was abandoned, when, after 
much prayer, much correspondence, and 
much patience, a union was effected with 
the Dioceses which had secured Bishops 
from England. The Rev. Messrs. Bela Hub¬ 
bard and Abraham Jarvis were chosen to 
accompany the Bishop to the Convention at 
Philadelphia at Michaelmas, 1789 a.d. ; and 
on the 2d of October they became members of 
that body, Bishops Seabury and White organ¬ 
izing as the House of Bishops. At this Con¬ 
vention the Prayer-Book was revised, and 
the sound and moderate views of the Bishop 
of Connecticut had great weight in the re¬ 
vision. Especially do we owe it to him that 
the prayer of Consecration in the Commu¬ 
nion office was taken almost exactly from the 
Scotch service. On the 30th of September, 
1790 a.d. , the clergy of Connecticut voted to 
confirm the doings of their proctors in the 
General Convention (the Rev. James Sayre 
being the only dissentient) and to adopt the 
new Prayer-Book ; but the use of Bishop 
Seabury’s Communion office was not alto¬ 
gether abandoned for some thirty years. 
In the same year a College of Doctors was 
established; but it is not mentioned after 
1792 a.d. , having been displaced by the 
Standing Committee, which was first chosen 
in 1791 a.d. The members of the Standing 
Committee were all clergymen; and it has 
been the uniform law of the Diocese to this 
day, with the exception of the year 1818 a.d., 
that they should all be chosen from the cler¬ 
ical order. Delegates of the laity had met 
with the clergy in 1788 a.d. to consult con¬ 
cerning the Bishop’s salary ; but the laity 
were not summoned to sit in Convention 
till 1792 a.d. , when it was necessary to 
elect deputies of each order to the General 
Convention. This was, therefore, in one 
sense the first Convention of the Diocese; 
the convocations of the clergy began many 
years before a Bishop was elected, and con¬ 
tinued to be held regularly for many years 
after. The revival of the Church in Con¬ 
necticut under Bishop Seabury was most 
real and permanent. To increase and con¬ 
firm its prosperity, he felt it necessary to es¬ 
tablish an institution for Church education, 
and in 1788 a.d. steps were taken for the 
foundation of an Episcopal academy, which 
was permanently located at Cheshire in 1796 
a.d. Though sometimes called Seabury Col¬ 
lege, a collegiate charter could not be obtained 
for it from the Legislature. In the midst of 





CONNECTICUT 


173 


CONNECTICUT 


active work for the good of his diocese and 
of his parish in New London, Bishop Sea- 
bury died on the 25th of February, 1796 a.d. 
He had ordained forty-eight Deacons and 
forty-three Priests, and had confirmed a 
very large number of persons in Connecti¬ 
cut, Khode Island, and elsewhere. It may 
he noted that he had been Bishop of Rhode 
Island since 1790 a.d., though there was no 
union of the Dioceses. 

The Rev. Dr. Abraham Jarvis was chosen 
in May, 1796 a.d., to succeed Bishop Sea- 
bury, but he declined the Episcopate, as did 
also the Rev. John Bowden, principal of the 
Episcopal Academy. In June, 1797 a.d., 
Dr. Jarvis was again elected ; and on the 18th 
of October he was consecrated in Trinity 
Church, New Haven, by Bishops White, 
Provoost, and Bass. His Episcopate of six¬ 
teen years was a quiet one, except for the 
persistent annoyance caused him by Ammi 
Rogers, whom he had deposed from the 
ministry. The establishment of the Church¬ 
man's Magazine in 1804 a.d. and the se¬ 
curing of additional facilities for the work 
of the academy at Cheshire, were among 
the signs of growth and prosperity. The 
trustees of the Bishop’s Fund were chartered 
in 1799 a.d., though they were not organ¬ 
ized till 1813 a.d. Bishop Jarvis died 
May 3, 1813 a.d., and, chiefly for financial 
reasons, there was much delay in the choice 
of a successor. In 1815 a.d., the Rev. John 
Croes was elected, but he was soon after 
chosen to New Jersey, and accepted that 
Diocese; and in the following year Bishop 
Hobart, of New York, was “ requested to 
visit and perform the Episcopal offices in 
this Diocese,” which he accordingly did, 
confirming very large numbers of persons 
in different places. Meanwhile, matters 
were ripening in Connecticut for the mixed 
political and religious revolution of 1818 
a.d., in which year, by the adoption of a 
State Constitution (though by a small ma¬ 
jority), the establishment of the Congrega¬ 
tional order was broken. This event was 
preceded and followed by a long war of 
pamphlets, in which the champions of the 
Church showed zeal and ability. The revo¬ 
lution did much to strengthen the Church 
in material things, though it brought into 
the civil membership of its parishes many 
who did not become communicants. The 
Bishop’s Fund was increased in part by a 
gift from the State of one-seventh of the 
amount repaid by the general government 
on account of money paid out during the 
war of independence, and in part by another 
grant from the Legislature, and on the 2d 
day of June, 1819 a.d., the Convention pro¬ 
ceeded to the election of a Bishop. Thirty- 
three clergymen and fifty-four lay delegates 
were present, only five of the latter being 
from parishes on the east side of the Connec¬ 
ticut River. The choice fell upon the Rev. 
Dr. T. C. Brownell, an assistant minister of 
Trinity Church, New York, sometime pro¬ 
fessor in Union College, and he was con¬ 


secrated in Trinity Church, New Haven, on 
the 27th of October, by Bishops White, Ho¬ 
bart, and Griswold. Bishop Brownell en¬ 
tered upon his work with vigor, and aided 
it by timely publications of much value. He 
was deeply interested in education, and in 
1820 a.d. the General Theological Semi¬ 
nary was removed to New Haven, where it 
remained about two years. Renewed at¬ 
tempts were made to secure a charter for a 
college, and at last, in 1823 a.d., the relig¬ 
ious bodies other than the Congregational- 
ists uniting with the Church, Washington 
College was incorporated by the Legislature, 
and Bishop Brownell was chosen its first 
president. In 1845 a.d. its name was 
changed to Trinity College. A Christian 
Knowledge Society for discussing missionary 
purposes had been chartered in 1818 a.d., 
and a Church Scholarship Society for assist¬ 
ance to young men in their studies for the 
ministry was founded in 1827 a.d., while 
in 1855 a.d. a charter was obtained for the 
Fund for Aged and Infirm Clergy and 
Clergymen’s Widows. Bishop Brownell’s 
Episcopate is a long record of faithful labor 
and wise counsel on his part, and of rapid 
growth following the blessing of God upon 
it. In 1831 a.d. he retired from the presi¬ 
dency of the college that he might devote 
all his time to the work of the Diocese. At 
the end of a quarter of a century from the 
time of his consecration the number of 
the clergy had increased to a hundred, and 
among them were many whose names were 
prominent in the church,—none more so 
than that of the learned Dr. S. F. Jarvis. 
At the Convention of 1851 a.d. the Bishop 
asked for an assistant, and the Conven¬ 
tion elected the Rev. John Williams, Pres¬ 
ident of Trinity College, who was conse¬ 
crated in St. John’s Church, Hartford, on 
the 29th day of October. Bishop Williams 
remained for three years at the head of the 
college, and a theological department grew 
up there under his supervision, which was 
removed in 1854 a.d., when he resigned the 
presidency, to Middletown, where it was in¬ 
corporated as the Berkeley Divinity School, 
and it has been no unimportant part of the 
work of Bishop Williams’s Episcopate that 
he has trained there so many of the clergy 
of the Church. The educational equipment 
of the Diocese was completed in 1875 a.d. 
by the establishment of St. Margaret’s Dio¬ 
cesan School for Girls in Waterbury. After 
1859 a.d. , Bishop Brownell was not able to 
attend the Conventions, and on the 13th of 
January, 1865 a.d., he died, having held the 
Episcopate for more than forty-five years, 
during the latter twelve of which he had 
been presiding Bishop of the Church in the 
United States. During the thirty-two years 
which have passed since Bishop Williams’s 
election the number of confirmations has 
been about 31,500, the proportional increase 
in the number of communicants has ex¬ 
ceeded that of the population of the State 
and that of any other religious body within 






CONSANGUINITY 


174 


CONSCIENCE 


it, the present number being about 22,000, 
and the number of Deacons ordained has 
been 283, or about one-fifteenth of the whole 
number of the clergy now in the country. 
The number of clergy canonically resident 
in the Diocese at the time of the last Con¬ 
vention was 187. The contributions reported 
for the preceding year for parochial expenses 
and salaries were about $400,000; for dio¬ 
cesan missions and other charitable objects 
within the Diocese, $23,000 ; and for Church 
and charitable objects without the Diocese, 
$14,000. It should be noted here that in 
1865 a.d. the question of a division of the 
Diocese was discussed ; but since the follow¬ 
ing year nothing has been heard of it in the 
Conventions. Until 1878 a.d. the organiza¬ 
tion of all the parishes had been by State law 
under the Congregational form as ecclesiasti¬ 
cal societies ; in that year legislative author¬ 
ity was obtained for organization in a more 
churchly way and under the provisions of a 
Canon. 

Two simple facts.go a long ways in show¬ 
ing the influence of the Church in Connecti¬ 
cut. The one is, that, at least since 1790 a.d., 
the public fast has been annually appointed 
by the Governor of the State on Good- 
Eriday ; the other, that there are within the 
limits of the State but two houses of worship 
of the Unitarian denomination. 

Rev. Prof. S. Hart. 

Consanguinity. Relationship by blood, 
as compared with Affinity, or relationship 
by marriage. Blood relationship within 
certain degrees has always been held an im¬ 
pediment to marriage. What those degrees 
are, beyond what the Civil Law has deter¬ 
mined, has not been authoritatively settled 
by the Church in this country, though the 
Bishops have recommended, without en¬ 
deavoring to bring the matter up in form, 
the adoption of the English Law, which is 
based upon the Levitical Table (Lev. xviii. 
6 - 21 ). 

Conscience. Few words in any language 
are used with a greater variety of mean¬ 
ings or with more indefiniteness of signifi¬ 
cation than the word conscience. When 
the translation of our Bible that is now in 
use was made, and for many years after¬ 
wards, we had but the one word con¬ 
science for the two classes of mental phe¬ 
nomena, which we now indicate by the 
two forms of the words, —conscience and 
consciousness. By the latter we mean, 
primarily and in the strictest sense, the 
means, or process rather, by which we know, 
immediately, what is going on in our own 
minds,—our thoughts and feelings, our pur¬ 
poses and aims, our hopes and fears,—as 
when we say I am conscious of perusing this 
paper, of remembering an event that oc- 
cured yesterday, and so forth. Thus, in a 
secondary sense, we mean by the word the 
knowledge itself, which we have by this 
means, and we speak of the knowledge as a 
matter of consciousness,—or as being “in 
consciousness,”—and finally, with a wider 


departure from the more strict and proper 
sense of the word, we often speak of the 
objects that are perceived or known as 
matters of consciousness. This is especially 
a view and a use of the word to which Sir 
William Hamilton has given rise and 
which he has brought into a certain degree 
of currency and recognition. 

But by the word “ conscious” we mean 
primarily our means of knowing what is 
right and our duty. Thus we denote the 
knowledge itself by the word ; this latter 
use of the original word—that is, the sig¬ 
nifications that we now denote by con¬ 
science —prevailed in the earlier part of our 
history, and the latter—that is, what we now 
mean by consciousness —did not begin to at¬ 
tract any considerable amount of attention, 
and consequently did not need a separate 
term to denote it, until quite recently, and 
in fact not until after men had begun to 
study mental philosophy more carefully and 
more distinctly as a matter of observation 
and careful analysis. The word “con¬ 
science” occurs in our English Bible some 
thirty times, while the word “ conscious¬ 
ness” does not occur at all. There are, 
however, several places in which this latter 
form of the word would better express the 
meaning than that one which is used; thus, 
St. Paul (1 Cor. viii. 7) says, “for some 
with conscience of the idol eat.” It would 
be better “consciousness of the idol,” or 
knowledge of the fact that it is an idol. So 
again (2 Cor. i. 12), St. Paul says, “ the tes¬ 
timony of our conscience,” when, in the 
more modern use, most persons would say 
consciousness,—that is, “ we are conscious, 
or know from consciousness,” “that in sim¬ 
plicity and godly sincerity we have had our 
conversation in the world, and more abun¬ 
dantly to you-ward.” 

It is hardly worth while to attempt, in 
this place, to describe or discuss all the 
theories that have been proposed with regard 
to the nature and functions of conscience, 
in this more restricted and most proper 
sense and use of the word. Bishop Butler, 
something more than a hundred years ago, 
gave great currency to the use of the word, 
and a far greater precision to its meaning, 
than it had had before. His view is that 
every created being has in its nature an in¬ 
dication of the end and purpose for which it 
was created, and, if a living being at all, it 
has certain faculties and instincts which, 
when taken together with a knowledge of 
its constitution, indicate very clearly how it 
should live and what it ought to do in order 
to accomplish the proper end of its being. 
Thus, as the eyes, ears, etc., of man not only 
enable him to see and to hear, so also they 
very clearly indicate that he ought to use 
these sense-organs, and take good heed to, 
and make proper use of, what he sees and 
hears, etc. This is an inward faculty to in¬ 
dicate what he ought to do with reference 
to the higher or moral qualities of the 
actions from among which he is to make 





CONSCIENCE 


175 


CONSCIENCE 


his choice and determine what he will do. 
“ Now,” says the Bishop (Sermons on Hu¬ 
man Nature, ser. ii.), “ obligations of virtue 
shown, and motives to the practice of it en¬ 
forced, from a review of the nature of man 
are to be considered as an appeal to each 
particular person’s heart and natural con¬ 
science, as the external senses are appealed 
to for proof of things cognizable by them-.” 
And he claims that we have as much right 
“ to argue from these inward feelings to 
conclusions about our duty as from what we 
learn by the eyes and ears in regard to objects 
in the outer world. A man can as little 
doubt,” says he, “ whether his eyes were 
given him to see with as he can doubt of the 
truth of the science of optics deduced from 
ocular experiments. And allowing the in¬ 
ward feeling, shame, a man can as little 
doubt whether it was given him to prevent 
his doing shameful actions as he can doubt 
whether his eyes were given him to guide 
his steps.” 

The question is sometimes raised and dis¬ 
cussed, whether the conscience is a separate 
faculty of the mind or not. But the ques¬ 
tion itself implies a mistake with regard to 
the mind,—a misconception with regard to 
its nature and modes of operation. The mis¬ 
take arises from the notion that the mind is 
made up of parts or “ faculties,” as the body 
is made lip of organs, each one of them 
performing a separate task or function, as 
the heart, the lungs, the stomach, in the 
body; or that, as we have different organs 
of sense for the various kinds of knowledge 
that we get of the objects around us, as the 
eyes for their colors, the ears for their 
sounds, etc., so the mind must have facul¬ 
ties for each one of its kinds of activity, 
as one faculty for perception, another for 
imagination, and so on, including conscience 
among them as the faculty that sees and dis¬ 
tinguishes between right and wrong. This, 
however, is acknowledged to be a mistaken 
view as soon as the attention is carefully 
drawn to the subject. The mind is one, 
and while it uses the eyes to see with and 
the ears for hearing, and the brain as its 
organ and instrument of thinking, remem¬ 
bering, etc., it is itself one, undivided and 
indivisible, so far as we know anything on 
the subject. 

If, then, there is no faculty of the mind 
that can be called conscience in this sense, 
what we call conscience must be the result 
of natural instinct and education or acquired 
mental habit. There are those who would 
claim that conscience is “ the voice of God 
within us,” and in a certain sense,—and 
that, too, a very important sense,—which we 
will consider very soon, this view is un¬ 
doubtedly correct. This was the view taken 
by Socrates, the first and the greatest of the 
Greek philosophers who distinctly con¬ 
sidered the subject. He called it his “good 
spirit,” that was always in him, guiding 
him to a knowledge of his duty and restrain¬ 
ing him when he had a thought of doing 


what he ought not to do. I think there can 
be no doubt that St. Paul had very much 
the same view,—that is, St. Paul belieVed 
and taught that every man has within him 
a light and a guide to right and duty, which 
he regarded as the voice or influence of God, 
—the Holy Ghost. 

What we thus call conscience, in our 
modern use of the word, as it seems in the 
light of the latest and best discussions of the 
subject, is the result of three elements : 

(1) There is a natural instinct in man 
which is analogous to the instincts that 
guide the brutes in all they do,—which in 
man is a guide in the higher walk of con¬ 
scious motives and voluntary choice, into 
which the brutes can never enter. He feels 
a conscious approval of certain feelings, as 
love, good will, generosity, and, in fact, all 
the feelings and motives that we call good 
and virtuous; and, on the other hand, a 
conscious disapproval of their opposites, as 
enmity, spite, and such like. Here man ap¬ 
proves or disapproves of himself and of his 
actions according as they proceed from mo¬ 
tives of one or the other of these two classes. 
This is the foundation, the ineradicable and 
the indestructible basis of morality among 
men. 

(2) There is, secondly, another element in 
conscience; for conscience is not all feel¬ 
ing,—it is insight or knowledge as well. It 
is very manifest that we have very early an 
insight into the nature and tendency of ac¬ 
tions, we see what effect they will have, con¬ 
sidered irrespective of any motives that may 
prompt us to perform them. Good motives 
sometimes lead to wrong actions. Hence we 
judge actions not only by the motives that 
the}' may proceed from, but also and as well 
by the consequences to which they may lead. 
And the two methods are usually and for the 
most part in harmony and lead to the same 
result. But it often happens, in the course 
of our experience, that our motives or 
feelings in regard to an act or a course of 
actions changes with our experience and a 
better knowledge of the consequences that 
flow from it. The first fruits or effects of an 
act may be such as we can approve, while a 
knowledge of the more remote consequences 
are such as to be vastly more important, and 
such in their character that no good man 
can choose the act with the motives which 
should actuate him or such as his conscience 
can approve. 

(3) But, in the third place, a large element 
of what we ordinarily call conscience is the 
result of education and of acquired habit. 
We are told early in our lives that some 
things are wrong, and that we must not do 
them, and that others are right, and that we 
ought to do them. And thus we grow up 
with many principles or rules of action,— 
many of the dictates of our conscience, as 
we may call them,—which are the result of 
education and habit, without any clear in¬ 
sight or knowledge of the reasons why the 
course of action to which they lead ought to 





CONSCIENCE 


176 


CONSCIENCE 


be regarded as right, rather than avoided as 
wrong. What we thus learn to do as right 
and duty we grow up with the habit of re¬ 
garding as right and part of our duty,—part 
of the dictates of conscience. 

Of the three elements thus named as enter¬ 
ing into what we call conscience, the first con¬ 
stitutes what we sometimes call man’s moral 
nature, which was undoubtedly at first pure 
and upright. But it is a question to be con¬ 
sidered, and one of great practical impor¬ 
tance, how far it has been corrupted or de¬ 
praved by the fall. That it has been cor¬ 
rupted or deadened by the inherited depravity 
of our nature admits of no doubt. But how 
far and in what respects it is to be distrusted 
on this account is a question that we n.eed 
not now discuss or consider. The second 
element named above constitutes what we 
sometimes call “reason,” or “the light of 
nature.” And this most assuredly is never 
infallible in any one of us. Invaluable as a 
guide it is undoubtedly, and by means of it 
we are often able to rise above the notions 
and principles of action that prevail in the 
community where we live, and thus to do 
something towards introducing a better state 
of morals among our friends and neighbors. 
We become reformers and help to elevate 
the lives of men to a higher plane. The 
third element constitutes what we call edu¬ 
cation, and in this there is always one part 
that consists of the religious views that we 
have inherited, or rather have been taught 
as a part of our education. But the com¬ 
munity where we live is never altogether 
perfect and our teachers are never infallible. 

Now it is a question whether over and 
above these three elements, or as acting in 
and through the first and second named, 
there is any special Divine influence to be 
recognized and taken into the account. It 
would seem to be the teaching of St. Paul 
that there is such an influence even among 
the heathen who know not Christ. “For 
when the Gentiles, which have not the law, 
do by nature the things contained in the 
law, these, having not the law, are a law unto 
themselves: which show the work of the 
law written in their hearts , their conscience 
also bearing witness , and their thoughts the 
meanwhile accusing or else excusing one an¬ 
other” (Rom. ii. 14, 15). And then, too, 
in special cases, as that of Cornelius (Acts 
x.). And so likewise with the unconverted 
and the unregenerate in Christian lands, the 
disposition to faith and repentance that leads 
them to accept the Gospel would seem to be 
ascribed to the Holy Ghost as something 
more and different from either of the natural 
elements of conscience that have been de¬ 
scribed above. But to those who have been 
admitted to the covenant relations with God 
there is promised a spiritual guidance in an¬ 
swer to prayer and obedience,—to those who 
will seek it and use it according to the terms 
and promises of God as revealed in His Holy 
Word. This influence comes, for the most 
part, if not wholly and exclusively, in and 


through what we call the conscience, and 
cannot always be discriminated from the 
other elements, especially the first and sec¬ 
ond that are named. 

And if the Holy Scriptures speak of the 
influence of the Holy Ghost leading us to 
think and to do those things that are right, 
they also speak of an Evil One who some¬ 
times puts bad thoughts into our minds and 
leads us to do that which is wrong. Thus 
(Acts v. 3), “ Peter, said Ananias, why hath 
Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy 
Ghost ?” And so also do the Scriptures 
speak of a “defiled conscience” (Titus i. 15), 
and of “a conscience” that is “seared with 
a hot iron” (2 Tim. iv. 2). Of the first we 
know nothing, perhaps, by the light of na¬ 
ture or reason alone, but of the latter we 
have abundant proof and illustration in the 
experience of life. The man who disregards 
his conscience soon comes to have no con¬ 
science at all, especially with reference to 
the wrong that he is doing. The conscience 
not only becomes “defiled,” so as to guide 
us wrongly, and to evil, but it becomes 
dead,—seared as with a hot iron, so that it 
is insensible to guilt. 

From these considerations it is very mani¬ 
fest that although conscience is both the 
voice of our nature—that nature which 
God hath given us—and also a special guid¬ 
ing influence of the Holy Ghost, as the 
voice of God within us, it is not so distinct or 
unmixed with other influences and elements 
that it can be regarded as in all respects in¬ 
fallible. Hence the wisdom of the apparent 
paradox: “Man is always wrong when he 
does contrary to the dictates of his con¬ 
science ; but he is not always right when he 
follows its dictates.” 

To understand and appreciate this para¬ 
dox we must consider the difference between 
the guilt or innocence of the man on the one 
hand, and the rightness or wrongness of 
his acts on the other. Usually we regard 
a man as innocent who acts from proper and 
commendable motives, with due deliberation 
and caution, after having taken all the 
means in his power, or all that the occasion 
requires, to inform himself as to his duty, 
although, even under these circumstances, 
and with all these precautions, he may be 
so unfortunate as to do that which ought 
not to be done and which he may after¬ 
wards see occasion to regret. If, in this 
case, we regard the man, we should say that 
he was innocent and to be pitied, and we 
may believe that, in the sight of God, he is 
so; while, if we look at the act alone, and 
judge by its character and consequences, we 
should not hesitate to pronounce him guilty ; 
he was guilty of the act, though guiltless of 
any bad intention or sinful motive. 

With this understanding, the last part of 
the paradox is readily admitted as resulting 
from the fact that no one is infallible. He 
may think he is right when he is clearly 
in the wrong. He may be conscientious 
when he is actually doing a very bad thing ; 




CONSENT OF ANTIQUITY 177 


CONSTITUTION 


as was St. Paul when, before his conversion, 
he persecuted the Church. He thought 
then, as he says, that he “ ought to do many 
things contrary to the Name of Jesus of 
Nazareth” (Acts xxvi. 9), and he expects 
pardon and favor because he did it igno¬ 
rantly. 

The justice of the other part of the para¬ 
dox appears from the fact that a man’s con¬ 
science is not a mere part of himself, like 
his feet, his hands, or his eyes, but it is him¬ 
self, acting, or rather thinking, in a certain 
way, and about a certain class of things. 
Hence, in this view of conscience, he who 
acts according to his conscience is doing 
what, with the best means of judging and 
deciding at his command, he thinks he 
ought to do; and he who acts contrary to 
his conscience is doing just that which he 
thinks he ought not to do. Hence in doing 
so he is wrong, not necessarily in regard to 
the act he performs,—that may be all right, 
just the thing one ought to do,—but wrong 
in that he is violating the conditions of his 
moral nature, the means of cultivating his 
conscience and of keeping it alive, sensitive 
and true to its duty and its functions. Hence, 
if he follows his conscience, although the act 
may be wrong, he is growing and gaining in 
the strength of his moral nature. And how¬ 
ever man may regard his act, we may well be¬ 
lieve that God looks upon it with favor and 
will forgive it, even if He does not reward 
the man for the good intentions he had, even 
though he falls into error and does the thing 
he ought not ; for error it may be, but sin 
it can hardly be called, however man may 
regard it. 

Conscience is thus seen to be a growing 
faculty or grace. It grows with our moral 
nature. It becomes not onty clearer in its 
indications and directions with regard to 
what it is our duty to do, but it also becomes 
much stronger and more powerful as a 
motive. It becomes quick, too, in its ac¬ 
tions, as quick as the lusts of the flesh or the 
passions of our baser nature. It becomes a 
realization of God’s law written and en¬ 
graved on our hearts. It becomes the 
instinct of our second nature acquired 
through grace, and the struggle of the 
spirit against the flesh in this our warfare 
of life. And it may—and will finally if 
we go on faithful to the end—become 
stronger and more controlling, even as a 
mere matter of instinct, than any of the 
lusts or appetites of our baser natures. 

Kev. W. D. Wilson, D.D. 

Consent of Antiquity. Generally re¬ 
fers to the evidence which the writers of any 
one age of the Church testify to any fact or 
series of facts or any doctrine. The rule 
which has been accepted as the true test by 
the controversial writers of the English 
Church is the ancient rule of St.Vincent of 
Lerins ,—Quod sempe r, quod ubique , quod ab 
omnibus ,” “ What has been always held, held 
everywhere, held by all.” Very many doc¬ 
trines and practices break down as binding 

12 


everywhere. In fact, the Canon of Scrip¬ 
ture is fairly included, since it was inherited 
from the Jewish Church, and so additions 
to it could not be binding while yet the true 
Canon, which was mixed up with the apocry¬ 
phal books in so many places, was yet con¬ 
tained in the lists. But the Canon of Holy 
Scripture has a perfectly satisfactory his¬ 
tory. The Creeds satisfy perfectly this rule. 
The Lord’s day has this seal. The Apostolic 
rule over the Church has this seal upon it. 
The doctrines bound up within the words of 
the Creed are sanctioned by it. The two 
sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Sup¬ 
per, the rite of Confirmation, the use of 
Liturgies,—these all show the threefold 
stamp of the consent of Christian antiquity. 

Are they therefore binding? Yes. For 
while these have not the very words of 
Christ ordaining them,—apart from the two 
sacraments,—yet they are so interlaced and 
so dependent the one on the other, that the 
witness that they were in use and order 
from Apostolic times makes them binding. 
Since the Canon of Scripture is proven by 
this very consent, exhibited in this three¬ 
fold way, and all else depends upon Scrip¬ 
ture for its ultimate authority, there is a 
binding force in this consent. Other usages 
may be harmless, and may be accepted by 
some part of the Church, but they depend 
upon local authority, and may be laid aside 
by the exercise of the same authority that 
created them ; but no interpretation of doc¬ 
trine and no new teaching can be binding, 
no matter how universally accepted and en¬ 
forced at some one time. We can show the 
date of the new teaching upon Purgatory, 
therefore it was not always held. We can 
show the date of the teaching of Transubstan- 
tiation. It too fails, for it was not always 
held. So of the government of the various 
sects. It was not known in antiquity. It is 
an innovation, therefore it has no authority. 

Consistory. The Court of a Bishop, in 
which the principle is that he is surrounded 
by the representatives of the clergy of his 
Diocese. In modern times the Consistory 
Courts are held by deputy, the Chancellor of 
the Diocese, or the Commissary acting for 
him, being the sole representative of Bishop 
and clergy. The Pope’s Council of Car¬ 
dinals is so called. Many important actions 
can only be taken in Consistory. 

Constitution, Apostolical. A book of 
great value in the evidence it bears to the 
practices of the primitive Church, but 
whose actual date cannot be ascertained. A 
large portion of it—the first six books—was 
compiled, probably from materials of vari¬ 
ous dates, before the year 300 a.d. There 
are two different forms in which it appears, 
and quotations from it in Epiphanius and 
others do not agree with what we have in 
many places. It seems very likely that the 
compilation varied in several sections of 
Asia Minor. There is also a very old Syriac 
and an iEthiopic translation of these six 
books. They contain directions upon almost 





CONSTITUTION 


178 


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every topic of discipline and usage in the 
Church, and form a useful collection of evi¬ 
dence as to the practice in the third and 
fourth centuries. They claim to have been 
written or contributed to by the Apostles 
themselves. There is a parallel line of teach¬ 
ing (though but little direct similarity) in the 
“Paedagogus”and “Stromata” of St. Clement 
of Alexandria (190 a.d.). The seventh and 
eighth books were added later, and form a 
sort of Pontifical (i.e., collection of offices 
of Episcopal ministration) for the Eastern 
Church. The Clementine Liturgy closes the 
eighth book. It is often supposed to have 
been the work of some ritualist, and never 
put in use, but Daniel (Codex Liturgeus, 
Onent. Fasc. i.) tries to show that it was in 
common use in Antioch in St. Chrysostom’s 
time before he arranged his own Liturgy. 
The following outline gives some idea of the 
work. The Constitutions profess on the face 
of them to be the words of the Apostles 
themselves, written down by the hand of 
Clement of Rome. Book I. prescribes in 
great detail the manners and habits of the 
faithful laity. Book II. is concerned chiefly 
with the duties of the Episcopal office, and 
with assemblies for divine worship. Book 
III. relates partly to widows, partly to the 
clergy, and to the administration of baptism. 
Book IY. treats of sustentation of the poor, 
of domestic life, and of virgins. Book V. 
has mainly to do with the subjects of martyrs 
and martyrdom, and with the rules for 
feasts and fasts. Book YI. speaks of schis¬ 
matics and heretics, and enters upon the ques¬ 
tion of the Jewish Law, and of the Apos¬ 
tolic discipline substituted for it, and refers 
incidentally to certain customs and tradi¬ 
tions, both Jewish and Gentile. Book VII. 
describes the two paths, the one of life, the 
other of spiritual death, and follows out this 
idea into several points of daily Christian 
life. Then follow rules for the teaching and 
baptism of catechumens and liturgical prece¬ 
dents of prayer and praise, together with 
a list of Bishops said to have been appointed 
by the Apostles themselves. Book VIII. 
discusses the diversity of spiritual gifts, and 
gives the forms of public prayer and admin¬ 
istration of the Communion, the election 
and ordination of Bishops and other orders 
in the Church, and adds various ecclesias¬ 
tical regulations. (Smith’s Dictionary of 
Christian Antiquities, p. 119, Am. ed.) 
“ With much alloy there is much of the 
most venerable antiquity in these remains” 
(Prof. Blunt, Eccl. Hist.). 

Constitution, Church. A constitution 
is a form of Church law passed by the au¬ 
thority of a single person. A canon is the 
result of legislative deliberation. Constitu¬ 
tions were common in the English Church, 
such as the Constitution of Lanfranc, 1078 
a.d., the famous and important Constitu¬ 
tions of Clarendon, 1164 a.d., the Consti¬ 
tutions of Othobon, 1268 a.d. But the pres¬ 
ent sense of the word is borrowed from the 
political use common to England and Amer¬ 


ica now. It means a charter containing all 
positive fundamental law needed for the 
creation, well-being, and government of the 
body enacting or receiving this charter. In 
the case of the Church, however, this char¬ 
ter of fundamental law has no creative force, 
for the Church has her foundations of God, 
and the Constitution is merely declarative 
of the Church’s rights, privileges, immuni¬ 
ties, and duties. So as she conforms so 
much in her adaptability to all conditions 
of men, she is here (as in no other country) 
governed by the Constitution of the General 
Convention in her national capacity and by 
the several Diocesan Constitutions in her 
local and diocesan work. 

Constitution of the Church. In order tc 
comprehend the scope and bearing of the 
Constitution of what by a strange misnomer 
is called the “ Protestant Episcopal Church 
in the United States of America,” it is es¬ 
sential to consider the source of all legisla¬ 
tive and governmental authority in this and 
in every other National or Provincial 
Church ; also in whom, and how, that author¬ 
ity is vested; and herein particularly whether 
any part or feature of that authority comes 
from Diocesan delegation, or, on the other 
hand, whether all such functions are not in¬ 
herent in the Bishops by virtue of the com¬ 
mission granted by our dear Lord Jesus 
Christ to His holy Apostles and their suc¬ 
cessors “even unto the end of the world.” 
And, in considering these propositions, there 
must be kept clearly in view the distinction 
between inherent functions themselves and 
the mere matter of arrangement of territorial 
lines within which to exercise the same. 
The Church was founded by Almighty God 
Himself; hence is Divine. From Adam to 
Jacob it was patriarchal and embraced in 
particular families. The external govern¬ 
ment was paternal, the father being by 
Divine appointment teacher and ruler of his 
household and descendants, dictating to them 
the true worship of God, transmitting His 
blessings, pronouncing His judgments, and, 
as prophet, declaring His promises and 
threatenings. The Fathers or Patriarchs 
were not only princes and governors, but 
also were Priests of the Church. Except 
when otherwise especially appointed of God, 
the eldest son of the Patriarchal family was 
by Him set apart and consecrated to be Priest 
in the Church, endowed with the princely 
prerogative of being lord over his brethren, 
and succeeding his father in chieftaincy and 
government. 

After Jacob, God established the Leviti- 
cal Priesthood, choosing out of the Twelve 
Tribes of Israel that of Levi to govern and 
minister in holy things ; and in this tribe He 
likewise instituted superiors and inferiors, in 
respect both to declaring the sentence of the 
law and in serving at the altar. Not only 
were Priests set above the Levites, but 
Priests above Priests (Num. iii. 6, 9,10; iv. 
15, 19, 20, 27; xvi. 1, 10). The chiefest 
dignity was that of High-Priest. By Divine 






CONSTITUTION 


179 


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appointment he was “chief over the chief” 
of the “ Levites,” and had “ the oversight of 
them that” “ kept the charge of the sanc¬ 
tuary” (Num. iii. 32). He was ruler and 
was “over” both Priests and Judges in 
Jerusalem “ in all matters of the Lord” (2 
Chron. xix. 8, 11). 

As the Patriarchal Church and ministry 
developed into the Jewish, so did the Jewish 
into the Christian, the latter, however, into 
a vastly more perfect condition. The Church 
is and always has been one. Its identity 
and perpetuity have been from the begin¬ 
ning. The functions and ministrations of 
.the Priesthood have varied with the different 
dispensations, hut, nevertheless, its identity 
has been preserved. The threefold orders 
of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, of the 
New Dispensation, answer and, in some sort, 
are referable to the Divine Priesthood of 
High-Priests, Priests, and Levites under the 
Mosaic Law. The Christian Priesthood was 
foretold in the prophecy of Isaiah : “ They 
shall declare my glory among the Gentiles, 
and I will also take of them (the Gentiles) 
for Priests and for Levites, saith the Lord” 
(Isaiah lxvi. 19, 21). The word “ Priests” 
as here used, included the two orders of 
High-Priest and Priest. Aaron was High- 
Priest ; yet he was sometimes called merely 
a “ Priest” (Num. xvi. 37). St. Clement of 
Rome, the martyr, who lived and labored 
with the Apostles, who was a “ fellow- 
laborer” with St. Paul, and whose “ name 
is written in the Book of Life” (Phil. iv. 3), 
in speaking of the Christian ministry, iden¬ 
tifies it with the Levitical. He says of the 
former: “To the Chief-Priest his peculiar 
offices are given ; and to the Priests their 
own proper place is appointed; and to the 
Levites appertain their proper ministries” 
(1 Ep. Cor. c. xli.). Our blessed Lord came 
n<?t to “ destroy the law” “but to fulfill” 
(St. Matt v. 17). The Law of Moses remains 
in full force except so far as in the new order 
of the Christian Dispensation it became es¬ 
sential to abrogate it. The law was abrogated 
as to circumcision (Acts xv.) and as to animal 
sacrifices (Heb. x. to verse 27), but not in 
regard to the orders of the Priesthood, nor 
as to the pre-eminence of the High-Priest. 
“ The Law of Moses was observed by Jesus 
when on earth ; neither were any precepts 
abolished afterwards, except those which had 
no inherent moral character in them. . . . 
That part of the law the necessity of which 
was taken away by Christ, did not contain 
in it anything of its own nature virtuous ; but 
consisted of things indifferent in themselves 
and therefore not unalterable.” (Grotius, 
De Yeritate, lib. v. sec. vii.) Now the holy 
triplet of the Priesthood was an essential part 
of the system under the Old Dispensation. 
Christ came not to destroy this essential 
part, hut to fulfill and render it more perfect. 
True, the Priesthood itself was changed 
under the Christian Dispensation, but not 
the orders of the Priesthood. “ Perfection” 
did not come “ by the Levitical Priesthood,” 


and “the Priesthood being changed” (not 
the orders thereof) has now become “an un¬ 
changeable Priesthood” (Heb. vii. 11, 24). 
It follows that in fulfillment of the Law the 
Priesthood of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, 
in their more perfect relation than that of 
the Levitical ministry, is to be perpetual 
“ even unto the end of the world ” These 
three orders, thus to be perpetual, involve a 
priori superiority and inferiority of func¬ 
tions ; which being true, the possessor of the 
superior must of necessity be the ruling or 
governing power. 

Of the Christian ministry our dear Lord 
was the first and the great High-Priest. 
He was “ the Apostle and High-Priest of 
our profession” (Heb. iii. 1). “He glori¬ 
fied not Himself to be made an High-Priest; 
but He that said unto Him, Thou art my 
Son ; to-day have I begotten Thee” (Heb. 
v. 5). But after Him the High-Priests were 
and are “ taken from among men.” “ Every 
High-Priest taken from among men is or¬ 
dained for men in things pertaining to God, 
that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices 
for sins: and by reason thereof he ought as 
for the people, so also for himself, to offer 
for sins. And no man taketh this honor 
unto himself, but he that is called of God, 
as was Aaron” (Heb. v. 1, 3., 4). Now the 
great High-Priest and Bishop of the Church, 
and in whom was and is merged or absorbed 
the Priesthood in all its grades, while He 
was fulfilling His visible ministry here on 
earth, reproduced the Priesthood in its three 
distinct orders, “taking of the Gentiles for 
Priests and for Levites.” He Himself being 
the first order, “ calleth unto Him whom He 
would ; and they came unto Him. And He 
ordained twelve that they should be with 
Him, and that He might send them forth to 
preach,” etc. (St. Mark iii. 13, 14). Thus 
ordained, “ they went out and preached that 
men should repent” (ch. vi. 12). And they 
baptized. “ Jesus Himself baptized not, but 
His disciples” (St. John iv. 2). They after¬ 
wards “ gathered themselves together unto 
Jesus and told Him all things, both what 
they had done and what they had taught” 
(St. Mark vi. 30). They were then further 
instructed in “ the mysteries of the kingdom 
of God” (St. Luke viii. 10),—that is, the 
Church. Up to this time the “twelve” 
evidently had not been advanced beyond the 
second order in the ministry. “ After these 
things the Lord appointed other seventy 
also” (St. Luke x. 1). They were not of 
equal degree with the twelve. Manifestly 
they were of the third order,—that of Le¬ 
vites or Deacons. Immediately before fore¬ 
shadowing His death, our Lord, addressing 
St. Peter with the other disciples, promised 
“ the Keys of Power” in these words :• “I 
will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom 
of heaven : and whatsoever thou shalt bind 
on earth shall be bound in heaven; and 
whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall 
be loosed in heaven” (St. Matt. xvi. 19). 
To all His disciples on another occasion He 






CONSTITUTION 


180 


CONSTITUTION 


said, “ Whatsoever ye shall hind on earth 
shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever 
ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in 
heaven” (St. Matt, xviii. 18). After His 
resurrection and just before the ascension, 
He commissioned the eleven (Judas had be¬ 
trayed Him), “ As my Father hath sent me, 
even so send / you. And when He had said 
this, He breathed on them and said unto 
them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost ; whose 
soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto 
them ; and whose soever sins ye retain, they 
are retained” (St. John xx. 21, 23). St. 
Matthew’s account of the commission is, 
“And Jesus spake unto them saying, All 
power is given unto me in heaven and in 
earth. Go ye therefore and teach all na¬ 
tions, baptizing them in the name of the 
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Ghost ; teaching them to observe all things 
whatsoever I have commanded you ; and lo, 
I am with you alway, even unto the end of 
the world” (St. Matt, xxviii. 18, 20). 

By this commission the eleven were ad¬ 
vanced from their former degree in the 
ministry to the Apostleship or Chief-Priest¬ 
hood, not only endowed with “ the power 
of the Keys,” but having the Master’s pledge 
to be with them and their successors “ even 
unto the end of the world.” Our Lord, 
having now relinquished His visible minis¬ 
try, and the Apostles having been by Him 
further instructed “of the things pertaining 
to the kingdom of God” during the forty 
days between the Resurrection and the As¬ 
cension (Acts i. 3), their first official act was 
to start the line of Apostolical succession. 
Judas, who had been numbered with the 
twelve and “obtained part of this minis¬ 
try,” having “ by transgression” fallen, it 
was commanded that “his Bishopric let 
another take.” Accordingly, the Apostles, 
that another might “ take part of this min¬ 
istry and apostleship,” “gave forth their 
lots; and the lot fell on Matthias; and he 
was numbered with the eleven Apostles” 
(Acts i. 15, 26). 

The twelve Apostles correspond to the 
twelve Patriarchs ; and they were promised 
by our Lord that they should “ sit upon 
twelve thrones , judging the twelve tribes of 
Israel” (St. Matt. xix. 28; St. Luke xxii. 
30). A “ throne” is an emblem of power; 
and it will be noted that the Apostles were 
not only to sit on “thrones,” but were to 
“judge” the tribes of the Church. This 
same authority of “judging” the Church 
here on earth was also committed to their 
successors, as we have seen, “ even unto the 
end of the world.” Hooker has it that the 
“seventy” became Presbyters or Priests 
under the Apostles (Book v. c. Ixxviii. 5). 
But whether so or not, the latter “ ordained 
them Elders” ( i. e ., Presbyters or Priests) 
“ in every Church” (Acts xiv. 23), and 
“ seven men of honest report full of the 
Holy Ghost and wisdom,” Stephen and 
Philip among them, were also chosen and 
“ set before the Apostles,” at their command, 


“and when they had prayed they laid their 
hands on them” and ordained them Deacons 
(Acts vi., and see also Acts viii. 5, 12, 13, 
37, 38, and 1 Tim. iii. 8-13). Thus we have 
Apostles, Priests, and Deacons in the Chris¬ 
tian ministry, upon the type of and answer¬ 
ing to the High-Priests, Priests, and Levites 
of the Levitical Priesthood. St. Jerome, in 
the fourth century, wrote: “We know 
from Apostolic tradition taken from the Old 
Testament, that what Aaron and his sons 
and the Levites were in the Temple, the 
same the Bishop and the Presbyters and the 
Deacons may claim to themselves in the 
Church” (Epist. lxxxv., Hieron ad Evang.,^ 
tom. ii. 311). Again he says, “ What Aaron 
and his sons were, that the Bishops and 
Presbyters are” (Hieron ad Nepotianum, 
Epist. ii., tom. i. 5, 14). Tertullian, in the 
second century, speaks of the “ High-Priest, 
who is the Bishop ” (De Bap., c. 17). Isidore 
of Pelusium, in the fifth century, wrote, 
“The Bishops succeeded the Apostles,— 
they were constituted through the whole 
world in the place of the Apostles. Aaron, 
the High-Priest, was what the Bishop is ; 
and Aaron’s sons prefigured the Presbyters” 
(Lib. ii. c. 5). 

That the Apostleship was not limited to 
the eleven is abundantly evidenced in the 
New Testament itself. Matthias, Paul, 
Epaphroditus, Timothy, Titus, Sylvanus (Si¬ 
las), Barnabas, Andronicus, and Junia, ifnot 
others, are shown by the inspired Record to 
have filled the Apostolic office, in addition 
to the eleven. This line of succession, thus 
recorded in the Sacred Volume, has been 
continued in unbroken chain down through 
the ages, so that our American Bishops of 
the present day can trace their orders and 
authority, step by step, from SS. Peter and 
Paul, through the Roman and English chan¬ 
nels, and from St. John, through the Galli- 
can Bishops, and from St. James, Bishop of 
Jerusalem, down through Bishop David, of 
the Diocese of St. David, in England; all 
with just as much unerring certainty and 
precision as the line of the sovereigns of 
England or of the Presidents of the United 
States can be traced. (Vide Chapin’s Primi¬ 
tive Church, ed. 1842, pp. 280-359, and ar¬ 
ticle Apostolic Succession.) The office 
of “ Bishop,” mentioned in the New Testa¬ 
ment, was not primarily that of an Apostle. 
A “ Bishop,” as there signified, was merely 
a “ Presbyter” or “ Elder” with respect to 
his orders ; though there is high authority 
for holding that such officer was possessed 
of a higher dignity than he who was desig¬ 
nated merely as a “Presbyter” or “ Elder,” 
undoubtedly that of primus inter pares. 
But very soon after the original Apostles 
passed away, they who succeeded to their 
ordinary functions (not extraordinary , such 
as the power of working miracles), by way 
of fixing pre-eminent distinction upon 
those earlier Chief Priests of the Christian 
ministry, left the title of “ Apostles” to 
those holy men, and assumed to themselves 






CONSTITUTION 


181 


CONSTITUTION 


the name of “ Bishop,” though the ordinary- 
functions of the office continued the same. 
The office continued,—the name only was 
changed. St. Hilary, the .Deacon, in the 
fourth century, said, “ They who are now 
called Bishops were originally called Apos¬ 
tles ; hut the holy Apostles, being dead, 
those who were ordained after them could 
not arrive at the excellency of the first; 
therefore they thought it not becoming to 
assume the name of Apostles ; but dividing 
the name Presbyter and Bishop, they left 
the Presbytery the name of Presbyter, and 
they themselves were called Bishops” 
(Comm. 1 Tim., iii.). Theodoret, about 420 
a.d., wrote, “ Epaphroditus was called the 
Apostle of the Philippians, because he was 
intrusted with the Episcopal Government as 
being Bishop. For those now called Bish¬ 
ops were anciently called Apostles; but in 
the process of time the name of Apostle was 
left to those who were truly Apostles, and 
the name of Bishop was restrained to those 
who were anciently called Apostles. Thus 
Epaphroditus was the Apostle of the Phi¬ 
lippians, Titus of the Cretans, and Timothy 
of the Asiatics” (Theod. in 1 Tim., c . iii. 1). 
Eubesius, early in the fourth century, said, 
“ St. Peter and St. John, though honored 
of the Lord, yet would not themselves be, 
but made St. James, surnamed the Just, 
Bishop of Jerusalem” (Eccl. Hist., lib. ii. c. 
1). St. Cyprian said, “ The Lord Himself 
chose the Apostles, that is, the Bishops” 
(Cyprian, lib. iii., Ep. 9). The early com¬ 
mentator, under the name of St. Ambrose, 
remarked, “ The Apostles are Bishops” (in 
Ephes., c. iv. t. v. 354). Grotius, in his 
note on Acts xxi. 18, says, “ He of the Apos¬ 
tles who was at Jerusalem performed the 
office which afterwards the Bishops did, and 
therefore he called together the Presbyters,” 
etc. 

The identity of the office of Bishop with 
that of Apostle being thus apparent, let us 
now consider the functions of the office, es¬ 
pecially with reference to their law-making 
and governing aspect, with which this paper 
is more directly concerned. 

The Apostles whose successors the Bish¬ 
ops are, and are to be, “even unto the end 
of the world,” were commissioned by the 
blessed Saviour Himself, as we have seen, 
unto whom was given “ all power in heaven 
and in earth.” After the promise to them 
of the “keys of the kingdom of heaven” 
and the pledge, “ Whatsoever ye shall bind 
on earth shall be bound in heaven ; and 
whatsoever ye .shall loose on earth shall 
be loosed in heaven,” and when the Great 
High-Priest relinquished His visible minis¬ 
try, they were by Him solemnly commis¬ 
sioned in words before quoted: “As my 
Father hath sent me, even so send I you. 
. . . Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose 
soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto 
them ; and whose soever sins ye retain, they 
are retained ;” “ And lo, I am with you al- 
way, even unto the end of the world.” He 


who had “ all power” over His Church,which 
He was “sent” to establish, and over the sub¬ 
ordinate ministry whom He was “sent” to 
appoint, and did appoint, declared to His 
Apostles, “ As my Father hath sent me 
(to send-you, etc.), even so I send you” (to 
send others, etc.). Can it be doubted, for 
one instant, that, under their commission, 
the Apostles (who, after our Lord’s visible 
ministry, became the High-Priests of His 
Church) had authority over the subordinate 
ministry in all matters of discipline and 
government ? It was through the Apostles 
(as it is now through their successors) that 
all official functions flowed to them whom 
they ordained ; and upon every principle of 
right reason, they who confer official func¬ 
tions must necessarily possess authority, 
within their jurisdiction, to govern and dis¬ 
cipline subordinates to whom such functions 
are so imparted. 

Whatever else the words of the commis¬ 
sion quoted may import, there can be no 
manner of question that they bear direct 
reference to government and discipline in 
the Church here on earth, both of the clergy 
and laity; and this authority, conferred 
upon the first Apostles, beyond all contro¬ 
versy was intended to flow down in and 
through their successors “ even unto the end 
of the world.” St. Paul consecrated Timo¬ 
thy to the Apostolic office, and gave him 
charge concerning his government of the 
Church of the Ephesians to “stir up the 
gift of God which is in thee by the putting 
on of my hands” (2 Tim. i. 6); “Preach 
the word; be instant in season, out of sea¬ 
son : reprove , rebuke , exhort with all long- 
suffering and doctrine” (2 Tim. iv. 2); 
“ against an elder receive not an accusation , 
but before two or three witnesses” (1 Tim. 
v. 19),—that is, receive not a judicial com¬ 
plaint , “ but before two or three wit¬ 
nesses;” “lay hands suddenly on no man” 
(v. 22); “ let the elders that rule well be 
counted worthy of double honor” (v. 17); 
“ rebuke before all” (1 Tim. v. 20); “ abide 
at Ephesus that thou mightest charge ( com¬ 
mand ) some that they teach no other doc¬ 
trine” (1 Tim. i. 3). That St. Timothy was 
an Apostle is shown by St. Paul’s own words 
in 1 Thess. i. 1 and ii. 6. Eusebius says, 
“St. Luke, in the Acts of the Apostles, 
makes mention of several who were his 
companions, as of Timothy and Titus, of 
which the first was made Bishop of Ephesus, 
as Titus also was of the Churches in Crete” 
(Euseb. Hist. Eccl., lib. iii., c. 4, p. 58). The 
commentator, in St. Ambrose’s name, in the 
fourth century, wrote : “ St. Paul, having 
ordained him Bishop, writes his first epistle 
to him to give him instructions concerning 
his Episcopal office; and this epistle was 
written to instruct Timothy in his own per¬ 
son, and all other Bishops in him for their 
deportment in the Episcopal office.” (Am- 
brosii in Ep. i. ad Tim., c. vi. See also, to 
substantially the same effect, Tertullian con¬ 
tra Marcion, lib. v., and St. Chrysostom in 





CONSTITUTION 


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Homil. 10 in Tim. t. IV. Op.) Epiphanius 
says, “The divine speech of the Apostle teach- 
eth who is a Bishop, and who a Presbyter, in 
saying to Timothy, a Bishop, 1 Rebuke not 
a Presbyter, but exhort him as a father.’ 

1 How could a Bishop rebuke a Presbyter, 
if he had no power over a Presbyter V As 
also, ‘ Receive not an accusation against a 
Presbyter, but under two or three wit¬ 
nesses’ ” (Epiphan. adv. Haeres., lib. iii.; 
Haeres., lxxv., Par. 1622, t. i. p. 909). 

This chiefty in the highest order of the 
priesthood appears also in the case of Titus. 
St. Paul says to him, “ For this cause left I 
thee in Crete, that thou shouldst set in or¬ 
der the things that are wanting, and ordain 
elders in every city as I had appointed thee” 
(Titus i. 5) ; “ Speak and exhort and rebuke 
with all authority” (ch. ii. 15); “ a man that 
is an heretic, after the first and second ad¬ 
monition, reject” (ch. iii. 10). St. Jerome 
says, “ Timothy was ordained Bishop of 
Ephesus by blessed Paul; and Titus, Bishop 
of Crete, preached the Gospel there and in 
the islands round about” (Hieron. Catal. 
Scriptor Eccl., t. i., 265). The Ambrosian 
commentator remarks, “ The Apostle had 
consecrated Titus to be a Bishop, and there¬ 
fore he warned him to be careful in eccle¬ 
siastical ordination” (Ambrosii in Ep. ad 
Tit. Praefatio, t. v. 419). Theodoret writes, 
“Titus was a notable disciple of Paul, and 
ordained by Paul Bishop of Crete, and 
authorized to make the Bishops that were 
under him” (Theod. Apud (Ecumen. in 
Praefat. Epist. ad Titum. (Ecumen. Op. Lu- 
tet, Par. 1631, t. ii., 285). From St. Chrys¬ 
ostom’s account it appears that Titus was 
Archbishop of Crete, having other Bishops 
under him. (An Archbishop has no greater 
spiritual authority than any other Bishop. 
His functions as Archbishop are such only 
as are conferred by legislation of the Church, 
and sometimes of the State also, where union 
of Church and State exists. They are 
merely supervisory. He is only “ chief 
among equals,”— i.e., equals in spiritual 
functions. Vide Archbishop.) St. Chrys¬ 
ostom says, “Titus, without doubt, was ap¬ 
proved of for his worth, when the whole 
island of Crete, and the superintendency 
over all the Bishops thereof, was committed 
to his charge” (Chrysost. Homil. I. in Tit., 
t. iv. p. 384). Theophylact states, “ That 
Titus was the most approved of any that at¬ 
tended on St. Paul, and on that account was 
made Bishop of the great island of Crete, 
and that he not only had the superintend¬ 
ency over all Crete, but the ordination of 
the Bishops thereof was committed to his 
care” (Theophylact in Arg. in Epist. ad Tit., 
837 Op.). 

As to the authority of Bishops as rulers and 
governors of the Church on earth, there never 
was any question for over fifteen hundred 
years after Christ.. Sufficient already ap- 
ears in this article to show this authority; 
ut it will not be unprofitable to cite 
further authorities bearing on the sub¬ 


ject. St. Ignatius was a companion of the 
Apostles and a disciple and pupil of St. 
John. About 70 a.d. he was made Bishop of 
Antioch, the metropolis of Syria, where the 
disciples were “first called Christians,” and 
occupied that See for about thirty-seven years, 
when he suffered martyrdom at Rome, 107 
a.d. , only a very few years after the death of 
the Apostle St. John. This Apostolic saint 
and martyr wrote thus: “What is the 
Bishop but a one who hath 'principality over 
all , so far forth as man can have it, being to 
his power a follower even of God’s own 
Christ ?” (Ignat. Ep. ad Trail., c. vii.) 

Again : “ It will become you to run to¬ 
gether according to the will of your Bishop, 
as also ye do. For your famous Presbytery, 
worthy of God, is fitted as exactly to the 
Bishop as the strings are to the harp” (Ep. 
ad Eph.). Again : “ It will therefore be¬ 

hoove you, with all sincerity, to obey your 
Bishop,” . . . “ because he that does not 
so, deceives not the Bishop whom he sees, 
but affronts Him that is invisible.” . . . 
“ some call indeed their Governor, Bishop ; 
but do all things without him. But I can 
never think that such as these have a good 
conscience, seeing they are not gathered 
together thoroughly, according to God’s 
commandment” (Epis. ad Magn.). And 
again : “ I exhort you that ye study to do 
all things in a Divine concord ; your Bishop 
presiding in the place of God ; your/Presby¬ 
ters in the place of the Council of Apostles, 
and your Deacons, most dear to me, being 
intrusted with the ministry of Jesus 
Christ” (Epis. ad Magnesians). Once 
more: “ For whereas, ye are subject to your 
Bishop as to Jesus Christ, ye appear to 
me to live not after the manner of men, 
but according to Jesus Christ” (Ignat. 
Epis. ad Trail.). 

St. Polycarp, the “ Angel” or Bishop of 
Smyrna, referred to in Revelation ii. 8, was 
likewise a disciple of the Apostle St. John, 
and is said by his disciple St. Irenseus (lib. 
iii. c. 3, sec. 4) to have been made Bishop of 
Smyrna by the Apostles themselves. Between 
107 and 116 a.d. he wrote his Epistle to the 
Philippians, subjoining the Epistles of St. 
Ignatius above referred to, with others, 
commending them as “ treating of faith and 
patience, and of all things that pertain to edi¬ 
fication in the Lord Jesus Christ” (Ep. 
Polyc. ad Phil.). St. Irenaeus, in the second 
century, wrote : “We are able to enumerate 
those who were appointed by the Apostles 
Bishops in the Churches, and their successors, 
even down to ourselves,who.never taught nor 
knew of such things as are madly dreamed 
of by these men” (i.e., the heretics). . . . 
“ If this had been so, then specially and 
chiefly would they (the Apostles) have de¬ 
livered them to those to whom they committed 
the Churches themselves. For it was their 
wish that they should be eminently perfect 
and irreprehensible in all things, whom also 
they left to be their successors , delivering 
(tradentes) to them their own office of gov- 





CONSTITUTION 


183 


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eminent,” etc. (Irensei adv. Hseres, lib. 
iii. c. 3). Speaking of the Church of Rome, 
Irenaeus says, “ The blessed Apostles, 
therefore, founding and instructing the 
Church, delivered to Linus the Bishopric, 
to govern the Church ” (Idem). Tertullian, 
the latter part of the second century, said, 
“ The High-Priest, who is the Bishop, pos¬ 
sesses the right of conferring baptism, and 
after him the Presbyters ; but not without 
the authority of the Bishop” (Tertull. de 
Baptismo, c. xvii., 263). Origen, early in 
the third century, remarked, “ More is re¬ 
quired of me (a Presbyter) than a Deacon ; 
more of a Deacon than of a layman ; but of 
him to whom the ecclesiastical government 
over us all is committed, more still is re¬ 
quired” (Origen in Jerem., Homil. ii. t. i. 
Oper. 114). Again : “ The power of the 
keys, as promised to St. Peter, in Matt. xvi. 
18, 19, the Bishops of the primitive church 
apply to themselves. ... It is orthodox 
for those Bishops so to do,” etc. (Idem, 
tom. xii., 279.) St. Cj'prian, the latter part 
of the first half of the third century, ob¬ 
served, “ It is not a matter left to our own 
free choice whether the Bishops shall rule 
over us or no, but the will of our Lord and 
Saviour is, that every act of the Church be 
governed by her Bishops. . . . The Church 
is founded upon the Bishops, by whom every 
ecclesiastical act is governed ” (Cyp. Ep. 27, 
edit. Pamel., or Ep. 33, edit. Oxon.,.sec. 1). 
In another place he speaks of a Bishop as 
“ the leader of the people, the pastor of the 
flock, the Governor of the Church, the Bishop 
of Christ and Priest of God” (Cyp. Ep. 
lxvi., ed. Erasm., lib. iv. Ep. 9). 

Eusebius (who lived 270-340 a.d.) says, 
“ Irenaeus succeeded to the Bishopric of the 
Parish ( i.e. Diocese) of Lyons, which Pro¬ 
metheus had ruled” (Eccl. Hist., Book v. 
c. 5). St. Jerome, in the hast of the fourth or 
first of fifth century, wrote: “As with the 
King, so with the Bishop ; or rather, still 
less to the Bishop than to the King, since 
one rules over willing, the other over un¬ 
willing, subjects ” (Ep. ad Nepot., c. vii., 11). 
The Ambrosian commentator, writing in 
the fourth century, said in regard to St. 
Timothy, “ With great vigilancy and provi¬ 
dence doth the Apostle give precepts to the 
ruler of the Church; for in his person doth 
the safety of the people consist” (Ambros. 
in 1 Ep. ad Tim., c. vi. t. v. 410). 

The “ Ancient Canons,” referred to in the 
office for “ Ordaining or Consecrating a 
Bishop,” and which were enacted during the 
purer days of the primitive Church, throw 
important light upon the subject under con- 
deration. The “ Apostolical Canons,” so 
called, some ancient authors insist are 
genuine enactments of the Apostles them¬ 
selves ; but Beveridge and a majority of the 
most learned writers on the subject hold 
them to be a “ collection of Canons enacted 
in different Synods, about the close of the 
second century and early part of the third.” 
The XXXIXth of these reads thus : “ Let 


not the Presbyters or Deacons do anything 
without the sanction of the Bishop; for he 
it is who is intrusted with the people of the 
Lord, and of whom will be required the ac¬ 
count of their souls.” The LYth is as fol¬ 
lows: “If any of the clergy insult the 
Bishop, let him be deposed: for thou shalt 
not speak evil of the Ruler of the peo¬ 
ple.” The Canons of the Undisputed 
General Councils are enactments which had 
the approval of the entire Christian world 
in the time of the primitive Church ; which 
latter, according to our own Homilies, was 
“ pure and uncorrupt.” These and all other 
acts of such General Councils, and also all 
Canons of Provincial Councils during the 
period known as that of the primitive Church 
so far as they bear upon the matter at all, 
without a single exception, recognize the 
unquestioned power or authority inherent in 
the office of Bishop in all matters of gov¬ 
ernment and discipline, including, of course, 
the enactment of laws. The Yth Canon 
of Nice relates to the “clergy or laity who 
have been excommunicated” or “ cast out” 
by their own Bishops. The Yth of Ephesus 
makes provision concerning any “ who 
have been condemned for their wrong prac¬ 
tices . . . by their own Bishops.” The 
IXth of Chalcedon recognizes the Bishop’s 
judicial chieftancy in ecclesiastical matters. 
The YIth Canon of Gangra (a Provincial 
Council) provides that “ if any one shall 
. . . presume to perform ecclesiastical acts 
without . . . the judgment of the Bishop, 
let him be anathema.” Many other 
Ecumenical Canons, and many of those of 
Provincial Synods having (like Gangra) 
Ecumenical sanction in the first Canon of 
Chalcedon, might be cited, showing the 
jurisdiction of Bishops in ecclesiastical 
government and discipline; but these will 
suffice. 

Some additional authorities of later periods, 
however, may, in this connection, be con¬ 
sulted with profit. Gregory the Great says, 
“ The Bishops now in the Church hold the 
places (of the Apostles). They which have 
that degree of regiment have authority to 
bind and loose” (Greg. M. in Evang., 
lib. ii. Homil. xxvi. t. i. Col. 1555, sec. 5). 
Theophylact remarks, “ They have power 
to bind and loose, which have the grace of a 
Bishop’s office, as Peter had” (Theophylac. 
in Matth. Com., cxvi. 24). Bichard Hooker 
tells us, “ In process of time the Apostles 
gave Episcopal authority, and that to con¬ 
tinue always with them which had it. . . . 
The Apostles, therefore, were the first which 
had such authority, and all others who have 
it after them, in orderly sort, are their law¬ 
ful successors. . . . They whom we now call 
Bishops were usually termed, at the first, 
Apostles, and so did carry their very names 
in whose rooms of spiritual authority they 
succeeded ” (Hooker’s Works, Book vii. c. iv., 
3). Again: “The Bishop’s pre-eminence, 
we say, therefore, was twofold : first, he 
excelled in latitude of order; secondly, in that 





CONSTITUTION 


184 


CONSTITUTION 


of power which belongeth unto jui'isdiction. 
Priests in the law had authority and power 
to do greater things than Levites, the High- 
Priests than inferior Priests might do ; there¬ 
fore the Levites were beneath the Priests, 
and Priests inferior to the High-Priest by 
reason of the very degree of dignity, and of 
worthiness in the nature of those functions 
which they did execute, and not only for 
that the one had power to command and con¬ 
trol the other. In like sort Presbyters hav¬ 
ing a weightier and a worthier charge than 
Deacons had, the Deacon was in this sort 
the Presbyter’s inferior ; and where we say 
that a Bishop was likewise ever accounted a 
Presbyter’s superior, even according unto 
this very power of order, we must of neces¬ 
sity declare what principal duties,” etc. 
(Idem, Book vii. c. vi. 1, 3). Van Espen, 
the great Canonist, says, “ III. It appears, 
also, from many testimonies gathered from 
antiquity, that Bishops, at that time, inquired 
into all crimes, even those concealed (occulta), 
and also instituted process, that they (the 
Bishops) might impose penalty according 
to the convicted crime. IY. But this is 
especially to he noted what Morinus says, 
that Bishops exercised their jurisdiction then 
for all crimes , in a sacramental relation , as 
we now say” (Van Espen’s Canons and Laws 
of the Church, Part III. Title vi., 42). 
Again: “ III. Therefore from Canon Law 
and our daily use in speaking, those are 
called Judices Ordinarii who do not receive 
their jurisdiction from any special delegation 
or commission, but by force of their own 
dignity or office. Hence the Canonists de¬ 
fine the Ordinary as one who has jurisdiction 
by his own right (jure suo),—a Bishop in his 
own Diocese" (Idem, Part III. Tit. v. c. ii.,— 
De Judice Ordinario). “ A Bishop is a min¬ 
ister of God, unto whom with permanent 
continuance there is given not only power 
of administering the Word and Sacraments 
which power the Presbyters have, but also a 
farther power to ordain ecclesiastical persons, 
and a power of chiefty in government over 
Presbyters as well as laymen , a person to be, 
by way of jurisdiction, a pastor even unto 
pastors” (Eccles. Pol., Book vii. sec. 2; 1 
Gibson’s Codex, xvii. ; Stillingfleet’s Eccl. 
Cases, vi., et seq.). “ The very office of Con¬ 
secration warrants every Bishop, in the 
clearest and fullest terms, to obtain authority 
by the Word of God for the correcting and 
punishing such as be unquiet, disobedient, 
and criminous,— i.e., for the exercise of all 
manner of spiritual discipline within his 
Diocese” (1 Gibson’s Codex, xviii.). In the 
office for “ the Consecration of Bishops,” the 
Bishop-elect is required to promise that he 
will “ diligently exercise such discipline as 
by the authority of God’s Word and by the 
order of this Church is committed to” him. 
And in the same office is set forth a prayer 
for the Bishop-elect to Almighty God, that 
“he may faithfully serve Thee in this office 
to the glory of Thy Name, and the edifying 
and well-governing of Thy Church.” 


We have now seen how the Patriarchal 
Dispensation developed into the Mosaic, 
and the latter into the Christian ; also how, 
in the matter of government and discipline, 
the Chief Priesthood of the Christian min¬ 
istry is in harmony with, and in some sense 
took character from, that of each preceding 
dispensation. And we have likewise seen 
how the Commission of our blessed Lord to 
His beloved Apostles, and their successors in 
office, has been understood and construed 
and acted upon, in the Christian Church all 
through the ages, as constituting them chief 
rulers in matters ecclesiastical. But the 
functions exercised by a Bishop are not 
merely his own, but those of the College of 
Apostles, whereof he is one, whom he re¬ 
presents within his jurisdiction, and from 
or through whom he derives the authority 
of his office. “ Episcopatus unus est cujus a 
singulis in solidum pars tenetur .” The 
government of a Bishop, however, was 
never intended to be arbitrary or irrespon¬ 
sible. He must answer to his peers for mis¬ 
conduct ; but, to our shame be it said, there 
is no other branch of the Church on earth 
where practically he is under so little re¬ 
straint against oppression and wrong as in 
this land of boasted justice ; nor does the 
history of the Christian Church through all 
the centuries furnish another instance where¬ 
in the inferior clergy have been or are so 
powerless as are ours to resist the tyranny 
of a despotic Bishop, no provision for appeal 
being made, or other adequate remedy pro¬ 
vided. 

While the authority of the Episcopate 
in solidum is exercised by a single 
Bishop over the inferior clergy and the laity 
in his Diocese, yet the same authority sub¬ 
sists in the College of Bishops of a Pro¬ 
vincial (which in this country is the Na¬ 
tional) Church over each individual Bishop 
thereof, and also, under the regulation of 
law, over his Diocese as well. Such Bishops 
have the inherent authority to make laws 
for the government of all the various Dio¬ 
ceses of their Province or organized jurisdic¬ 
tion, and the Bishops thereof, so far as the 
same may be consistent with Divine and 
Catholic law, notwithstanding the distinc¬ 
tive jurisdiction devolving upon each 
Bishop; and, by Ecclesiastical Law, no 
vacancy in a Bishopric can be filled except 
in virtue of their authority. Moreover, in 
a proper case, they may deprive one of their 
number of his individual jurisdiction. Thus 
it will be perceived that there is and can be 
no such thing as an independent Bishop or 
an independent Diocese, any more than a 
member of the human body can be inde¬ 
pendent of the particular body to which it 
belongs. The member being separated, its 
functions cease, and it must die. 

For the more efficient exercise of the in¬ 
herent authority and functions of the Uni¬ 
versal Episcopate, the primitive Church 
(being that nearest to the time of the visible 
ministry of our Lord) established a distribu- 





CONSTITUTION 


185 


CONSTITUTION 


tive system or economy of Church govern¬ 
ment, which at a very early day was con¬ 
formed, for its lines of territorial jurisdiction, 
to the civil divisions of the Roman Empire. 
This system was not only recognized by, but 
entered into the law of the Universal Church, 
as is evidenced by very many enactments of 
the Undisputed General Councils, and also 
by those of Provincial Synods having Ecu¬ 
menical confirmation. It is not important, 
for the purposes of this article, to trace the 
details of this system ; but it should be stated 
that the Province was an essential factor. 
It consisted of an aggregation of Sees (now 
also called Dioceses) having its Synod of 
Bishops, over which the Metropolitan pre¬ 
sided, and which enacted laws, heard ap¬ 
peals, etc. Prior to the General Council of 
Nice, two or three Bishops might consecrate 
a Bishop, but, by the IVth Canon of Nicasa, 
it was decreed that “ It is most proper that 
a Bishop should be constituted by all the 
Bishops of a Province ; but if this be diffi¬ 
cult on account of some urgent necessity, or 
because of distance, three at least should 
meet together, and the suffrages be taken, 
those of the absent Bishops also being com¬ 
municated in writing, then the ordination 
should be made,” etc. By the XXIIId 
Canon of Antioch (approved by the Ecu¬ 
menical Council of Chalcedon) it was 
enacted that “ It shall not be lawful for a 
Bishop, even at the close of life, to appoint 
another as successor to himself; and if any 
such thing should be done, the appointment 
shall be void. And the Ecclesiastical Law 
must be observed, that a Bishop must not be 
constituted otherwise than with a Synod and 
with the judgment of the Bishops, who, 
after the decease of a former Bishop, have 
the authority to promote the man who is 
worthy.” The succession in the Episcopate, 
therefore, cannot be kept up, within the lines 
of law, by less than three Bishops acting in 
concurrence with the judgment of the other 
Bishops of the Province. Thus three Bishops 
are necessary to perpetuate their own order ; 
and no perfect National or Provincial 
Church can exist with less than three. 

In harmony with these propositions, and 
no doubt recognizing them as fundamental, 
those who acted in the matter did not for¬ 
mally adopt the Constitution of the “ Protest¬ 
ant Episcopal Church in the United States” 
until after the requisite number of Bish(tps 
had been consecrated in order to the organ¬ 
ization of a Provincial Church in this coun¬ 
try. On the 5th day of August, 1789 a.d., 
the following resolutions were passed by the 
Convention, Bishop White presiding : . 

11 Resolved , That a complete order of 
Bishops, derived as well under the English 
as the Scottish line of Episcopacy, doth now 
subsist within the United States of America, 
in the persons of the Right Rev. William 
White, D.D., the Right Rev. Samuel Pro- 
voost, D.D., and the Right Rev. Samuel 
Seabury, D.D. 

“ Resolved , That the said Bishops are fully 


competent to every act and duty of the 
Episcopal office and character in these 
United States, as well in respect to the 
consecration of other Bishops, and the or¬ 
dering of Priests and Deacons, as for the 
government of the Church , according to such 
rules, canons, and institutions as now are, 
or hereafter may be duly made and ordained 
by the Church.” 

Three days thereafter the Constitution 
was formally adopted and signed by the 
members of the Convention ; but it then 
had no operative effect except as an agree¬ 
ment by the consenting Dioceses to a Na¬ 
tional or Provincial union and jurisdiction 
on the terms and conditions expressed in the 
instrument. In other words, the Dioceses 
in effect thereby merely consented to pro¬ 
vincial jurisdiction on the conditions indi¬ 
cated. The breath of life was afterwards 
infused into the Constitution by the assent 
thereto of the Bishops ; without which assent 
the instrument would have had no vitality. 
There was no pretense of conferring func¬ 
tions on the Bishops. Any such attempt by 
the Dioceses or their representatives would 
have been gross impertinence. On the con¬ 
trary, the effect of the Constitution was and 
is, by the voluntary assent thereto by the 
Bishops, to limit the exercise of their inher¬ 
ent functions in the aggregated or National 
jurisdiction, according to the terms of that 
instrument, and, among the rest, to bind 
them not to exercise their law-making 
authority without the advice and consent of 
the clergy and laity as represented in the 
House of Deputies, which latter body are, 
by the Constitution, in reality made the 
Bishop’s Assessors, or Council of Advice, 
with permanent continuance as such, and 
with the right to initiate and veto measures. 
But no measure can have the force of law 
without the Bishop’s assent. 

As shown by the writings of St. Cyprian 
and other Fathers, and by the proofs in Van 
Espen, Provincial Councils of the Church 
were probably not held until about the mid¬ 
dle of the second century; prior to which 
time, each Bishop made all the rules or laws 
for his Diocese. The clergy then formed 
his Council of Advice, and as such were con¬ 
vened whenever the Bishop desired; but 
they had no control. And a Bishop may 
still make rules for the government of his 
own Diocese, so far as the same may not be 
inconsistent with superior law, and except 
so far as by constitutional restriction, en¬ 
acted by his own consent or that of a pred¬ 
ecessor, he may be prevented from asserting 
this prerogative of his office. (See Stilling- 
fleet’s Eccl. Cases, 336.) Originally, when 
Provincial and other Councils came to be 
held in the early Church, Bishops only were 
received to membership; but afterwards 
others were admitted, only, however, as ad¬ 
visory members, and never being entitled to 
vote. No Canons or other measures were 
enacted except by the voice and vote of the 
Bishops; nor has there ever been to this 




CONSTITUTION 


186 


CONSTITUTION 


day, nor can there be, any valid Church leg¬ 
islation without Episcopal sanction. 

It will be perceived that constituting the 
House of Deputies as an advisory body to the 
House of Bishops in the General Convention 
is not out of harmony with the spirit of prim¬ 
itive custom ; but the negative on legisla¬ 
tive action, which by concession the Bishops 
have accorded to that body, is a departure 
from such custom. Nevertheless, in this 
feature, the principle is not contravened that 
validity of ecclesiastical legislation depends 
upon the assent of Episcopal authority. 

It follows from what has been said that 
the General Convention derives none of its 
powers b} r delegation from the Dioceses, and 
that the Constitution takes all its vitality 
through concession of the Bishops in respect 
to the exercise of their inherent functions 
within the National or Provincial jurisdic¬ 
tion consented toby the Dioceses, and under 
the limitations imposed. In the State, 
under our theory of government in this coun¬ 
try, power ascends from the people ; where¬ 
as, in the Church, it descends from above. 
The Priest takes so much as he possesses of 
the power of the Keys and other functions 
(such as authority to administer the sacra¬ 
ments) by delegation from or through the 
Bishop ; but he is endowed with no inherent 
legislative function. Neither Priest nor 
layman possessing any inherent authority 
of legislation, no Diocese, in its own right, 
can have any such power. Whatever part 
it may take in making Diocesan law is 
by virtue of Episcopal consent, as in the 
case of the House of Deputies in General 
Convention ; and no enactment of a Di¬ 
ocesan Convention or Council can have va¬ 
lidity without the Bishop’s approval. The 
Dioceses, of their own right, possessing no 
functions of legislation, of course can im¬ 
part none by delegation. In other words, 
they cannot impart what they do not 
possess. 

Accordingly, and manifestly in recogni¬ 
tion of the fundamental principles herein 
set forth, there is no attempt in the Consti¬ 
tution to delegate or even to enumerate 
powers. That instrument assumes that the 
needed powers exist, and in this regard, 
deals only with the manner of exercising 
them. The language is not in all cases fe¬ 
licitous. For instance, in the 3d Article it 
is provided that “ The Bishops of this 
Church, when there shall be three or more, 
shall, whenever General Conventions are 
held, form a separate House, with a right 
to originate and propose acts for the con¬ 
currence of the House of Deputies,” etc. 
At first blush, this would seem like an at¬ 
tempt to confer on the House of Bishops “ a 
right;” but, on reflection, it will be seen 
that the provision is simply an infelicitous 
expression of the method adopted for ascer¬ 
taining the consent or “ concurrence of the 
House of Deputies,” without which, by 
operation of the Constitution, the Bishops 
have agreed that their legislative “ acts” 


shall be inoperative. All laws must be con¬ 
strued in view of surrounding circumstances 
existing at the time of their enactment, 
particularly with reference to pre-existing 
laws in pari materia ; and especially must 
be construed in subordination to existing 
fundamental law. Therefore it would do 
violence to all rules of construction to hold 
that those who framed this provision in¬ 
tended by it to confer, in any degree, the 
right of legislation upon the Bishops, which 
already existed in virtue of law higher than 
any Constitution ever framed by man. The 
emphatic and objective point at which the 
provision is directed, therefore, is the con- t 
currence of the “ House of Deputies.” 

But another provision of this Article is 
of such a character as to require special no¬ 
tice. It is this: “ And in all cases the 

House of Bishops shall signify to the Con¬ 
vention their approbation or disapprobation 
(the latter with their reasons in writing) 
within three days after the proposed act 
shall have been reported to them for con¬ 
currence ; and in failure thereof , it shall 
have the operation of a law .” This pro¬ 
vision of the Constitution contemplates the 
possibility of an act having “the operation 
of law” without the approbation of the 
Bishops ; hence itself is “ unconstitutional,” 
as being in direct conflict with the funda¬ 
mental or Higher Law by which our blessed 
Lord Himself commissioned the Apostles 
and their successors as the chief rulers and 
law-makers of His Church. As before stated, 
without the Bishops’ approbation no law of 
the Church can be enacted ; hence this pro¬ 
vision is ultra vires and void. It cannot be 
held that the provision acquires validity be¬ 
cause the Bishops consented to the Constitu¬ 
tion, and thus delegated to the House of 
Deputies the power of legislation in the con¬ 
tingency indicated ; for the exercise of such 
legislative functions cannot be delegated. 
As well might a Presbyter undertake to dele¬ 
gate his priestly functions to a layman ; and 
with stronger reason might it be argued 
that the Congress of the United States is 
capable of delegating its powers to the heads 
of Departments at Washington, or one house 
thereof its functions to the other. 

From the philosophy of this article, and 
from the authorities cited, by which its 
propositions are sustained, it is believed that 
n© impartial mind can do otherwise than 
conclude that the General Convention has 
plenary powers of ecclesiastical legislation, 
subject only to Divine and Catholic law and 
the limitations of the Provincial Constitu¬ 
tion. 

It was not the purpose, in preparing this 
paper, to discuss at large the details of the 
Constitution, but only to consider the gen¬ 
eral scope of that instrument and the under¬ 
lying or fundamental principles that must 
govern its construction ; but there is one 
other feature, already alluded to in an in¬ 
cidental way, which may, in conclusion, 
appropriately be considered ; and that is, the 





CONSTITUTION 


187 


CONTRITION 


name which the Constitution has given to 
our branch of the Holy Catholic Church. 
“ Names are things,” and sometimes teach¬ 
ing things, as in the present instance. 
Adjectives qualify the meaning of nouns; 
and, to the ordinary mind, “ Protestant 
Episcopal” signifies the chief characteristics 
of the Church that bears the burden of such 
designation. The idea conveyed to the un¬ 
tutored by “ Protestant,” thus conspicu¬ 
ously occupying the foreground, is that the 
prime object of the Church so labeled is to 
“protest,” instead of preaching the Gospel, 
ministering the sacraments, and saving 
souls. True, the Church protests against 
error in every form, be it Romish, Protest¬ 
ant, Agnostic, or otherwise, but her mis¬ 
sion is affirmative, objective ,—not that of 
negation. In solemn Creed we declare our 
belief in “ the Holy Catholic Church” (or, 
in other words, the Church Universal),— 
not in a “ Protestant Episcopal” sect. The 
title “ Protestant Episcopal” does not surely 
describe the insignia of the Spouse of Christ 
and of that Faith which for more than fif¬ 
teen hundred years was the quod semper , 
ubique, et ab omnibus of the Christian world. 

The designation “ Episcopal” implies that 
there can be a Church, in the proper mean¬ 
ing of the word, that does not hold to Epis¬ 
copacy. One might as well speak of a man’s 
gender as being that of a masculine male, 
or of a person skilled in treating diseases of 
the eye as an eye oculist. The Church—the 
Spouse of Christ —is One , and not divided 
into Episcopal and non-Episcopal fragments. 
“ There is one Body . . . one Lord, one 
Faith, one Baptism” (Eph. iv. 4, 5). Our 
blessed Lord established only the one Church. 
If we are not of this fold,—if the Church of 
our love bears not the essentials that have 
characterized the Bride of Christ for nearly 
nineteen centuries,—if she cannot trace her 
ancestry, step by step, through all the ages, 
back to our Lord Jesus and His Apostles, 
—then duty to God and our souls requires 
of us the utmost haste in renouncing alle¬ 
giance to her authority, and in seeking out 
and conforming to the true fold. Organized 
separation from the Church Catholic is 
schism ; and schism is sin. That there are 
vast numbers of devoted Christian people 
living in such separation is only too true. 
It is not for us to judge them, but to pray 
Almighty God “ to bring into the way of 
truth all such as have erred, and are de¬ 
ceived,” and, at the last, to reward all faith¬ 
ful people in His everlasting kingdom. The 
Good Master prayed the Father “ for the 
men Thou gavest me out of the. world,” ad¬ 
ding, “ Neither pray I for them alone, but 
for them also which shall believe on me 
through their word : that they all may be 
one ; as Thou, Father, art in me, and I in 
Thee, that they also may be one in us” 
(St. John xvii. 6, 20, 21). But schismatic 
or dissenting societies are not of the “ one 
fold” of the Good Shepherd, nor do they 
heed His prayer that believers in Him “all 


may be one.” “ And other sheep I have, 
which are not of this fold ; them also I must 
bring, and they shall hear my voice ; and 
there shall be one fold and one Shepherd” 
(St. John x. 16). For over fifteen hundred 
years after Christ’s visible ministry not 
one of these schismatic societies or organi¬ 
zations existed presuming to call itself a 
“ Church” ; nor during all that time was 
there any pretense of a “ Church” existing 
in all the world, or that could exist, with¬ 
out the threefold ministry commissioned by 
our Lord, and in turn by His Apostles. It 
was St. Ignatius, the disciple and pupil of 
the Apostle St. John, who, in his epistle to 
the Trallians, said of Bishops, Priests, and 
Deacons, “without these there is no Church.” 
Thus it appears that the maxim Nulla 
Ecclesia sine Episcopo is of no modern 
origin. And thus it also appears how tauto¬ 
logical it is, and how unbecoming (at least 
for members of the one household of Faith) 
to designate our Mother as the “ Episcopal” 
Church. But this tautology is less to be 
deplored than the narrowness and one-idea 
shallowness signified by “ Protestant.” No 
other branch of the Catholic Church has 
ever been, by her own children, subjected to 
the burden of such a dwarfing description. 

Hon. S. Corning Judd, LL.D. 

Consubstantiation. A theory Luther 
held with regard to the Real Presence of 
Christ in the Eucharist. It was as to the 
manner , a part of the truth not revealed 
to us, and therefore the English Church 
wisely does not attempt to define, but simply 
and absolutely to declare her belief in His 
presence in the Lord’s Supper. Luther 
used the illustration of the fire heating the 
iron to a white heat but not changing the 
nature or the weight of the iron. His view 
has not been accepted at all,—the Romanist 
defending transubstantiation, the English 
and Oriental Churches not defining, but 
accepting and declaring the Real Presence, 
and the Protestant denominations generally 
holding the Zwinglian theory of mere com¬ 
memoration with more or less definiteness. 

Contrition. The first essential step to a 
true repentance. Repentance is a state in 
which the soul must continue (as is also 
Faith), not a single act, which may then be 
dismissed. Attrition is merely the begin¬ 
ning of contrition. Attrition is rather a 
fear of consequences, not a sorrow for sin, 
and therefore is akin to the sorrow of the 
world which worketh death (2 Cor. vii. 10). 
But contrition involves with the sorrow for 
sin also a hatred of it for itself, and an en¬ 
ergetic casting of it. But this cannot be 
done at once. As sin in general is practiced 
and becomes habitual, and the soul is edu¬ 
cated in it, so the soul, to throw it off, can 
only do so bv patient habitual counter-action. 
It has to learn to hate what it once loved, 
and to love what it once hated, to become 
indifferent to the sins that once gave it 
pleasure, and to eagerly practice, till it does 
enjoy, the pure and holy thoughts and hopes 





CONVENT 


188 


CONVENTION 


to which it was once indifferent. The 
sorrow and the struggle together mark the 
true contrition, the broken heart. God can 
heal, but the sacrifice must he a truly broken 
heart. This share of contrition in the edu¬ 
cation of the heart is an essential factor in 
the Christian’s development through the 
state of repentance. 80 St. Paul always 
was eagerly contrite for his persecution of the 
Church, and this sorrow inflamed his love to 
his Lord still more, while it abased him in 
his own sight. A true contrition never 
loses sight of the sins, whether of commis¬ 
sion or omission, to be forsaken, and whose 
return is to be guarded against. A true 
contrition tries to fill the void left by the 
renunciation of evil habits or of sins by 
other and holy habits and acts. There is 
no greater danger to the soul than to be 
empty, swept, and garnished (St. Matt. xii. 
44). And this contrition is also bound up 
in confession of the sin and satisfaction or 
reparation. These three require a contin¬ 
ual practice and form the state of repent¬ 
ance. Therein is the real test of a true 
repentance. 

Convent. A religious house, usually for 
nuns. 

Conventicle. Properly, a little convent, 
a secret cabal of monks in a convent to 
make a party in the election of an Abbot. 
Hence a schismatical gathering, and so is 
used in England as the legal term to de¬ 
scribe any place of worship used by dissen¬ 
ters. The wording of the 73d Canon of 1603 
a.d. is clear, and includes meetings of the 
ministers of the Church as well as of those 
who reject her ministrations. “ For as 
much as all conventicles and secret meetings 
of priests and ministers have ever been 
justly accounted very hateful to the state of 
the Church wherein they live, we do ordain 
that no priests or ministers of the Word of 
God, nor any other persons, shall meet to¬ 
gether in any private house or elsewhere to 
consult upon any matter or course to be 
taken by them, or upon their motion or dis¬ 
cretion by any other, which may any way 
tend to the impeaching or depraving of the 
doctrine of the Church of England, or the 
Book of Common Prayer, or any part of the 
government or discipline now established in 
the Church of England, under pain of ex- 
communication ipso facto.” 

Convention. The meeting of the Bishops, 
clergy, and laity in council, generally but 
once in the year. This name for Diocesan 
Synods is peculiar to the American Church. 
It has been changed for the older and more 
appropriate name of Council in the Dioceses 
of Arkansas, Florida, Fond du Lac, Georgia, 
Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missis¬ 
sippi, Nebraska, Texas, Virginia, West 
Virginia, and Wisconsin. The Diocese of 
Springfield uses the title Synod. The Prov¬ 
ince of Illinois has formed a Federate Coun¬ 
cil. Anciently the Diocesan Synods met 
twice a year. 

The organization of the Convention de¬ 


mands the presence of the Bishop, with his 
clergy, in person, and the laity, by their 
delegates, from the several parishes of the 
Diocese having a right to representation. In 
truth, every parish being an integral part 
of the Diocese, has an inalienable right to 
representation, and every clergyman has a 
seat by right of office. So the phrase usual 
in the constitutional instruments and in the 
Canons of parishes, “in union with this Con¬ 
vention,” is wrong in principle and fraught 
with possible mischief. The Bishop sits with, 
and presides over, the whole body by right 
of office; but frequently the practice is to 
elect a President out of the body of the 
Priests, who can preside as occasion serves. 
Sometimes a Bishop has claimed the right 
to act as a Bishop, and not as mere presiding 
officer, and in some instances he has claimed 
tw r o votes upon this ground. The Conven¬ 
tion is not a gathering of clergy and laity 
from a congeries of parishes, but is the legis¬ 
lative body of the Diocese, and therefore a 
representative body of the whole estate of 
the Church. The Diocese needs the Con¬ 
vention, the Convention does not create the 
Diocese, but merely organizes and harmo¬ 
nizes its work. A parish in propriety cannot 
be deprived of its seat so long as it is a par¬ 
ish, but it may be made amenable to disci¬ 
pline. The Convention meets at the ap¬ 
pointed time, or, in case of emergence, is 
called into special session by the ecclesiasti¬ 
cal authority, which is either the Bishop or, 
in the vacancy of the Diocese, the Standing 
Committee. The Convention takes cogni¬ 
zance of the conditions on which the mem¬ 
bers take their seats ; elects its own officers, 
who are usually also Diocesan officers; di¬ 
rects how the several committees and dele¬ 
gations shall be constituted; in case of va¬ 
cancy elects a Bishop ; enacts Canons of 
discipline and of Diocesan organization and 
work; takes order on the finances of the 
Diocese ; admits parishes and advises on the 
state of the Church ; consents to or rejects 
all proposed changes in the rubrics and order 
of the Prayer-Book and in the Constitution 
of the General Convention, begun in or pro¬ 
posed to the General Convention. Its Can¬ 
ons are binding upon all the members of the 
Church alike,—Bishop, clergy, and laity,— 
and its decisions and resolutions demand 
heedful consideration from every member 
of the Diocese. Its functions, therefore, are 
those of a deliberative body, and it is con¬ 
ducted with all the gravity and decorum of, 
and under the same rules that obtain usually 
in, deliberative and legislative bodies. 

Federate , or Council of the Dioceses within 
any State is authorized by Canon 7, Tit. 
III., of the “Digest.” It sets forth the 
authorization in these terms : 

“ It is hereby declared lawful for the Dio¬ 
ceses now existing,or hereafter to exist within 
the limits of any State or Commonwealth, 
to establish for themselves a Federate Con¬ 
vention or Council representing such Dio¬ 
ceses, which may deliberate and decide upon 






CONVERSION 


189 


CONVOCATION 


the common interests of the Church within 
the limits aforesaid; but before any deter¬ 
mined action of such Convention or Council 
shall be had, the powers proposed to be ex¬ 
ercised thereby shall be submitted to the 
General Convention for its approval. Noth¬ 
ing in this Canon shall be construed as for¬ 
bidding any Federate Council from taking 
such action as they may deem necessary to 
secure such legislative enactments as the 
common interests of the Church in the State 
may require.” 

The Dioceses in the State of Illinois have 
so far only formed themselves into a Federate 
Council, viz., Chicago, Quincy, and Spring- 
held, under the Presidency of the Rt. Rev. 
Alex. Burgess, S.T.D. It is composed of 
the Bishops of the three Dioceses, and of 
five clerical and five lay delegates from each 
Diocese. It will meet on the second Tues¬ 
day in November, 1884 a.d., in St. Paul’s 
Church, Springfield. 

Conversion. A term that has had more 
meanings forced into it than it can bear, and 
for which meanings other accurate terms 
are used by the Church. In popular use 
conversion is made to stand, first, for Re¬ 
generation, secondly, for Sanctification. 
It cannot bear these meanings, for its real 
root means a turning away,— i.e ., from one 
state to another. I. The conversion of the 
Gentiles from heathenism to Christianity. 
II. The conversion from a state of sin to a 
state of repentance. “There will I teach 
transgressors Thy way, and sinners shall be 
converted unto Thee” (Ps. li. 13). III. 
Conversion from a wavering character to 
one of firmness, as in St. Peter’s case, where 
he was already a believer and a deeply re¬ 
ligious man. IV. St. Paul’s conversion was 
not from irreligion to Christianity, but from 
an enthusiastic zeal in behalf of Judaism, 
leading to persecution, to an equally enthu¬ 
siastic zeal in behalf of Christianity, leading 
to lowly patience and forbearance, and en¬ 
ergetic work. 

These are the scriptural types of conver¬ 
sion, only one of which coincides with the 
state of repentance, but none of which at 
all coincide with its modern popular use 
to mean Regeneration, which is God’s 
own gift, and Sanctification, which is the 
gift of the Holy Ghost working with our 
hearts. Conversion cannot be without the 
help of the Holy Spirit, but it is only pre¬ 
parative to the reception of God’s gift of 
regeneration in baptism (vide Regenera¬ 
tion), and is a state in which we should live, 
i.e ., of repentance; Sanctification is the 
gift of the Holy Ghost, as by our humble 
use of the means of grace we are daily better 
fitted to receive and to live in it. 

Convocation (in England). Convocation 
is an assembly of the spirituality of the realm 
of England, summoned by the Archbishops, 
pursuant to the queen’s writ, whenever a 
Parliament is summoned, and it is continued 
or discharged at the same time that Parlia¬ 
ment is prorogued or dissolved. The analogy 


is still further continued in the Constitution 
of Convocation, which consists of the Suffra¬ 
gan Bishops in the Upper House, and of 
the Deans, Archdeacons, a Proctor or proxy 
for each Chapter, and two from each Diocese 
in the Lower House of Convocation ; and in 
respect of this Constitution it would appear 
to be of older date than Parliament itself, 
and to form like it an integral part of the 
body politic of England. The objects for 
which Convocation is summoned are to con¬ 
sult on matters which concern the crown, 
the security and defense of the Church of 
England, and the tranquillity, public good, 
and defense of the realm itself. Convocation 
formerly asserted and exercised the right of 
enacting ecclesiastical Canons, and of voting 
subsidies to the crown ; but the former right 
was greatly restricted by Henry VIII., and 
by later acts of Parliament; and the latter 
was silently abandoned in 1664 a.d. ; since 
which time the clergy have been taxed like 
other citizens. But this right had been lit¬ 
tle more than a nominal one, for after the 
time of Henry VIII. the votes of subsidies 
were always confirmed by Parliament. Cer¬ 
tain Convocations are of great importance in 
the history of the State and Church of Eng¬ 
land ; in particular that of 1529 a.d., estab¬ 
lishing the king’s supremacy; that of 1562 
a.d. , confirming the Articles of Religion ; 
that of 1603 a.d. , enacting certain Canons; 
and that of 1661 a.d., completing the revis¬ 
ion of the Prayer-Book. 

As there was little or nothing to do on or¬ 
dinary occasions, the sessions of Convocation 
seldom occupied more than a few days, the 
meeting either adjourning itself or being 
prorogued by royal writ. But about the 
close of the seventeenth and the beginning 
of the eighteenth century a factious spirit 
so prevailed in the Lower House that the sit¬ 
tings were distinguished by unseemly con¬ 
tentions with the Bishops of the Upper 
House ; and in 1717 a.d. Convocation was 
prorogued, and not again assembled for busi¬ 
ness for more than a hundred years, until, 
under Victoria, through the influence of 
Bishops Wilberforce, of Oxford, and Phil- 
potts, of Exeter, it was again permitted to 
resume activity, both as a consultative and 
a deliberative body. Convocation differs 
from an ordinary Provincial Council in that 
the latter is comprised of Bishops, and meets 
to consult on matters which concern the 
faith and peace of the Church as a religious 
body, while the former has other objects 
and is a representative body. Each Prov¬ 
ince, Canterbury and York, has its own 
Convocation. 

Authorities: Encyclopaedia Britanniea, 
and Student’s Hume. 

Convocation of 1529 A.D., The. Henry 
VIII., of England, having determined at 
any cost to effect a divorce from Queen 
Catherine, summoned a Parliament to deal 
with that question and with other matters of 
equal importance. The Parliament assem¬ 
bled in 1529 a.d., and at the same time Con- 






CONVOCATION 


190 


CONVOCATIONS 


vocation came together. Almost the first 
thing done in Parliament was to pass three 
acts regulating the probate of wills (which 
was a right of the Ecclesiastical Courts), the 
charge or fee of the clergy called “ Mor¬ 
tuaries,” and the obtaining license from 
Eome for bolding pluralities ; which acts 
amounted to a direct blow at the authority 
of the Pope in England. Convocation was 
far from pleased by them, and in response 
made an address to the king in behalf of 
their privileges. But it was of no avail, for 
the bills soon became law. 

At the next session of Parliament in 
1530 a.d., as there seemed no prospect of 
any assistance from the Pope in the matter 
of the king’s divorce, steps were taken to 
decree it without reference to his authority, 
and a bill was brought into Parliament 
making it penal to introduce bulls from 
Rome ; about the same time the whole clergy 
of England were declared guilty of break¬ 
ing the statute of Prasmunire (a law to re¬ 
strain English ecclesiastics from acting 
under papal authority), and a heavy fine 
was imposed upon them as a penalty. 
Before accepting the fine to be levied, how¬ 
ever, the clergy were informed that it must 
be accompanied by an acknowledgment that 
the king was the supreme head of the Church 
of England. Against this admission Con¬ 
vocation stood out for some time, but after 
considerable negotiation and discussion of 
phrases, the wording that the king is “ the 
singular protector, the only and supreme 
lord, and as far as is permitted by the law of 
Christ, even the supreme head” of the 
Church, was fixed upon and passed by Con¬ 
vocation, apparently because not objected to 
when put to the vote. But the position of the 
clergy with reference to the crown and to 
Parliament was not yet sufficiently defined ; 
and in 1532 a.d. the House of Commons 
brought an address to the king reciting 
many heavy charges against them. Against 
this address a reply was framed by Bishop 
Gardiner, and still another reply by a com¬ 
mittee of the Lower House of Convocation ; 
but the king was unyielding, and Convoca¬ 
tion was required to subscribe the three 
following articles: (1) No constitution or 
ordinance should hereafter be enacted or 
put forth by the clergy without the king’s 
consent. (2) That a committee of thirty- 
two persons be appointed to review the 
ancient Canons, and to abrogate such as 
shall be formed prejudicial to the king’s 
prerogative and onerous to his highness’s 
subjects. (3) That all such Canons as 
shall be approved shall stand good when 
ratified by the king’s consent. To these 
articles the Lower House soon agreed; but 
the Bishops made more resistance, and 
would only agree to a form in which the 
third article was evaded, which was voted 
in May, 1532 a d. ; but even then not unani¬ 
mously. By these acts was accomplished 
the abandoning of the Pope’s supremacy 
and the establishment of that of the kinsr, in 


the submission of the clergy. (See Perry’s 
History of the Church of England.) 

Convocations in the Church in the United 
States must not be confounded with the offi¬ 
cial assemblies of the same name in the 
Church of England, where they form a 
regularly authorized part of the Establish¬ 
ment under the laws of both Church and 
State. In the Protestant Episcopal Church 
in the United States there is no constitu¬ 
tional or canonical provision for the organ¬ 
ization of any such bodies, but in most or 
all of the Dioceses the term Convocation 
has long been applied to stated assemblies 
of the clergy, with occasionally a lay ele¬ 
ment, regulated to some extent by the 
Diocesan Canons, but all more or less of 
a voluntary character. The constitution, 
duties, objects, and authority of Convoca¬ 
tions differ widely in the various Dioceses, 
though there are a few prominent features 
common to all. The Diocese is usually 
territorially divided into such a number of 
Convocations as will insure the convenient 
assembling of a sufficient number of the 
clergy. The Bishop is, ex officio , the pre¬ 
siding officer of each when he is present. 
The meeting lasts two or three days, which 
are devoted to frequent public services, to 
private devotional exercises, to the discus¬ 
sion in public and among themselves by 
the clergy of timely and important topics 
of doctrinal or practical interest, and to so¬ 
cial intercourse and relaxation. There is 
generally more or less of amissionary char¬ 
acter given to all the exercises, and the 
opportunity is frequently used for doing 
mission work at outlying points in the 
neighborhood of the place of assembly. 
Efforts are made to stir up missionary zeal 
and to stimulate the work of Church exten¬ 
sion. The meetings are thus of great value 
in discovering the missionary needs of the 
Diocese and developing methods of meeting 
them, though the Convocations are not the 
authorized Diocesan missionary organiza¬ 
tions, special boards, elected by the Convo¬ 
cations, being intrusted with that work. 

A custom has grown into use in some 
Dioceses, dating from the Lambeth Confer¬ 
ence, of applying to the presiding Presbyter 
of each Convocation the title of Dean. 
There is in this a certain degree of conven¬ 
ience and appropriateness, but it may lead 
to confusion of ideas, unless we bear dis¬ 
tinctly in mind the essential difference be¬ 
tween these officers and the Deans of the 
Church of England. The latter belongs 
entirely to the organization of the Cathe¬ 
dral system, with some special exceptions, 
none of which bear any but the most 
remote analogy to the Presidents of the 
American Convocations. The analogies are 
equally remote in the case of Archdeacons, 
a title recently adopted in some American 
Dioceses. The nearest approach to the office 
is probably to be found in the English Rural 
Deans, although here, also, there are essen¬ 
tial differences, as well in authority as in 






CONVOCATIONS 


191 


COPTIC CHURCH 


function. A Dean of Convocation holds 
his office either by the election of the clergy 
constituting the body, or by the appoint¬ 
ment of the Bishop on their nomination. 
He may or may not be officially recognized 
by Diocesan Canon. His duties are deter¬ 
mined in the same voluntary and irregular 
way. The office is therefore honorary, and 
of the most restricted character. It is evi¬ 
dent that the possibilities of usefulness which 
are offered by Convocations have not yet 
been developed, nor can they be while these 
assemblies are mere voluntary gatherings of 
the clergy, with various and uncertain ob¬ 
jects and authority. Systematized and uni¬ 
fied in their Constitution and methods, and 
officially recognized as a part of the organ¬ 
ization of the Church under the General 
and Diocesan Canons, they may become 
powerful instrumentalities for good. The 
following Constitution is suggested as a 
guide towards the accomplishment of this 
end, its principal features having been for 
years successfully tested in the Diocese of 
Easton. 

The territorial division and the stated 
meetings three times a year are fixed by the 
Canons of the Diocese. The Bishop is 
always present, if possible, taking an active 
part in all the exercises, arranging, when 
necessary, his official visitation of the 
parishes to suit the time of meeting in each. 
The meetings are held in the various 
parishes in rotation, the times being fixed 
by the Bishop and Deans at each Annual 
Convention, and published with the journal. 
At each anniversaj’y meeting a Secretary is 
elected and a Dean electively nominated 
to the Bishop for his appointment. The 
Bishop and the Deans, with two or more lay 
members, elected by the Convention, consti¬ 
tute the Diocesan Board of Missions, and, 
with the approval of the Convention, con¬ 
trol the entire missionary work of the Dio¬ 
cese. Topics for discussion are carefully 
selected by the respective Deans in consul¬ 
tation with the Bishop, thoroughly sylla- 
bused and the parts assigned to selected 
speakers, and sent out in printed circulars 
one month before each stated meeting. 
These are discussed before the congregation 
after evening prayer, one of them being 
always of a missionary character. For ex¬ 
ample : 

TOPIC.—THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 


I. Its Beginnings. Rev . A . B . 

II. Its Sustenance. Rev . C . D . 

III. Its Objects. Rev . E . F . 

IV. Its Reward. The Bishop . 


By this means unified, accurate, and sys¬ 
tematic teaching is assured. The rector 
may suggest one of the topics upon which 
he specially desires his congregation to be 
instructed. These topics take the place of 
the sermon at evening service, the treat¬ 
ment being extempore or by short written 
papers, as the clergy assigned may elect or 
may be specially requested by the Bishop. 


Lay speakers are sometimes selected. A 
limit is usually assigned, and the exercises 
varied by the singing of hymns. There 
are three evening and two morning services, 
the latter with sermon and the Holy Com¬ 
munion at the first. There may be an offer¬ 
tory at each service to defray the expenses 
of the clergy, and there must be one for 
missionary purposes. In addition to these 
public exercises the clergy meet together in 
private, and after devotional services con¬ 
fer upon matters of current interest. A 
feature of great value has been the selection 
of some competent Presbyter as Preceptor, 
under whose guidance the other clergy care¬ 
fully and critically study some previously 
assigned passage in the Greek Testament. 
In addition to all this there is opportunity 
for each rector or missionary to make a re¬ 
port of the special needs of his cure, of the 
prospects and best methods of Church ex¬ 
tension therein, and of the probable amount 
of contributions to be expected. By these 
means the double object may be accom¬ 
plished of stimulating interest in Church 
work and systematizing the methods of its 
performance. 

Rev. Robert Wilson, D.D. 

Cope ( cappa , whence cape). A cloak¬ 
shaped vestment which was originally a 
secular garment, worn as a protection 
against rain. As an ecclesiastical vestment 
it cannot be certainly traced earlier than St. 
Benedict’s time (529 a.d.). As it was more 
withdrawn from common use it was made of 
costlier material and was more richly orna¬ 
mented. Its modern form is a cloak of an 
exact semicircle with a border (osphrey) on 
the straight side, frequently very rich with 
figures and lamboyant work. The straight 
side should be ten feet in length, and when 
worn, the cope is fastened in front by a 
clasp called a morse. It was one of the 
vestments directed in the famous Ornaments 
Rubric in Edward VI. Prayer-Book ; and 
in Cathedrals the cope is a very common 
vestment. (Vide Vestments.) 

Coptic Church. The Monophysite or Jac¬ 
obite Christians of Egypt, who have since 
the seventh century maintained a schism, 
which at first comprised the larger part of 
the Egyptian Church, but which has been 
dwindling away. The Copts are the descend¬ 
ants of the ancient Egyptians, whose lan¬ 
guage passed into the present liturgic lan¬ 
guage of the Church. The Coptic was a 
spoken language, with much corruption and 
introduction of new terms, and was related 
to the Egyptian of the Pharaohs. It was a 
vernacular tongue till the sixteenth cen¬ 
tury, since which time it has disappeared, 
the last person who spoke it, so far as can 
be ascertained, dying in 1633 a.d. 

The Copts refused to accept the deposition 
of Dioscorus, their Patriarch, by the Coun¬ 
cil of Chalcedon, and this led to the schism. 
Timothy (457 a.d.) was the first to usurp 
patriarchal functions. After various at¬ 
tempts at reconciling the orthodox (Mel- 









CORPORAL 


192 COUNCILS, (ECUMENICAL 


cliites) and the Jacobites, the latter took 
final shape as a sect about 517 a.d. It was 
strengthened by the long vacancies which 
occurred in the orthodox See of Alexandria, 
and at one time was all-powerful. Now it 
numbers about one hundred thousand mem¬ 
bers, and, it is said, is losing ground before 
Mohammedanism. ( Vide Neale’s History of 
the Patriarchate of Alexandria.) 

Corporal. The linen cloth spread over 
the consecrated bread after the communion. 
Its use, as directed in the rubric, “that a 
fair linen cloth shall be reverently placed 
over what remaineth of the consecrated Ele¬ 
ments after all have communicated,” can be 
traced directly to the fifth century, but from 
its nature must date from the earliest times 
that the Holy Tables were in use also. The 
term anciently meant both the fair white 
linen cloth which covered the Holy Table, 
and also the covering ordered for the Ele¬ 
ments, and was to be always of pure white 
linen. 

Corpus Christi. A feast instituted in 
1264 a.d., and held on Thursday after Whit- 
Sunday. It is based upon the doctrine of 
Transubstantiation, when that was made an 
article of Faith. 

Councils, (Ecumenical. An (Ecumenical 
or General Synod is an assembly which rep¬ 
resents the universal Church, and not, like 
a Provincial or National Synod, only a par¬ 
ticular region. It is not enough that such 
an assembly should be summoned from the 
whole Church, but it is also necessary that 
its decrees shall be universally accepted, and 
this is the only final proof of its oecumenical 
character. Its authority arises not from 
the number of Bishops present, but from 
the approbation of the Catholic Church dis¬ 
persed throughout the world. If this con¬ 
dition is fulfilled, no defects in the composi¬ 
tion of the Council or criticism of its pro¬ 
cedure can avail to throw doubt upon its 
judgments. 

Bishops alone had an authoritative voice, 
but Priests, Deacons, and even laymen 
might take part in the deliberations. Thus, 
at the Council of Nicaea, we are told that 
there was an “innumerable throng” of 
Priests, Deacons, and Acolytes. St. Atha¬ 
nasius, then only a Deacon, was the chief 
defender of the orthodox faith. 

General Councils were only called when 
the integrity of the Faith was threatened. 
Their office was not to add to “ the Faith 
once delivered to the Saints,” but to attest it 
or define it as against heresy. Thus the 
Faith attains exact or dogmatic expression. 

Six Synods alone have been universally 
received by the Catholic Church, as follows: 

1, the Council of Nicaea, in Bithynia, 325 a.d. ; 

2, the first Council of Constantinople, 381 
a.d. ; 3, the Council of Ephesus, 431 a d. ; 
4, the Council of Chalcedon, 451 a.d. ; 5, 
the second Council of Constantinople, 553 
a.d. ; 6, the third Council of Constantino¬ 
ple, 680 a.d. The Oriental Church admits 
a second Council of Nicaea 787 a.d. The 


Roman Church asserts the oecumenical char¬ 
acter of several others, but the number is 
not definitely agreed upon. Anglican, 
Roman, and Oriental alike acknowledge 
the six above enumerated. 

The decrees of the six (Ecumenical Coun¬ 
cils were chiefly directed to the settlement 
of the doctrine of the Divinity and the Per¬ 
son of Christ. 

The First (Ecumenical Council. —Arius, 
one of the public preachers of Alexandria, 
began to teach that the Son of God was a 
creature, the first of all creatures; but still 
only a creature. He argued as follows : 
Since He is a son, (1) there was a time when 
He was not, (2) before He was begotten He 
w,as not, (3) and He was formed from what 
once was not. The reasoning was soon seen 
to be defective in that, starting from the re¬ 
lation of Father and Son, it conducted to 
the conclusion that He was not a son but a 
creature, and hence only a son by adoption. 
Afterwards it was argued that the existence 
of the Son resulted from an act of the 
Father’s will, and hence He must be es¬ 
sentially inferior. One of the inferences 
from these positions was that our Lord was 
tried as other moral agents and adopted on 
being found worthy: that His holiness was 
not essential but acquired. This heresy was 
promulgated first 319 a.d. It was con¬ 
demned by a Synod held in Alexandria the 
following year; but the teachers of false 
doctrine obtained the countenance of several 
influential prelates in Asia Minor and Pales¬ 
tine, and the heresy soon obtained a wider 
currency. 

Constantine, the first Christian emperor, 
on becoming master of the East, found this 
controversy troubling the Church, and, anx¬ 
ious for peace and harmony, summoned a 
General Council, which met accordingly at 
Nicaea, in Bithynia, in June, 325 a.d. It was 
attended by about three hundred Bishops, 
chiefly of the East. Either Hosius of Cordova, 
or Eustathius of Antioch, presided. Atha¬ 
nasius, about twenty-seven years old and still 
a Deacon, was the principal champion of the 
Catholic faith, and conducted public disputa¬ 
tions with Arius and other heretical leaders. 
It appeared at once that in the minds of the 
overwhelming majority there was no doub.t 
of the heretical character of the new teach¬ 
ing. It still remained to devise and agree 
upon a formula which would exclude such 
teaching. The proposed term Homoiousios. 
“of like substance,” concealed the real 
question in dispute. The plain question 
was, whether our Lord was God in as full a 
sense as the Father, though not to be 
viewed as separable from Him, or whether 
He was a creature,— i.e., of a substance 
which had a beginning. 

The term Homoousios, “of the same es¬ 
sence or substance,” was at length adopted. 
The Creed set forth by this Council embody¬ 
ing the doctrine of the Trinity and of the 
divinity of Christ in particular, agreed in 
its phraseology very closely with that now 







COUNCILS, (ECUMENICAL 193 


COUNCILS, (ECUMENICAL 


commonly called the Nicene Creed, but 
ended with the words, “And in the Holy 
Ghost.” The propositions of Arius were 
stated and condemned. This Synod also 
passed twenty Canons, one of which decreed 
that the feast of Easter should always be 
held on Sunday, and regulated its time by 
the vernal equinox; another contained the 
following words : “ Let the ancient customs 
continue to exist in Egypt, and Libya, and 
Pentapolis; that is, that the Bishop of Alex¬ 
andria should have jurisdiction over all 
these, for there is a similar relation for the 
Bishop of Home.” Anglican theologians 
have inferred from this that the authority of 
the Bishop of Home was not considered at 
that time as extending beyond his own 
Patriarchate. All the decrees of the Council 
were published in a synodial epistle to the 
Universal Church. 

The Second (Ecumenical Council .—The 
decisions of Nicsea were followed by a de¬ 
termined and prolonged conflict, during 
which, at times, Arianism, backed by the 
persecuting arm of the civil power, almost 
gained the victory. Several of the succes¬ 
sors of Constantine were Arians and one an 
apostate (Julian, 361-363 a.d.). Athanasius, 
who succeeded Alexander in the See of 
Alexandria, spent many years in exile, but 
never wavered in upholding the Nicene 
faith. Hosius of Cordova, in his hundredth 
year, yielded under great distress, and 
signed an heretical statement, which he 
afterwards recanted with bitter penitence. 
Liberius, Bishop of Rome, after a valiant 
and resolute defense of the faith, was ban¬ 
ished, and in the homesickness of exile at 
last gave way. Many Conferences and 
Councils were held, some of high impor¬ 
tance, especially that of Sardica, 347 a.d. 
The difficulties of the time were increased 
from two causes : first, a large body of 
Christian people, though orthodox at heart, 
could not for a long time reconcile them¬ 
selves to the term Homoousios. It was only 
after a long controversy that all believers in 
the divinity of Christ came to see that no 
other term had the force requisite to exclude 
the heresy which would make Him only a 
creature. The other cause which obscured 
the true issue was the manner in which the 
Arians so often shifted their ground, propos¬ 
ing now one formula and now another. 

At last, 380 a.d., in the person of Theodo¬ 
sius, an emperor at once Christian and or¬ 
thodox ascended the throne of the Eastern 
Empire. His first care was to end this long 
strife, which had produced far more confu¬ 
sion in the East than in the West. The 
administration of the Church was deeply 
affected, Altar against Altar, Bishop against 
Bishop, thus Constantinople itself was in 
possession of the Arians, an Arian Bishop 
occupying its throne, but Gregory Nazian- 
zen was leading an organized opposition. 
In Antioch, another of the great Patriarchal 
Sees, two Bishops, Meletius and Paulinus, 
claimed jurisdiction. 

13 


Theodosius resolved to summon a Council. 
In answer to his summons one hundred and 
fifty Bishops met at Constantinople. The 
Western Church was not represented. 
Meletius of Antioch, a man of holy life, 
was appointed to preside. Theodosius had 
already endeavored to regulate the ecclesi¬ 
astical affairs of Constantinople by driving 
the Arian Bishop from the city and putting 
St. Gregory in possession of St. Sophia, the 
Cathedral church. It still remained to 
establish peace in Antioch. At this junc¬ 
ture Meletius died, universally lamented 
and revered as a saint by the Council of 
which he was president. The friends of 
peace proposed that the rival Bishop, Pau- 
linus, should be recognized. St. Gregory 
strenuously advocated this course, and was 
bitterly disappointed when the Meletian 
party proceeded to elect a successor and 
thus perpetuated the schism. St. Gregory’s 
possession of the See of Constantinople was 
now attacked on canonical grounds in the 
Council itself, he having been originally 
consecrated Bishop of another See, while 
the ancient rule forbade translations. Upon 
this he resigned, and withdrew also from the 
Council after an eloquent farewell address. 

This Council enlarged the Creed of 
Nicsea by the insertion of several additional 
phrases, and of all the words which now 
stand after “ Holy Ghost,” except the 
filioque clause (added at the Council of 
Toledo, 589 a.d.). The most important 
amendment was the amplification of the 
article on the Holy Ghost. This was 
done to meet the heresy of Macedonius, an 
Arianizing Bishop of Alexandria, who 
denied the Divinity of the Third Person of 
the Blessed Trinity. They are placed here 
for comparison. 

The Creeds of Nice and Constantinople, 
as they were recited at Chalcedon : 


NIC.TCA. 

We believe iii One God, 
the Father Almighty, 
Maker of 1 all things visi¬ 
ble and invisible. And in 
One Lord Jesus Christ, 
the 2 Son of God, begotten 
of the Father. 

Only begotten, that is 
of the substance of the 
Father; 

God of God, Light of 
Light, Very God of Very 
God, Begotten, not made ; 
being of One Substance 
with the Father; by 
Whom all things were 
made, 3 the things in 
heaven and things in earth. 

Who for us men and for 
our salvation came down 4 
and was incarnate 6 

and made Man, 6 

and suffered, 7 and rose 
again on the third day, 8 

Who ascended into heaven, 9 

and cometh again 10 to 
judge quick and dead, 11 


CONSTANTINOPLE. 


1 heaven and earth, and of 


2 Only-begotten Son of 
God, begotten of the 
Father before all worlds; 


3 transposed to the beginning . 


4 from heaven, 

6 of the Holy Ghost and 
the Virgin Mary, 

6 and was crucified for us 
under Pontius Pilate, 

I and w T as buried, 

8 according to the Scrip¬ 
tures. 

0 and sitteth on the Right 
Hand of the Father. 

10 in glory 

II of Whose Kingdom there 
shall be no end. 




COUNCILS, (ECUMENICAL 194 COUNCILS, (ECUMENICAL 


NIC.EA. CONSTANTINOPLE. 

And in the Holt Ghost , 12 12 the Lord, and Giver of 
Life, Who proeeedeth from 
the Father, Who with the 
Father and the Son to¬ 
gether is worshipped and 
glorified; Who spake by 
the Prophets; in One Holy 
Catholic and Apostolic 
Church; we acknowledge 
one Baptism for the re¬ 
mission of sins; and we 
look for the Resurrection 
of the dead, and the life 
of the world to come. 

Eour Canons were passed. The first pro¬ 
nounced the Creed inviolable and con¬ 
demned seven heresies, the most important 
of which were the Arian, the Macedonian, 
and the Apollinarian. The latter was an 
error of an opposite kind to the Arian, Appol- 
linaris having taught that our Lord had no 
“ reasonable soul,” but that the Word sup¬ 
plied the place of the mind or nous. The 
second guarded the bounds of territorial 
jurisdiction. The famous third Canon gave 
a “ primacy of honor to the Bishop of Con¬ 
stantinople next after the Bishop of Rome, 
because Constantinople was new Rome.” 
The fourth related to a recent intrusion into 
the See of Constantinople. This second 
General Council is a notable instance of a 
Council by no means representing the whole 
Church attaining the oecumenical character 
simply through its final acceptance by the 
Catholic Church. Arianism as a school 
within the Church was now at an end. From 
this time it only continued to exist as a 
sect without. 

The Third (Ecumenical Council. —About 
Christmas, 428 A.D., a priest named Anasta- 
sius, preaching in St. Sophia, Constanti¬ 
nople, used these words : “ Let no one call 
Mary Theotokos (Mother of God) ; for she 
was a human creature, of whom God could 
not be born.” The Archbishop, Nestorius, 
gave the sermon his emphatic sanction, and 
followed it with a course of sermons on the 
same theme. This was the starting-point 
of the Nestorian heresy. Such expressions 
as these were used: “ It was not the Word 
that was born but the man Jesus,” that He 
who “held the circle of the earth” could 
not be wrapped in grave-clothes; that the 
sustainer of all things could not rise from 
the dead. Some of the immediate followers 
of Nestorius spoke of Mary as “the mother 
of a man united to God,” “The son who 
suffered is one, God the Word is another.” 
“ For my part,” said one, “ I cannot say 
that a child of two or three months old was 
God.” Superficially it was a criticism upon 
a term which in the sense they often attrib¬ 
uted to it would be inadmissible, namely, 
if “Theotokos,” or “Mother of God,” be 
interpreted to mean, “ Mother of the God- 
head.” But the expressions quoted above 
clearly show that the objection cut far 
deeper than this and resulted in dividing 
Christ into two Personalities, the Human 
and the Divine. It was not primarily the 
dignity of the Virgin-Mo her which made 


the question important, but the reality of 
the Incarnation was involved, the truth of 
the grand declaration of St. John, “The 
Word was made Flesh and dwelt among 
us.” “ If the son of Mary were not literally 
God, He could not bring heaven and earth 
into unity; to have two Saviours would be 
equivalent to having none” (Canon Bright). 
The great champion of the Faith as against 
Nestorius was Cyril of Alexandria. He is 
often accused of having used violent and 
arbitary methods, though it is probable that 
the title of Saint awarded to him from an¬ 
cient days at least indicates a general and 
wide-spread popular estimate of his charac¬ 
ter which can hardly fail to have had some 
substantial basis. He was, however, one of 
the foremost theologians in the history of the 
Christian Church, admirable for the clear¬ 
ness and precision of his thought and lan¬ 
guage. He took his stand upon the simple 
formula: “If our Lord Jesus Christ is 
God, how can our Lord’s Mother, the 
Holy Virgin, be not Mother of God ?” He 
guarded himself against misinterpretation 
by clearly confessing a true manhood in 
Christ, and clearly denying that Mary 
could be Mother of Ccro-head. The West 
was unmoved by the new heresy, and Pope 
Coelestine (422-432 a.d.) accepting the doc¬ 
trinal statements of Cyril, commissioned him 
to “join the authority of the Roman See to 
his own” and insist upon a recantation on the 
part of Nestorius. Accordingly, at a Coun¬ 
cil of Alexandria, 430 a.d., Cyril put forth 
a synodal letter containing an exposition 
of that portion of the Creed which concerns 
the Incarnation, and twelve “ anathemas” 
or articles directed against the teaching of 
Nestorius. These anathemas express con¬ 
cisely and clearly the Catholic doctrine of 
the Person of Christ. At the height of the 
controversy, the emperor, Theodosius the 
Younger (408-450 a.d.), issued a call for a 
General Council to meet at Ephesus on the 
ensuing Pentecost (431 a.d.). Here accord¬ 
ingly met the third (Ecumenical Council. 
Promptly at the time proposed Cyril arrived 
with fifty Bishops, arid found Nestorius 
awaiting them with sixteen. Afterwards 
the Bishop of Jerusalem appeared and 
others from various places. But the Bish¬ 
ops of the Patriarchate of Antioch had not 
yet arrived when, a fortnight after the time 
appointed, the Council was organized under 
the influence of Cyril. That the Council 
should have proceeded to its work in the 
absence of the Antiochine prelates has been 
made an objection to its validity, inasmuch 
as they were known to be within five days’ 
journey. Cyril presided as the chief Bishop 
present, and as representing not only his 
own See but that of Rome, and this not¬ 
withstanding the presence of two Bishops 
from Italy as papal legates. Nestorius and 
his party refused to attend until all the Bish¬ 
ops should reach the city. The Council, 
therefore, proceeded without him. The 
Creed of Nicsea was read and the recent 





COUNCILS, (ECUMENICAL 195 


COUNCILS, (ECUMENICAL 


statements compared with it. The writings 
of Cyril were read, and received a general 
approval. The doctrine of Nestorius was 
unanimously condemned and himself de¬ 
posed. The Pelagian heresy, which had 
troubled the West in particular, was also 
condemned. The Council also published 
eight Canons of discipline. The decrees 
were signed by two hundred Bishops. 

As in the case of the Council of Constan¬ 
tinople, the fact that it included only the 
East was covered by the final ratification 
and acceptance of its decrees throughout 
the Church, so any question of the regularity 
of the proceedings at Ephesus is met by the 
acceptance of its results. 

The Fourth (Ecumenical Council .—The 
orthodox doctrine of the Person of Christ, 
while denying the Nestorian statements 
which separated the One Christ into two 
Persons, God and a man, is equally careful 
to distinguish in the One Divine Personality 
two natures, the Human and the Divine. 
It is easy to see, however, that in zeal¬ 
ous opposition to Nestorianism men were 
likely to fall into the opposite error, losing 
sight of the true humanity of our Lord, on 
which depends equally with His Divinity 
the redemption of the world ; for it is only 
thus that He can be “ the second Adam, a 
true example, a true sacrifice, a sympathiz¬ 
ing and brotherly High-Priest, whose very 
manhood was the basis of the Church and 
the medium of his brethren’s renewal” 
(Canon Bright). Accordingly, out of the 
controversies which still continued after the 
Council of Ephesus this opposite form of 
error soon emerged. It was distinctly for¬ 
mulated by Eutyches, a monk of Constanti¬ 
nople and a zealous admirer of St. Cyril (who 
died in 444 a.d.). In 448 a.d., at a Council of 
thirty Bishops in Constantinople, Eutyches 
was accused of renewing the Apollinarian 
heresy which had been condemned at the 
second General Council. On being exam¬ 
ined before the Council, Eutyches declared 
that after the Incarnation he acknowledged 
but one nature in Christ, namely, the Di¬ 
vine. Upon this he was unanimously con¬ 
demned*. In the contest which followed a 
Council was called by the emperor, who 
sympathized with Eutyches. The meeting 
took place at Ephesus in 449 a.d. The 
President was Dioscorus, Bishop of Alex¬ 
andria, an unscrupulous and fanatical parti¬ 
san of Eutyches, who was aided by a mili¬ 
tary force. The proceedings were charac¬ 
terized by extreme violence, and resulted in 
favor of Eutyches. But the decisions of 
this assembly were immediately rejected at 
Rome, Constantinople, and elsewhere, and 
it was called by Pope Leo of Rome the 
Latrocinium, or Robber-Council, a name by 
which it has ever since been known. It is 
an example of a Council meant to be Gen¬ 
eral and containing a representation from 
the West as well as the East, but repudi¬ 
ated by the consent of the Catholic Church. 

This was followed by the grand Council I 


of six hundred and thirty Bishops at Chal- 
cedon in 451 a.d., called together by the 
Emperor Marcian (450-457 a.d.). The Ro¬ 
man legates sat in the highest place, though 
nineteen magistrates appointed by the em¬ 
peror exercised a general control and acted 
as Moderators of the Assembly. The pro¬ 
ceedings assumed in part the form of a trial 
of Dioscorus for heresy and violence. He 
was condemned and deposed. The most im¬ 
portant work of the Council consisted in 
a careful examination of the Faith. The 
celebrated letter or treatise called the u tome” 
of St. Leo, Pope at this time, was adopted, 
and thus became part and parcel of Catho¬ 
lic teaching. It is a clear and profound ex¬ 
position of the doctrine of the Incarnation. 
The epistles of St. Cyril were also approved, 
and thus the Faith was guarded on both 
sides. Finally the Council set forth a con¬ 
fession or definition of Faith and twenty- 
eight Canons of discipline. So thorough 
and complete was the work of this Council, 
so clearly was the Catholic Faith now de¬ 
fined as touching the Divinity and the Per¬ 
son of Christ, that ancient writers ranked 
the first four General Councils with the four 
Gospels. Some Anglican writers in like 
manner have spoken as if only four were to 
be counted as General. The universal 
Church, however, has accepted six, and the 
constant appeal of the English Church to 
the period of an undivided Christendom in¬ 
volves the acceptance on her part of all the 
six. It is nevertheless true that the last 
two may properly be termed supplementary, 
dealing as they did, not with new heresies, 
but with certain results of Nestorianism on 
the one hand, and of the Eutychian or Mo- 
nophysite heresy on the other. 

The Fifth (Ecumenical Council .—The set¬ 
tlement of the doctrine of the Person of 
Christ in the Councils of Ephesus and 
Chalcedon did not prevent the two opposite 
extremes of Nestorianism and Monophysit- 
ism from continuing to exist in heretical 
sects, and in some modified forms, from af¬ 
fecting the views of many within the Church, 
especially in the East. In Alexandria some 
time after the Council of Chalcedon, the ex¬ 
treme Eutychians refusing to acknowledge 
the orthodox Patriarch, formed a separate 
sect, called the Acephali , as being without a 
head, and thus kept alive the heresy. In 
the next century it was represented to the 
Emperor Justinian (527-565 a.d.) that this 
schism might be healed by the condemnation 
of certain writings of three eminent theolo¬ 
gians of the first half of the fifth century, who 
either had not been condemned or had been 
received with apparent favor in the Council 
of Chalcedon. These were Theodoret, Theo¬ 
dore of Mopsuestia, and Ibas of Edessa. 
Theodoret had opposed St. Cyril, but without 
altogether losing credit for orthodoxy. Theo¬ 
dore was undoubtedly heretical, and the work 
of Ibas to which exception was taken was a 
letter in which he was said to have denied 
I the Incarnation. The collection made from 





COUNCILS, (ECUMENICAL 


196 COUNSELS OF PERFECTION 


the writings of these men was called the 
“ Three Chapters” or “ Articles.” The em¬ 
peror, who was a dabbler in theology, accepted 
the suggestion, and attempted to execute it by 
publishing an edict condemning the “ Chap¬ 
ters” and anathematizing their authors. 
This led to a long contest, which was only 
settled by the calling of a General Council to 
meet at Constantinople in 553 a.d. A re¬ 
markable circumstance connected with this 
Council was the presence in Constantinople 
of Pope Yigilius of Rome. For refusing to 
subscribe to the emperor’s edict he had been 
compelled to repair to Constantinople, where 
he was detained for seven years. By his 
vacillating course he had become an object 
of dislike to both parties in the controversy. 
When the Council met he refused to attend. 
There were present one hundred and sixty- 
five Bishops, including a very few from the 
West. The writings which had formed the 
subject of controversy were examined and 
condemned. At the same time the four 
earlier Councils were approved. It is also 
contended by some authors that in approving 
the theological edicts of the emperor certain 
writings of Origen, the celebrated Alexan¬ 
drian theologian, were condemned. The 
Pope persisted in his refusal to attend the 
Council and condemned its proceedings, but 
some months afterwards retracted and ac¬ 
cepted it as oecumenical, declaring that his 
previous course was instigated by Satan. 
This Council bears the title of the Second 
Council of Constantinople. 

Sixth General Council , or Third Council of 
Constantinople .—As the fifth General Coun¬ 
cil completed the condemnation of Nestor- 
ianism and was thus supplementary to the 
Council of Ephesus, so the sixth and last 
met the final phase of the Eutychian or Mo- 
nophysite heresy, and thus finishes the work 
of Chalcedon. A more refined form of the 
heresy of Eutyches arose in the early part of 
the seventh century. This was Monothelism , 
or the affirmation of one will alone,— i.e., the 
Divine, in Christ. It was supposed by 
many that this doctrine might be safely held, 
and that it would form a compromise by 
means of which many monophysites might 
be brought back to the Church. It was pro¬ 
mulgated in Constantinople by the Patriarch, 
about 616 a.d. , enforced by a decree of the 
emperor, and for awhile accepted by several 
of the Patriarchs. The chief opponent of 
the new doctrine was at first Sophronius, 
Bishop of Jerusalem, afterwards Maximus, a 
monk from Constantinople. In correspond¬ 
ence with the Bishop of Constantinople, 
Honorius, Pope from 625 to 638 a.d., clearly 
committed himself to monothelism. At¬ 
tempts were made to stifle the controversy 
by imposing silence on both parties, but in 
vain. In the first Lateran Council (Rome, 
649 a.d.) monothelism was condemned and 
an exposition of faith was published. At 
length the emperor, Constantine Pogonatus, 
summoned the sixth (Ecumenical Council, 
which met at Constantinople in November, 


680 a.d., and lasted about ten months. It 
was attended by two hundred Bishops. The 
controversy was carefully examined and a 
definition of Faith set forth, in which it was 
stated that, in accordance with the doctrine 
of the Incarnation, as previously defined, 
and the teachings of the Fathers, it follows 
that “ In Christ there are two natural wills 
and two natural operations, without division, 
change, separation, or confusion ; and these 
two natural wills are not contrary, as im¬ 
pious heretics pretend ; but the human fol¬ 
lows the divine and almighty will, not resist¬ 
ing or opposing it, but rather being subject 
to it.” The preceding five Councils were 
confirmed, and the Creeds of Nice and Con¬ 
stantinople were accepted. The supporters 
of the monothelite heresy were condemned, 
among them Honorius, the monothelite Pope. 
Leo II. (682-83 a.d.) was a zealous cham¬ 
pion of the Council, and expressly assented 
to the condemnation of Honorius, speaking 
of his teaching as a “ profane betrayal of the 
Faith.” Thus we see a Pope, for whom in¬ 
fallibility is claimed, condemned by a Gen¬ 
eral Council and by another Pope. 

Such, in brief, is the history of the (Ecu¬ 
menical Councils, by which the Faith of the 
Catholic Church as touching Our Lord and 
Saviour Jesus Christ was defined for all 
time. 

Authorities: Robertson’s History of the 
Christian Church, Bright’s History of the 
Church (313-451 a.d.), Hefele’s Councils, 
Pusey’s Councils, Palmer on the Church, 
etc. Rev. Prof. W. J. Gold. 

Counsels of Perfection. A phrase much 
used to express the practice of what are 
called the three counsels of perfection,— 
chastity, poverty, and obedience. It is hard 
to see the full force of all that has been said 
about these counsels, for opposed to the w r ay 
in which they are too often taught is the 
express direction of our Lord to say that we 
are unprofitable servants ; we have done that 
which was our duty to do, when we have 
done all those things which were commanded 
us. This being so, the so-called counsel, “ Be 
ye therefore perfect, even as your Father 
which is in heaven is perfect,” is a com¬ 
mand, and not a counsel. Doubtless there 
are better conditions and estates in which 
we can live than those in which we choose 
to live without being faulted for our choice. 
Marriage entangles the married couple 
more in the things of this world than does 
the unmarried state in those who are able 
to bear it, yet it does produce a loveliness 
of character, when holily used, not found 
otherwise. Wealth properly used is a means 
of grace, and can give greater scope for 
usefulness than poverty, yet each has its 
special blessing. But as obedience (the 
third law of these counsels) lies at the very 
root of all Christian faith and action, it is 
still more difficult to understand how there 
can be a superior obedience beyond what is 
absolutely bounden. The whole superstruc¬ 
ture has too frail a foundation. Undoubt- 




COVENANT 


197 


COVENANT 


edly, as we push forward in the Christian 
race, we find many things lawful not ex¬ 
pedient for our Christian characters, and 
these counsels of perfection should rather be 
called counsels for still deeper self-renunci¬ 
ation, as we are strengthened by the grace 
of the Holy Ghost, to go forward and to 
endure a still straiter discipline. 

Covenant conies from con and venio , and 
means coming together. It is the coming 
together of two persons, for an agreement 
or contract; whereas testament refers to one 
person only. And covenant is an affair, as 
well known to a Jewish mind, as anything 
in all sacred or social history. God made a 
covenant with Adam and his posterity in 
the Garden of Eden. On His part, He gave 
Adam not a body only, but “ a living 
soul,” with its inherent powers of thought, 
free-will, and self-government. On Adam’s 
part, obedience to God’s wishes and inspira¬ 
tions was expected and demanded ; and as 
a testimonial and proof of his obedience, he 
was to abstain from a selfish knowledge of 
good and evil, and learn the best way to use 
the powers intrusted to him, by partaking 
daily of the Tree of Life, God’s sacramental 
way of supplying his spiritual wants. A 
mode of perpetuating a sanctified existence 
which may be unceasing ; for we read in the 
Revelation of St. John of “ the Tree of Life, 
which is in the midst of the Paradise of 
God” (Rev. ii. 7). 

But Adam chose his own way (as his de¬ 
scendants still do) of finding out and esti¬ 
mating good and evil; and the covenant 
between him and his all-wise Creator, 
with its conditional gift of life and its en¬ 
dowments, was forthwith at an end. Yet that 
Creator, as merciful as He is wise, allowed 
a renewal of the covenant on new requisi¬ 
tions. Life is represented by blood (Lev. 
xvii. 11), and lost or forfeited life by blood 
poured out, and seemingly gone to waste as 
worthless. The Creator would not renew 
the abdicated covenant unless (and the con¬ 
dition appears not natural only, but inevi¬ 
table) man would acknowledge his terrible 
failure, would most significantly confess that 
his life was now forfeited and virtually 
thrown away, and was therefore to be held 
temporally and uncertainly, and no longer 
an endowment for immortality. 

This was to be done by a sacrifice, em¬ 
blematical of “a more excellent sacrifice,” 
seen from afar, by an omniscient eye. It 
was to be a ceremony in which blood poured 
out, and, no longer life-giving, was to show, 
nay, to demonstrate, that man’s fatal loss 
was freely admitted and acknowledged; and 
that he was to hold life thenceforth and al¬ 
ways as, more than ever, a conditional gift, 
and one liable daily and hourly to be taken 
from him. Abel proved his submission to 
this new order of things by offering sacri¬ 
fices in which life was taken away and 
blood poured out freely. Cain proved his 
insubmission by offering sacrifices from 
which blood was totally excluded, and which 


illustrated graphically his own choice, pri¬ 
vate judgment, and perversity of will. One 
sacrifice was accepted and made welcome, 
and the other rejected and set at naught. 
It repeated Adam’s sin of judging for one’s 
self; and the repeated sin has been reiterated 
from that day until now, making the yield- 
ance of a human will to the Divine a moral 
miracle. 

From this representation it is perfectly 
easy to comprehend that to a Jewish mind, 
accepting as historic verities the books of 
Moses, the ideas of a covenant, of a vacated 
covenant, of the renewal of a vacated cove¬ 
nant by sacrifices and the pouring forth of 
blood, life’s closest emblem, must have be¬ 
come as familiar as matters of household 
economy. Talk to a Jew of a covenant, and 
of a covenant ratified by an offering of 
blood, and he would understand you as talk¬ 
ing of what might be called (and is so called 
in a Judaico-Christian document, the Epis¬ 
tle to the Hebrews) one of “ the first prin¬ 
ciples of the oracles of God.” But talk to a 
Jew of a testament , and especially of a testa¬ 
ment ratified by blood, and you would sim¬ 
ply bewilder, astonish, or horrify him. He 
knew nothing of a last will and testament, 
for his religion disposed of all his property, 
and he could not make one (Numb, xxvii. 
8-11). If our Saviour meant to say what 
we mean by “this is my blood of the New 
Testament,” His disciples would not have 
known what He intended, or would have 
supposed Him to speak in the dialect of Ro¬ 
man Law. Roman Law, and after a while 
Romish Theology, made the word testament 
a common word in Western countries, and 
the old Oriental word, covenant , became an 
excommunicate. The word testament is not 
to be found in our Common Version from 
Genesis to Malachi, while in the Hebrew it 
is to be found in the shape of noun, verb, 
etc., about three hundred times. In our 
Christian Scriptures the proper Greek word 
for covenant is found thirty-three times, and 
in twenty of them is translated covenant, 
and not testament; and yet we cling to the 
phrases Old Testament and New Testament 
as if the very existence of the Bible were 
wrapped up in them. Nevertheless, they 
have only thirteen precedents in their favor, 
while covenant and its correlatives have 
three hundred and twenty! Can history 
present another instance of a similar perver¬ 
sion in misusing and misnaming a word 
which God Himself has consecrated ? 

Notwithstanding, we are curtly asked, 
What are we to gain by exchanging testa¬ 
ment for covenant? In the first place, we 
can understand our Saviour’s language in 
the institution of the Eucharist. He in¬ 
tended to say that by the outpouring of His 
blood on earth, and its oblation at the mercy- 
seat of the real Holy of Holies, a New Cove¬ 
nant could be established for fallen and 
death-stricken man. A testament has noth¬ 
ing to do with blood any more than a 
psalm-book. And, moreover, He never said 





COVENANT 


198 


CREATION 


the bread was the New Covenant in His 
body. He made the blood, the familiar em¬ 
blem of a sacrifice, the immensely superior 
thing; and of course the wine the immensely 
superior element. If we withdraw the wine 
from the Eucharist we sadly depreciate, if 
we do not nullify it. The notion of con¬ 
comitance is hut a fetich of the schoolmen. 
It is dogma, hut not doctrine. 

Again, under a covenant everything be¬ 
comes conditional instead of absolute; or, 
if absolute in terms, conditional in charac¬ 
ter. God’s promises to us in baptism are 
under a covenant, and are therefore condi¬ 
tional, and completely so. If we fail in* ful¬ 
filling our promises, we lose our title to the 
grace pledged to promises fulfilled, but never 
pledged to promises broken, neglected, or 
set at naught. It is insolent to expect that 
God will keep His word when we do not 
keep our own. 

So God’s predictions under a covenant are 
as conditional as His promises. There is a 
phalanx of predictions scattered through 
the Jewish prophecies which seem to have 
lost their virtue, since they never have been 
verified. Were those predictions insincere? 
Perish the evil thought! They were pre¬ 
dictions under a covenant, the stipulations 
of that covenant were unfulfilled, and the 
predictions became suspended possibilities. 
They may, or may not be, demonstrations 
at another day. 

And now comes something of profounder 
meaning, of intense significance. If prom¬ 
ises and predictions are conditional under 
a covenant, so are predestinations also. 
Predestinations have nothing to do with 
metaphysics in the Bible any more than 
promises and predictions. They are eccle¬ 
siastical, and not scholastic and dogmatic. 
And so St. Augustine understood them. He 
believed in the predestination to grace for 
all who were baptized reverentially. He 
believed that a baptism so begun, and prop¬ 
erly carried on, was predestined to perse¬ 
verance ; and there he stopped. Calvin be¬ 
lieved that his elect were predestined to 
absolute salvation, and his non-elect to abso¬ 
lute perdition, and rejected all conditions 
as an impertinence. It cannot take great 
acuteness to discern a heaven-wide difference 
between these separate systems, though it 
suits some to intermingle and confound 
them. 

It is hoped, now, that few or none will 
persist in saying it is of no consequence 
whether the word testament or covenant be 
applied to what the first Council of Nice, 
in its very Creed, denominated The Scrip¬ 
tures ; showing that to the file-leader of 
great Christian assemblies the word testa¬ 
ment was unknown. Why, if this word is 
pettishly insisted on, the proper and annihi¬ 
lating answer is that it deprives us of a 
Bible. Look at Heb. ix. 16, 17, in the Com¬ 
mon Version, or the Revisal of it. This pas¬ 
sage informs us, magisterially, that “ where a 
testament is, there must also of necessity be 


the death of the testator.” Has, then, God 
our testator died ? If not, we have no tes¬ 
tament to go upon. And if He lives, we have 
no testament; for such a thing “is of no 
strength at all while the testator liveth.” 
Either way we have no Bible ; none, at least, 
which is available, while these verses are 
easily disposed of by using the word cove¬ 
nant. A covenant for the dead is firm; as 
of course it is, they having lived its term 
out with fidelity. But it has not reached 
this firmness while the covenanted liveth 
(not covenanter ; the word is a participle, 
and not a noun), because he may lose every¬ 
thing by failing to keep its stipulations. 
This translation, too, is perfectly simple, and 
Hooker tells us that he holds it “ for a most 
infallible rule in expositions of Sacred Scrip¬ 
ture, that where a literal construction will 
stand, the farthest from the letter is com¬ 
monly the worst” (Bk. v. ch. lix. sec. 2). 
No wonder, finally, that God should ac¬ 
count it a peculiar satisfaction to have men 
take hold of His covenant with all their 
hearts (Isa. lvi. 4). The most unpromising 
may do so, as this text evinces, to their im¬ 
mortal joy. Rev. T. W. Coit, D.D. 

Creation. The manifestation of God’s 
power : (a) in the physical world ; ( b ) in the 
spiritual world. It is held that creation is 
the necessity in His nature. How, when, and 
where it shall be exhibited belongs to Him in 
His infinite wisdom, of His perfect will, and 
according to His perfect love. “ Thou art 
worthy, 0 Lord, to receive glory and honor 
and power : for Thou hast created all things, 
and for Thy pleasure ( thelema —the same 
word as will in the Lord’s Prayer and in 
Hebrews x. 7, 10; so St. John vi. 39, and 
often) they are and were created” (Rev. iv. 
11). We confess it, as His attribute, in the 
Creeds. Natural theology presents it to us 
as a deduction from the comparison of all 
the facts of the natural world. But inspira¬ 
tion sets this upon an unassailable basis for 
every one who receives the Revelation of 
Holy Writ. There the argument is always 
from the natural world directly to the spir¬ 
itual world. So in Job, so in the 19th 
Psalm, and in innumerable other places. 

The Persons present in the act of crea¬ 
tion were the Holy Trinity. It was not 
framed by the hand of angels, but the 
Spirit of God brooded over the waters of 
chaos. The fiat of Jehovah went forth, 
Let there be. The Word of God, the wis¬ 
dom was present (Prov. viii. 22-31 ; St. 
John i. 3; Col. i. 16; Eph. iii. 9; Heh. xi. 
2 )- 

Modern science has endeavored to pass 
beyond the study of the relation of things 
and of their constitution to ask how and 
why. In these discussions scientists are lost 
in their own imperfect grasp of the laws of 
nature, and despite all efforts they refute each 
other’s theories, and have finally to fall back 
upon the statements concerning creation 
which the Divine wisdom has chosen to re¬ 
cord. Religion has ever found that all 






CREATIONISM 


199 


CREED 


clearly established facts are in full accord 
with inspiration, that when at first there ap¬ 
peared to he collision there was on the part 
of scientists a failure to see all the facts 
in their true relations, and on the part of 
devout Christians to abandon lightly teach¬ 
ings that had been accepted. But when 
these two had been adjusted there was ever 
a gain to the reception of the truth of Rev¬ 
elation. It is proper as well as natural that 
the Christian should refuse to readjust his 
already formed ideas about the natural 
world founded upon already established facts 
at the bidding of those who, having collected 
a fresh set, have formed them into crude, 
ill-balanced theories. Let us wait, and 
when a fact or series of facts have been in¬ 
disputably interpreted and put into their 
natural and true position in the economy of 
nature, we will gladly accept them, know¬ 
ing full well that they will prove to be in 
perfect accord with the records of Revela¬ 
tion. In the mean time, while hesitating to 
accept, it is not wise to sneer at what science 
has to suggest as to the true interpretation 
of these records. 

Creationism. Controversies which were 
held in early ages as to the origin of the 
soul. Is it created and infused into the un¬ 
born infant, or is it propagated with the 
body as it is formed ? These controversies 
were carried on for some time in the Church 
as different heresies had to be combated. St. 
Augustine’s words state the doctrines, but 
do not determine the question raised. “As, 
therefore, both soul and body are alike pun¬ 
ished unless what is born is purified by re¬ 
generation, certainly either both are derived 
in their corrupt state from man (Traducian- 
ism), or the one is corrupted in the other, as 
if in a corrupt vessel, where it is placed by 
the secret justice of the Divine Law (Crea¬ 
tionism). But which of these is true I would 
rather learn than teach, lest I should pre¬ 
sume to teach what I do not know.” These 
wise words are practically accepted with 
this, as he says elsewhere : “ if only that sen¬ 
timent remain firm and unshaken, that the 
death of all is the fault of that one (Adam), 
and that in him we have all sinned.” The 
instinctive belief is that of Creationism as 
being in better accord with all the Scripture 
teaches, and with our revealed knowledge 
of the immaterial and divine origin of the 
soul. 

Credence-Table. The table, bracket, or 
slab on which the vessels and elements for 
the Holy Communion are placed till the 
proper time appointed in the rubric for them 
to be put upon the Holy Table. They were 
originally prepared and brought in from the 
sacristy, after the earliest custom of taking 
them directly at the time of the celebration 
from the offerings of the faithful. The term 
seems to come from the Italian, “to taste 
beforehand ;” hence a plate on which any¬ 
thing is offered, thence a side table. It is 
of late introduction apparently in the Eng¬ 
lish Church; it was a charge against Arch¬ 


bishop Laud that he used one, though after 
the example of Bishop Andrews and others. 
It has been declared a legal ornament in 
the English Church. Its proper position is 
upon the south side of the chancel. It may 
be a movable table, but more appropriately 
it should be a shelf properly supported 
against the wall. 

Creed. The use of the very term “Creed” 
presupposes two assumptions, which are re¬ 
garded as innate ideas that form the basis of 
all thought. They are considered as axioms 
because they are usually assented to with¬ 
out argument and must be determined before 
argument. 

1st. The first is “ I,” or the conscious fact 
that every human being is a distinct person 
or entity, himself, not another. This con¬ 
ception of self, it is claimed, is simple, dis¬ 
tinct, and universal. Every one regards 
himself as an uncompounded unit; a being 
possessed of faculties but not composed of 
them; having free-will, conscience, intelli¬ 
gence, tastes, appetites, passions, and the 
like ; but being himself an indivisible unit 
to whom these characteristics belong, in 
which they naturally dwell, and all which he 
may rule and direct. 

This person has an instinctive sense of 
freedom. He may be affected by internal im¬ 
pulse, or coerced by external powers, but his 
own assent or consent is essential to his own 
personal satisfaction. He cannot yield un¬ 
willingly to impulse without a feeling of 
degradation ; nor submit to mere force with¬ 
out a sense of either shame or enslavement. 

This person stands in natural connection 
with and reciprocal relation to all human 
nature, which has one origin and constitutes 
one organic race. This fact is also assumed 
in the very first word of every formal Creed. 
It is the assumption and confession of the 
unity of the human race ; of which every 
human person is a constituent. It stands 
upon the fact, that what is common to all 
is essential to every one ; and draws the con¬ 
clusion that nothing shall be imposed upon 
any one (other things being equal) which is 
not equally required of nil. Hence some 
creed-forms, especially the Oriental, begin 
with “ We” instead of “ I.” 

2d. The second fundamental concept and 
axiom contained in the very term “ Creed” 
is “ belief.” In the singular form it is “ I 
believe,” and in the plural “ We believe.” 

The assumption is, that belief is a pri¬ 
mary necessity of every human person, and a 
like necessity for all the race. It is confi¬ 
dently claimed to be impossible for any con¬ 
scious creature to escape the primary neces¬ 
sity of belief. The very consciousness of 
creaturehood, the conviction that one is not 
self-existent, that some power or person has 
caused him to be, make belief this primary 
necessity. While the common mind assents 
to this fact, the most searching analysis of 
the keenest thinking, and the profoundest 
searching of the most learned inquiry, have 
neither been able to reach a simpler element, 






CREED 


200 


CREED 


nor discover a lower base than “belief.” 
The spontaneous assent of the common 
mind is confirmed by all philosophy ; hence 
belief is established as the primary source of 
all knowledge, the very first exercise of in¬ 
telligence, as well as the ground of all duty 
and the support of all wisdom. 

In granting this we confess that, logic¬ 
ally considered, philosophy precedes faith. 
Whether formulated as distinct mental 
ideas, or merely accepted with more or less 
clearness of apprehension as axioms, the 
idea of personality, with its corollary, the 
unity in origin and continuance of the hu¬ 
man race, together with the idea of neces¬ 
sary, primary universal belief, precede, un¬ 
derlie, support, and permeate every form of 
Creed. 

The Creed of Christianity is not exempt 
from the confession of this philosophic basis. 
While in itself the Creed is not philosophic 
in construction, and from the nature of the 
case cannot be, yet it presumes a philosophic 
foundation, and acknowledges all the just 
rights of philosophy. 

In fact, philosophy is simply the product 
of the reason which is natural to man. 
Christianity teaches that God is the author 
and finisher of nature. Hence Christianity 
acknowledges the rights, and not only 
allows, but encourages the honest use of all 
the powers of reason. Indeed, Christianity 
always respects and frequently appeals 
directly to human reason. The very 
assumptions of personality, common hu¬ 
manity, and necessarily primal belief, are a 
tacit confession that natural reason is a gift 
from and a trust under God. 

If any one questions these axioms, in¬ 
cluded in the very term Creed, then they 
must be sustained. All axioms of Chris¬ 
tianity philosophy may question, if it can. 
Should it do so in this case, then philosophic 
work must be done before Christianity may 
begin to be taught. Christianity asks no 
mere favors of philosophy. It stands only 
on the right and the true. 

In point of fact, however, these funda¬ 
mental concepts are never questioned by the 
common mind; and have never, even by the 
most acute or learned writers, been under¬ 
mined, analytically divided, nor reduced to 
simpler elements. Hence Christianity takes 
one position, equally clear and strong, to 
either the lowly or the exalted, and both 
begins and prosecutes all its instructions, 
revelations, witnessings, and exhortations 
with “I, We believe.” 

The Apostles’ Creed appeared so early in 
the devotional usage of the Church that its 
historic origin is unknown. The evidence 
is insutficient that ascribes it to the Apostles 
themselves. St. Paul, however, mentions 
“ the form of sound words,” which he ex¬ 
horts Timothy to “hold fast.” It is certain 
that our Lord Jesus Himself gave the es¬ 
sence of this Creed in the baptismal formula 
which He appointed: “Go ye therefore and 
make disciples of all nations, baptizing them 


into the name of the Father, and of the 
Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” 

The Creed consists of three divisions, the 
first of which treats of the Almighty 
Father, the second of the Son, and the 
third of the Holy Ghost. The special 
work of each of the three persons is named 
in this specific part of the Creed. 

It is obvious that the Creed grew into 
form, probably in the very times of the 
Apostles, out of the necessity of instruction 
to the candidates for baptism. As they 
were to be baptized into the name of the 
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Ghost, it was needful that they be well in¬ 
structed in the points of their belief. As 
the belief was one and the same everywhere, 
—the One Faith,—some fixed form of its ex¬ 
pression naturally arose and came into com¬ 
mon use. Whether it thus grew naturally, 
or was actually a deliverance from the Apos¬ 
tles in person, severally and by agreement, 
cannot now be historically determined. In 
either case, however, its authority rests back 
upon antiquity. Whether given by the 
Apostles, or growing out of the necessity of 
baptismal occasions, it certainly appeared in 
the age of inspiration, has most sure war¬ 
rant of Holy Scripture, has been sanctioned 
by universal acceptance in the Church of all 
ages, and stands now as the undoubtedly 
authorized summary of the facts necessary 
to be believed, and required to be confessed, 
by all who are to be made disciples of 
Christ. 

Its present form, in universal use by the 
Church, is as follows : 

“ I believe in God the Father Almighty, 
Maker of heaven and earth : 

“And in Jesus Christ His only Son our 
Lord ; Who was conceived by the Holy 
Ghost, Born of the Virgin Mary ; Suffered 
under Pontius Pilate, Was crucified, dead, 
and buried ; He descended into hell; The 
third day He rose from the dead; He as¬ 
cended into heaven, And sitteth on the right 
hand of God the Father Almighty; 
From thence He shall come to judge the 
quick and the dead. 

“ I believe in the Holy Ghost ; The holy 
Catholic Church, The Communion of Saints ; 
The Forgiveness of sins; The Resurrection 
of the body; And the Life everlasting. 
Amen.” 

This is the form in use throughout West¬ 
ern Europe, indeed, in all the Western 
Church, wherever the Latin language was 
formerly in vogue, and in all branches of 
the Church that have grown out of those 
which used the Latin in its Liturgies. 

The Greek form, used in Russia, Turkey, 
Greece, and generally throughout the East, 
begins with the plural instead of the singu¬ 
lar. Instead of “ I believe” it has “ We 
believe.” 

The two are essentially one, though sup¬ 
plemental to each other. They both carry 
the important truth, that there is only one 
Faith, which is obligatory alike upon every 





CREED 


201 


CREED 


person. The idea, primarily in the mind of 
Western worshipers, is the faith of the per¬ 
son, the self; while the primary idea of the 
Eastern worshiper is the common faith, that 
which all together believe. 

This merely shows the different habits of 
mind which pervade the distinct modes of 
progress and development which character¬ 
ize and distinguish the West and the East. 
In the former the individual or person is the 
primary idea and pervading force. In the 
latter the organism—whether Church or 
State—is this idea and force. Each shows 
the strength and weakness of its own posi¬ 
tion. Apart they are weak. Only to¬ 
gether are they strong. It is equally real 
and true that every human being is a per¬ 
son before God, and that he is a member 
of the human organism. Hence the salva¬ 
tion provided in Christ reaches persons 
both individually and in organized com¬ 
munion. One way of salvation is provided 
for all. “One Lord, one Faith, one Bap¬ 
tism l” What every one confesses as the 
Faith, all in like manner confess. The effect 
of the confession upon the individual con¬ 
fessors varies, but the confession itself is 
ever one, comprehensive, and the same. 

Two additions have been made to the 
Apostles’ Creed since the Apostolic age, 
which, with some slight changes in the 
Nicene Creed, will be noticed when the ar¬ 
ticles of the Creed to which they are attached 
come up in order for consideration. 

The Creed, commonly called the Nicene 
Creed, originated with the Council held in 
Nice, or Nicsea, in Bithynia, Asia Minor, 
325 a.d. It is substantially the same as that 
now in use ; except that it closed with, “ We 
believe in the Holy Ghost.” The articles 
that follow were added by the Council of 
Constantinople, 381 a.d. 

The whole Creed, as it now stands and is 
used in the Western Church, is as follows: 

“ I believe in one God, the Father Al¬ 
mighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of 
all things visible and invisible : 

“And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the 
only-Begotten Son of God, Begotten of 
the Father before all worlds, God of God, 
Light of Light, Very God of Very God, 
Begotten, not made, Being of one substance 
with the Father; By Whom all things 
were made; Who for us men and for our 
salvation, came down from heaven, And 
was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the 
Virgin Mary, And was made Man, and was 
crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, He 
suffered and was buried, And the third day 
He rose again, according to the Scriptures, 
And ascended into heaven, And sitteth on 
the right hand of the Father, from thence 
He shall come to judge the quick and the 
dead, Whose kingdom shall have no end: 

“ I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord 
and Giver of life ; Who proceedeth from 
the Father, and the Son ; Who with the 
Father and the Son together is worshiped 
and glorified ; Who spake by the prophets : 


And I believe one Catholic and Apostolic 
Church ; I acknowledge one Baptism for 
the remission of sins; And I look for the 
resurrection of the dead and the life of the 
world to come. Amen.” 

Before considering in order the different 
parts, or articles of the Creed, it may be 
well to remark that it is a short compen¬ 
dium of facts, rather than an elaborate defi¬ 
nition of doctrines. Such definitions are 
drawn out, for example, in the XXXIX. 
Articles. These “ Articles of Religion,” as 
they are called, contain the opinions that 
prevailed in the Reformed Catholic Church, 
known as the Church of England, at the 
Reformation. They were finally signed by 
both the Houses of Convocation of Canter¬ 
bury and York, 1571 a.d. They are even 
yet required to be signed by every clergy¬ 
man in the English Church upon his ordi¬ 
nation, although none of the laity, except 
the graduates of the Universities of Oxford 
and Cambridge, were ever required to sign 
them. The American Church does not re¬ 
quire their signature, though she keeps them 
in her Prayer-Book, as sound expositions 
of the doctrines she teaches. She demands 
of her clergy their signature to a general 
declaration of conformity to the doctrines, 
discipline, and worship of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church in the United States of 
America. 

The distinguishing characteristic of the 
Creed is that it sets forth the facts upon 
which the Gospel rests, and thereby points 
out the means generally— i.e ., for all per¬ 
sons—necessary to salvation. It will be ob¬ 
served that these are not only thoughts or 
ideas to be apprehended mentally and spiritu¬ 
ally, and to be used devoutly, but they are 
also veritable, self-existing facts, not depend¬ 
ent upon human assent, but real and true 
in themselves ; indeed, the one chain of facts, 
external to man, which a person must be¬ 
lieve if he would enter and continue in the 
way of salvation. They are analogous in 
some respects to natural facts, which are also 
facts, whether men believe or disbelieve 
them. For example, fire burns; if a man 
believe it, he will use fire wisely; but if he 
do not believe it, fire will none the less 
scorch him or consume his houses, should he 
throw himself into it, or neglect precautions 
against it. 

This point, therefore, is of the utmost prac¬ 
tical importance to every human person, 
and to the whole human race. It is im¬ 
portant that all who have reached “ the age 
of understanding” should hold and confess 
the Creed; and that children should have 
all done for them that can be done according 
to the Creed, and that they should be dili¬ 
gently taught it so as soon as they are able 
to learn. 

Differences of opinion, among even the 
wise and good, do not and cannot alter ex¬ 
ternal facts. As facts they rest on their own 
verity, and are operative, whatever any per¬ 
son may think or not think about them. 






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Now the fact of personal identity, now 
existing and forever to continue, conjoined 
with the fact of the oneness of the human 
race, and this associated with the universal, 
primary and persistent, necessity of belief, 
can never be other than facts, however any 
person may choose, or fancy himself com¬ 
pelled to think about them. Every human 
person must take the consequences of his 
personality, and all the race the consequences 
of its unity, whatever opinions may be held 
individually or prevail with greater or less 
approach to generality. 

Starting with personal identity, human 
unity, and the necessity of belief, the first 
succeeding fact of the Creed is “ One God.” 
Proof of this, if required, is to be sought out¬ 
side the Creed. Of course the Bible or any 
revelation cannot be appealed to for primary 
proof of the existence of God, because reve¬ 
lation presupposes belief in the Revealer. 
The Creed itself presents no proof. It 
merely sets forth the fact. Here human 
philosophy comes in, and discussions arise. 
One school declares that belief in God is in¬ 
tuitive, born in all men, so that every hu¬ 
man person has originally in himself belief 
in God. This school agrees that confirma¬ 
tory, or rather definitive and strong, proofs 
of the Divine existence may be drawn from 
both conscious self-searching after one’s own 
origin under the conviction of self-insuffi- 
cience and consequent necessary dependence 
upon some supreme Lord of the universe 
and of men, and from the observation and 
study of other men and of nature. Here 
a wide and various philosophic field lies 
open: and, while Christianity enters this 
field and sustains itself therein, the Creed 
only formulates the conclusion in setting 
forth the fact of the “ One God.” 

The next fact—the “ Father Almighty” 
—is partly supported by reason, partly by 
intuition, and partly also by revelation. 
Reason, having perceived the One God and 
shown His necessary unity, declares that He 
is Almighty, as a necessary consequence, for 
the One God must from the very nature of 
the case be Almighty. He is Father, — i.e., 
the Universal Father, the spring and source 
of love, the universal energy and assurance 
of love, the sweetest, purest, and strongest 
power in the universe, the person in whom 
love centres, whose essence is love. This 
fact accords with reason, but answers chiefly 
the longings and yearnings of human hearts. 
Hence there is intuitive response to the fact 
not only from the mind of man, but also 
from that deepest part of himself, whence 
springs the consciousness of what he is and 
what he needs. Revelation strengthens the 
human reason and satisfies human intuitions 
upon this point; not by originating the 
knowledge of the Divine Fatherhood, but 
by confirming it in every particular, and 
enlarging it beyond the utmost reach of hu¬ 
man discovery. 

That the One God, Father Almighty, is 
u Maker of heaven and earth, and of all 


things visible and invisible,” follows as an 
irresistible deduction. He only can be this 
Maker. None other can be found, nor con¬ 
ceived of. The original self-existence only 
can be the Creator of the universe. 

The Creed to this point may be attacked, 
and has been in every particular. Philosophy 
has called it in question, beginning even 
with dispute about personal identity and 
proceeding through the creation. It has 
been defended on philosophic grounds, as it 
should have been. In the future, philoso¬ 
phy must take this portion of the Creed to 
itself ; and the learning, that will support it, 
must be based upon human reason and in¬ 
tuition. While it requires a high mental 
development to comprehend, ahd some 
learning to know the philosophic points in¬ 
volved in this first division of the Creed, it 
requires only the powers of reason and in¬ 
tuition that are common to all—even to 
children—to perceive the facts, to adopt 
them by belief, to make them means of com¬ 
fortable assurance, and to use them solemnly 
in either trembling or joyful devotion. 

The Creed gives them in concentrated 
form ; they are placed in its beginning be¬ 
cause they comprise the facts upon which 
all that follows is based. While Christian 
believers are enjoined to stand ready to de¬ 
fend this citadel of the faith, according to 
their ability and opportunity, they are per¬ 
mitted also to rest in it, as in a home of the 
soul, and to enjoy, every one, personal, sweet 
communion with God, addressing Him ever 
as “ Our Father.” 

The Creed being established and accepted 
thus far, the conclusion springs up sponta¬ 
neously and with great force, that this one 
God, Father Almighty, has surely mani¬ 
fested Himself to His creatures. He as¬ 
suredly, from the force of His own essential 
love, has created them. Hence, in some 
way, He has surely revealed Himself unto 
them. 

The Creed from this point sets forth the 
facts of revelation. It recognizes indeed, 
as truth always does, the rights of human 
reason. The facts that follow are held ever 
subject to question and proof. After the 
preliminary probability, which leads us to 
look for a revelation from God, comes the 
proof that what the Creed further contains 
is that revelation. 

We can conceive of revelation coming in 
various ways. It might have been in the form 
of a voice from heaven proceeding continu¬ 
ally or at intervals, heard of all men or heard 
of a few. It might have been in a still, small 
voice, or in no articulate form, but only by 
an internal influence or afilatus reaching one 
or many, and making itself known to the 
mind or the heart of men. We cannot limit 
the means, instruments, subjects, or objects 
of revelation., We can only ask, What had 
God said ? What hath God wrought ? 

In point of fact, the Divine revelation all 
centres in one person, who is Himself both 
God and Man. The beginning of revelation 




CREED 


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points to Him, and the close of revelation 
clings to Him. Hence the Creed, being 
the formal Gospel concentrated, opens its 
revealed portions with setting forth the 
facts about Jesus. 

Coming forth from the mysterious sanc¬ 
tuary wherein we have with our reason and 
intuitions worshiped God the Father, we 
apply the same powers to His word of revel¬ 
ation. We meet a Man who declares Him¬ 
self to be the Son of God, who has come 
from His Father and our Father to make 
known the Divine person and declare the 
Divine will. We demand, as we have both 
the right and duty to do, His credentials. 
He gives them amply. He retires not from, 
but courts the criticism of men. He does not 
even confine Himself to the society of His 
friends. He meets His enemies openly, 
before audiences composed of those who 
are favorable or unfavorable to Him. He 
claims, with the very simplest and therefore 
most impressive boldness, to be the very 
Person pointed out in all the preceding 
Divine revelation. He declares that He is 
the very Messiah, the Christ, the anointed 
of God to whom all the prophets bore wit¬ 
ness ; and for whose advent the chosen 
and separate nation, which had kept alive 
the worship of the One God, had from age 
to age been waiting. He expounds, sup¬ 
ports, and defends His stupendous claim, 
does the work that He says the Father had 
appointed Him to do, finishes it, and ascends 
openly towards heaven, going back, as it is 
declared, to the right hand of the Majesty 
on High. 

The whole revelation of God therefore 
centres in Jesus. He is the corner-stone 
of the whole religion of the true God. The 
Gospel as an organism grows out of His 
person, and as a code of doctrine springs 
from His words. Divine truth at least, 
indeed, all truth, flows forth from Him as 
from a fountain. In Himself He is the 
Truth. 

They who hold the Creed are not exempt 
from the necessity of proving all these points 
to the just satisfaction of human reason. 
They did so at first. They have done so in 
all the past. They are doing it in this age. 
They will do the same in the generations to 
come. The Creed itself, however, does not 
deal in argument. It only gives the facts, 
in the shortest possible form of full and suf¬ 
ficient words. 

It proceeds with pronouncing Jesus 
Lord, — i.e., the rightful ruler over every 
man, and over all mankind. 

The ground of His lordship is His personal 
Divinity. He evidently is not the original 
Divine Person, whom we worship as one 
God, Father Almighty. He distinguishes 
Himself from the Father by speaking of 
Him as another person. 

Here reason is baffled,—not confounded, 
only required to stand in awe. It is beyond 
human power to comprehend the existence of 
more than one personality in the unity of 


the GoD-head. What reason cannot com¬ 
prehend the understanding may yet receive 
as a fact. Reason may demand that the 
fact be clearly set forth and duly authenti¬ 
cated. It can fairly demand no more. The 
proof has many branches, but they all grow 
out of the truth of Jesus, as from a root. 
That root being acknowledged, the whole 
Gospel proceeds and is evolved from it. The 
point now in view is the character and 
peculiar distinctiveness of the Deity of Jesus, 
with its relations to the one GoD-head. 

We learn that He is the Only-Begotten of 
the Father. We take this fact into our un¬ 
derstandings. We are fully capable of re¬ 
ceiving it as a fact. It teaches us that the 
One God Father is father, not in a meta¬ 
phorical but in a literal sense. He has 
existed from all eternity in unity of sub¬ 
stance, that included distinct—not separate— 
persons, one of whom was, is, and forever 
will continue Father, and the other Son. 

Hence the Son is God, not originally, in 
and of His own self, but God of God. He 
is of the very Divine essence, being in Him¬ 
self Light, but Light of Light. He is in 
the superlative sense God, being therefore 
equal with the Father in power, glory, 
beauty, love, and all excellence, indeed, 
Very God ; but Very God of God. 

“ Begotten, not made, being of one sub¬ 
stance with the Father.’' 

This is the peculiar clause that dis¬ 
tinguished the Nicene Creed. The Coun¬ 
cil of Nice was called by Constantine I., 
the Roman emporor, and met at Nice 325 
a.d. The chief occasion of its convention 
was the heresy called Arianism, which had 
arisen in Alexandria and was spreading 
through the Church. Arius, a Presbyter of 
Alexandria, in Egypt, taught that Jesus 
was a partaker of the Divine nature, but not 
of the veritable Divine substance. He was 
therefore a creature, the highest indeed of 
all creatures, the very nearest and dearest 
of all whom God had made, but still a 
creature. Arius was willing to confess that 
Jesus was of like substance, but not of the 
very same substance with the Father. In 
Greek, one single letter contains the whole 
controversy. If the Council of Nice had 
adopted the word omoiousios Arianism 
would not have been condemned. It 
refused the middle “i,” and hence the 
dreadful controversy that afflicted the 
Church, and has not yet ceased. That 
Jesus was omoousios, of the very same 
substance with the Father, was the fact to 
which members of the Council bore testi¬ 
mony, not as their own opinion only, but as 
the witness of the Catholic Church to the 
orginally inspired truth, which from the 
beginning had been the Christian faith. 
Hence the true doctrine is that Jesus, as to 
His Divine nature, is begotten, not made, 
and is by nature God. 

The Creed next, declares that Jesus is the 
Creator of all things. The Father then 
is Creator in a sense analogous to that of 






CREED 


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Architect, and the Son Creator in a sense 
analogous to Builder. This shows some¬ 
thing of the practical relation between the 
Rather and the Son, as what preceding 
shows of their essential relation. Each ex¬ 
ercises the functions of His Own personality, 
with distinctiveness of will and act, though, 
of course, with the accord of entire unity in 
love. 

Next follows the special work of Jesus 
for mankind. The love of the Father 
went, and ever goes, forth towards the 
world of His creation. Man, misusing his 
freedom, had fallen into sin. God in love 
sent his Son, who was called Jesus, i.e., 
the Saviour. Jesus, responding to this 
love and sharing it, “ for us men and for our 
salvation came down from heaven.” 

This is a fact, not discovered nor discover¬ 
able by man, but to be received upon most 
sure warrant of the Divine revelation. 
Jesus laid aside His Divine manifestation 
of power and glory, took upon Himself the 
form of a servant, and came into that rela¬ 
tion with human nature that was necessary 
to His work as man’s Saviour. 

“ He was incarnate by the Holy Ghost 
of the Virgin Mary, and became Man.” 

This is all literal truth, a fact with all 
actual significance and force, real in itself 
and all its relations. The Incarnation was 
a true human conception, wrought, how¬ 
ever, by the supernatural operation of the 
Holy Ghost. Mary was the true Mother 
of Jesus, yet a very virgin. 

He became man in the fullest possible 
sense. All that constitutes man He was, is, 
and henceforth will forever continue. And 
yet He remains the same person, who is 
Very God of Very God. The General 
Council of Ephesus, 431 a.d., and that of 
Chalcedon, 451 a.d., established the doc¬ 
trine that Jesus is-One Person, who at His 
Incarnation took human nature into Himself, 
so that He became very man, not by con¬ 
fusion of natures,— i.e., not by compounding 
into a new commixture the human nature 
with the Divine,—but by so taking up the 
human with the Divine that His personality 
extended over the human ; so that, remain¬ 
ing His very Divine self, He yet became 
man. Hence He enters into all essentially 
human relations, and from His Incarnation 
onward forever remains man. 

Having thus set forth the Saviour, in 
the singleness of His personality, and in the 
fullness of both His Divine and Human 
Natures, the Creed proceeds to declare His 
mission. It proceeds to show what He did 
in obedience to the will of the Father, who 
sent Him ; and in accordance with His own 
coinciding love, which impelled Him; for 
the working out of the salvability of men, 
and for making salvation itself actual to all 
those who use their freedom in choosing, 
and seeking for it. This fact of human free¬ 
will is taken for granted in all the instruc¬ 
tions of the Gospel, through all the articles 
of the Creed. God forces no man into good. 


He only provides the way, gives all needful 
help, presents every impelling motive short 
of actual coercion, and then leaves man to 
choose whom he will have for his lord. 

Jesus recognizes this inalienable human 
freedom,and presents Himself as the Saviour 
of the willing; the bringer of peace to all 
men of good will; “ The Way, The Truth, 
The Life.” 

Having become man, He proceeded to do 
the work necessary for the conquest of sin 
under which man lay in bondage. 

“ He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was 
crucified, dead, and buried.” 

He thus made “one oblation of Himself, 
once offered, a full, perfect, and sufficient 
sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the 
sins of the whole world.” Thus the re¬ 
demption, made only by Jesus, extended to 
all mankind. There is no limit to its effi¬ 
cacy, and it becomes efficient to every hu¬ 
man person that does not shut himself out 
from its influence. Neglect or refusal of the 
means of grace every free man may be 
guilty of. Whoever accepts and uses the 
means of grace provided in the Gospel, 
being within the scope of redemption, is 
himself saved through the satisfaction for 
sins made by the GoD-man through His 
willing sacrifice of Himself on the cross. 

“ He descended into Hell,”— i.e., into 
Hades, the place and state wherein the spirits 
of the departed await the final judgment. 
What He did there is only partly revealed. 
He preached to “ the spirits in prison,” but 
what He preached is not revealed. 

This clause was not in the earliest form 
of the Apostles’ Creed; but has been in use 
since early in the fifth century. 

“And the third day He rose again, ac¬ 
cording to the Scriptures.” 

The resurrection of Jesus was the burden 
of the preaching, and the warrant of the 
mission of the Apostles. They bore personal 
testimony to the fact. They saw and touched 
Him, ate and drank with Him, heard for 
forty days His instructions concerning the 
kingdom of heaven. It was their specific 
mission to set up this kingdom on earth. 
Jesus breathed on them, bestowing the 
Holy Ghost, and gave them thus that 
grace of ordination which in obedience to 
His will has been transmitted through them 
and their successors even to our own times, 
and will be continued according to promise 
until the end of the world. He' Himself, on 
bestowing this ordination, promised to be 
with His Apostles and their successors until 
the end of the world. The immediate suc¬ 
cessors of the Apostles took up their testi¬ 
mony, joined to it the link of their own wit¬ 
ness, and handed on the chain to their own 
successors, and thus an unbroken line of 
witnesses to the fact of the resurrection of 
Jesus have kept the light of the Gospel 
shining mid the world-darkness of sin 
throughout the Christian generations. This 
conquest over death was made by the God- 
man Jesus as the completion of His work 




CREED 


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of justification. It stands yet, not only as 
the ground of assured hope, but as the vic¬ 
torious act of the “ last Adam,” through 
which death itself is stripped of its power 
over all those who place their trust on 
Jesus. 

“ He ascended into Heaven.” The God- 
man thus ascended. The very humanity of 
our Lord, now and evermore indissolubly 
joined to the Divine nature in the person of 
the Only-Begotten, ascended into heaven, 
and sitteth at the right hand of God. He 
bore with Himself all the oflBees He had 
received, when the Father made Him 
the Christ, the Anointed one. He was 
anointed High-Priest of the new, perfected 
Tabernacle. In the very presence of God 
He exercises now the office of His High- 
Priesthood. “ He ever liveth to make in¬ 
tercession for us.” The worship offered 
throughout His kingdom on earth—the liv¬ 
ing Church everywhere—centres in the me¬ 
morial of His sacrifice; as do also both the 
public and private devotions of His faithful 
disciples, lie is present on earth in a mys¬ 
tical manner, and makes all His appointed 
means of grace efficient specifically by His 
power through the operation of the Holy 
Ghost. Yet He remaineth ever at the right 
hand of God, exercising His priesthood in 
mediation. He takes upon Himself the 
penalty of all sin, and procures pardons for 
penitents, grace and help for the needy, as¬ 
surance of hope with the peace that passeth 
understanding for all the faithful. 

“ From thence He shall come to judge the 
quick and the dead : Whose Kingdom shall 
have no end.” 

The Apostles evidently expected the 
speedy return of our Lord after they saw 
Him ascending into heaven. The Church, 
in all the ages since, has had the same ex¬ 
pectation. No man, however, knoweth the 
time of His return. The point in which the 
Apostles, especially St. John, the last of 
them, were definitely agreed, was, that 
Jesus should return in His own personality, 
“ in like manner as He was seen to go into 
heaven;” that He would then judge the 
world in righteousness, appoint due awards 
finally to all mankind, and set up His king¬ 
dom visibly in the universe. This contin¬ 
ues to be the expectation of Christians. 
They are looking for this consummation 
daily. The long delay, as it seems, to those 
whose experience is bounded by mortal life¬ 
time, is only a purifying trial of faith. The 
closing words of revelation ring yet in the 
ears of the saints : “He which testifieth 
these things says, Surely I come quickly.” 
The hearts of the hopeful, who are waiting 
for Him on earth and in Hades, respond 
now, “Amen! Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” 

His “ Kingdom without end” is to be 
universal. “At the name of Jesus every 
knee shall bow, of things in heaven, and in 
earth and under the earth.” At the name 
of Jesus, the GoD-man, the very Divine 
Human indissoluble person, who was incar¬ 


nate, dead, buried, risen, ascended ! Hence 
this final universal kingdom shall be visi¬ 
bly presided over, and ruled forever, by God 
incarnate. Our own very human nature 
shall thus rule forever, in personal union 
with the Divine nature. This is an unri¬ 
valed promise, carrying with it every con¬ 
ceivable honor, distinction, blessing, com¬ 
fort, and glory which can be conceived of 
as external to man. In addition, however, 
it is further revealed that this great final 
universal Lord shall so take His beloved 
into union that they, being in Him and He 
in them, they shall be His friends forever, 
as well as kings and priests unto God. 

“ And.in the Holy Ghost.” 

The Nicene Creed closed with these words. 
What follows to the end was added by the 
first Council of Constantinople, 381 a.d. : 

“ I, We believe in the Holy Ghost, the 
Lord and Giver of life, Who proceedeth 
from the Father [and the Son].” 

This completes the revelation of the mode 
of the Divine existence, and declares that the 
one God is, not merely appears, but is, from 
and for all eternity, Three Persons. The 
specific work of the Holy Ghost is that 
of Lord and Giver of life. In operation 
the Father originally wills, the Son forms, 
and the Holy Ghost vivifies. In the lan¬ 
guage of philosophy, the first is the Cause, 
the second the Formal Cause, while the 
third is the Efficient Cause of all existence. 
Their union is substantial. Their distinc¬ 
tion is personal. They are one in nature, 
distinct in relations and office. They are 
distinct objects of devotion. Either may be 
addressed in prayer or thanksgiving. All 
join in the love which is of the Divine 
essence. All equally possess the Divine 
attributes. Their relations are real, though 
they act always in unison. Each executes 
His specific office. All join in common 
operation. Whoever is the “ friend” of one 
is the friend of all. Salvation is the work 
of all. Saved men become the adopted 
children of the loving Father, the brethren 
of the GoD-man, the Only-Begotten Son, and 
the communicants in and with the Holy 
Ghost. 

The clause given above in brackets, “ and 
the Son,” was not in the original Creed of 
Constantinople. It was inserted by the 
Papal Church, under the influence of the 
Emperor Charlemagne, and has never been 
accepted by the Oriental Church. Indeed, the 
insertion of this clause was and is one of the 
grounds of the lamentable schism between 
the Church of the East and that of the West. 
They who in the West are disturbed by this 
addition to the old form of the Creed, and yet 
use it, explain it as the setting forth of the 
mission and not the nature of the personal 
Holy Ghost. His procession from the 
Father they confess in the old form, but add 
that He proceedeth from the Son in accord¬ 
ance with the words of Jesus : “ I will send 
Him unto you.” Others accepting the doc¬ 
trine of the “ double procession,” still would 




CEEED 


206 


CREED 


rather return to the old form, because it is 
the old form. Practically, the point does 
not disturb devotion. It belongs to the 
domain of metaphysics, and demands the 
most attenuated use of that philosophy for 
even understanding its statement. 

“ Who spake by the Prophets.’’ 

This work of the Holy Ghost belongs to 
the department of inspiration. He it is who 
breathes into the men, chosen in the differ¬ 
ent ages to reveal God and His will, the true 
Word of God. The Father wills, the Son 
forms, the Holy Ghost proclaims the Word 
of the Lord. Angels have been some¬ 
times chosen as the messengers of revela¬ 
tion. Men, however, have been usually 
chosen in all generations. Proph’ets are of 
two kinds. Original prophets are those to 
whom the Word was first revealed. The 
anointed and appointed preachers of right¬ 
eousness, in all ages, are secondary prophets. 
The Holy Ghost inbreathes all. The first 
He causes to utter the truth, be they willing 
or unwilling. The latter are not always so 
compelled. They may mingle the truth of 
God with their own inventions. The words 
of the first are to be received as the Word of 
God. Those of the latter must be judged of 
by the hearer. Yet the Holy Ghost is 
present in and with all preachers of the 
Word. The hearers, therefore, are under 
Divine obligation to heed what they hear, 
while the preacher is under like obligation 
“ to rightly divide the Word of truth.” 

The clear apprehension and full reception 
of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity gives 
much clearness of understanding for the 
study of the Word of God: while the fact, 
practically considered, appeals with both 
tenderness and force to the heart. Those 
conscious of sin find strength for their love 
of the Father in the personal assurance of 
the grace of the Son, while the communion 
of the Holy Ghost works, in their own per¬ 
ceiving spirits, that perception of pardon 
and peace in which God is the one central 
power, manifested in beauty, sweetness, and 
comfort. 

The whole Creed to this point treats of 
the Divine side of the Gospel. It sets forth 
God in His Trinity, distinct as three per¬ 
sons, yet united in substance and co-opera¬ 
tion. It is necessary to be believed, be¬ 
cause every fact touches human salvation, 
and pervades all real means of grace. The 
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost all 
act divinely; but each, in His own chosen 
sphere, primarily acts and operates. They 
conjoin but never supersede one another. 

We come next to the human instrumen¬ 
tality; set up indeed by Divine wisdom, 
imbued with Divine authority, and pervaded 
by the Divine presence with constant grace 
and help, but still human in its constitution, 
because composed of human members and 
organized according to human needs. 

“I, We believe one Holy, Catholic and 
Apostolic Church.” 

As the belief necessary to the guidance 


and salvation of one man is the same that 
is necessary for all men, so are the means of 
grace the same for one and all. These means 
are comprised in the Constitution of the 
Church. Not only is the Church the ap¬ 
pointed teacher of truth, but she is the cus¬ 
todian and dispenser of the sacraments, one 
of which joins every partaker in personal 
union with the GoD-man, and the other nour¬ 
ishes him with “ the bread of heaven. ” The 
sacraments not only present truth in the 
form of doctrine to the mind, and move the 
heart with solemn memories, but they con¬ 
vey specific graces, corresponding to natural 
birth and nutrition. In one that new birth 
is effected in the faithful which-makes them 
very members of Christ ; and in the other 
they are “ nourished up into everlasting 
life.” They are generally necessary to sal¬ 
vation,—i.e., necessary for one and all where 
they can be had. The ministration of these 
visible means of grace supposes and requires 
theexistenceof one visible body, the Church. 
Hence the Gospel appeared at first as a reg¬ 
ularly constituted organization. It was one 
and the same in all the early ages. The 
Apostles, as one college, first administered 
the affairs of the whole Church. Very soon, 
however, they took each a specific sphere. 
St. James took his See in Jerusalem. Paul 
and Barnabas became missionaries to the 
Gentiles, and St. Peter to those of the Cir¬ 
cumcision. Paul made Timothy and Titus 
Apostles, and set the first in Ephesus and the 
other in Crete with Episcopal jurisdiction, 
as his Epistles to either clearly show. This 
was followed throughout the Church. From 
the very dawn of Church history Bishops 
appear, everywhere, exercising the Apostolic 
authority, while Presbyters and Deacons are 
always found working with and under them. 
Indeed, every national Church of which any 
record is found, for fifteen hundred years, 
had its hierarchy composed always of Bish¬ 
ops, Priests, and Deacons. Although the 
term Bishop, during the historic period of 
the New Testament, represented only a func¬ 
tion—viz., an overseership—and was applied 
even to some Presbyters, yet the proper of¬ 
fice of the Bishop was in the hands of Apos¬ 
tles, including the Eleven, with Matthias and 
Paul. Afterwards the name Apostle was 
confined, as a memorial of reverence, to the 
first receivers of the piscopal office, and the 
term Bishop was given to their successors. 
From that time to the present a Bishop has 
been and is not merely an overseer, but all 
that an Apostle ever was in official authority 
and power within the Church. True, Bish¬ 
ops are now successors of the Apostles, by 
unbroken lines of ordination, and possess 
the dignity, office, and mission which Christ 
gave to the Twelve, and in which He prom¬ 
ised to sustain them by His own presence 
with them until the end of the world. 

The unity of the Church is a fact, because 
“ He is the head of the Church, which is His 
body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in 
all.” It is holy, because it is His Body, and 





CREED 


207 


CREED 


dispenses all the means of grace, by word, 
sacrament, and discipline, through which 
holiness is promoted and preserved. It is 
Catholic, or universal, because it is one, 
operating alike for every man and for all. 
It is Apostolic, because it is founded upon 
the Apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ 
Himself being the chief corner-stone. 

Thus the Gospel is not merely a code of 
laws, or congeries of doctrines, but is a veri¬ 
table organism also, divine in origin, and 
perpetuated by the indwelling presence of 
the Word of God, by the providence and 
grace and truth which Jesus dispenses by 
the Spirit, through* and by means of His 
own sure though unseen presence. 

The Church, though divine thus in origin 
and perpetuity, is also human ; because men, 
women, and children, in all the generations, 
constitute her membership. She is the chosen 
visible witness of God on the earth. Her 
primary mission is to keep alight and glow¬ 
ing this witness in every age, and hand it 
on to succeeding generations. Besides this 
specific work for the honor of God, she has 
that of calling the world to repentance, of 
receiving into the Divine household the 
“children of adoption,” and of'keeping that 
which is committed to her against that day. 

While human in constitution, she is not of 
man’s making. Man can no more make a 
church than he can originally create a liv¬ 
ing person. He may make images in like¬ 
ness of the living, but God only can breathe 
in the breath of life and give power to be 
fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. 

The clause in the Apostles’ Creed which is 
joined with this article—“ the Communion of 
the Saints”—is not found it its earliest forms. 
It was inserted, no one knows exactly how 
and when, but has been in common use for 
about thirteen centuries. It is simply a 
definite expression of a point included in the 
original article. The Holy Catholic Church 
is of course the communion of the saints, 
because it is the Body of Christ ; and the 
communion of all holy persons is with one 
another through their common union with 
Christ. The thought in this clause in¬ 
cludes past, present, and future. All those 
who are departed in the true faith of the 
Most Holy Name are at rest in Jesus ; not 
dissevered from the living, but only separated 
in vision by the curtain of the grave ; while 
all the saved in coming generations will en¬ 
ter the same one body, and join in the one 
communion. However the clause came in, 
it is sanctioned by long usage, and sanctified 
by holiest associations. On every occasion 
of its utterance it gives sweet and strong ex¬ 
pression to that sense of both brotherly and 
organic common membership in the family 
and Church of the living God, which space 
and time cannot diminish, which death itself 
cannot dissever, and which shall continue 
ever brightening but ever the same through 
time into eternity. 

“I, We acknowledge one Baptism for the 
remission of sins.” 


The sins of all those who are joined in 
communion with Christ are remitted. The 
sentence of pardon to the penitent is de¬ 
clared by those who are ordained to this 
authority; but the actual impartation of re¬ 
mission is in and through grafting into Him 
who is the life of the world. This portion 
of the Creed is in exact accordance, and 
most perfect harmony, with the pervading 
idea, or rather essence of the Gospel. The 
Gospel is more than a system of theology or 
code of law, or rule of fitness, order, and 
beauty ; it is a veritable organism. It oper¬ 
ates beneath the understanding, or will, or 
affections, even upon the central essence of 
personality. It takes position in the very 
being of self, and there joins the faithful to 
Christ. Hence, as Christ Himself ingrafts 
His own chosen branches into Himself, He 
is the one Baptizer. As St. John says, i. 34, 
gvtol koTGV 6 danrlfav kv II vEV/iaTL He is 

the Baptizer with the Holy Ghost. 

His Apostles, with their successors, includ¬ 
ing all to whom authority to baptize is 
transmitted, receive into the Church by bap¬ 
tizing with water “ into the name of the 
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Ghost.” But the promise of Jesus given 
with this mission, “ Lo, I am with you al- 
way,” is most sure warrant that He is pres¬ 
ent when the outward visible form is ful¬ 
filled, and that He it is who then and there 
baptizes with the Holy Ghost. This makes 
baptism complete in both visible order and 
spiritual grace. The question of the possi¬ 
bility of a bar against this spiritual baptism, 
made by the recipient consciously or uncon¬ 
sciously, is not now under consideration. 
The point is, that every real baptism is per¬ 
fected by the one Baptizer; and that it ef¬ 
fects such organic union of the baptized per¬ 
son with Christ that the remission of sin is 
secured and conveyed. He who is truly bap¬ 
tized hath “put on Christ,” and “ there is 
therefore now no condemnation to them that 
are in Christ Jesus.” 

Hence the terms of the Creed are explicit. 
It declares the perfectness of remission in 
baptism. It makes no reservation. Bap¬ 
tism is “ generally necessary to salvation,” 
because it is the ordinary and appointed 
means of effecting that organic union with 
Christ, which is salvation. The person bap¬ 
tized is made one with Christ, by the spe¬ 
cific operation of the Lord and Giver of life, 
and Christ only imparts this gift of the 
Holy Ghost. 

“ The resurrection of the body.” “I, "We 
look for the resurrection of the dead.” 

This is an exclusively Christian doctrine. 
It is quite different from the old heathen 
notion of the immortality of the soul, and 
unlike all conceptions of a future life held 
and taught in other forms of religion. Its 
point is, that the very body of the dead hu¬ 
man person is as truly and perfectly his own 
body as was the body of the dead Christ 
His while it lay in the tomb. There is no 
conflict between this fact and the equally sure 





CREED 


208 


CRITICISM 


facts of bodily dissolution. We believe the 
natural decay, disintegration, and possible 
wide diffusion, through earth, water, or air, 
of the material substance in which the living 
human body is manifested in mortal life. It 
is evidently not the material substance which 
constitutes the body. It makes itself mani¬ 
fest in this life by means of material sub¬ 
stance, though the very particles themselves 
are continually changing. In what the very 
essence of body dwells is not known. All we 
are sure of is that every body is distinct from 
every other body ; that every person has his 
own body. This body may die, but can never 
be destroyed. It may be laid in the grave, 
as seed may be covered in the ground. God, 
however, will raise it up at the last day. As 
He giveth to every germinating and grow¬ 
ing seed His own body, so shall the body of 
the very person who died in its own identity 
be recalled to life. St. Paul says, “ It is 
sown a natural body,”— i.e ., a psychical or 
soul body,—“ It shall be raised a spiritual 
body.” This teaches us nothing about the 
substance in which the immortal body shall 
manifest itself. All it does clearly teach is 
that as the mortal body is an instrument of 
the soul, so also shall the immortal body be 
a fitting instrument for the uses of the spirit. 
This tripartite constitution of man, in body, 
soul, and spirit, is thus shown to be essential, 
and therefore indestructible. Death is only 
a temporary disruption of the threefold unity 
of every human person. When death shall 
be finally conquered, every one of the faith¬ 
ful shall dwell in his completely restored tri¬ 
partite constitution, in the open presence of 
the unveiled Trinity. 

“ The life everlasting.” “ The life of the 
world to come.” 

It will be best always to consider care¬ 
fully that the Creed is the symbol of faith 
for all true believers in Christianity. It 
sets forth exclusively the positive facts and 
grounds of faith and hope. It is silent of 
threatenings. Its silence, however, is no 
evidence that the supplementary contrasts 
to its assertions are not real and sure. 
It says nothing of the second death. It 
leaves that and all similar warnings and 
threatenings to be made known as they are 
commanded to be proclaimed. It is like a 
shout of victory and song of triumph. It is 
occupied alone with the glories of the saints. 
They shall enter into “ life everlasting.” It 
will be essentially the same as the “eternal 
life,” which God hath given to His beloved, 
and which they enjoy on earth according to 
their measure. This life is the personal 
communion of the saints with the person 
God, who is love, light, life. They dwell 
with Him. Even during mortality He takes 
up His abode in them. The future life 
everlasting will be the same reciprocal per¬ 
sonal communion, but in the midst of a new 
environment. Not earth-darkness, sin, sor¬ 
row, and toil will then surround the loving 
ones who are “ the friends of God,” but rest, 
peace, purity, joy uninterrupted and un¬ 


ceasing will be theirs. Their spiritual 
bodies will dwell with Him, who human as 
they are forever, is yet GoD-man, ever con¬ 
tinuing “ Head over all things to the Church, 
which is His body.” The details of the 
heavenly environment are not given. Some¬ 
thing is either taught literally or suggested 
in gorgeously figurative description in the 
Bible, especially in “ the book of the Rev¬ 
elation ;” but the essential fact that is made 
known is simply that we shall be like 
Christ. Now Christ, in His Divine Man¬ 
hood, is Lord over all things forever. This, 
then, is what Christians must surely believe 
of the life everlasting, viz.: that it will be 
passed with the reciprocal, loving compan¬ 
ionship of all saints, in the very open pres¬ 
ence of God, where, “ all things being sub¬ 
dued unto Him,” nothing shall by any 
means hurt “ the sons of God,” but, through 
the Lord of All, everything good shall be 
for the use of those whom Jesus shall 
finally present to the Father and confess 
before God and the angels. 

“Amen.” The original meaning of this 
word is verily, or truly. Its frequent use by 
Jesus during His life on earth, with the 
manner of that use, gives to it a peculiar 
solemnity. It is the preface to His most sol 
emn and significant declarations. His assur¬ 
ance of union with the Father, His most 
glorious promises and most fearful denuncia¬ 
tions, are begun often with Amen, verily. It 
is therefore a formula of direct appeal to the 
God of Truth. In this sense it seals the 
whole.Creed, and becomes a solemn declara¬ 
tion, as in the sight of God, that this is the 
very sum and substance of that faith in 
which the saints live and labor, and into 
which they hope to enter finally at the per¬ 
fect consummation. 

Rev. B. Franklin, D.D. 

Criticism. The passing a judgment on 
any subject. It is a department of study 
which has been applied, with destructive 
consequences to the faith of many, to the 
examination of the books of Holy Scrip¬ 
ture. It is subdivided into several parts : 1. 
Philological criticism, testing the genuine- 
enssof a document by the style and the words 
used, determining whether"they were at the 
date assigned to the document in common 
use, or whether they were of earlier or later 
date. II. Internal criticism, the examina¬ 
tion of the contents of the document, deter¬ 
mining whether the subjects discussed were 
in truth those current at the assigned date, 
or were earlier or later, or whether the whole 
document coheres throughout, or contains 
matter that properly betrays interpolation. 
III. Criticism based upon external history. 
Devoutly used these are very great helps to 
a proper understanding of the different 
books of the Canon of Scripture, and we 
have to use with caution and discrimination 
the instruments it puts into our hands. 
There are three sources for the popular con¬ 
fusion of ideas about the books of Scripture 
and their contents: The perfectly just and 




CRITICISM 


209 


CROSS 


defensible habit of quoting indifferently side 
by side texts from all parts of the Bible, 
though historically Genesis is separated from 
Revelation by at least fifteen centuries. The 
carelessness common in giving due instruc¬ 
tion about their purposes and contents and 
upon the doctrine of inspiration. The want 
of due heed in using and arguing from the 
contents of the several books of the Bible. 
When some startling assertion is made, with 
an array of apparent learning contrary to 
the vague ideas current as to the date, his¬ 
tory, and contents of a book, it is popu¬ 
larly supposed that the book or books in 
question are not genuine or not authentic. 
Criticism has done very much to rouse up 
an intelligent study of Holy Scripture, and 
with all the sad consequences to some, we 
must be very thankful for the firm founda¬ 
tion it has proven for the genuineness of the 
Bible. Attack has not only developed com¬ 
plete defense upon all important points, but 
it has cleared away a great deal of confused 
incorrect teaching, as a siege against an im¬ 
pregnable fortress clears away much under¬ 
brush which has gathered without the 
defenses but is itself conducted with much 
pomp, parade, and noise. And it may be 
that the obscuring smoke of the attack may 
hang long over the citadel. The books of the 
Old Testament have had a great deal of 
light thrown upon their purpose and con¬ 
tents, while the traditional dates of their 
composition have been in general estab¬ 
lished, and wherever modified, only in an un¬ 
important way. The war of criticism has 
raged chiefly round three points,—the Pen¬ 
tateuch, Isaiah, and Daniel. All other con¬ 
troversies are subordinate to these, and these 
have been most successfully maintained in 
their integrity. That after the Captivity 
explanatory 1 phrases, e.g ., “ as it is this day,” 
were probably inserted by some authority, 
as Ezra, is true. That documents were 
used and rearranged by Moses, documents 
of their early history preserved carefully 
among the B’nai, does not at all affect the 
fact of his inspiration. The minute accu¬ 
racy of his books has been amply proven at 
all points. So, too, of Isaiah. Whether 
there were “ two Isaiahs” living at different 
times, but having their separate writings 
bound up into one, or a later writer borrow¬ 
ing the name of the earlier genuine Isaiah, 
depends upon the single fact whether there 
is such a gift as prophecy or not. If God 
does permit the future to be foretold, then 
there was but one Isaiah,—the son of Amoz, 
—who prophesied “in the days of Uzziah, 
Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of 
Judah” (Isa. i. 1). The defense of Daniel 
has been most ably made by Dr. Pusey in his 
exhaustive lectures, and*by others also. 

In the New Testament the authenticity of 
the Gospel of St. John, of the Apocalypse, 
of several of St. Paul’s Epistles, has been 
attacked, but the contest now is nearly over ; 
the main battle over the fourth Gospel has 
been successfully won. 

14 


That there has been no change in the view 
in which these books must be held is not as¬ 
serted, but that there has been any essential 
change, or that their authenticity, authority, 
and inspiration has suffered in the slightest, 
is not true. Their authority is higher than 
ever, because more intelligently and clearly 
apprehended. 

In this article there is no attempt to re¬ 
count the canons of criticism, which critics, 
principally those in Germany, have laid 
down as inviolable, and have deliberately 
broken whenever it suited their purpose, to 
point out how, denying the clear sequence of 
facts, they have selected such isolated ones 
as fitted in best with their preconceived 
theories and absolutely despotically rejected 
the rest, or to note how often they have built 
up—as substitutes for plain recitals of easily 
comprehended narratives, which were thor¬ 
oughly coherent internally and fitted with 
the external surrounding, because they were 
true—vague, wild guesses, that were utterly 
baseless, and asserted these to be genuine and 
veracious. The result was that these critics 
refuted each in turn his predecessor, and 
substituted for facts his own baseless ideas 
of what the facts should be, by their own 
disagreements defeating their purpose. The 
outcome, though we have not yet seen the 
end of the whole controversy, has been so 
far, and will eventually terminate in, the 
complete vindication of the Inspired Scrip¬ 
tures of the Church of God. 

Crosier. The pastoral staff of the Arch¬ 
bishop. The pastoral staff' is of very early 
use. It has been claimed as coming to the 
Church from the staff held by heathen 
priests. It may probably have been taken 
from the shepherd’s crook, since that was a 
most appropriate symbol, often used in the 
Old Testament. Still, the staff as a badge 
of office, and of use also, was one so univer¬ 
sally employed that almost any explanation 
of its original introduction into the Church’s 
ritual would have some mark of truth, and 
only tend to show that it was used very 
early. The crook was later assigned to the 
Bishop),—the plain pastoral staff'; the cro¬ 
sier, i.e., the cross alone, to the Archbishop. 
The Patriarch was given a staff with two 
cross-bars. 

Cross. Once the instrument of unutter¬ 
able torture and shame, now the badge of 
the Christian religion. It is used as an or¬ 
nament in Churches. It is worn on the 
person; it is worked into the vestments of 
the services. It furnishes the plan for many 
sacred edifices. It was used once universally 
as a gesture of benediction. It is used in 
the Church officially at the reception of the 
infant or adult after baptism into the Chris¬ 
tian Church. Its shadow falls upon many a 
grave. So thoroughly has it passed from an 
instrument or sign of shame to a badge of 
the Christian. The true sense of the use of 
the sign of the cross in baptism is well given 
by Dr. Burgess’s explanation, accepted by 
King James, and affirmed by Archbishop 




CRUSADES 


210 


CRUSADES 


Bancroft to be the sense of the Church: 
“ I understand it not as any sacramental, or 
operative, or efficacious sign, bringing any 
virtue to baptism or the baptized. When 
the book says, ‘ and so sign him with the 
sign of the cross in token,’ etc., I under¬ 
stand the book not to mean that the sign of 
the cross has any virtue in it to effect or 
further this duly, but only to intimate and 
express by that ceremony, by which the an¬ 
cients did avow their profession of Christ 
crucified, what the congregation hopeth and 
expecteth hereafter from the infant, namely, 
that he shall not be ashamed to profess the 
faith of Christ crucified into which he was 
even now baptized.” 

Crusades. The expeditions of Christian 
armies to Palestine and Egypt for the re¬ 
covery of the Holy Land from the possession 
of the Saracens. They were called Crusades 
both because they were undertaken to re¬ 
cover Jerusalem and the so-called Holy 
Cross, and because the soldiers wore a cross 
on their clothes and had one upon their stand¬ 
ards. There were in all eight crusades, ex¬ 
tending over a period of nearly two hundred 
and seventy years. The causes of the cru¬ 
sades lay farther back than the immediate 
motives for them. They were begun and 
continued under religious enthusiasm, inter¬ 
mittent indeed, but sufficiently strong to 
lead to the enormous sacrifices of means and 
life which they involved. 

The first crusade—the result of the preach¬ 
ing of Peter the Hermit and of the urgings 
of the Greek emperor and the Patriarch of 
Jerusalem—was at first a disorganized rab¬ 
ble, under the lead of Peter, was organized 
by the princes that shared in it, and finally 
was led by them, at the head of the several 
columns, formed without much concert, to¬ 
wards Constantinople. Godfrey of Bouillon 
was the first to reach that city at the head 
of eighty thousand troops. He at once pushed 
into Asia Minor and besieged Nice, which 
he took in six weeks (1097 a.d.). Antioch 
was captured a year after, and after a siege 
Jerusalem fell, and was barbarously sacked, 
and the Jews were burnt in the synagogue 
and the infidels massacred, it is said, to the 
number of seventy thousand. Godfrey was 
chosen king and was crowned, and soon after, 
upon the crushing defeat of the soldan of 
Egypt on the plain of Ascalon, the princes 
disbanded and returned home. 

The second crusade was, in 1144 a.d., led 
by the Emperor Conrad III. and Louis VII., 
but it proved abortive. The Greek emperor 
fearing its successes quite as much as he did 
the Saracens, practically betrayed the Ger¬ 
man army by misleading it in the defiles of 
Asia Minor. The French army too was mis¬ 
managed, and when at last the remnants of 
the army were placed in position before Da¬ 
mascus, disease and want and dissensions 
destroyed its efficiency, and the expedition 
soon came to an end. It was a most dis¬ 
couraging defeat to all of Europe at the time. 

The third crusade was preceded like the 


first by eager, enthusiastic rabbles, which 
pressed forward to their destruction. Jeru¬ 
salem had fallen before Saladin in 1187 a.d. 
Acre was invested by Guy de Lusignan, and 
the wastes of the siege repaired by the multi¬ 
tudes who pushed into the siege from Europe. 
Frederick Barbarossa was drowned after de¬ 
feating the soldan of Iconium, and his troops 
were wasted at Antioch. Philip Augustus 
and Richard I. at last successively reached 
the plains about Acre. Dissensions broke out, 
and there was little real concert of action, 
but A cre finally capitulated. But dissension 
and the retreat of Leopold and of Philip 
left Richard alone. A victory over Saladin 
at Ascalon brought on a truce, and the third 
crusade ended, 1192 a.d. 

Since Jerusalem had not been recovered 
from the Saracens, a fourth crusade was 
preached 1198 a.d., but it was not organized 
till 1202 a.d. , but it was diverted from its 
destination. It captured Zara for the Vene¬ 
tians and Constantinople for Alexis and his 
father Isaac, but feuds, dissensions, open war 
with friends and allies, marked its steps, 
1203-4 a.d. At last the few who reached 
Palestine were defeated. No crusade had 
such excellent chances of success, and not 
another wasted them so ignorantly (1204 

A.D.). 

The fifth crusade was undertaken by 
Hungarian Crusaders in 1217 a.d., and was 
joined in by Germans, Italians, English, 
and French under the Duke of Austria. 
After Andrew of Hungary withdrew, it 
made an expedition into Egypt, where, upon 
its successes, peace was asked for by the 
Egyptian soldans at the price of the cession 
of Jerusalem. This was refused through 
the cupidity of the papal legate, and finally 
the Crusaders were compelled to withdraw, 
after having lost everything. The Chris¬ 
tians still held Acre. Frederick of Germany 
now headed the crusade, but he was at 
feud with the Pope (1228 a.d.), and, without 
attempting military operations, succeeded 
through negotiation in obtaining free access 
to Jerusalem and a peace for ten years. He 
went to Jerusalem and there crowned him¬ 
self, and then returned to Europe (1228 a.d.). 

The seventh crusade, begun 1238 a.d., was 
likewise formed of separate expeditions. One 
was led from France, and was wrecked in 
the defeat at Gaza. The second, which re¬ 
covered Jerusalem, was led by the Earl of 
Cornwall, and accomplished its work with¬ 
out a battle. Jerusalem was held till 1242 
a.d. , when it was recaptured by the Chawa- 
razmian Moguls, who defeated the Tem¬ 
plars and the Moslem, and overran all of 
Palestine. Acre was the sole port left to 
the Christians. Louis the Pious now un¬ 
dertook to repair these losses, and planned 
to attack Egypt (1248 a.d.). The same fatal¬ 
ity,—wasted time, lost opportunities, and ill- 
planned battles which were fruitless victories, 
ended at last in the capture of the king 
(1250 a.d.) near Cairo. Damietta was 
surrendered in exchange for him. He re- 






CRYPT 


211 


CURE OF SOULS 


mained four years longer at Acre, but at 
last returned home only to prepare for the 
last crusade. In 1270 a.d. he led the last 
crusade, which proceeded against Tunis, but 
died before the city was captured. A truce 
was made for ten years, and some liberties 
for Christians were stipulated in the treaty. 
Edward of England made an expedition 
with three hundred knights into Syria, but 
was compelled to return by the death of his 
father and his own consequent accession to 
the throne. So ended the crusades. Acre 
was captured by the Moslem in 1291 a.d., 
and they were for centuries left in an un¬ 
disturbed possession of the Holy Land. 

The social and political results of the cru¬ 
sades were in the end beneficial, but never 
before or since have treasure, lives, and time 
been so lavishly wasted as in these ill-planned 
and worse-executed assaults upon Syria. 

Crypt. (Hidden place.) A subterranean 
vault under any portion of the church. It 
was sometimes used as a place of burial. In 
very ancient churches it is the surest indi¬ 
cation of what were the original plan and 
dimensions of the church. 

Culdees. Probably a corruption of Co- 
lidei, i.e ., Servi Dei. An order of ascetic 
monks originally established in Ireland 
(792 a.d.), and apparently imitators of the 
rule of Chrodegan of Metz. They existed 
in Ireland, but in connection with later 
Cathedral Chapters, till the Reformation, 
and the name survived till 1628 a.d. But 
the name and history of these secular ascetics 
attracted more notice in Scotland, in which 
country they appeared about 800 a.d. 
Their peculiar habits differing from other 
manastic orders, and the fact that they were 
very frequently married, and that their 
place in the body was hereditary, that they 
were governed sometimes by lay Abbots, 
drew attention to them. They continued 
to exist as separate both from the old orders 
of St. Columba and the foreign orders, as 
the- Benedictines, brought into Scotland 
about two hundred years later. As secular 
in habits, with clerical ordination, they were 
an anomaly, which was at last gotten rid of 
by attaching them, as in Ireland, to some 
Cathedral Chapter. The name and proba¬ 
bly the rule of the body survived for a long 
time, but they were brought under diocesan 
rule. Their origin and government, both 
in Ireland and Scotland, were most probably 
the outcome of the tendencies and develop¬ 
ment of their age, and not properly borrowed 
from any foreign example. 

Cup. The chalice used in the adminis¬ 
tration of the Holy Communion. It is the 
term used by the translators of the New 
Testament. “ The cup which we bless, is it 
not the communion of the Blood of Christ ?” 


(1 Cor. x. 16.) Its form as a vessel varied 
according to convenience or means; but at 
first sometimes of wood, it was usually of 
silver, gold, glass, more seldom of baser 
metal. 

Doctrinally, the cup is the communicating 
to the devout recipient all the blessings that 
the shedding of Christ’s Blood upon the 
cross have obtained for us. “ Most humbly 
beseeching Thee to grant that by the merits 
and death of Thy Son Jesus Christ and 
through faith in His blood, we, and all Thy 
whole Church, may obtain remission of our 
sins and all other benefits of His Passion,” 
and so throughout this Prayer of Oblation. 
It is the reception, how or by what mode 
we may not now know (St. John xiii. 7, a 
principle announced by our Lord applicable 
to all mysteries) of the Blood of Christ 
(St. John vi. 55, 56), to be by us received 
“ in remembrance of His meritorious Cross 
and Passion, whereby alone we obtain re¬ 
mission of our sins and are made partakers 
of the kingdom of heaven.” 

To withhold the cup, then, from the laity 
upon any imagined principle whatever, prac¬ 
tical or doctrinal, is to act contrary to the 
express command of our Lord and of His 
Apostles, and to administer a maimed and 
imperfect sacrament. For any layman, upon 
any pretext, to withdraw after receiving the 
Body is to do an insult to the Giver of the 
Feast, the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Curate. One who has the cure of souls, 
under the direction of another. It properly 
belonged to the Deacon, but was, and is, ex¬ 
tended to any Priest who is serving in the 
parish of another. The term is not known 
in this country, where the Priest or Deacon 
is properly—according to rubric and Canon— 
called the Assistant Minister, though only 
a Priest can be instituted as assistant in a 
parish. 

Cure of Souls. The work of the min¬ 
istry. The Bishop of the Diocese has an 
unlimited cure in his jurisdiction, since he 
is the responsible head of the Diocese, and 
is the angel of his Church (c/. Rev. ii. and 
iii.). The Priest and Deacon are his subor¬ 
dinates, having limited jurisdiction,— i.e., 
within the parishes to which they are sent 
and over which they are to have charge. 
Offices not in use in this country, as Arch¬ 
deacons, have elsewhere jurisdiction of super¬ 
vision and partially of discipline, being the 
Commissaries of the Bishop. The charge to 
the Priest at his ordination (vide Ordina¬ 
tion of Priests) and to the Bishop (vide 
Consecration of Bishops), together with 
the questions put to each, show plainly the 
extent and the limit of the cure of souls, 
and the great responsibilities laid upon 
each. 




DAKOTA 


212 


DANIEL 


D. 


Dakota. Vide Nebraska and Dakota. 

Dalmatica. Originally a secular dress, a 
tunic with either short or no sleeves, be¬ 
longing to persons of the upper class, and, 
later, worn only by sovereigns at their coro¬ 
nation. The earliest mention known is in 
the account of Cyprian’s martyrdom (if the 
MSS. be genuine) (256 b.c.). The martyr 
took otf first his outer cloak, then his dal¬ 
matica, which he gave to his Deacons, and 
stood in his linen under-garment. It was 
worn by Bishops, and then permitted to 
Priests, and finally it became the distinc¬ 
tive vestment for Deacons at the celebra¬ 
tion of the Holy Communion. 

Damnation. The New Testament word 
for which this is the translation is used in¬ 
discriminately both of the sentence and the 
execution, but there is no detail of the na¬ 
ture of the punishment inflicted implied in 
the word. Its application (a) to the judg¬ 
ment of the wicked at the last day, and (6) 
to the punishment that follows, is to be 
gathered from the context, not from the word 
itself. It can only be by comparison that 
we can determine those passages which bear 
ipainly upon the point of the condition of 
the lost. Upon this point the Church 
has never passed any oecumenical teaching, 
though the certainty of damnation has 
always been assumed. The materialistic 
views of some of the earlier teachers soon 
passed over into theimmaterialized spiritual 
torments held by later doctors. As to the 
duration of that torment, there has again 
been no dogmatic teaching by the whole 
Church, though Origen’s ideas of a final re¬ 
mission were condemned. In fact, wher¬ 
ever Scripture is silent, leaving a fact as a 
mystery to be solved hereafter, the Church 
has been providentially kept from making 
a formal statement. But as the weight of 
Holy Scripture leans to the doctrine of ever¬ 
lasting punishment, so does the mind of 
the Holy Church. All theorizing about 
material or spiritual torments and when 
these are to be fulfilled, all vain interpola¬ 
tions of purgatorial pains, and all theories 
of final restoration, find no place in her 
teaching. What her Lord has told she be¬ 
lieves, what He has concealed she does not 
presume to know. 

But this word damnation is used in two 
places which have given rise to much mis¬ 
understanding, or rather the second place 
(in the exhortation to the communicants) 
is a quotation from the first place (1 Cor. 
xi. 29). As the word damnation— krima — 
does not in itself determine the nature, de¬ 
gree, or extent of the punishment, it is really 
a vague term. But the next verse shows 
the lingering, suspended sentence giving 


room for its withdrawal; for though the 
contents of the sentence refer to an actual 
epidemic, it bears for us a spiritual sense 
also, and the whole refers to the discipli¬ 
nary, not the punitive nature of God’s sen¬ 
tences upon us here. Therefore it is a mor¬ 
bid straining and an infusion of more than it 
will bear, to give the word “ damnation’’ in 
these places the extreme signification often 
forced upon it. 

Daniel. (God’s judge, or God is my judge.) 
The name of either three or four different 
persons mentioned in the Old Testament: 
(1) 1 Chron. iii. 1; (2) Ezra viii. 2; (3) 
Nell. x. 6. But it was also borne by the 
last of “ the four greater prophets.” Accord 
ing to Dan. i. he was one of a small body of 
captives carried from Jerusalem to Babylon 
by Nebuchadnezzar in the third year of 
Jehoiakim (604 b.c.). Nebuchadnezzar is 
called “king of Babylon,” but his father, 
Nebupolassar, was still on the throne, as we 
learn from Jer. xxv. 1, that the^/irsjJ year of 
Nebuchadnezzar coincided with the fourth 
of Jehoiakim, and from Dan. ii. 1, that the 
second year of Nebuchadnezzar was in the 
third year of Daniel’s captivity. All these 
dates fall into harmony on the natural sup¬ 
position that Nebuchadnezzar would have 
been called king by the Jews, while actually 
only his father’s viceroy intrusted with the 
command of their affairs. Erom these cap¬ 
tives a number were selected of royal or of 
noble family, distinguished alike by their 
physical and mental characteristics and by 
their education, to be especially trained for 
the king’s service. Among these were Dan¬ 
iel and his three companions, and of these 
Daniel was the most distinguished. The 
name of Belteshazzar (the prince of Bel), 
given to him at Babylon, was doubtless in¬ 
tended as the equivalent of his Hebrew 
name. His training at the court of Nebu¬ 
chadnezzar was but just completed when he 
recalled and explained, by means of the wis¬ 
dom divinely given, the famous dream of 
the king when all the wise men of the realm 
had failed. This at once gave him rank and 
position, and he was made “ruler over the 
whole province of Babylon” (Dan. ii. 48). 
In this position he must have had the oppor¬ 
tunity, and have used it, to be of great 
service to his countrymen who were carried 
into captivity somewhat later, and he must 
have become personally acquainted with 
Ezekiel, the great prophet among them. 
Later on he explained the second dream of 
Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. iv.), and in conse¬ 
quence secured from the king a decree de¬ 
claring his sense of the power of the God 
of the Jews. This must have tended to 
ameliorate their condition, and they seem to % 





DANIEL, THE BOOK OF 


213 


DANIEL, THE BOOK OF 


have believed that Daniel’s influence with 
the king could avert the threatened destruc¬ 
tion of their city and temple. Hence it be¬ 
came necessary for Ezekiel, in proclaiming 
that judgment, to say that even his inter¬ 
cession, like that of Noah and Job, would 
prove unavailing (Ezek. xiv. 14-20). Under 
the immediate successors of Nebuchadnezzar 
he appears to have been forgotten, but in 
the extremity of Belshazzar he was again 
called forth, and interpreted the handwriting 
upon the wall pronouncing the doom of the 
king and the kingdom. At the accession 
of Darius he was made the first of the 
“three presidents” of the whole kingdom, 
and still higher honor was intended (Dan. vi. 
1-4), when, by the intrigues of the court¬ 
iers, he was thrown into the den of lions. 
From this he was delivered and restored 
to honor, and he continued to prosper 
under the reign of Cyrus, in whose third 
year his last recorded vision is dated (Dan. x. 
1). He must have been now extremely ad¬ 
vanced in age, and, notwithstanding some 
untrustworthy Mohammedan traditions, it 
is unlikely that he ever returned to his na¬ 
tive land. Besides Ezekiel’s mention of 
Daniel already spoken of, he again refers to 
him (ch. xxviii. 3) as a distinguished example 
of wisdom. Critics have found difficulty in 
such mention by the prophet of a man still 
living and still in the prime of life; but it 
is plain that Daniel’s wisdom was very re¬ 
markable, and stood out in public and known 
superiority to all the famous wisdom of the 
Chaldeans. His fellow-countrymen in cap¬ 
tivity must have looked up to him almost as 
a superior being, and no higher example of 
wisdom could have been presented to them. 

Daniel, The Book of, is placed in our 
Canon as the last of the four greater proph¬ 
ets, but in the Hebrew Bible it stands 
among the Hagiographa , or Holy Writings, 
either between Esther and Ezra or immedi¬ 
ately before Esther. Various reasons have 
been given for this position, such as, that 
one-half the book being in Chaldee instead 
of in Hebrew, it was thought it should be 
separated from the other prophets ; or that 
it was distinguished from them by the fact 
that all its prophecies were communicated by 
dreams and visions and not by a direct 
“ Thus saith the Lord but the true rea¬ 
son seems to have been a regard to the 
apocalyptic character of the book and a 
recognition of the distinction between the 
functions of the prophet and the seer. 

At chapter ii. 4, the language changes 
from Hebrew to Chaldee when recording the 
answer of the Chaldeans to the king in their 
own language (Syriac-Aramaic); and this 
language continues to the close of chapter 
vii., when the Hebrew is resumed for the rest 
of the book. As nearly as may be, therefore, 
the book is evenly divided between these 
languages. This change of language is often 
explained by saying that the half of the 
book of especial interest to the Chaldeans, 
and mostly concerned with the dreams and 


the acts of their kings, is written in their 
language, while the half more particularly 
designed for the Church is in the sacred 
language. This is generally true, but must 
be supplemented by the statement that the 
seventh chapter is probably put into Chaldee 
on account of the vision being substantially 
the same as the dream of Nebuchadnezzar 
and its interpretation in chapter ii., which 
was already in Chaldee. Moreover, there 
seems no reason why the first chapter, which 
is simply historical, should have been in 
Hebrew unless the Jewish tradition be 
accepted, which states that the several proph¬ 
ecies were written separately and inde¬ 
pendently, and were collected by the elders 
of the people, who prefixed this chapter as a 
needed introduction. If this tradition be 
accepted, there remains no difficulty in the 
terms in which Daniel is spoken of, and thus 
the objection sometimes brought on this 
ground against his authorship of this book 
is entirely removed. There is no reason 
why such a merely historical introduction 
should not have been prefixed by any com¬ 
petent and authorized person. The Chaldee 
of the book is of an earlier type than that of 
the Targums, while the Hebrew is of a late 
character, resembling that of Ezekiel and 
Habakkuk, though purer than the former. 
So far as the language is concerned there¬ 
fore, a date is indicated for the book in the 
time of the captivity when the Jews were 
gradually exchanging their own language 
for the Aramaic. The same indication is 
furnished by the few Greek words found in 
the book. These are all technical names of 
musical instruments, doubtless brought with 
the instruments themselves from foreign 
sources, and naturally result from the com¬ 
mercial intercourse already established be¬ 
tween Greece and Babylon. If, as some 
critics maintain, the book had been written 
in the closing years of the reign of Antio- 
chus Epiphanes, it is inconceivable that it 
should not bear the impress of the Greek 
literature and culture of that period, when 
Hebrew appears to have become almost en¬ 
tirely a dead language. 

After the first introductory chapter, the 
contents of the book are as follows: chapter 
ii. contains an account of a forgotten dream of 
Nebuchadnezzar which he required to have 
recalled and interpreted. All the wise men 
of the kingdom having failed, Daniel, 
through prayer and the intercession of his 
friends with God, was enabled to do this, 
and showed the king the succession of four 
great kingdoms, of which his own was the 
first, all terminating in the universal and 
everlasting reign of God. The circum¬ 
stances attending the interpretation of this 
dream must have given it publicity, and 
Nebuchadnezzar may have feared its effect 
upon the permanency of his empire. At 
all events, it is recorded in chapter iii. that he 
set up a great image, having not only the 
head but the body also of gold, and sought 
to unite his whole empire in its worship. 




DANIEL, THE BOOK OF 


214 


DANIEL, THE BOOK OF 


Any one of his officers who should refuse to 
worship was to be cast into a furnace. The 
description of the officers summoned seems 
to have been purposely arranged so as not to 
include Daniel himself; but his three friends 
were involved, and refusing the required 
worship, were at once cast into the furnace. 
Nebuchadnezzar saw them walking there 
unharmed with a fourth glorious form 
“ like the Son of God,” and commanded 
their release. It is quite in character with 
the clearness and strength of his mind that, 
having thus recognized a power greater than 
his own, he should have issued a decree in 
honor of the greatness of that Power. A 
feeble mind might have obstinately persisted 
in the contest, but he was a man of sufficient 
sagacity to recognize the utter folly of such 
a course. Chapter iv. is entirely occupied 
with a royal decree, recounting a dream and 
its interpretation by Daniel, the king’s tem¬ 
porary insanity, his recovery, and conse¬ 
quent recognition of the power of the Most 
High. The recently discovered monuments 
of Babylon afford proof of a period in 
Nebuchadnezzar’s reign in which, accord¬ 
ing to his own inscription, there was a sus¬ 
pension of all his great works on his temples, 
and palaces, and canals of irrigation, as well 
as of his worship and offerings. Herodotus 
also ascribes to a queen several of the im¬ 
portant works which others attribute to 
Nebuchadnezzar. No other explanation 
can well be suggested for these remarkable 
facts than the temporary insanity (techni¬ 
cally Lycanthropy) which is recorded in this 
chapter. That an Oriental kingdom should 
have been preserved to its monarch through 
such an eclipse is remarkable; but in this 
case there were strong and peculiar reasons. 
The heir apparent, Evil Merodach, was a 
very undesirable ruler; Nebuchadnezzar 
himself had been a mighty conqueror, and 
his name was a tower of strength ; from the 
notice of her works by Herodotus, the 
queen, who acted as regent, seems to have 
been an excellent ruler; and above all, the 
internal administration of the empire was 
largely in the hands of the wise and able 
Daniel. Chapter v. gives an account of the 
feast of Belshazzar, in the midst of which 
came the handwriting upon the wall, inter¬ 
preted by Daniel, of the death of that mon¬ 
arch, and of the reception of the kingdom 
by Darius. Much objection was made at 
one time to this account because Berosus and 
Herodotus state that the last king of Baby¬ 
lon was Nabonnedus or Labynetus, and that 
he was not killed at the capture of the city. 
But the monuments have solved the diffi¬ 
culty by furnishing an inscription in which 
Nabonnedus addresses his son Belshazzar 
with royal titles, showing that he had asso¬ 
ciated him with himself upon the throne, and 
therefore Belshazzar was naturally left in 
command of the city when his father had 
taken the field. Xenophon concurs with 
Daniel in the statement that the last king 
of Babylon was slain in the capture of the 


city. There still remains a question in re¬ 
gard to Darius. Various theories have 
been proposed, but further information must 
be obtained from the monuments before he 
can be certainly identified. In the sixth 
chapter an account is given of the intrigues 
of the courtiers, and of the decree obtained 
from Darius, and of Daniel's being thrown 
into the den of lions in consequence of his 
disobedience to this decree. Chapter vii. goes 
back chronologically to the first year of 
Belshazzar, and records the extremely im¬ 
portant vision, parallel to chapter ii., of the 
four beasts, representing four world-empires 
succeeding one another, and all ending in the 
universal and eternal divine government. 
The chief controversies concerning the book 
turn upon the interpretation of this proph¬ 
ecy. To enter into these varying inter¬ 
pretations would occupy too much space. 
Suffice it to say that the best supported 
interpretation, and the one, until lately, 
almost universally received, understands the 
first kingdom of the Babylonian of which 
Nebuchadnezzar was head, the second of 
the Medo-Persian, the third of the Greek 
rule of Alexander and his successors, and 
the fourth of the Roman. All the other 
interpretations, though varying in their 
methods, concur in making the fourth king¬ 
dom that of Alexander or of his successors. 
These views have been ably refuted in 
Pusey’s work on Daniel. Chapter viii. gives 
further details in regard to Alexander and 
his successors, especially concerning Antio- 
chus Epiphanes, and the interpretation is so 
plainly given in connection with the vision 
itself that no room is left for doubt. The 
ninth chapter is chiefly occupied with the 
prayer of Daniel concerning the close of the 
captivity, and closes with the wonderful 
prophecy of the seventy weeks to elapse be¬ 
fore the coming of the Messiah. Much 
learning and ingenuity have been expended 
in seeking to find some other meaning for 
this prophecy, but none of the varying in¬ 
terpretations thus proposed commend them¬ 
selves as having either internal probability 
or the support of any external evidence ; and 
they all rest on the assumption that the 
writer, living in a later age, did not recog¬ 
nize the historic fact of the fulfillment of 
Jeremiah’s prophecy in the return of the 
Jews from their captivity. The remainder 
of the book is one continuous prophecy, 
given in the third year of Cyrus, and is 
occupied with the story of the struggles be¬ 
tween the Seleucidse (the kings of the north) 
and the Ptolemies (the kings of the south, 
or of Egypt), in the course of which the 
chosen people suffered greatly, the whole 
closing with references to the future, which 
have been variously understood as referring 
either (1) to the spiritual resurrection of 
many of the people after their great struggle 
with the power of the heathen, or (2) to the 
literal resurrection of the last great day. 

The book of Daniel, as a whole, thus 
stands out as giving more than any other 





DANIEL, THE BOOK OF 


215 


DAVID 


prophecies world-wide and comprehensive 
views of the providence of God in the gov¬ 
ernment of the world, and more definite 
indication than any other of the exact time 
of the coming of the Messiah. Besides the 
disputed points in its interpretation already 
specified, mention must be made of “ the 
little horn” of chapter xi., which has been and 
still continues to be variously understood. 
Of the genuineness and authenticity of the 
book there appears never to have been any 
doubt until the time of Porphyry. It is 
contained (with apocryphal additions) in 
the LXX. and other Greek translations of 
the Old Testament, although in the volume 
of the LXX. the translation of Theodotion 
was afterwards substituted for that originally 
made, probably through the influence of 
Origen. It is recognized in the books of 
Maccabees (1 ch. ii. 59, 60, and in its Greek 
translation, 1 ch. i. 54), and, according to 
Josephus (Ant., xi. 8, $5), its prophecies 
were shown to Alexander. When we reach 
the time of the New Testament, it is dis¬ 
tinctly quoted as Daniel’s by our Lord 
Himself (Matt. xxiv. 15), and its miracles 
are alluded to in Heb. xi. 33. It has always 
been received both in the Jewish and the 
Christian Church. 

Most of the objections made to it have 
already been considered. One other must 
be noticed. Porphyry (f cir. 305 a.d.), in 
his zeal against Christianity, objected to this 
book that its prophecies were minute and 
exact to the close of the reign of Antioch us 
Epiphanes, and beyond were vague and 
untrue; hence the book must have been 
written at that time. This objection has 
been taken up in modern days, and forms 
the whole gist of the argument against the 
book. On any fair interpretation of the 
four empires, and of the seventy weeks, this 
objection utterly falls to the ground, because 
these prophecies are sufficiently definite, 
reach far beyond the reign of Antiochus, 
and have been accurately fulfilled as far as 
the vision of the prophet has yet been un¬ 
rolled in the course of time. It remains, 
however, that there is a certain degree of 
truth in the objection, in that, in chapter xi., 
the struggles of the kings of the north and 
the south are depicted with unusual minute¬ 
ness through the reign of Antiochus, the 
great persecutor of the Church, and after 
that point become only very general. For 
this, however, there is an obvious and satis¬ 
factory reason. In the providence of God 
the voice of prophecy was to be hushed soon 
after the time of Daniel, and yet the Church 
under Antiochus was to be called to pass 
through a terrible ordeal. It was exceed- 
ingly important that it should be, as it was, 
sustained in that trial by these prophecies, 
and that object having been accomplished, 
there was no reason why the course of his¬ 
tory should be traced further. No other 
great trial was in store for the Church until 
the time of the coming of its Lord. 

Bey. Prof. F. Gardiner, D.D. 


David is the national hero of Israel. And 
by name and in character “ beloved,” the 
shepherd-king, the soldier who never lost a 
battle, the impartial judge, the statesman- 
king, the poet and prophet of God, the or¬ 
ganizer of the worship of Jehovah in forms 
that are fresh after three thousand years of 
use; above all, the progenitor and type of 
Christ. His claim to pre-eminent honor is 
unquestioned. 

His story reads like a romance, though it 
is very simply told. He was the youngest 
of eight sons of Jesse of Bethlehem. The 
family was of some local dignity, but not 
prominent in the tribe or nation. David’s 
name, “beloved,” reminds us of another “son 
of his father’s old age” (Gen. xxxvii.), who 
was born in this same neighborhood, and who 
was envied and hated of his brethren, both 
on account of his father’s love and “ for his 
dreams and for his words.” Perhaps the 
same reasons explain the humble position in 
which David is found at the beginning of 
the story, his father’s hesitating answer to 
Samuel’s inquiry (1 Sam. xvi. 11), and his 
elder brother’s insulting language to him 
before the army. They are jealous, the old 
father is afraid of them, and he is too gentle 
and brave to put himself forward without 
“a cause.” He is first brought into notice 
when Samuel, the prophet and judge, to 
their surprise and terror, appears in the 
little town and summons the people, and 
especially the family of Jesse, to the sacri¬ 
fice. The youngest son is missing, and they 
wait for him. When he comes in, “ruddy 
and of a beautiful countenance, and goodly 
to look to,” the prophet recognizes the ob¬ 
ject of his mission and anoints him before 
them all. We are not told that the prophet 
explained to them, or to David, the meaning 
of his act, though his former course with 
regard to Saul would lead us to infer that he 
made it known to David, and as much and 
more is implied in the story. But whatever 
he knew, he continues to sing his psalms with 
the sheep for listeners, and fight his battles 
with the lions and the bears, till his fame gets 
abroad, and he is sent for to play before the 
king when the attacks of his strange malady 
come upon him, and for a time he becomes 
the constant companion of Saul and greatly 
loved by him. 

His next appearance in the narrative is in 
the fight with the Philistine. There is a 
difficulty in reconciling the narratives of 
1 Sam. xvi. 23, and xvii. 58, which ought 
not to be passed over, but which need not 
be made too much of. The Septuagint 
unites xvii. 12-32, and xvii. 55-xviii. 6. 
No solution yet proposed is entirely satis¬ 
factory, and we must wait for more light * 
for one that is. The general outline of the 
story would indicate that David returned 
for a time from the court to his shepherd- 
life, from which he was summoned by his 
father to go to the camp of Saul. The de¬ 
scription of his personal appearance when 
the Philistine “disdained him” is the same 





DAVID 


216 


DAVID 


as on the former occasion, but the narrative 
brings out more of his personal character, 
his whole-hearted trust in God, and his 
simple, contagious fearlessness. When he 
goes forth to the fight, neither Saul nor we 
have any more doubt what will be the result 
than he has himself. 

He is without fear and yet he takes every 
precaution. When honors begin to be 
heaped upon him he is not dazzled by them. 
He becomes at once the delight and hope 
of the people and of the army. He is the 
close friend of Saul’s son, and he is loved by 
Saul’s daughter, and at first by Saul him¬ 
self. But then to Saul’s other malady is 
added the madness of jealousy as he saw in 
David the heir, and suspected in him the as¬ 
pirant, to the kingdom. First by violence 
and then by treachery he tried to get rid of 
him, nor was his enmity lessened when he 
was obliged to keep his promise and receive 
David as his son-in-law. His conduct at 
length became so violent that David was 
driven from the court, and fled first to Sam¬ 
uel’s protection in Hamah, and then to the 
court of the king of Gath, whence he only 
escaped by feigning madness. From the 
court of Achish (or Abimelech, Ps. xxxiv., 
title) he fled to the cave of Adullam, and 
here he began the life which continued till 
the death of Saul. First his own family 
came to him, and then others, discontented, 
in debt, outlaws, and fugitives from society, 
and he found himself at the head of a con¬ 
stantly increasing band of freebooters, 
whom, however, he kept in such strict con¬ 
trol, that he was more than once betrayed 
by his neighbors. He was regarded gener¬ 
ally by the inhabitants as a protector, and 
one to whom they gladly paid a kind of 
tribute. Saul pursued him, and drove him 
from place to place, until at length, after 
twice generously sparing the life of his foe, 
and finding Saul still implacable and false, 
David saw that there was no safety for him 
but in flight, and he passed on and took ser¬ 
vice with Achish, king of Gath, who gave 
him Ziklag for a residence. Here he re¬ 
mained for a year and four months, until the 
final battle and defeat on Mount Gilboa, 
when Saul and his sons were slain and the 
army of Israel routed and scattered. 

The immediate consequence of that great 
disaster was to advance the Philistines into 
the very heart of the kingdom and practi¬ 
cally to cut it in two. At the same time the 
force at David’s disposal was so increased by 
the addition of portions of the defeated army 
that when he came at the call of the tribes 
to Hebron to be made king over the south¬ 
ern portion of the kingdom, he already had 
a strong army at his command. For seven 
years and a half he reigned at Hebron, while 
the feeble son of Saul maintained a rival 
throne at Mahanaim. But the desertion 
and treacherous murder of Abner, his only 
dependence, was followed by the murder of 
Ishbosheth, and David was anointed king 
“over all Israel and Judah.’' 


Then began a reign of thirty-three years 
more, than which none is more glorious. One 
of David’s first exploits was the capture of the 
Jelusite stronghold of Jerusalem, which he 
fortified and made the royal city. Thither, 
with great pomp, he brought up the Ark of 
the Lord, and made Jerusalem the centre 
of worship. Then he proceeded to strengthen 
and enlarge his kingdom. He formed al¬ 
liances with the kings of Tyre and Hamath. 
He fought against the Philistines, Ammon, 
Noab, Edom, and the Syrians, and always 
with success. In his time and his son’s 
the promise to Abraham was literally ful¬ 
filled,—“ from the river of Egypt to the 
great river, the river Euphrates” (Gen. xv. 
18). He reorganized the army; he person¬ 
ally administered the kingdom through a de¬ 
partment of “judgment and justice while 
the reorganized army, the system of police, 
the records, and the finances were made sep¬ 
arate departments, and appointed chiefs. 
Nor this alone. He reorganized the system 
of worship and gave to it his minutest at¬ 
tention, arranging the orders of Priests and 
Levites, arranging the choirs, and even 
inventing instruments of music for their 
use (Amos vi. 5). One great desire of his 
heart he was not permitted to accomplish, 
but only to see it afar otf. The building of 
the Temple was reserved for his son, but 
David did what he could to make prepara¬ 
tion for it, and for the project of the Tem¬ 
ple and gathering of materials for its erec¬ 
tion the honor is due to David. 

But the glory of David’s reign was tar¬ 
nished by a great sin. The adultery with 
Bathsheba was followed by the foul murder 
of her brave husband, and the sin was vis¬ 
ited upon him in consequences of death and 
shame that never departed from his house. 
The crime of Amnon’s incest was followed 
by his murder at the hands of his brother 
Absalom, and Absalom’s rebellion drove the 
old king from his home and throne only to 
be restored by Absalom’s death. His last 
years were peaceful, and he saw Solomon se¬ 
curely seated on the throne, but the seeds of 
division were already planted in the king¬ 
dom. The other sin, which brought upon 
his people the visitation of a plague which 
destroyed seventy thousand, viz., the taking 
of a census of the people, is one of which 
we cannot appreciate the heinousness, partly 
perhaps because we know so little of the 
circumstances. 

But the story of David’s life to be ap¬ 
preciated must be read with the Psalms for 
a commentary. Of the one hundred and fifty 
psalms he is the author of about one-half, and 
the rest are built on his foundation. Many of 
David’s Psalms were written for the worship 
of the sanctuary, of many others the occa¬ 
sions belong to his life, and they partake of 
his personal character and are full of allu¬ 
sions to his circumstances. The sheepfold 
(xxiii.), the battle (viii.), the victory (xviii.), 
the cave (xxxi.), the wilderness (lxiii.), the 
storm (xxix.), the siege (lx.), and above all 




DAVID 


217 


DEACON 


bis repentance (xxxii., li.), furnish occasion 
and give form to the words in which the 
Psalmist pours out his heart to God, and it 
is hardly possible to understand the Psalm 
without understanding something of his 
circumstances. 

But, besides this personal element in the 
Psalms, there is another which is also per¬ 
sonal, and yet which distinguishes them from 
other poems and confessions, and even from 
other hymns of praise. David’s whole¬ 
hearted devotion singled him out as a man 
fitted for the work which he had to do, and 
there is a peculiar force in the repeated 
mention of the heart of God and of man in 
his story. He is the “ man after God’s own 
heart,” and the Lord chose him who “ look- 
eth on the heart.” His heart was for a time 
turned away and he fell into sin, but it was 
never hardened against God, and his prayer 
of repentance is a prayer for a “new and 
clean heart,” the “ offering of a broken 
and contrite heart” to God. The key to 
Abraham’s character is his faith ; to David’s, 
his love. He loved God and God loved 
him, and men loved him, and his Psalms 
speak to the hearts of all men as his words 
“ bowed the hearts of the men of Judah as 
the heart of one man.” 

But not even this deep truthfulness of 
love is sufficient to account for the fact that 
the Psalms of David have entered so largely 
into the worship and life of the Church. 
David was a prophet, and his words are in¬ 
spired, but he was a prophet of a peculiar 
kind. In him prophecy took a new de¬ 
parture, and not only his words but his per¬ 
son and his kingdom were prophetic. More 
than any other man David was the type of 
Christ. The promise made to Eve in the 
Garden of Eden and repeated to Abraham, 
is made more definite still when God 
promised that “ of the fruit of his loins He 
would raise up Christ to sit on his throne.” 
Such a promise of God must be regarded as 
the key to David’s life. It must be under¬ 
stood to be always present with him, even 
when its presence has the effect to deepen 
his penitence for his sin. Accordingly from 
this time forward the Messias is foretold 
and expected as the son of David, and even 
as David (Jer. xxx. 9 ; Hosea iii. 5). When 
Christ came He was saluted as the son of 
David, and He came fulfilling in His person 
and in His Church the kingdom of David. 

Here, then, we have the key to the pecu¬ 
liarly Christian character of the Psalms of 
David. In them the Psalmist speaks as 
the, type of Christ and Christ speaks by 
him, and there is that wonderful blending 
and union of the personal and human ele¬ 
ment with the Divine which makes them so 
dear and so true to the disciples and mem¬ 
bers of the body of the GoD-man. And 
therefore it is that it has always been 
the mind of the Church to find Christ 
in them, not only in those which are 
called “Messianic” (e.g., ii., cx.), and in 
the single verses which are quoted as such 


by sacred writers ( e.g ., xvi.-lxxxix., xl.), or 
by our Lord Himself (e.g., xxii.), but in all 
of them. Therefore, too, they are so perfectly 
adapted and so universally used in Christian 
worship. Christ speaks in them, and we 
Christians speak to Him by them. They 
tell us of the Throne and Kingdom of the 
Christ, the Anointed, of His law, His 
enemies, His righteous sceptre, His Divine 
Sonship, His exalted nature, His death and 
resurrection, His universal dominion, His 
everlasting reign. It is David who speaks, 
but it is not only David the man, the 
Psalmist, and the king, but David the 
prophet, David the type of Him who is 
“David’s Son and David’s Lord.” And 
his words “ are ours because we are 
Christ’s.” Rev. L. W. Gibson. 

Day. The word, simple and plain as it 
is, a cycle including a period of darkness 
and one of light, both together twenty-four 
hours long, has been the subject of much 
discussion in connection with the record in 
the first chapter of Genesis. The geologist, 
claiming that the term is figurative, as it has 
been used elsewhere, e.g., the Day of the 
Lord, the Day of vengeance, insists upon 
vast ages as included in each successive day. 
Whatever explanation may be given, or 
whatever duration may be assigned to the 
term, the controversy cannot affect the in¬ 
spiration, and therefore absolute accuracy 
of the whole passage. The successions of 
creative work, as there recorded, are in 
exact accordance with what science has 
taught us, and the occasional discrepancies 
alleged are found to disappear as a closer in¬ 
vestigation brings out the true facts. There 
is no clashing to suppose that the “ Day” of 
the Mosaic record may have marked long 
ages of present time, and till some positive 
evidence, beyond the demands of theory, 
however certainly based upon actual facts, 
shall be found to decide the question, it is 
not necessary to treat it otherwise than as a 
postulate in geologic science. It cannot 
affect the truth or accuracy of the revealed 
story, for it may be that we interpret words 
by our ideas of what they ought to mean for 
us. The word is often used for an indefinite 
time. “Abraham saw my day and was 
glad.” “ In that day” is often in the proph¬ 
ets. This use of it is perfectly clear. 

Deacon. A minister. So far as the 
record shows, this was the first office created 
by the Apostles. They themselves were 
appointed by the Lord. The account of 
the election and ordination (Acts vi. 1-6) 
of the seven Deacons is the model for all 
succeeding ordinations. It is conjectured 
that the seventy disciples whom the Lord 
had sent forth were before this recognized 
as officers, but it is mere conjecture, and we 
read of the young men who buried Ananias 
and Sapphira. But the Deacon had his 
special duties to do. It is said that of 
the seven at once two began to preach, but 
this is perfectly compatible with the duties 
of a Church officer. In fact, in the first 




DEACON 


218 


DEACONESS 


proclamation of the Gospel every man had 
this laid upon him ; but when theological 
accuracy was required, then trained men, of 
course, could alone be recognized; these 
were generally the prophets of the New 
Testament. (Vide Prophesying.) That 
the Deacon should, having the natural gift 
therefor, preach, and that as evangelist as 
St. Philip immediately after appears (Acts 
viii.; cf. xxi. 9), he should not only proclaim 
the Gospel, but also baptize. There is noth¬ 
ing incompatible in having the offices joined 
in one person. The office of Deacon is not 
clearly described in either the Acts or in St. 
Paul’s first Epistle to Timothy. It is left 
very vague indeed. The later development 
of the office in the Church retained its pri¬ 
mary office to look after the finances and 
details of the parish, but also joined to it 
the authority to baptize and to preach. To 
it was secluded, too, the authority to assist 
in the Holy Communion by the delivery of 
the cup. Thus they were the stewards and 
almoners of the Church, the ministers to the 
poor, sick, and imprisoned. They were 
specially attached to the personal attendance 
upon the Bishop, executing his orders and 
representing him to the people. They were 
called his hands, ears, mouth, and eyes. 
They kept the congregation in order, and 
waited upon the priest at the Holy Com¬ 
munion ; in times of stress they could even 
reconcile a penitent. They were attached 
to the parish to which the Bishop assigned 
them. These very nearly correspond to the 
present position of the order. They cannot 
remove from a parish but by order of the 
Bishop. They can administer baptism only 
when no priest is at hand. They cannot 
absolve, or bless, or celebrate the Holy Com¬ 
munion. They can preach when thereto 
licensed by the Bishop. They are to minis¬ 
ter to the poor, sick, and needy, to discover 
them and report their needs to the priest. 
The exigency of the times has made this 
office but the stepping-stone to the priest¬ 
hood, and in the majority of cases has forced 
the Deacon into the execution of functions 
for which it was supposed he was imper¬ 
fectly prepared. The Deacon is forbidden 
to absolve, bless, or celebrate the Com¬ 
munion, three acts which are within the 
capacity simply as official acts of any one fit 
for the Diaconate. This is proper, as not 
within the scope of that share in the stew¬ 
ardship committed to him. But ability to 
preach, and the requisite learning to qualify 
him for the priesthood, are demanded of him, 
and are exercised by him long before he 
usually is prepared for the “ good degree.’’ 
The necessities of the Church have forced 
ill-qualified Deacons to assume duties which 
ought to require long and patient training, 
while their office does not permit them to 
discharge those official priestly acts from 
which they are debarred by their lower rank, 
yet for want of which the parish committed 
to their charge is suffering,—an anomaly 
in the work which the pressing needs of the 


Church in her mission work can alone jus¬ 
tify. The question is asked, Why are there 
not permanent Deacons ? It is really a 
question of finance. If the salaries and in¬ 
come of the Diocese were poured into one 
common treasury, and administered by a 
financial officer, then Deacons could be 
maintained for work in their proper sphere ; 
but, since comparatively few parishes can 
support more persons than the Rector, the 
office of a Deacon cannot be made more than 
a step preceding the priesthood. As it now 
stands, permanent Deacons are almost an 
impossibility. 

Deaconess. A female ministrant in the t 
Apostolic Church. St. Paul (Rom. xvi. 1) 
commends Phoebe, the servant (Deaconess) 
of the Church in Cenchrea to the Roman 
Christians. The older commentators on 1 
Tim. iii. 11 (even so must [ their ] wives 
[Greek, women] be grave, not slanderers, 
sober, faithful in all things) held from the 
general connection of the passage that, 
whether these women were the wives of Dea¬ 
cons or not, they were admitted to the order 
of Deaconesses. Virgins who were formed 
into an order were also admitted, but so gen¬ 
erally were widows, that the term to enter 
into the widowhood was often synonymous 
with being made a Deaconess. There are 
many references to them both in the Fathers 
and in the Canons from the time of Ignatius 
(107 a.d.) to the tenth century, though after 
the fifth century they began to decline in 
the West. In the East they lasted till at 
least after the Council in Trullo, 692 a.d. 
The office was appointed to aid in the 
Church’s work under the existing customs 
of that age, when women could better minis¬ 
ter in many ways to these sisters in the faith, 
in giving them instruction under circum¬ 
stances when it would be either impossible 
or not proper for the Priest or Deacon to do 
so ; to prepare them for the rite of baptism ; 
to minister to the sick and needy; to ven¬ 
ture into the prisons to the confessors and 
martyrs there, when it would be too dan¬ 
gerous for the Priest to go unnecessarily ; to 
exercise some supervision over the order of 
virgins and widows not in this office. The 
setting apart with imposition of hands which 
they received was clearly understood to con¬ 
vey or to imply the gift of no sacerdotal 
functions. They could not baptize or dis¬ 
charge any part of the public worship which 
was the part of men to do. As long as the 
Church work demanded their aid they were 
useful, but under the changed conditions of 
a Christianized empire, and when after¬ 
wards so many of their active duties could 
be discharged by the then better controlled 
order of nuns, their office was dropped, and 
their work transferred to the rival order. 

(Vide Smith’s Diet, of Chr. Ant., Words¬ 
worth on Acts xviii. 18, and on 1 Tim. iii. 

2, Bingham, ii. $ xxii.) 

The order has been revived and used to 
quite an extent in the Church in late years. 
Using the term in a wide sense, excluding 




DEACONESS 


219 


DEACONESS 


from it the sisterhoods strictly living under 
rigid rule, but including some not strictly 
Diaconal, the outline history of the move¬ 
ment is somewhat thus: In 1845 a.d., Dr. 
¥m. L. Muhlenberg organized the Sister¬ 
hood of the Holy Communion, which was 
thus the first association of women in the 
Anglican Church. In 1855 a.d. the Bishop 
of Maryland instituted the order of Dea¬ 
conesses in connection with St. Andrew’s 
Parish in Baltimore. The General Con¬ 
vention of 1859 a.d. roused much interest 
in this work, which was checked at first by 
the civil war, but this ultimately afforded 
a practical training for future workers, and 
furnished a mass of very valuable experi¬ 
ence. In 1864 a.d. a very able report, 
with a large mass of suggestive facts and 
useful hints, was presented to the Conven¬ 
tion of the Diocese of Pennsylvania. Out 
of it grew the Bishop Potter Memorial 
House. In the same year Bishop Wilmer, 
of Alabama, instituted the order of Deacon¬ 
esses in Mobile. In 1872 a.d. the Bishop of 
Long Island set apart seven “ godly and well- 
tried women to the office of Deaconess.” 
The order is also at work in Louisiana, and 
associate members of these Deaconesses are 
employed in other Dioceses. There are such 
orders now in five Dioceses in England. 
Space does not permit us to do more than 
give, in Dr. Howson’s words, the general 
principles of the order: “ (a) Definition of 
a Deaconess. A Deaconess is a woman set 
apart by a Bishop under that title for service 
in the Church. ( b) Relation of a Deaconess 
to a Bishop. (1) No Deaconess or Deaconess 
institution shall officially accept or resign 
work in a Diocese without the express au¬ 
thority of the Bishop of that Diocese, which 
authority may at any time he withdrawn. 
(2) A Deaconess shall be at liberty to resign 
her commission as Deaconess, or may be de¬ 
prived of it by the Bishop of the Diocese in 
which she is working, (c) Relation of a 
Deaconess to an incumbent. No Deaconess 
shall officially accept work (except it be in 
some non-parochial position, as in a hospital 
or the like) without the express authority of 
the incumbent of that parish, which author¬ 
ity may at anytime be withdrawn. ( d ) Re¬ 
lation of a Deaconess to a Deaconess institu¬ 
tion. In all matters not connected with the 
parochial or other system under which she 
is summoned to work, a Deaconess may, if 
belonging to a Deaconess institution, act in 
harmony with the general rules of such in¬ 
stitution.” And six English Bishops signed 
these suggested rules. “ ( a ) Probation. It is 
essential that none be admitted as a Deaconess 
without careful previous preparation, both 
technical and religious, (b) Dress. A Dea¬ 
coness should wear a dress which is at once 
simple and distinctive, (c) Religious knowl¬ 
edge. It is essential to the efficiency of a 
Deaconess that she should maintain her habit 
of prayer and meditation, and aim at con¬ 
tinual progress in religious knowledge, (d) 
Designation and signature. It is desirable 


that a Deaconess should not drop the use of 
her surname, and with this end in view it is 
suggested that her official designation should 
be ‘ Deaconess A. B.’ (Christian and sur¬ 
name), and her official signature should be 
‘A. B., Deaconess.’ P.S.—It is desirable 
that each Deaconess institution have a body 
of associates attached to it, for the purpose 
of general counsel and co-operation.” This 
paper, taken from the “ Report on Woman’s 
Work,” read before the Board of Missions 
in 1871 a.d., contains many suggestions 
which are well worth careful study. As 
we have seen, the order has been tentatively 
employed in the Church with excellent re¬ 
sults. But its relation to the Church has not 
yet been fairly defined. It is of course fully 
within the Bishop’s power to institute it and 
to have it as a recognized association in his 
Diocese, but an effort has been made to ob¬ 
tain for it a wider recognition. In 1880 a.d. 
a committee reported to the General Con¬ 
vention a Canon, which was laid aside, and a 
Canon presented by the Bishop of Massa¬ 
chusetts was accepted by a large vote in the 
House of Bishops; but, owing to the late 
date of the session when it was sent to the 
Lower House, there was no time to consider 
it, and the subject, owing to the press of 
other business, was not considered at the 
Convention of 1883 a.d. But this proposed 
Canon may be given as the deliberate opin¬ 
ion of a majority of the Bishops : “ Resolved , 
The House of Deputies concurring, that the 
following Canon be enacted, to be entitled 
Canon vi. of Title III.,‘ Of Organized Relig¬ 
ious Societies within the Church .’ ” 

\ I. All organized Religious Bodies in this 
Church, of which the avowed object is the 
increase of holy living and of good works, 
and of which the members are in any man¬ 
ner set apart and specially devoted to such 
service of God in His Church, as orderly co¬ 
operation with Christ’s ministers, the edify¬ 
ing of His Body, the Christian education of 
youth, and the promotion of works of mercy 
and charity, are hereby declared to owe al¬ 
legiance to the doctrine and ritual of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church, whose pro¬ 
fessed representatives and agents they be¬ 
come ; and also due recognition of, and obe¬ 
dience to, its constituted authorities. And 
without such allegiance and obedient recog¬ 
nition such organized bodies may not claim 
the sanction of this Church. 

\ II. (1) Women of devout character and 
approved fitness may be set apart by any 
Bishop of this Church for the work of a 
Deaconess, according to such form as may be 
authorized by the House of Bishops, or, in 
default thereof, by such form as may be set 
forth by the Bishop of the Diocese. 

(2) The duties of a Deaconess are declared 
to be the care of Our Lord’s poor and sick, 
the education of the young, the religious in¬ 
struction of the neglected, the reclaiming of 
the fallen, and other works of Christian 
charity. 

(3) No woman shall he set apart for the 






DEACONESS 


220 


DEAN 


work of a Deaconess until she be twenty-five 
(25) years of age, unless the Bishop, for spe¬ 
cial reasons, shall determine otherwise, but 
in no case shall the age be less than twenty- 
one (21) years. The Bishop shall also satisfy 
himself that the candidate has had an ad¬ 
equate preparation for work, both technical 
and religious, which preparation shall have 
covered the period of at least one (1) year. 

(4) No Deaconess shall work officially in 
a Diocese without the express authority in 
writing of the Bishop of the Diocese, nor in 
any parish without the permission of the 
Hector or Minister thereof. 

(5) Deaconesses may be transferred from 
one Diocese to another by proper letters 
dimissory, at the request of the Bishop to 
whose jurisdiction they are to be so trans¬ 
ferred. 

(6) If a Deaconess should at any time re¬ 
sign her office, she shall not be restored there¬ 
to unless in the judgment of the Bishop such 
resignation was for weighty cause. And no 
Deaconess shall be removed from office by the 
Bishop except with the consent of two-thirds 
of the members of the Standing Committee 
of the Diocese duly convened. 

(7) The Constitution and Rules for the 
government of any institution for the train¬ 
ing of Deaconesses, or of any community in 
which such Deaconesses are associated, must 
have the sanction in writing of the Bishop 
of the Diocese in which such institution or 
community exists. All formularies of com¬ 
mon worship used in such institution or com¬ 
munity must have the like sanction, and 
shall be in harmony with the usage of this 
Church, and like the principles of the Book 
of Common Prayer. 

\ III. (1) Devout women desirous of living 
in community, under rule, with sanction of 
the ecclesiastical authority, for the increase 
of self-consecration to God, and the better 
performance of the works of faith enjoined 
in the Gospel, may be formed into Societies 
with the consent of the Bishop; and such 
Societies, under the conditions named be¬ 
low, shall be recognized as Sisterhoods in 
this Church. 

(2) The Constitutions and Rules of such 
Societies, prescribing their organic struc¬ 
ture, the qualifications for entrance, the reg¬ 
ulations for the common life, and the scope 
and methods of their work, must have the 
written approval of the Bishop then exercis¬ 
ing jurisdiction in the Diocese; and the said 
Constitution and Rules, so far as thus ap¬ 
proved, shall be unalterable by the same 
Bishop or by the Sisterhood within his Dio¬ 
cese, except by their joint act and agreement. 

(3) The form and order for entrance into 
such Sisterhood shall be drawn up and pre¬ 
scribed by the Bishop of the Diocese, unless 
otherwise provided for by the House of 
Bishops. 

(4) The Bishop shall have Episcopal super¬ 
vision and canonical authority over Sister¬ 
hoods within his jurisdiction, and may act 
as Visitor thereof. 


(5) Every such Sisterhood may have its 
Chaplain or Pastor, who shall be nominated 
by the Society within the Diocese, and ap¬ 
proved by the Bishop; and who shall be a 
clergyman in Priest’s Orders, canonically 
subject to the Bishop. 

(6) In matters concerning only the Chris¬ 
tian walk and conversation of the Sisters as 
individuals,—their personal concerns and 
private devotional life,—Sisters are free to 
govern themselves in the sight of God, so 
that all be done in the spirit and methods 
commended by this Church. But the for¬ 
mularies of common worship in a Sister¬ 
hood, and all devotional practices in such wor¬ 
ship (other than as usual in this Church), 
and the books of devotion or religious in¬ 
struction used in ministering to others, shall 
be subject to the examination and approval 
of the Bishop, and shall be in harmony with 
the usage of this Church and principles of 
the Book of Common Prayer. 

(7) No Sisterhood shall send any of its 
members to another Diocese to work there 
except on the request of the Bishop of that 
Diocese, and with the consent of its own 
Bishop ; nor shall any member of a Sister¬ 
hood work officially among the people of any 
parish of this Church without the consent of 
the Rector or Minister thereof. 

Dean. The title of an ancient office in 
the Western Church, but only recently be¬ 
coming current here, though the bearer of 
the title here is not properl}’' a Dean. ( Vide 
Convocation.) The Canon Law recognizes 
four officials having a right to the title. The 
Dean, who has a Chapter of Prebendaries or 
Canons subordinate to the Bishop, as a coun¬ 
cil assistant to him in matters of religion 
and in matters temporal relating to his Bish¬ 
opric. (Burn’s Eccl. Law, vol. ii., sub voce 
Dean; vide also the article Cathedral.) 
The second is held by a single person, the 
Dean of Battel, the abbey William the 
Norman founded to commemorate the bat¬ 
tle of Hastings (1066 a.d.). It is presenta- 
tive, has cure of souls, but has no Chapter. 
The third has attached no cure of souls, is a 
donative, and, having jurisdiction therefore, 
holds a court, and has a peculiar,— i.e., is 
amenable only to royal or Archiepiscopal— 
visitation, as the Dean of Arches in London 
is exempt from the Bishop of London’s juris¬ 
diction, but under the Archbishop of Canter¬ 
bury. The fourth office is that of the Rural 
Dean. Probably this last order really has a 
right to the title ( vide Rural Dean), for 
“the spiritual governors,the Bishops,divided 
each diocese into deanries (decenaries, or 
tithings), each of which was the district of 
ten parishes or churches; and over every 
such district they appointed a dean, which in 
cities or large towns was called the dean of 
the city or town, and in the country had the 
appellation of rural dean.” (Burn’s Eccl. 
Law.) This principle of governing by tens 
passed into the monastic rule, and so was 
transferred to the colleges and universities. 
( Vide Coke on Lit., lib. ii. c. 134 and note.) 




DEATH 


221 


DECALOGUE 


Death. The act of the separation of the 
goul from the body; the death of the soul; 
eternal death. It is the inevitable doom of 
all before the moment of the blast of the 
Trumpet. These shall have some change 
pass upon them, but all others shall first pass 
under the law. Death is the contrast to life. 
But two men in all human history have been 
exempted, Enoch and Elijah. It has always 
had a terror for the human mind; the un¬ 
known hereafter, the agony itself, the sepa¬ 
ration from all things we love, make it a 
dreadful act to many who are yet strength¬ 
ened by the Christian’s faith. The Scrip¬ 
tures represent and record these fears most 
faithfully, and give as the reason—Sin. 

There are three kinds of death : the death 
of the body, which we can see; the death 
of the soul,—spiritual death ; and the second, 
or eternal death. The death of the body as 
the result of sin is a merciful provision of the 
Creator, by which the consequences of sin 
might be checked, to those who place them¬ 
selves within the Law of Grace and Life in 
Christ. Spiritual death, the death of the 
soul, does take place here by a voluntary self¬ 
deprivation of all the means of grace, by 
impenitence, and by the sin against the Holy 
Ghost; in fine, by persistence in that state 
of trespasses and sins into which we are 
born by nature. Eternal death, the second 
death, the privation of blessedness in God’s 
presence, the outer darkness of our Lord’s 
Parable. Death is to be destroyed as it has 
been already conquered by Christ (1 Cor. 
xv. 26; Heb. ii. 14; Col. ii. 15), as indeed its 
power must cease when there are no more 
victims. He has taken away the true fear 
of death that lies in sin, yet He shrunk nat¬ 
urally as perfect man from the act of death, 
for it should have no power over Him except 
as He willed or submitted voluntarily to it. 

Death of Christ. It was a real, true, not 
a phantasmic death. His soul left His body 
and went into the prison of departed spirits, 
but His divine nature, being incomprehensi¬ 
ble, did not leave either soul or body. It 
was voluntary, 1st, because He foretold that 
it should be so, and upon the cross. He bowed 
his head and said, It is finished ; 2d, because 
it was in a certain degree miraculous. He 
hung upon the cross alive but six hours, 
whereas the victim usually lingers three 
days; and His death He, as it were, an¬ 
nounced by the loud cry, by His commend¬ 
atory prayer, by bowing His head. It was 
a very and true death, and for us, that He 
might taste death for every man, that in soul 
and body He might know all that we un¬ 
dergo, even after death. Therefore it is most 
useful that His death as well as His passion, 
and His burial, are placed in the Creed as 
parts of our Christian Confession. 

Decalogue. The ten words (the Hebrew 
title, also Ex. xxxiv. 28), title of the Ten 
Commandments; the covenant which was 
given to Moses on Mount Sinai by God 
Himself. The history of God’s giving it to 
Moses and the form and contents are given 


in Exod. xx. It is repeated in Deut. v. 
There is but a single discrepancy between 
the two records. The fourth commandment 
is based in Exodus upon God’s rest after 
creation ; in Deuteronomy it is based upon 
the deliverance from Egypt. There is no 
discrepancy in reality, since Moses is recit¬ 
ing them with a different purpose in Deu¬ 
teronomy. Also, it may be noted that in the 
last commandment the clauses, Thou shalt 
not covet thy neighbor’s house ; thou shalt 
not covet thy neighbor’s wife, are reversed in 
order in Deuteronomy, and also “ his field” is 
inserted after house. The authoritative form 
is in Exodus. The division of the com¬ 
mandments into ten has been the subject of 
some controversy. The Church of England 
follows the division to which Philo (80 a.d.) 
gave currency ; in this the Calvinistic bodies 
follow her, but the Lutherans do not. The 
Romanist joins the first and second com¬ 
mandments into one, and divides the last into 
two. If the covenant as given in Exodus is 
the authoritative form, and the one in Deu¬ 
teronomy is only a repetition of it, then the 
division which the English Church uses is 
the most natural, and, for several reasons, 
the only one possible. The so-called pref¬ 
ace is an independent command : “I am the 
Lord thy God. . . . Thou shalt have none 
other gods but me.” A basis for the other 
commandments from which they flow nat¬ 
urally. In the second, on idolatry, the for¬ 
bidding of the making of images is followed 
by prohibiting the worship of them, with a 
statement of the grounds for this prohibi¬ 
tion. As for the last, the inversion of the 
clauses as noticed above shows that it is but 
one command. In fact, all other divisions 
do more or less violence to the sequence of 
the commandments. 

There is some doubt as to how these were 
arranged upon the two Tables. Again, the 
grouping which we usually follow com¬ 
mends itself to us, since St. Paul throws the 
fifth commandment into the second division, 
though its contents make it a link binding 
the two groups together. The first four 
clearly relate to our duties to God. The 
fifth one, by the light thrown upon it by the 
Proverbs, where “father” and “mother” 
stand for God and the Church, makes a nat¬ 
ural transition. Then, too, the family rela¬ 
tion lying at the base of the Hebrew polity, 
it should properly make the first of the sec¬ 
ond sphere of duties,—to our neighbor. It 
is not the place here to go into it at any 
length, but the true foundation for all obedi¬ 
ence was love (Deut. vii. 9 ; Rom. xiii. 8 
sg.). But the clear apprehension of this 
was denied by resting upon the other say¬ 
ing, “ And it shall be our righteousness if 
we observe to do all these commandments 
before the Lord our God, as He hath com¬ 
manded us.” 

But the covenant enacted for the Israelite 
extends to all as well, because its root is in 
the truest aspirations of our nature, and be¬ 
cause practically our Lord, by commenting 





DECREE 


222 


DECRETALS 


upon it in His sermon on the mount, made 
it binding upon us, as by the assumption 
both by St. Paul and by St. James that it is 
always in force. Therefore in its precise 
terms it is the covenant by which we are 
bound at our baptism, interpreted, it is true, 
by the love which our Lord threw over it. 
Its recital each Sunday in the service is 
therefore strictly in the line of instruction 
which the Church has followed,—the Creed, 
the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Command¬ 
ments put before us constantly, for they are 
our part of the baptismal covenant. 

In reciting the Law at the point of the 
service where it is ordered, the English 
Church has added to the old Liturgical 
. usage. There is no precedent for it in any 
of the ancient services which have come 
down to us. It is not the less a most excel¬ 
lent addition to the service, and forms an 
outline for instruction, that self-examination 
which is urged upon us in the exhortations 
to the Communion office. 

At the close of each commandment as it 
is proclaimed to us (for that is the true office 
of the minister at that moment), there 
is placed the familiar response, “ Lord have 
mercy upon us and incline our hearts to 
keep this law;” (and after the last one) 
“ Lord have mercy upon us and write all 
Thy laws in our hearts, we beseech Thee.” 
The first wdrds are the ancient Kyrie elei- 
son,—which is not so freely used in the Eng¬ 
lish as in the Oriental services,—and a peti¬ 
tion fitted for the commandments appended 
to it. The whole of this part of the ante- 
communion is a noble addition to the Li- 
turgic services which the English Church 
has inherited. 

Decree. Holy Scripture speaks of God’s 
purposes or decrees as being eternal, and 
clearly intimates that events are not fortui¬ 
tous and accidental, but are known and fore¬ 
ordained by infinite wisdom. But this does 
not interfere with our perfect freedom to 
choose our line of action. The controversy 
is with those who hold to a strict predestina¬ 
tion theory,—for, in our ignorance of His 
essential nature, theory only it must be, 
since as Bishop Butler acutely remarks, that 
though necessity may logically be, yet in 
practice we must act as though it did not 
exist. This controversy has been popularly 
overlaid with questions and side issues which 
do not belong to it, and there results a con¬ 
fusion as to the proper limits of true free¬ 
dom. Putting aside for a moment our in¬ 
ability to conceive of God beyond what He 
has chosen to reveal to us, we may say that 
the leading consequences of any act—not 
the primal act itself—are unavoidable and 
irrevocable by us ; that the general laws of 
nature and the limitations of our powers by 
the conditions of our creation and nature, 
bear also consequences which we cannot es¬ 
cape. Then the inferences and mutual oppo¬ 
sitions which form separate and independent 
lines of action also must be thrown out. 
All of these belong to God’s foreknowledge ; 


as, too, the secret springs of our character, 
the logical outcome of influences of which we 
may be unconscious, the heredity of certain 
tendencies, the limitation of education, which 
again depends upon the circumstances and 
conditions of a past not in our hands, and the 
proper sequences of those interposing acts, 
whether of mercy or of justice, which He 
in His infinite wisdom has seen fit to 
place at conjunctures in the history of our 
race. All these, too, are foreknown and 
must enter into His decrees, yet must be 
thrown out by us when discussing, what 
is really the gist of the whole contro¬ 
versy, the decree of election or rejection of 
each separate individual soul; we can only 
narrow down, not solve, the mystery. In 
throwing out these things above enumer¬ 
ated, we are only eliminating facts which, 
however complex they may seem to us, fol¬ 
low out the law of cause and effect. We 
do not thereby mean to overlook God’s pres¬ 
ence in them, or His use of them. Their 
complexity is our puzzle, not His whose 
knowledge is infinite, and they do not prop¬ 
erly fall within the popular conception of 
His will towards each separate soul of His 
creation. But it is clear that while we have 
left ample room for the play of our limited 
wills, we have taken out of the question 
much that has confused it. Now at this 
point God’s mercy is declared. He hath 
no pleasure in the death of a sinner. He 
willeth that all men shall be saved. He 
willeth that all men shall come to a knowl¬ 
edge of the truth, yet by the law of second 
causes and of consequences our minds are 
dulled, our perceptions and capacities are 
stunted. However secret and immutable 
His decrees are, they are founded upon His 
attributes, in His own perfect nature, and 
are involved in His foreknowledge and pur¬ 
poses to man in Christ Jesus. Yet they 
amply allow for the responsible use, through 
our will, of the faculties, capacities, and op¬ 
portunities God has given to us in this our 
lifetime. The reconcilement of the two 
statements in Holy Scripture constitutes the 
mystery unfathomable to us in the present 
state of our powers. That it is reconciled 
must be believed, since truth is a fundamen¬ 
tal concept of God. 

Decretals. (I.) The False Decretals. The 
title of a compilation of Canons and Epistles 
from various sources, the larger part of 
which are wholly fictitious. The Papal 
Epistles, beginning with Siricius, are nearly 
all genuine; those preceding Siricius are 
forged. The Canons of the Provincial and 
(Ecumenical Councils, as generally received, 
are genuine, but there are a large number 
of fictitious Synods included. The whole 
mass of both forged and authentic docu¬ 
ments was put forth under the name of 
Isidore, Archbishop of Seville, but was put 
together probably near Rheims about the 
year 843-847 a.d. It was intended to meet 
the troubles and confusions in the Empire 
at that date. These troubles arose from the 





DEDICATION 


223 


DEGREES 


ambition of the Prelates, the covetousness 
of the nobles, and the general ignorance 
which lay over the mass of the people, many 
of whom had been but in comparatively 
recent times brought into the Church. 
Charlemagne’s strong hand repressed these 
troubles, but his son Louis the Pious was 
unequal to the task he inherited. The 
forger thought that by an appeal to a dis¬ 
tant power, which yet should have a spir¬ 
itual authority, he could obtain the solution 
of the problem. So he made an appeal to 
Rome the final decision of all quarrels, and 
introduced the Papacy as the ultimate au¬ 
thority on Church law. This fatal basis 
brought in the doctrine of the Roman su¬ 
premacy, hitherto disallowed and often dis¬ 
avowed by the Western Churches. But as 
his collection was admitted to have the 
highest authority its teachings were ac¬ 
cepted, and so upon a forgery and a false¬ 
hood was founded the extension of those ar¬ 
rogant papal pretensions which led to the 
schism between the Eastern and Western 
Churches,—those superstitions and malprac¬ 
tices of the Middle Ages which brought on 
the Reformation and the innumerable sects, 
schisms, and heresies which have plagued 
the Church since. The authorship of the 
book is unknown, but it is probabty the 
work of the same person who had already 
issued two collections of Capitularies, and 
was a partisan of the able Ebo of Rheims, 
whose troubles and deposition may have 
suggested the redresses, and the authority 
necessary to enforce them, which are taught 
in the Ealse Decretals. 

„ (II.) Decretals of the Popes, collected 
first by Raymond of Penaflor, under Greg¬ 
ory IX., and afterwards enlarged by the 
addition of successive books,— Decretales 
Epistolce , Gregory IX., Liber Sextus , Clem- 
entinoe , Extravagantes Joanni , Extravagantes 
Communes , Liber Septimus. Together with 
the Decretum of Gratian (which had been 
formed out of the labors and collections of 
previous Canonists since the time of the 
False Decretals), the whole collection forms 
the Corpus Juris Canonum of the Roman 
Church. 

Dedication. Nearly equivalent to con¬ 
secration in popular use. But there is a 
deep distinction. To dedicate is to set apart, 
as given to God. Tithes and offerings are 
dedicated. Samuel was dedicated to the 
Lord. To consecrate is to solemnly set 
apart, with an implied curse against sacri¬ 
lege, a person, house, or thing to sacred and 
hallowed uses. Often a thing dedicated is 
perishable, a thing consecrated is perma¬ 
nent. 

Degradation. Deprivation of an office. 
Really, to deprive of a step or degree of 
rank* or honor. The Bishop, Priest, or 
Deacon is degraded for cause,— i.e ., his de¬ 
gree of office in the Church is taken from 
him. It varied in the proportion of the 
offense, as from temporary suspension to to¬ 
tal deprivation. For the inferior orders the 


Bishop was the proper judge and executive 
officer. But finally the Synod of the Prov¬ 
ince became the proper tribunal. The 
crimes for which a clergyman could be 
deposed were (besides immorality, such as 
would exclude a layman) offenses against 
discipline, against doctrine, against the 
Church and its Ritual. The form used 
doubtless varied, but was accompanied with 
some significant rites, as depriving the 
offender of his robes, the vessels used in 
his office, and ending by scraping his thumb 
and hand, which had been anointed at his 
ordination. The act of the Church at this 
day is very simple. The causes for degra¬ 
dation (deprivation and displacing are its 
synonyms) are those recited above, and re¬ 
nunciation of the ministry. His deposition 
is an entire rejection from all office, not from 
a higher to a lower. Sentence is pronounced 
whether the offender be present or not, at 
some service appointed by the Bishop, and 
due notice must be given to every minister 
and vestry in the Diocese, and to all the 
Bishops and to the Standing Committee of 
any vacant Diocese; the notice specifying 
under what Canon the said minister has been 
deposed. The Canons on deposition, Tit. ii., 
Can. ii., \ 2, Can. v., $ 1, Can. vi., \ 2, Can. 
viii., Can. x., § 2, Can. xi., \ 2. 

Degrees. (I.j Steps. “The Song of 
Degrees,” the title to Ps. cxx.-cxxxiv. 
Either hymns sung by the Pilgrims to the 
Passover at Jerusalem, on their journey 
thither, or they may have been chanted 
upon the’ fifteen steps leading from the 
women’s to the men’s court in the Temple. 
The first explanation of the title is the most 
likely. 

(II.) Steps of kinship. The law of na¬ 
ture forbids marriage within certain degrees. 
The law of morality, civil regard for social 
good, and the Church’s regard for both, for¬ 
bid still more remote degrees. 

The Canon of the American Church is 
indefinite, simply forbidding that marriage 
which the law of God disallows. This may 
be made wider or narrower without further 
definition. For, e.g., there is no law for¬ 
bidding the marriage of a deceased wife’s 
sister, yet it is prohibited by the construc¬ 
tion of the English Canon law upon the 
Mosaic table of forbidden marriages (Lev. 
xviii.), and a bill to repeal it was recently 
defeated in the English House of Lords. 
The English Law of Prohibited Degrees is 
founded upon two rules of interpretation: 
(a) The term degree ascends as well as de¬ 
scends, and so all marriage in an ascending 
line, as well as in a descending line, must be 
prohibited ; what is held of father or mother 
is true of grandfather or grandmother. (6) 
What degree is forbidden to the one sex is 
forbidden to the other also by parity of 
reason. If a woman is forbidden to marry 
her husband’s brother, then the man is for¬ 
bidden to marry his wife’s sister, the degree 
of relationship being the same in both cases. 
Upon these two rules the English Law of 





DEIFICATION 


224 


DEISM 


Marriage and Prohibited Degrees is framed. 
(Vide Matrimony, where the table of pro¬ 
hibited degrees is placed.) 

Deification. This bold term, founded on 
2 Peter i. 4, has been used by the Fathers 
occasionally to express the ultimate perfect 
union with Christ. Christ became man 
that we might be deified (St. Athan. or. De 
Incar., liv.). It is certainly implied in the 
common saying, The Son of God became the 
Son of Man that the sons of men might 
become the Sons of God. 

Deipara. She who bore God, i.e., the 
Virgin Mary, who was the mother of Him 
who is Eternal God, even the GoD-man 
Jesus Christ our Lord. 

Deism is a term sometimes used to in¬ 
clude all belief in a Divine Being, but this 
use of the word is incorrect. Deism is best 
defined by negatives, and strictly designates 
a form not of belief, but of unbelief. A Deist 
is one who, beginning from the position of 
Christian faith, has cast ofif everything that 
is peculiar to that faith, and holds onty the 
belief in one God. He holds less than the 
faith of Israel even, who had the promise 
and miracles, and a history and sacrifices, 
and the Scriptures, and symbolizes with 
Mohammedanism, with which it also agrees 
historically, inasmuch as it was also in its 
origin a heresy and departure from Christi¬ 
anity. 

At the same time it must be remembered 
that the Deists of the eighteenth century 
were never organized into a sect, had no 
creed or form of worship, recognized no 
leader, and were constantly shifting their 
ground, and even denying that they were 
anything but Christians. So that it is im¬ 
possible to include them strictly under any 
definition. That which has been given is as 
near a definition as possible. Deism is what 
is left of Christianity after casting off every¬ 
thing that is peculiar to it. The Deist is 
one who denies the Divinity, the Incarna¬ 
tion, and the Atonement of Christ, and the 
work of the Holy Ghost ; who denies the 
God of Israel, and believes in the God of 
nature. 

In dealing with the Christian religion the 
Deist, therefore, in the first place, puts aside 
as idle sentiment all that influence of the 
Holy Spirit upon and within men which 
is expressed in the Scriptures by the terms 
“the new birth,” “conversion,” “the 
fruits of the Spirit,” the “ witness of the 
Spirit,” and the like. Pentecost and all 
that it represents and commences is “ unhis- 
torical.” Then next the Divinity and wor¬ 
ship of our Lord is questioned and set aside 
for the time, if not absolutely, and he 
strikes ofif at once, professedly as a seeker 
after truth, but really in the spirit of an 
enemy, what he reckons as the “evidences 
of Christianity,”—miracles, prophecy, mo¬ 
rality. It is easy to see how unfair such a 
course is, and how far from friendly or hon¬ 
est inquiry is such criticism, and" also at 
what a disadvantage we put ourselves when 


we consent to such an arrangement of forces. 
We are really putting the main body of our 
forces into camp, and leaving the fortress 
and the leader to accept battle in the rear¬ 
guard and among the baggage. For the mira¬ 
cles are not mere wonder-works, and the 
prophecies are not mere foretellings and ex¬ 
traordinary guesses, and the morality of the 
Old Testament or the wisdom of the New 
are not abstractions. But all have their 
key and source in Christ our Lord, with¬ 
out whom they are what sunlight would be 
without the sun. They all spring from Him, 
and are to be understood by Him and by 
faith in Him. They are evidences indeed, 
but they are the necessary and natural re¬ 
sults of His presence ; proofs certainly, but 
better seen as consequences. When unbe¬ 
lief makes its attack upon them, therefore, 
it must be fought off, and the battle with 
Deism in the eighteenth century ended in its 
confessed defeat. But the ground was not 
fairly chosen. The victory on the field of 
reason was won, but it was won as by sol¬ 
diers who, at their enemy’s challenge, laid 
aside the shield of faith and the sword of 
the Spirit. 

The unbelief which sprang into life in 
England in the seventeenth century, and 
flourished and decayed in the first half of 
the eighteenth century, had its opportunity 
in the religious wars, the divisions of Chris¬ 
tendom, and the weak divorce of culture 
from religion, which was one of the prevail¬ 
ing faults of Protestantism, while, on the 
other hand, the age was one of great intellec¬ 
tual activity and strongly disposed to free in¬ 
quiry, and a time of great advance in nat¬ 
ural science. In England all these causes 
were strongly at work, and the Church had 
need of all her strength to stem and direct 
the current into proper channels. But in¬ 
stead of being at her strongest, first the con¬ 
test with Rome during and after the Refor¬ 
mation of the sixteenth century, and then 
the long and bloody struggle with Puritan¬ 
ism in the seventeenth, left the Church weak¬ 
ened, and prepared for almost any sentiment 
which gave promise of peace. The bondage 
of the Puritans prepared for the rebound of 
wild license under Charles. A bitter spirit 
of controversy had been developed and was 
not laid. The people were determined upon 
one thing,—that the Church as established 
should not be disturbed. But from the time 
when English Church and English State 
alike were able to find no way of escape 
from their perplexities save by calling in 
William of Orange, an alien to both, and in 
his own eyes the conqueror of both, spirit¬ 
ual religion in England seemed to have 
fallen into a condition of decay. The peo¬ 
ple hated popery, and they hated whatever 
threatened to disturb Church or State, but 
religious life was at a low ebb, and unless 
men looked deeply enough into the matter 
to see in the Church something better than 
politicians and Erastian divines did see, the 
tendency of earnest thought was away from 




DEISM 


225 


DEISM 


her rather than towards her. And out of 
these seething elements, and in no small part 
the result of them, arose the Deism of the 
eighteenth century. 

The real Deists, that is, the writers who 
are known by the name, are only some 
twelve or fifteen in number, and there is 
hardly one of them who as a writer deserves 
a high place. But they were important for 
their representative character, as they evi¬ 
dently expressed the sentiments of a larger 
class, and said what many were only think¬ 
ing, and as they represented a dangerous 
tendency of the age. And also for their ef¬ 
fect upon the Church, in rousing Churchmen 
to a sense of the danger, and in bringing to 
the front a host of writers in defense of re¬ 
ligion, chief among them Bishop Butler; 
and also for the effect of their writings in 
other countries, for from England went the 
teaching which through Voltaire went over 
into France, and from France into Germany, 
and developed into French atheism and 
German rationalism. 

The first writer who can he reckoned as a 
Deist was one who made his attack upon 
Christianity long before the name of Deist 
had its special application,—Lord Herbert, 
of Cherbury (1581-1648 a.d.), the brother 
of the Christian poet and aivine George 
Herbert. His argument was (1) that Chris¬ 
tianity was not needed, natural religion was 
sufficient, and (2) that it could not be proved. 
But he included under natural religion a large 
part of Christianity,—the being of God, and 
His worship, morality, repentance, and fu¬ 
ture rewards and punishments. And he re¬ 
lates of himself that when he was in doubt 
whether to publish his work, he prayed for 
a sign from heaven, and suddenly it thun¬ 
dered. Hobbes (1581-1679 a.d.), the secre¬ 
tary of Lord Bacon, and the friend of Ben 
Jonson and Lord Herbert, was a materialist. 
His principal work is the “ Leviathan,” and 
the principles of his system selfishness and 
despotism. But in his earlier writings his 
ground was very much the same as that of 
the later Deists. 

f The first whose writings made any great 
noise in the world as a distinct attack upon 
Christianity was John . Toland (1696-1722 
a d.), a convert from the Roman Catholic 
Church to dissent, whose first book was 
called “ Christianity not Mysterious.” He 
was in fact a pantheist, and went on from 
his first pretended defense of Christianity 
against its corrupters to open scorn of all 
religion and denial of a personal God. After 
him Collins (1713 a.d.) led in the attack 
upon prophecy in his “Discourse on Free- 
thinking,” which called out among others 
a crushing reply from Bentley, as Toland had 
brought out Stillingfleet. It is, by the way, 
a curious illustration of the result of contro¬ 
versy and of the inconsistent course of un¬ 
belief, that in his rejection of Daniel and his 
prophecies Collins takes the ground of de¬ 
nying all Messianic expectation, while later 
unbelief, e.g., Strauss, not only concedes such 

15 


expectation, but makes our Lord to have 
taken constant advantage of it, and to have 
adapted His conduct to its demands. Wool- 
ston (1667-1703 a.d.) represents the assaults 
upon miracles, attacking them as incredible 
and absurd. He is distinguished by being 
probably the only man of all the infidel 
writers of England who ever suffered for his 
opinions at the hands of law. His blasphe¬ 
mies were such as to shock and scandalize 
all decent Christian people, and if ever blas¬ 
phemy deserved punishment, his is such a 
case, though he better deserved a lunatic 
asylum than a prison. His story curiously 
illustrates one point of his and other infidel 
attacks in the conflict of evidence with re¬ 
gard to the place of his death; some wit¬ 
nesses certifying that he died in prison, 
others speaking of him as dying “ in his own 
house.” The two conflicting testimonies are 
reconciled by the fact that he purchased “ the 
liberty of the King’s Bench,” and lived and 
died in his own hired house within the pre¬ 
cincts of the prison. In Tindal (1656-1733 
a.d.) Deism reached its climax. His book, 
“ Christianity as Old as the Creation,” in 
which his ground is that if Christianity has 
any truth in it as old as creation, if it adds 
to that old original truth it is an impostor 
and an upstart, brought out some one hun¬ 
dred and fifty answers, among them Cony- 
beare, Leland, Foster, and, above all, Butler. 
Conybeare shows that Tindal confounded 
the Light of nature with the Law of nature, 
which men learn gradually and require aids 
to learn, and therefore the ground of a per¬ 
fect knowledge is taken away. Butler met 
him with an argument of which J. S. Mill 
says, “ from its own point of view it is con¬ 
clusive. The Christian religion is open to 
no objections which do not apply at least 
equally to the common theory of Deism.” 

Chubb (1715-1747 a.d.) differs from other 
Deistic writers in making his attacks upon 
the New Testament, the Church, and the 
clergy from the ground of a working-man. 
At first he allowed revelation and a future 
judgment and held a high Unitarian view 
of the divinity of Christ; but he developed 
into denial of miracles, and even doubts 
about the sinlessness of our Lord and the 
wisdom of His teaching. Lord Shaftesbury 
(1713 a.d.) was regarded by his contempo¬ 
raries as among the bitter enemies of Chris¬ 
tianity, but he so veils his rancor under 
a pretense of playful irony that some have 
even claimed him as the friend of religion. 
Thomas Morgan (1743 a.d.) is noticeable for 
his attack upon the Old Testament, and his 
denial that Jesus ever accepted the part of 
Messias in any sense. Morgan’s sympathies 
are all with Solomon in his “ tolerant old 
age,” and with Jezebel as against the zealots 
of the law, while for Moses and the prophets 
and the Jews as a people he has nothing but 
scorn and contempt. His book (“ The Moral 
Philosopher”) appeared about the same 
time as Warburton’s “Divine Legation of 
Moses.” Dodwell, in his “Christianity not 





DEISM 


226 


DELAWARE 


founded on Argument” (1742 a.d.), pro¬ 
fesses to speak as a Christian, and as such to 
cast aside reason and to depend on an irresist¬ 
ible light for his convictions ; but he really 
casts scorn on all belief in the operation of 
the Spirit of God in the soul of man, and 
denies His operation in enlightening reason, 
and adding evidence which is above reason, 
but not against reason. 

Dodwefl therefore represents rather the 
skepticism which was the position of Bo- 
lingbroke (1678—1751 a.d.) and Hume (1700- 
1776 a.d.) and Gibbon (1737-1794 a.d.). 
Other writers are claimed on the same side, 
as, for example, Alexander Pope, whose 
sympathies were evidently with those who 
held Deistic views. But those which have 
been named were the principal ones, and 
with them and the replies to them the De¬ 
istic controversy in England came to an 
end, leaving the victory confessedly on the 
side of Christian faith. Of the Deistic 
writers there is no one who has deserved to 
be reckoned among England’s great writers. 
Deism failed in England because it wanted 
enthusiasm, and because it had neither creed, 
polity, worship, nor accepted leaders; but 
also for another reason,—because it had op¬ 
posed to it a Church which had all these* 
and which only needed rousing from its 
slumbers to make good use of them. Deism 
in England was never popular, and it never 
showed any constructive strength nor any 
ability to adapt the materials which it found 
at hand. 

In France, on the other hand, when Vol¬ 
taire went back from his residence in Eng¬ 
land and his friendship with Bolingbroke 
and opened the campaign of Deism, he found 
religion weakened not only by superstition 
and secret unbelief and open immorality, 
but bound by state despotism and darkened 
by ignorance of the Scriptures. The French 
infidels were brilliant and popular writers 
besides, and Voltaire was a practical re¬ 
former. He represents Deism and then 
skepticism, and later, in spite of his dying 
declarations, perhaps atheism. Rousseau 
comes nearer the position of Arianism or 
high Unitarianism. Helvetius, LaMettrie, 
Diderot, D’Holbach, were atheists; and 
against none of them did the Gallican 
Church or French Protestantism lift up a 
voice in reply. French unbelief had the 
field of literature all to itself. 

Deism was introduced from England into 
Germany, and was fostered, and in its French 
form perhaps introduced, by Voltaire ; and 
here the movement arose not out of griev¬ 
ances, but out of want of faith, was carried 
on within the Christian body, and resulted 
in a compromise that was, in fact, the vic¬ 
tory of unbelief. It even took a definite 
name and called itself Naturalism, or Ne¬ 
ology, or Rationalism, and, like New Eng¬ 
land Unitarianism, claimed to be a form of 
Christian doctrine. Unbelief in Germany 
is more learned, less irreverent, and develops 
towards pantheism and atheism less rap¬ 


idly than elsewhere. Its spread among the 
people is more critical, more concerned 
with morals, and therefore less logical than 
French or even English unbelief. 

The unbelief of the nineteenth century 
has in it very little of the Deistic form. It 
is more determined to get rid of the super¬ 
natural, and leave no room for faith of any 
kind, and so is more openly atheistic or 
pantheistic. This is equally the result of 
scientific research on one side and the dis¬ 
tinct advance of the Church on the others 
especially in England. And at the same 
time unbelief in the nineteenth century 
has been compelled to change its ground 
with regard to the Church, and compelled 
to find an explanation for the manifest facts 
of Christianity, which it tries to do on nat¬ 
ural principles. Of this form of unbelief 
Strauss is the best exponent in Germany, 
Renan in France, Mill in England. 

Authorities: Abby and Anton, Eng¬ 
lish Church of the Eighteenth Century, 
Cairn’s Unbelief in the Eighteenth Cen¬ 
tury, Aids to Faith. 

Rev. L. W. Gibson. 

Delaware. The first services in this 
Diocese were held by Swedes (vide Penn¬ 
sylvania) in a church within Fort Chris¬ 
tina (Wilmington) 1638 a.d., nearly fifty 
years before the founding of Philadelphia. 
The first missionary was Rev. Rocus Torkil- 
lus. In 1667 a.d. Crane Hook Church was 
built, a mile and and a half from the fort. 
In 1697 a.d., Rev. Ericus Biorck writes: 
“ Their unworthy minister, clad in my 
surplice, delivered my first discourse to 
them in Jesus’ name.” In 1699 a.d., 
Trinity Church (Old Swedes’) was conse¬ 
crated. It is still used for service. There 
was intercommunion between the English 
and Swedish Churches, the English clergy 
being missionaries of the Propagation 
Society. Trinity Church owned five hun¬ 
dred acres where Wilmington stands, but 
the property was given out in intermina¬ 
ble leases. In 1749 a.d., Rev. Israel Acre- 
lius, who wrote a history of the Swedish 
congregations in America, was rector of 
Trinity Church. After the Revolution, in 
1791 a.d., Provost Girelius, then in charge 
of Trinity Church, returned to Sweden. 
The Swedish Archbishop, Uno von Toerl, 
writes affectionately to the Swedish congre¬ 
gations in America concerning their separa¬ 
tion from the mother-country, which was 
now to take place. He expresses the good 
wishes of the king, and adds his own prayer 
for God’s blessing on “ the members of the 
congregations, and that the Gospel light, 
which, under Divine Providence, was first 
kindled in these parts by the tender affec¬ 
tion of Swedish kings and the zealous en¬ 
deavors of Swedish teachers, may there, 
while days are numbered, shine in perfect 
brightness, and bring forth fruit to ever¬ 
lasting life.” With such loving messages 
closed the work of the Swedish Church, 
and the parish naturally fell into the care of 





DELAWARE 


227 


DELAWARE 


the Episcopal Church. A debt of gratitude 
is due to Sweden for these early foundations, 
built by laborious and self-denying mission¬ 
aries in this foreign country. In 1792 a.d., 
Rev. Jos. Clarkson was elected rector of 
Trinity Church. To go back to the mis¬ 
sions of the English Church in Delaware : In 
1703 a.d. , Gov. Nicholson, of Virginia, who 
had built churches in several colonies, was 
building a church in New Castle (Im¬ 
manuel). In 1704 a.d., Rev. Thos. Craw¬ 
ford was sent to Dover by the Propagation 
Society. “ The glebe lands were presented 
by Col. Jno. French of New Castle, a de¬ 
vout member of the Church.” In 1705 a.d. 
Rev. Geo. Ross was missionary at New Cas¬ 
tle. This year St. Ann’s, Appoquinimink, 
or Middletown, was built. In 1708 a.d. the 
first church in Dover was finished. This 
year Rev. Mr. Jenkins died, after only five 
months of successful work in Appoquinimink. 
In 1716 a.d. , Mr. Richard Halliwell be¬ 
queathed to Immanuel Church, New Castle, 
sixty pounds and his marsh and plantation for 
the use of the ministers of the parish. In 

1716- 17 a.d. , St. James’ Church, White 
Clay Creek, was built,—Mr. Jas. Robinson 
gave a few acres of land as a glebe. In 

1717- 18 a.d. , Rev. Geo. Ross, with Gov. 
Keith, visited Lewes, and Kent and Sussex 
Counties, “ preaching and baptizing large 
numbers.” In 1721 a.d., RevlWm. Beckett 
was appointed for Lewes and adjacent parts. 
In 1729 a.d., Rev. Walter Hackett was at 
Middletown. He died in 1733 a.d. “ He 
had been a very laborious missionary.” In 
1742 a.d. , “ Rev. Wm. Beckett speaks of his 
four churches in Sussex as being filled on 
Sundays and holy-days.” In 1749 a.d., 
Rev. Hugh Neill was missionary at Dover. 
He catechised a class of one hundred 
negroes on Sunday evenings, and baptized 
one hundred and nine adult negroes. Rev. 
Geo. Ross died in 1749 a.d., aged seventy- 
five years, having “ labored most zealously” 
in New Castle and through the three coun¬ 
ties. In 1757 a.d., Rev. A. Cleveland, lately 
appointed to New Castle, died at the house 
of Benjamin Franklin. Franklin’s news¬ 
paper contained an article highly commend¬ 
ing the good man. In 1758 a.d., Eneas 
Ross, son of Geo. Ross, is settled in New 
Castle. In 1759 a.d., Rev. Chas. Inglis 
takes charge of Dover. In six years he 
baptized in Dover and its vicinity seven 
hundred and fifty-six children and twenty- 
three adults, and the communicants in¬ 
creased from forty-nine to one hundred and 
fourteen. He afterwards became rector of 
Trinity Church, New York, and at a later 
period Bishop of Nova Scotia. The year 
1766 a.d. was memorable for the loss by 
shipwreck of Rev. Messrs. Giles and Wilson, 
who were returning from England to as¬ 
sume the missions at Dover and Mispillion. 
In 1782 a.d. the Revolution closed the work 
of the Propagation Society, which had so 
long blessed these shores. The first Diocesan 
Convention met in Dover in 1791 a.d. In 


1793 a.d., Bishop White confirmed sixty- 
three in Trinity Church, Wilmington. In 
1803, Bishop Claggettconfirmed in the same 
church. In 1822 a.d., Bishop White, 
assisted by Bishop Kemp, consecrated Im¬ 
manuel Church, New Castle. Rev. Robert 
Clay resigned this parish in 1824 a.d., 
after a rectorship of thirty-six years. St. 
Andrew’s, Wilmington, was consecrated by 
Bishop White in 1829 a.d. Bishop H. U. 
Onderdonk consecrated Trinity Chapel, Wil¬ 
mington, in 1830 a.d. St. Andrew’s Church 
was burned in 1840 a.d., but rebuilt the 
same year. 

On May 26,1841 a.d., Rev. Alfred Lee was 
elected Bishop.* After visiting the parishes, 
he accepted the election, which was unani¬ 
mous. On October 12 of this year, during 
General Convention, he was consecrated in 
St. Paul’s Church, New York, Bishop Gris¬ 
wold acting as presiding Bishop. By this 
act Delaware was withdrawn from the care 
of the Bishops of Pennsylvania. One of the 
first tokens of new life was the repair¬ 
ing and reopening of “ Old Swedes’ Church” 
in 1842 a.d. In 1843 a.d. St. Luke’s, 
Seaford, was finished and consecrated, and 
St. John’s, Little Hill (Greenville), was re¬ 
paired and consecrated. St. Paul’s, George¬ 
town, was consecrated in 1844 a.d., and 
St. Thomas’, Newark, the next year. In 
1847 a.d. the Chapel of the Comforter, 
Long Neck, was consecrated, and the same 
year St. Ann’s, Appoquinimink, was re¬ 
paired and consecrated. The next year St. 
Mark’s, Millsborough, was consecrated, and 
in 1850 a.d. St. Philip’s Chapel, Laurel, re¬ 
ceived consecration. 1853 a.d. ,May 20, Grace 
Church, Baltimore Mills, consecrated. 1854 
a.d., September 14, Church of the Ascen¬ 
sion, Claymont, consecrated, under the rec¬ 
torship of Rev. Dr. J. B. Clemson. 1855 
a.d., January 14, St. Andrew’s, Wilming¬ 
ton, enlarged and reopened. The Bishop is 
the Rector of this church. 1856 a.d., Christ 
Church, Christiana Hundred, opened. The 
chief projector and founder of this church 
was Alexis T. Du Pont. He died in 1857 


* The Right Rev. Alfred Lee, D.D., D.C.L., was born 
in Cambridge, Mass., September 9, 1807 a.d. Graduated 
at Harvard 1827 a.d. He studied law and was admitted 
to the Bar in New London, Conn., where he practiced 
two years. Graduated from General Theological Semi¬ 
nary, New York, 1837 a.d. Ordered Deacon May 21, 

1837 a.d. Ordained Priest June 12, 1838 a.d. Officiated 
a few months in St. James’, Poquetonnack, Conn., in 

1838 a.d. In September, 1838 a.d., became rector of 
Calvary, Rockdale, Pa., where he remained until his ele¬ 
vation" to the Episcopate. Received degree of S.T.D. 
from Trinity, Hartford, 1841 a.d., and from Hobart, 
Geneva, same year. In 1860 a.d. received same de¬ 
gree from Harvard, and in 1877 a.d. that of LL.D. from 
Delaware College, Newark. Consecrated first Bishop of 
Delaware, in St Paul’s Chapel, New York, October 12, 
1841 a.d., by the Right Rev. Alexander Viets Griswold, 
S.T.D , the Right Rev. Richard Channing Moore, D.D., 
the Right Rev. Philander Chase, S.T.D., the Right Rev. 
Thomas Church Brownell, S.T D., the Right Rev. Henry 
Ustick Onderdonk, S.T.D., the Right Rev. William 
Meade, D D., and the Right Rev. Charles Pettit Mcll- 
vaine, S.T.D. In 1842 a.d. became rector of St. An¬ 
drew’s, Wilmington, which position he still holds.— 
(Living Church Annual.) 






DELAWARE 


228 


DEMONIACS 


A. D., having first founded St. John’s Church, 
Wilmington. Christ Church, Delaware 
City, was consecrated in 1857 a.d. 

The succeeding year witnessed the conse¬ 
cration of St. Mark’s Church, Little Creek. 
1858 a.d. St. Peter’s, Lewes, consecrated. 
St. John’s, Wilmington, consecrated after 
the death of its founder, A. T. Du Pont, 
1860 a.d. Christ Church, Dover, renewed, 
and consecrated. 1863 a.d. , Calvary Church, 
Brandywine Hundred, consecrated. Christ 
Church, Milford, was rebuilt, during the 
rectorship of Rev. J. Leighton McKim, in 
1866 a.d. St. James’ Church, Newport, 
under the rectorship of Rev. W. D. Hanson, 
was opened October 23, 1875 a.d., and St. 
John Baptist, Milton, in 1877 a.d. The 
new Grace Church, Brandywine Hundred, 
was opened July 4, 1875 a.d. June 1, 
1880 a.d. , St. Andrew’s, Ellis’s Grove, was 
opened under the care of Rev. G. W. 
Johnson. St. Paul’s, Georgtown, having 
been rebuilt, under the rectorship of Rev. 

B. T. Douglas, was opened in 1881 a.d. In 
1882 a.d. the new Trinity Chapel, Wil¬ 
mington, was opened, having been built in 
the rectorship of Henry B. Martin, M.D. 

The only General Convention which ever 
met in Delaware assembled in 1786 a.d. in 
Wilmington. It had ten clerical and twelve 
lay deputies from six States. The call for 
the first Diocesan Convention came from 
Rev. John Bissett, Appoquinimink, and the 
vestry of Christ Church, Dover. Several 
years before a summons had been issued, 
but there is no evidence of the assembling 
of a Convention. In 1803 a.d., in Conven¬ 
tion, Rev. William Pryce was commis¬ 
sioned to attend the Maryland Convention, 
and propose the election of a Bishop for 
Delaware and the Eastern Shore of Mary¬ 
land. The Maryland Convention deemed 
this “inexpedient.” In 1821 a.d., Rev. 
Richard D. Hall, of Trinity Church, Wil¬ 
mington, reports two confirmations by 
Bishop White, the whole number confirmed 
being one hundred and sixty-three. In 
1838 a.d. , Bishop Onderdonk ordained three 
Presbyters in St. Ann’s, Appoquinimink,— 
Rev. John Linn McKim, Rev. William 
Nelson Pendleton, and the Rev. William 
James Clark. When the first Diocesan Con¬ 
vention met in 1791 a.d., it had but three 
clergymen in it, viz., Rev. Messrs. Thorne, 
Bissett, and Skelly. Bishop Lee speaks 
highly of the work of the early clergy in 
Delaware, from the beginning of its history, 
and their work in connection with the 
laborers of after-years, under God, shows an 
improving state of things to-day, as the fol¬ 
lowing statistics will make evident. The 
Bishop has prepared a table extending from 
1841 to 1881 a.d. Churches consecrated, 
23 ; built, 24; enlarged, 8; baptisms, 10,082; 
confirmed, 4327; ordained Deacons, 35; 
Presbyters, 31; parishes, 27 ; churches and 
chapels, 36 ; ministers canonically resident, 
29; candidates, 2; Sunday-school teachers, 
290; scholars, 2500. There is an Episcopal 


Eund, and one for the Relief of Disabled 
Clergy and their Widows and Orphans. 

Rev. S. E. Hotchkin. 

Demiurge. The Gnostic imaginary Dis¬ 
poser of the Order of the Universe. The 
title was used by Plato, was transferred by 
Philo as a sub-title descriptive of the 
Creator, was taken up by the New Plato- 
nists, and so was transferred by the Oriental 
fancies of the Gnostics to their wild theories. 
The Gnostic ( vide HSon) imagined a Su¬ 
preme Being from whom, by successive 
emanations (in some 365 degrees), at last 
wisdom was reached, from whom sprung 
the Demiurge, the shaper of the material 
universe. 

Demoniacs. Whenever, in the English 
Authorized Version of the Old Testament, 
the word “ devil” occurs, and in two-thirds 
of the cases in the New Testament, it signi¬ 
fies not Satan, of whose name it is the equiva¬ 
lent, and to whom it, by rights, should have 
been restricted, but one of those subordinate 
spirits of whom he is the “ prince,” and in¬ 
stead of “ devil” we should read “ demon.” 
Of the “ woman who had a spirit of infirmity” 
the Lord said, “ Satan hath bound her” (St 
Luke xiii. 11), and certain sufierers are said 
to be “ oppressed of the devil” (Acts), but 
no man is ever said to “ have” or* be “ pos¬ 
sessed by” Satan, always by a “ demon,” or 
“ demons” (Acts), by “ evil” and “ unclean 
spirits,” the “ angels of the devil.” 

The history of the word is significant. In 
the Hebrew Scriptures, on several occasions 
objects of false worship are mentioned, and 
always in terms of contempt, but sometimes 
by names which perhaps really indicated 
the idol form, sometimes the regard in 
which the heathen held them (Lev. xvii. 7 ; 
2 Chron. xi. 15; Isa. xiii. 21), sometimes 
apparently by the titles which their wor¬ 
shipers gave them,—“ goats” or “satyrs,” 
“ idols” or “images,”—lords” (Ps. xcv. 5; 
Deut. xxxii. 17 ; Ps. cvi. 37). Among the 
Greeks daimon was a general term by which 
to designate all spiritual authority. It was 
applied to the gods, to the deified heroes, to 
guardian spirits. It included also all evil 
powers ; but the term was one suggestive in 
the mind of the heathen of neither evil nor 
dishonor. ( Vide Acts xvii. 18, 22.) Nor 
probably would anyone of the titles used by 
the Hebrew writers have been objected to by 
a heathen. But to the mind of an Israelite 
believing in the one God, holding that idols 
were abominations, and the deities of the 
heathen, spirits of evil, intercourse with 
whom (“ familiar spirits”) (Lev. xx. 27; 1 
Sam. xxviii. 8) was deadly sin, every one of 
these titles involved the idea of evil. And 
when he used the word daimon or daimonion 
he meant a wicked spirit, a “ lying spirit” 
like him that spoke in the prophets of Ahab, 
an “ evil angel” such as the Lord sent to 
punish Israel (1 Kings xxii. 22; Ps. lxxviii. 
49) ; albeit he did not speak of these as 
demons unless they became objects of wor¬ 
ship. It is in this special sense that St. 





DEMONIACS 


229 


DEMONIACS 


Paul uses the word when he tells the 
Christians of Corinth that the heathen sacri¬ 
fices to idols are “ sacrifices to demons and 
not to God, and ye cannot drink the cup of 
the Lord and the cup of demons : ye cannot 
he partakers of the Lord’s table and of the 
table of demons” (1 Cor. x. 20, 21), while 
that which he cast out of the damsel at 
Philippi is entitled not a demon, but a 
“ spirit of pytho,” or “ of divination” (Acts 
xix. 19). The use of the term in Tobit is more 
general (Tob. vi. 7, 17), but not like that 
with which we are familiar in the Gospels. 

The difference in respect to the use of the 
term in its different forms is very marked. 
The revelation of the truth about Satan and 
his angels, the kingdom of darkness, is part 
of the revelation of the truth in Christ, 
and it comes upon us with a burst of light. 
The state of things into which we are in¬ 
troduced by the Gospels, when the “posses¬ 
sion by demons,” “ having unclean spirits,” 
was a common and recognized form of 
affliction, and so dealt with by our Lord that 
there is no possibility of doubt upon the sub¬ 
ject without denying His truthfulness,— 
this state of things is in respect of the 
knowledge and acknowledgment peculiar. 
It seems not unreasonable that the powers 
of evil should have been given a special 
license just at this time in order that at their 
very worst they might be met by Him and 
overthrown ; but certainly one great differ¬ 
ence between that time and the times before 
and after, lay in the great flood of light 
which poured in upon it with the Saviour’s 
presence. 

It is noteworthy that St. John in his 
Gospel rarely names Satan, and any form 
of daimon only occurs when the enemies of 
the Lord bring the charge and He repels it, 
that He “ hath a demon.” Nor does he 
once in his Gospel refer to any “spirit” that 
is unclean or evil, and only once in his first 
Epistle (1 John iv. 3), where he repeats 
almost the very words of St. Paul concerning 
spiritual gifts (1 Cor. xii. 1, 3). Writing 
later and for a generation which always had 
the other three Gospels, his record took the 
form rather of a complement than of a 
repetition of the others. But in the earlier 
Gospels the dealing of our Lord with the 
demons and with those who were possessed 
by them occupies a prominent place. St. 
Matthew records how at the beginning of 
our Lord’s ministry “they brought unto 
Him all sick people that were taken with 
divers diseases and torments, and those 
which were possessed with devils, and those 
which were lunatick, and those that had 
the palsy” (St. Matt. iv. 24). “ They brought 
unto Him many that were possessed with 
devils, and He cast out the spirits with His 
word, and healed all that were sick” (St. 
Mark i. 34). 

In the synagogue at Capernaum there 
was a man “ who had a spirit of an unclean 
devil, and he cried out, Let us alone; what 
have we to do with thee, Jesus of Nazareth ? 


I know Thee, who Thou art; the Holy One 
of God” (St. Luke iv. 34), and he was one 
of many whom He rebuked and suffered not 
to speak, because they knew that He was 
Christ. “ In the country of the Gerge- 
senes there met Him one possessed of devils,” 
“ who came and worshiped Him, crying out 
and saying, What have we to do with Thee, 
Jesus, Thou Son of God ? Art Thou come 
hither to torment us before the time?” (“ The 
devils believe, and tremble,” St. James says, 
ch.ii. 19). “And Jesus asked him,what is thy 
name ? And he said, Legion, for we are many. 
And they besought Him that He would not 
send them out into the abyss.” And at the 
command of Jesus “ the unclean spirits went 
out and entered into the swine, and the herd 
(of about two thousand) ran violently down 
a steep place into the sea.” And “ the man 
out of whom the devils were departed was 
found sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed, 
and in his right mind” (St. Matt. viii. 28 ; 
St. Mark v. 1; St. Luke viii. 26). “ They 

brought to Him a dumb man possessed of a 
devil, and when the devil was cast out the 
dumb spake” (St. Matt. ix. 32). He cast 
out “ an unclean dumb and deaf spirit that 
had possessed one from a child,” so that he 
was lunatic and sore vexed” (St. Luke ix. 
42), “and rent him when he came out of 
him, so that they said, He is dead” (St. 
Matt. xvii. 18): “out of Mary Magda¬ 
lene seven devils” (St. Mark xvi. 9) : 
out of the daughter of the Syro-Phce- 
nician woman a devil, “an unclean spirit” 
(St. Mark vii. 26). But not only did 
Christ Himself exercise this power over 
unclean spirits. He committed it to His 
disciples, and “even the devils were subject 
to them in His name” (St. Luke x. 17). 
Nay, He foretold that men should “in His 
name cast out devils” whom He “ never 
knew” (St. Matt. vii. 22). Some form of 
exorcism was indeed practiced among the 
Jews during our Lord’s ministry, which He 
recognized by His question, “ By whom do 
your sons cast them out?” (St. Luke xi. 
19), as, on the other hand, they recognized 
His power by their charge, “He casteth out 
devils through Beelzebub, the prince of the 
devils” (St. Matt. xii. 24, 27). His promise 
of power was fulfilled when in Samaria, at 
the word of St. Philip, “ unclean spirits, 
crying with loud voice, came out of many 
that were possessed” (Acts viii. 7). After¬ 
wards in Philippi, at the word of St. Paul, 
the “damsel possessed with a spirit of div¬ 
ination” was healed (Acts xvi. 16). And 
later still, when at Ephesus evil spirits were 
cast out by the hands of the Apostle, who 
resisted the authority of the Jewish exor¬ 
cists (Acts xix. 12). In one of his latest’ 
epistles the Apostle warns against “seduc¬ 
ing spirits and doctrines of devils” (1 Tim. 
iv. 1). “Worship of devils,” to be misled 
by “ the spirits of devils,” is a sin of the last 
times ; to be “ the habitation of devils,” the 
fate of Babylon fallen (Rev. ix. 20; xvi. 14; 
xviii. 2). 





DEPOSITION 


230 


DEUTERONOMY 


Briefly to recapitulate the main points 
gathered from these passages. The active 
working of demons—angels and agents of 
Satan—is recognized in the Old Testament. 
But their greatest activity was shown in the 
time of our Lord’s manifestation on the 
earth. Then they took “ possession” of the 
souls and bodies of men; The “having” 
or being “ possessed by a demon” was a con¬ 
dition to be recognized by certain signs, and 
though it produced disorder of mind and 
body, it was clearly and positively distin¬ 
guished from ordinary physical and even 
mental disorders. The demoniac might he 
dumb or lunatic, but all dumb and lunatics 
are not demoniacs. Our Lord recognizes 
the fact by the plainest words and the plain¬ 
est conduct. To question it is to impute to 
Him shameless falsehood. We do not know 
what in any case induced the affliction. It 
has been conjectured that it was prepared 
for by some habitual vice which weakened 
the will, and opened the way for the evil and 
unclean spirit to take captive the soul and 
body of the sufferer, but we have no reason 
to suppose that the demoniac was the most 
wicked of men. “ Not the most wicked, but 
the most unhappy.” 

Nor is there anything in the condition 
which restricts it to those times. The work 
of evil spirits goes on and will. It is less 
open, but not less real. It may very possibly 
be that there are cases now in which per¬ 
sistent evil habit has put the will into the 
power of the evil spirit, and the man is 
driven into strange and evil ways in spite of 
himself (2 Tim. ii. 26). If there are such 
cases, they are very sad, and to human 
power hopeless. But if there is an evil 
power in the world, there is also a Son of 
Man, who “still hath power on earth.” The 
hope of such must be notin ordinary human 
means, but added to them, in the religion, 
in the prayers which are offered, and the 
means of grace which are received “ in His 
name,” who most assuredly did not limit to 
one generation the promise, “ in My name 
they shall cast out devils.” 

Rev. L. W. Gibson. 

Deposition. Vide Degradation. 

Descent into Hell. (Vide Creed.) Our 
Lord’s descent into the place of departed 
spirits is an article of faith, inasmuch as it 
involves the fact that in human soul and 
body He was in all respects as we are, sin 
only excepted, and that He was touched 
with all our infirmities, and went to the con¬ 
fines of all that can befall the soul upon 
which the law of separation from the body 
has passed, and from which He returned 
victorious (Col. i. 15; Eph. iv. 8, 9; Heb. ii. 
•14). But the space of time during which 
His soul was there was filled with the work 
St. Peter describes (1 Pet. iii. 18-20). This 
very-much-debated passage can really be 
taken only in its plain, common-sense mean¬ 
ing. There is no difficulty in recognizing 
the power of Him who is over all to do as 
He will with all souls. That souls can and 


do know, remember, and reason is admitted. 
Why these souls in prison were selected of all 
others we need not too curiously inquire, since 
His infinite wisdom is too abundantly proved 
for us to doubt the perfect justice and mercy 
of this act. The doctrine in question has 
been explained away chiefly on two grounds, 
both apparently well founded, but both un¬ 
tenable. Eirst, it implies the power of re¬ 
penting after death. The reply is, that the 
impossibility of repentance beyond the grave 
is rather a just and equitable deduction, by 
applying our present condition to what is 
told us of the future, than an express dogma 
of Holy Scripture, and therefore its limits 
are not really known to us; but, that in 
this case, if this conclusion were drawn, it 
would be determined only for those who 
were sometime disobedient, when once the 
long-suffering of God waited in the days of 
Noah; and, secondly, it is urged that it 
gives-some countenance to the doctrine of 
purgatory. Rather, it expressly does not , 
for the underlying principle of purgatory is 
that it is a place of cleansing and purifica¬ 
tion by fire, or other disciplinary pain, and 
there is not the slightest ground for this 
in the text of St. Peter. Rather, for these 
souls, the tone of the eighty-eighth Psalm 
should be the one for us to feel in interpret¬ 
ing so difficult a passage. 

The article was placed in the Creed prob¬ 
ably about the middle of the fourth cen¬ 
tury. It probably owes its prominence to 
the Apollinarian controversy (vide Apollin- 
arians), when it was necessary to strongly 
assert the existence of our Lord’s soul as 
distinct from His divine nature. 

The Third of the XXXIX. Articles 
had originally a clause in addition. As it 
now runs we have it, “As Christ died for 
us, and was buried, so also it is to be be¬ 
lieved that He went down into Hell.” It 
continued thus: “for the Body lay in the 
sepulchre until the Resurrection, but His 
Ghost departing from Him was with the 
hosts that were in prison or in Hell, and did 
preach to the same, as the place in St. Peter 
doth testify.” (Browne on the XXXIX. 
Articles.) 

Desk. The “ pulpit or pew” from which 
the prayers are said in many churches, 
which still retain the furniture common 
forty years ago. It was an innovation 
which, beginning in the minor contentions 
in the latter years of Edward VI., was given 
way to gradually till James I.’s time, when 
it became universal. It is now generally 
disappearing, and the older, more sightly, 
and reverent stalls are taking its place. 

Deuteronomy. The second giving of the 
Law upon the “ plains of Moab this side 
Jordan.” The wanderings of the people 
had now drawn to a close. The forty years 
were almost ended, and Moses, knowing that 
he could not cross over into “that good 
land,” recapitulated to the Israelites a rapid 
outline of the history of their life in the 
wilderness from the giving of the Law to that 




DEUTERONOMY 


231 


DIET 


moment. It included a repetition (with ad¬ 
ditions) of the legal and ritual directions 
and a series of solemn warnings, closing both 
with an awful prophecy, which was fulfilled 
in the final destruction of Jerusalem, and 
with a song of triumph and thanksgiving. 
The last verses were added of course by some 
later hand. Before giving the analysis of 
the book, we will add that though its Mosaic 
authorship has been denied, this denial would 
seem to come out of a mere spirit of contra¬ 
diction. The natural, even necessary, change 
of style from the historical to the rhetorical 
has been alleged as a proof that it could not 
be by Moses. The apparent discrepancies of 
statement are inevitable when the chronicler 
in his record sets down leading facts, but when 
reciting the same general series of events 
before an audience familiar with the history, 
nay, actors in it, he naturally neglects the 
full account of the leading events and men¬ 
tions secondary facts connected with them. 
To the audience, there would be no discrep¬ 
ancies, but to us, unable to harmonize the al¬ 
lusions, they seem contradictory. So far as 
a close examination of the various theories 
against the Mosaic authorship can be made, 
it may be confidently denied that they have 
the slightest ground. A minute criticism, 
gathering many little seeming contradictory 
facts, may construct a theory but cannot 
present a formal case. ( Vide Pentateuch.) 

There are three main discourses, in which 
the history of the people and the legal, relig¬ 
ious, and ceremonial laws are repeated. 

I. The first discourse (ch. iv. 43) is mainly 
historical, and rapidly recites the events from 
the giving of the Law to that moment, men¬ 
tioning incidentally the contests with the 
various tribes and peoples in the course of 
their wanderings. It is rapid, easy, con¬ 
nected, but very concise, and has some allu¬ 
sions which are not recorded in the fuller 
history. 

II. The second discourse (ch. iv. 44; 
xxvi. 19) recapitulates the various enact¬ 
ments yet with modifications and additions, 
and is full of zeal and ardent enthusiasm. 
It lifts up the obedience of the people into a 
higher plane. It supposes that the discipline 
of the wilderness, the death of the disobe¬ 
dient by the way, the proofs of God’s love, 
and the abiding presence of the pillar of 
light and cloud had warmed and inflamed 
their hearts. Warned that they were ob¬ 
stinate in character, they were urged to love 
and obey because of God’s love and mercy. 
The laws originally given as for a wandering 
people, are here and there modified a little to 
suit their settlement in Canaan. Altogether 
it is difficult to conceive how a man of the 
mighty ability and the vast experience of 
Moses, one who had been the agent of God 
in such wondrous miracles, who had intrusted 
to him the training of the infancy of a nation, 
could speak to them with any less fervor 
when he was about to be separated from 
them. Filled with the Holy Ghost, burn¬ 
ing with zeal and love for the people, surely 


language was too poor to convey all he 
would pour forth out of a full heart, now that 
he was to be separated from them. Every 
law that is recited to them has behind it, and 
pulsing through the words which contain it, 
the overflowing heart of the Lawgiver. The 
ten commandments, the religious law; the 
fear of idolatry, the need of obedience ; the 
ritual law of feasts and (naturally) the flesh 
allowed in them ; their tithes and offering; 
the seventh year and the Jubilee ; the feasts 
of the Passover, the Pentecost, and the Tab¬ 
ernacle,—form the section on the religious 
law. The rules for judges and the adminis¬ 
tration of justice, the regulation for a future 
king, the inheritance of the Levites, the 
prophecy of Christ the Prophet, the cities 
of refuge and the law of the avenger of blood, 
the law on perjury, on war, on homicides, on 
divorces, on the malefactor not to remain 
hanging all night, from the section on the 
political and criminal law. Then the social 
laws follow (ch. xxii.-xxvi.) 

III. Then Moses associated the elders with 
him, and recited to the people the solemn 
forms of blessing and cursing which were to 
be recited upon Mount Gerizim and Mount 
Ebal. Then followed that awful passage be¬ 
ginning with the promise of abundant bless¬ 
ing, and passing on to the prophecy (the more 
terrible because we know how fifteen cen¬ 
turies later it was literally fulfilled) of the 
final punishment of their disobedience, and 
the destruction of Jerusalem. This discourse 
closed with a fervent appeal to the people to 
love and to obey. This is the last formal 
discourse of instruction, but there remained 
much more to do. The final arrangements 
for the leadership of the people, and the plac¬ 
ing of the books of the Law in the side of the 
Ark, and His song and His blessing, were yet 
to be made and recorded (ch. xxxi.-xxxiii.). 
And Moses went up to the top of Pisgah, 
thence saw by the vision God gave him the 
extent of the promised land, and then (as 
the Jewish tradition beautifully phrased it) 
God kissed him, and so he died and the Lord 
buried him. 

Devil. Vide Satan. 

Diatessaron. The Greek name for the 
harmony of the four Gospels. Tatian, it is 
said, introduced this mode of arranging the 
sacred narrative of our Lord’s life. ( Vide 
Harmony of the Gospels.) 

Diet. The Assembly of the Estates in 
Germany. It had at one time in German 
history, during the Reformation, an active 
influence in public, especially in religious 
affairs. For details, the reader is referred 
to the Histories of the Reformation on the 
Continent; the dates only of the more 
notable ones are here given. 

Diet of Worms, 1521 a.d. To which 
Luther was summoned, and to which he 
came under the safeguard of the Emperor. 
In this Diet he appealed to the Holy Scrip¬ 
ture. 

Diet of Nuremberg (I.), 1523 a.d. At 
which the Centum gravamena were presented, 




DIGNITARY 


232 


DIOCESE 


and where the idea of calling a Council was 
first agitated. 

Diet of Nuremberg (II.), 1524 a.d. Where 
the proposition of the Council was further 
agitated by the Lutherans. 

Diet of Spires (I.), 1526 a.d. Under the 
Archduke Ferdinand, in behalf of Charles 
Y. The Lutheran Princes led in the de¬ 
bates. They succeeded in directing that 
every one was to have liberty of conscience, 
till a General or National Council could be 
summoned in Germany. 

Diet of Spires (II.), 1529 a.d. The work 
of the Lutherans was undone; the states 
which had become Lutheran could remain 
so, but no other of the states could change. 
The preaching against Roman doctrine 
was prohibited, the Anabaptists were to be 
put to death. This undid so much of the work 
of the first Diet, that six of the Lutheran 
Princes and the deputies of fourteen im¬ 
perial cities protested, in writing, against 
the decree, which they would not obey, and 
appealed to a General Council, to the Em¬ 
peror, and to any other unprejudiced judge. 
Hence they were called from this solemn 
protestation Protestants, which the Lu¬ 
therans first took and afterwards the Calvin- 
istic bodies, and then it became a general 
term. 

Diet of Augsburg (I.), 1530 a.d. Charles 
Y. tried to reunite the Princes in the dis¬ 
cussions on religion, and to combine the 
resources of the Empire against the Turk. 
Here the Elector of Saxony, with his con¬ 
federates in religion, offered the famous 
Augsburg Confession. The general result 
was the resolve to wait for a General 
Council. 

Diet of Augsburg (II.), 1547 a.d. The 
decisions of the Council of Trent, then in 
interrupted session, produced some dis¬ 
sensions, but the whole decision was left to 
the Emperor, but the Council decrees were 
acceded to. 

Diet of Augsburg (III.), 1548 a.d. The 
Diet at which the Interim was drawn up. 

Diet of Augsburg (IY.), 1550 a.d. The 
Emperor complained of the non-observance 
of the Interim , but the reply was that the 
Lutheran deputies were not admitted to the 
Council of Trent as had been agreed, nor 
was the compact that the Pope should not 
preside observed. 

Diet of Ratisbon (I.), 1541 a.d. Held to 
effect a reconciliation between the Protest¬ 
ants and the Romanists. After much dis¬ 
putation nothing was effected. Five or six 
articles out of twenty-two were decided on, 
but the Diet came to no real decision. 

Diet of Ratisbon (II.), 1546 a.d. None 
of the Protestant powers appeared. The 
Council of Trent was accepted in its sessions 
thus far held, and action was taken which 
led to a war with the Protestants. 

Diet of Ratisbon (III.), 1557 a.d. A con¬ 
ference was attempted between the Roman 
and Lutheran divines, but it soon broke up. 

Dignitary. One who holds an office or 


preferment in the Church, to which jurisdic¬ 
tion is attached. 

Dilapidation. In the English Church 
the Archdeacon has full authority as to de¬ 
ciding upon the needs of repairing churches 
and the extent of the dilapidations. His 
monition, or that of the Bishop, is directed 
to the incumbent, who shall thereupon take 
steps to have the church or houses of the 
benefice properly repaired ; and to this end 
he was to expend all proper moneys raised 
or given upon the Bishop’s consent and 
approval. 

Diocese. This is the name now com¬ 
monly given to the territory over which 
one Diocesan Bishop’s jurisdiction extends. 
When the Bishop is a Missionary Bishop, 
not elected by his own clergy and people, the 
territory under him is called a Missionary 
Jurisdiction. Until about the end of the 
third century the common term for a 
Bishop’s jurisdiction was tt apoinia, or, as we 
now say, parish. Under Constantine the 
word “ Diocese” meant a large aggregation 
of Provinces,—the same that was afterwards 
called an Exarchate , and still later a Pa¬ 
triarchate. The original Parish or Diocese 
grew out of the Bishop, who commonly 
began his labors in the chief city of the re¬ 
gion. As he multiplied his clergy they 
naturally lived together with him, working 
from a common centre. When one build¬ 
ing would no longer accommodate all, other 
buildings were erected, but—as is proved 
by the Bishop’s throne occupying the same 
position in each of the ancient Basilicas— 
the Bishop was equally the head of each and 
all. The other clergy were sent by him, 
and continued to be under his constant 
direction,—the Bishop himself when present 
in any church being the usual celebrant, 
preacher, and minister of adult Baptism, 
as well as of peculiarly Episcopal functions. 
Some of the old Canons seem to make his po¬ 
sition that of a real father, his clergy being 
his family. When separate Church build¬ 
ings became so numerous that the family 
feeling was outgrown, and when churches 
became more frequent in the remoter coun¬ 
try parts, then there gradually came what 
is now known as “the parish system.” At 
first all the churches would be served by 
clergy sent from the Bishop’s house, in 
some order of rotation fixed by him,— 
all the churches belonging equally to the 
Bishop. Alexandria was the first city 
where a separate Presbyter was attached to 
each church, in something like the modern 
relation of a rector of a parish. In process 
of time, it was found that this insured more 
thorough knowledge of individuals and a 
closer application of pastoral care, and 
eventually the separate parishes acquired 
separate funds and rights of their own ; and 
the parish system—now more than a thou¬ 
sand years old—became in most respects 
what it is at present. 

In this country the process of practical 
development was precisely the opposite. In- 




DIOCESE 


233 


DIOCESE 


stead of Bishops coming first and parishes 
long afterwards, the parishes came first, 
some of them being in existence more than 
an hundred years before there was a Bishop 
in the country. As a natural result, the po¬ 
sition of parishes is much more clearly de¬ 
fined with us than the inherent rights of 
the Bishops. Before the Bevolutionary war 
there was no “ Diocese” in the country, the 
whole thirteen colonies—by a monstrosity 
of perversion and abuse—being considered 
a part of the “ Diocese” of London, in Eng¬ 
land. After the war was over, the first at¬ 
tempt at organization was simply among the 
parishes that happened to be within the ter¬ 
ritory of any one “ State.” Nor did the 
parishes in any State, thus organizing, at 
first call themselves a “ Diocese.” They 
were simply “ the Church in the State of 
Pennsylvania,” or in the “State of New 
York,” etc. This is the language of the 
Constitution as originally adopted in 1789 
a.d., in which the word “ Diocese” is only 
once used, and then as synonymous with 
“ district.” This is in Art. 4 : “ And every 
Bishop of this Church shall confine the ex¬ 
ercise of his Episcopal office to his proper 
Diocese or district, unless requested to or¬ 
dain, or confirm, or perform any other act 
of the Episcopal office, by any Church des¬ 
titute of a Bishop.” This formal style was 
maintained until the subdivision of New 
York into two Dioceses, in 1838 a.d., gave 
occasion for a change ; and in that same year, 
in the Constitution the word “States” was 
struck out in every place except where it 
follows the word “ United,” and the word 
“ Dioceses” took its place. There is, to tho 
present day, no law of our Church regu¬ 
lating the organization of a Diocese in any 
State or Territory. The original Constitution 
provided that “A Protestant Episcopal 
Church in any of the United States not now 
represented may, at any time hereafter, be 
admitted on acceding to this Constitution.” 
The Churches in nine of the States were 
represented at that General Convention of 
1789 a.d.,— Connecticut, Massachusetts, New 
York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Dela¬ 
ware, Maryland, Virginia, and South Caro¬ 
lina. The Constitution also provided that 
“ The Church in each State shall be entitled 
to a representation of both the clergy and 
the laity.” There was no requirement fix¬ 
ing the number of clergy or parishes ; but 
“ A Church” in any “ State” of the Union 
not then represented was to be admitted “ on 
acceding to this Constitution.” The proof 
of this “ acceding,” and of the election of the 
deputies appearing, was all. Not even a vote 
of admission was thought necessary. In this 
way Rhode Island made its appearance in 
General Convention in 1792 a.d., Vermont in 
1811 a.d., New Hampshire in 1817 a.d., and 
others subsequently. At length there grew 
up the custom of “admitting” by vote of 
both Houses ; but this vote always was favor¬ 
able on proof of “ acceding to this Con¬ 
stitution.” Nothing else was required. 


Meanwhile, the Constitution was changed so 
as to permit the organization of a Diocese 
in a Territory as well as in a State. There 
is absolutely no limit as to numbers either 
of clergy or laity in a State or Territory at 
the time of organization. Vermont was ad¬ 
mitted when there were only two clergymen 
in the State, one of them being a Deacon, 
and both came to the General Convention of 
1811 a.d. , and were admitted without even a 
vote. Though any two or more clergy and 
parishes in a State or Territory may thus 
organize themselves into a Diocese, accede 
to the Constitution, and claim the right to 
be admitted into the General Convention, 
there is a canonical restriction in regard to 
the election of a Bishop of their own. This 
they cannot do until there shall have been, 
for a year before such election, at least six 
Presbyters settled over parishes, and quali¬ 
fied to vote for a Bishop ; and six or more 
parishes represented in the lay order in the 
Convention electing. But this is the only 
restriction in the case of a new Diocese or¬ 
ganized out of a State or Territory. 

The case is entirely different, however, • 
when the new Diocese is formed by subdi¬ 
viding an existing Diocese. This cannot be 
done without first getting the consent of 
the Bishop and Convention of the Diocese 
to be divided, and afterwards the consent of 
the General Convention. And the consent 
of the General Convention “shall not be 
given”—so says the Constitution—“until 
it has satisfactory assurance of a suitable 
provision for the support of the Episcopate 
in the contemplated new Diocese.” When 
this phrase became law, its advocates said 
that it did not mean an endowment or Epis¬ 
copal Fund ; but it would be enough if the 
Bishop were to be the rector of a parish, or 
president or professor of a college, or was 
supported by assessments; and West Vir¬ 
ginia and Southern Ohio were both admitted 
without one dollar of endowment, both 
these Dioceses supporting their Bishops by 
assessments. But there are still other restric¬ 
tions : “No such new Diocese shall be 
formed which shall contain less than six 
parishes, or less than six Presbyters who 
have been for at least one year canonically 
resident within the bounds of such new Dio¬ 
cese, regularly settled in a parish or con¬ 
gregation, and qualified to vote for a Bishop. 
Nor shall such new Diocese be formed if 
thereby any existing Diocese shall be so re¬ 
duced as to contain less than twelve parishes, 
or less than twelve Presbyters who have 
been residing therein and settled and quali¬ 
fied as above mentioned.” And it is also 
declared that “No city shall form more 
than one Diocese.” Nor is even this the 
whole. The Bishop may choose which of 
the Dioceses he will, the new or the old, and 
that shall be thenceforth his Diocese. If 
there be an Assistant Bishop, he may take 
as his own Diocese that which is not chosen 
by the Bishop, or he may choose to continue 
with the Bishop as his Assistant, with right 





DIOCESE 


234 


DISCIPLINE 


to succeed him. Moreover, the Constitution 
and Canons of the old Diocese continue to 
be those of the new (except as local circum¬ 
stances may prevent) until they may he 
duly altered by the Convention. There are 
several other restrictions besides, hut not of 
so much importance as the above. 

An American Diocese, as represented in 
its Convention or Diocesan Synod, consists 
of its Bishop (and Assistant Bishop, if there 
he one), who always presides when present; 
it includes also nearly all the clergy, and 
lay delegates from each parish. Some Dio¬ 
ceses restrict their clerical membership by ex¬ 
cluding all who have not been in residence for 
six months or a year, as well as all who are 
not in active clerical duty, or whose parishes 
are not in union with the Convention. The 
Diocesan Convention elects its own Bishop, 
by a separate vote of both orders. It elects 
also a Secretary and Treasurer, as well as a 
Standing Committee, who are the Bishop's 
constant Council of Advice, and without 
their consent he can do no official act of 
much importance. The clergy and laity also 
elect their own deputies to General Conven¬ 
tion, and their own Board of Diocesan Mis¬ 
sions, who, with the Bishop at their head, con¬ 
duct the business of Church extension within 
the bounds of the Diocese itself. At the 
Convention the Bishop is required to present 
a full account of his Episcopal work for the 
year preceding, and he suggests any matters 
which he may think expedient for the action 
of his Convention. A Diocese lias no re¬ 
served rights which it can defend as against 
legislation by the General Convention. But 
its Constitution and Canons, though subor¬ 
dinate to those of General Convention, are 
binding, so that a clergyman of the Diocese 
is liable to presentment and trial for violating 
them. The Dioceses are by the Constitution 
required to provide the mode of trying Pres¬ 
byters and Deacons. The vote by orders is 
found in all the Dioceses, so that neither 
clergy nor laity can infringe upon one an¬ 
other’s rights. But very few of the Dioceses 
give to the Bishop a separate vote in legis¬ 
lation. He commonly votes as one of the 
clergy. But his influence is generally as 
strong as his veto would be. The Standing 
Committee is “the ecclesiastical authority” 
during the vacancy of a Diocese for all 
those parts of a Bishop’s administrative duty 
which do not require Episcopal consecration 
for their validity. They have power to in¬ 
vite any Bishop to perform these Episcopal 
acts; or the Convention may put the Dio¬ 
cese provisionally under the charge of any 
Bishop. It is very common for Dioceses of 
any extent to be subdivided into Convoca¬ 
tions, Deaneries, or Archdeaconries ; which 
are chiefly of use in ascertaining, by actual 
experience, what may be the most conveni¬ 
ent lines for future subdivision into smaller 
Dioceses. 

A Missionary Jurisdiction does not elect 
its own Bishop, nor elect a Standing Com¬ 
mittee, nor legislate for itself, nor send a 


full deputation to General Convention. In 
many respects its position is analogous to 
that of a Territory, as compared with a State, 
in our national political system. 

Key. J. H. Hopkins. 

Diptychs. The tablets from which the 
roll of the names of the dead were read at 
the celebration of the Holy Communion. It 
was probably borrowed from the consular 
registers of magistrates. There was a class 
of Diptychs in which the register of the or¬ 
thodox Bishops who had ruled the See was 
read. Exclusion from this list was often a 
punishment. St. Cyprian directs that one 
of the Bishops subject to Carthage should t 
have his name dropped because of an in¬ 
fringement of Church Law. The better- 
known class of Diptychs was the roll of 
names of living and dead benefactors of the 
Church. These Diptychs became the basis 
for the Martyrologies. A prayer in the 
Mozarabic Liturgy is called Post Nomina, 
—i.e., the prayer after the recitation of the 
names. 

Directory. A book explaining and regu¬ 
lating Church ceremonials. 

Disciple. The name borne by the fol¬ 
lowers of Christ in His lifetime. It in¬ 
cluded more than the Twelve Apostles. The 
name continued to be given till at last the 
title the Antiocheans bestowed upon them, of 
Christians, replaced it. 

Discipline. In its fundamental principles 
the discipline of the Church in the United 
States is based on the few general directions 
contained in the New Testament and the 
primitive practices. In the application of 
those principles and in the use of particular 
methods there has been a considerable de¬ 
parture from early customs. The difference 
is due to many causes. At first the Chris¬ 
tian Church stood surrounded by the cus¬ 
toms, institutions, and especially the cor¬ 
rupting games and diversions of a heathen 
society. To these fascinating and seductive 
immoralities is due the rigid and precise 
system of ecclesiastical penalties and purga¬ 
tions well known to the student of Church 
history. The whole social constitution and 
manners being changed, the Church has re¬ 
sorted to different measures for preserving 
its honor and its purity. While diverse 
views are held as to the expediency of en¬ 
forcing the obligations of upright and holy 
living by imposing penalties and disabilities, 
it is admitted on all sides that the spirit, 
tone, and convictions of the modern world 
are such as to render the infliction of eccle¬ 
siastical penalties extremely difficult. Theo¬ 
logians and divines differ widely on the 
question how far such penalties actually pro¬ 
mote Christian truth and righteousness, 
even when they are practicable. 

The discipline of the clergy is provided 
for in detail by the Canons. Reference to 
them shows that the object mainly sought is 
the maintenance of the character of the 
Christian ministry and the prevention of 
scandal and disorder in the Church through 




DISCIPLINE 


235 


DISPENSATION 


moral transgression. As with the laity, 
the discipline is rather corrective than puni¬ 
tive, seeking the welfare of the whole body 
rather than to measure out a proportionate 
pain to the transgressor. The law for the 
arraignment and trial of any clergyman or 
Bishop, with a specification of offenses, is 
drawn up with great particularity, and may 
be found in the “Digest.” The offenses may 
be in doctrine or in practice. Trials for 
heresy are perhaps as rare as those for im¬ 
morality, but proceedings are much oftener 
initiated for the latter than for the former. 
On confession or by default, clergymen are 
suspended or deposed every year by Bishops. 
The rule prevails that a man shall be tried 
by his peers. The information and the 
court are found among the Clergy, who are 
supposed to guard both their own rights in 
their orders and their integrity. Minute 
precautions are appointed for the protection 
of the accused and the securing of justice in 
the sentence. Essentially the Bishop’s func¬ 
tion is judicial, though to some extent he 
has the powers of the grand jury, and the 
initiation or arrest of proceedings is largely 
at his discretion. Both from penalties for 
false teaching and bad living there may be 
restoration on a well-tested reformation or 
recantation. Thus far the efforts made in 
General Convention to establish Appellate 
Courts have not been successful, the best 
jurists not appearing to favor them. The 
public opinion of the Church and generally 
of the community sufficiently supports the 
judicial decisions of the Episcopate. 

For the laity disciplinary authority is 
found in the few rather general directions 
on the subject (already referred to) scat¬ 
tered through the New Testament and 
in the Rubrics of the Prayer - Book, 
chiefly in those pertaining to the Office 
of the Holy Communion. As the highest 
privilege of the believer, and as the chief 
visible mark of his standing in the body, 
the Lord’s Supper naturally becomes a 
criterion of fidelity to the Head of the 
Kingdom. Admission to it is a kind of 
certificate of the individual disciple’s con¬ 
tinuance in faith and obedience. Rejec- 
tion from it is both the deprivation of a 
benefit and to some extent a public mark of 
chastisement or rebuke. Laymen are not 
brought before a Church tribunal. There 
is no trial by “brethren.” Under the re¬ 
sponsibility of the power of the Keys, 
guided by the grace of ordination and by 
the wise and loving judgment of the Shep¬ 
herds of the Flock, the Priesthood admits or 
rejects. While the voluntary non-communi¬ 
cant can hardly be said to suffer disgrace by 
not participating, after once being lawfully 
received, to be prohibited or suspended 
brings reproach and must be felt as a priva¬ 
tion. In each case the Priest depends for 
his knowledge on all such means of inquiry 
and evidence as may be within his reach. 
From flagrant injustice he is restrained by 
the civil law of the land. His duties being 


extremely delicate and often extremely diffi¬ 
cult, allowance has to be made for possible 
errors, especially where the case in hand is 
one where the law of the Church and the 
law of the State are not agreed, as happens 
frequently in the States as respects divorce 
and the relations of the sexes. Not seldom 
the legal complication prevents action where 
action ought to be taken. By a vast pro¬ 
portion the instances of moral dereliction 
unnoticed exceed those of hasty or unjust 
or excessive punishment. Looking simply 
at the question of probable good or evil re¬ 
sulting, thoughtful clergymen pause even 
when a prima facie case of guilt is made 
out. That the fear of what is sometimes 
called excommunication does hold in check 
a multitude of people of inferior moral and 
spiritual sensibility is indisputable; it hardly 
needs to be said that temporary suspensions 
at the private suggestion or requirement of 
the clergy are frequent. Church law al¬ 
lows all persons aggrieved in a sense of un¬ 
merited restraint to appeal to the Bishop of 
the Diocese, who, on inquiry and a full ' 
statement from the clergyman exercising 
discipline, may modify or remit the penalty. 
Such revisions and restorations are not very 
common. A laxer discipline than that which 
now exists would tend to lower the standard 
at least of outward piety without much rais¬ 
ing the standard of charity. A discipline 
more rigorous and more active would re¬ 
quire a catalogue of clearly-defined and 
universally-recognized moral offenses, apart 
from the Decalogue and the letter of the 
New Testament, which at present is not sup¬ 
plied. 

Rt. Eev. F. D. Huntington, S.T.D., 
Bishop of Central New York. 

Dispensation. The word has two dis¬ 
tinct uses. The first describes the econo¬ 
mies under which God has dealt with men, 
as the Patriarchal, the Mosaic, and now the 
Christian Dispensation. These have had 
clear covenant limits, and under the last 
every man is living, and by it Christians 
are bound. It is the dispensing to us of 
the rights, privileges, and blessings ob¬ 
tained for us by Christ, which He gives 
through His Church (Eph. iv. 7, 16). In a 
subsidiary sense the word is used to mean 
some particular act or event recognized as 
coming from God, —an act of Providence, or 
a dispensation of Providence. 

The second use is the right—useful at 
times, and belonging to each Bishop—to re¬ 
lax for cause the rigidity of ecclesiastical 
discipline. Its force does not go beyond 
the act and for the cause specified, and is 
not to be taken as a precedent overthrow¬ 
ing the law, but as a precedent governing 
the limits under which future dispensations 
may be granted, and it ceases when the 
causes which justified it cease. But this 
right was arrogated to himself by the 
Bishop of Rome, who made a traffic of his 
dispensations, which was checked in Eng¬ 
land by various statutes, chiefly that of 






DISSENTERS 


236 


DOUBT 


Provisors (Edward III.). In this country 
and under our Canon Laws dispensations 
are not needed. 

Dissenters. A title given to those who 
dissent from the Established Church of 
England. This dissent is twofold: the 
dissent from her government; the dis¬ 
sent from her doctrines. But it is worthy 
of all consideration that the avowed prin¬ 
ciples on which such dissent is based, e.g ., 
the proclamation of a slighted truth, is really 
the principle of disruption of all bonds. 
The Church of England does not break 
the principle of Apostolic unity. Neither 
her history nor her conduct at any time 
have laid her open to that charge. But the 
throwing off the Apostolic government and 
the magnifying of any one doctrine out of 
all proportion to the rest of the doctrines of 
the Faith, really breaks the net knotted of 
discipline and of truth. Again, it is to be 
insisted on, with the fullest proof at hand, 
that there is no doctrine proven to be in the 
Scriptures but is fully held in the Church 
in its due place in the frame-work of the 
Faith. The doctrine of Predestination held 
and urged by the Presbyterian is taught in 
its place in the scheme. It is not dispro¬ 
portionately extolled. The doctrine of the 
Methodist, of Free-will, is held within those 
true limitations that save it from Pelagian- 
ism. And so it is a truth that each dis¬ 
senter will find the truths most dear to him, 
held, taught, enforced, but not out of its 
due position, in the joining together of those 
doctrines left by our Lord, and taught by 
His Apostles as needful for salvation. (This 
whole subject is most admirably treated in 
the Bampton Lecture for 1871, by Dr. G-. H. 
Curteis, “ Dissent in its Relations to the 
Church of England.”) 

Divinity of Christ. Vide Jesus. 

Divorce. Vide Matrimony. 

Dogma. A theological principle. The 
term belongs, strictly, to a positive state¬ 
ment of doctrine derived immediately or 
by dedication from Divine Revelation, and 
enunciated by the Church through a Gen¬ 
eral Council. In a looser sense it is applied 
to the special tenets of particular Churches, 
or even of sects, if put forth by an authority 
recognized by them. Dogma presupposes 
substantial proof which is generally and in 
the ordinary sense of an historical or logical 
kind; but it must be remembered that we 
have reached the highest possible kind of 
evidence when it is proved that any par¬ 
ticular statement has come from God. There 
can be no real opposition between dogma 
and history, or dogma and logic, so long as 
these principles are kept in view. But it 
must be remembered that there are some 
subjects in theology, especially such as re¬ 
late to God Himself, which are beyond the 
province of history or of mere logical dedi¬ 
cation, for they are dogmas which are known 
only from His revelation of them (Blunt’s 
Diet, of Hist. Theology). The dogmas of 
the faith are summed up in the Creeds, and 


are taught every person. But there is a 
popular dislike to listen to any direct teach¬ 
ing of dogma as such. This arises partly 
from the want of skill in the teachers in 
presenting the dogmatic teaching, and 
partly from a prevalent idea that dogma is 
exclusive, and now the desire to break down 
all barriers and to construct an inclusive 
body of doctrine, or rather to throw away 
doctrine altogether is the leading thought. 
It is an era of reaction against overstrained 
statements and misapplied dogmatic truths ; 
but dogma can never be cast aside, it is the 
very constitution of the truth itself. 

Dominical Letter. The Sunday letter 
for the year. (Vide Calendar.) 

Donative. A spiritual preferment in the 
free gift of a patron, and without admis¬ 
sion, institution, or induction by any man¬ 
date from the Bishop or other. But the 
donee may by the patron, or by any other 
authorized by the patron, be put into pos¬ 
session. 

Dossel. A piece of embroidered needle¬ 
work, stiff silk or cloth of gold, hung at the 
back of a throne or altar, but more particu¬ 
larly the latter. 

Doubles. It may happen that the service 
of the Sunday and that of a Saint’s day co¬ 
incide. The question then occurs, Which is 
the service proper to the day? The ancient 
Sarum rule (which has not been changed by 
authority in the Anglican communion) is 
that the Saint’s day service should take the 
place of the Sunday. So, unless that Sun¬ 
day be a High-Feast day, or in Advent or 
Lent, the Lessons, Collect, Epistle, and Gos¬ 
pel of the Saint’s day replace those of the 
Sunday. In some places the Collect for the 
Sunday has been read immediately after the 
Saint’s day Collect, but this does not appear 
proper. 

Doubt. In derivation the word doubt 
is related to the Latin word duo, two. 
The very word indicates an anxiety and 
trouble of mind which is painful. A man 
standing where two roads meet, uncertain 
which to take, represents the doubter. 

“ Man knows some things and is ignorant 
of many things, while he is in doubt as to 
other things. Doubt is that state of mind 
in which we hesitate as to two contradictory 
conclusions,—having no preponderance of 
evidence in favor of either.” (Krauth’s 
Fleming’s Vocabulary of Philosophy.) 

‘ Doubt is some degree of belief, along 
with the consciousness of ignorance, in re¬ 
gard to a proposition. Absolute disbelief 
implies knowledge ; it is the knowledge that 
such or such a thing is not true. If the 
mind admits a proposition without any de¬ 
sire for knowledge concerning it, this is 
credulity. If it is open to receive the pro¬ 
position, but feels ignorance concerning it, 
this is doubt. In proportion as knowledge 
increases doubt diminishes, and belief or dis¬ 
belief strengthens.” (Taylor, Elements of 
Thought, quoted in the work last named.) 

In religion painful doubts are caused by a 





DOUBT 


237 


DOXOLOGY 


defective religious life and by improper 
views of God. 44 Fluctuations of religious 
experience” and “ relapses into sin” help 
to increase them. Doubt is often the result 
of a natural temperament of mind. Religion 
is a habit, as well as a belief; and constant 
private and public prayer, the reading of 
the Holy Scriptures and good books, a dwel¬ 
ling on God’s promises, and a consideration 
of His goodness, with a due observance of 
God’s laws, and a frequent faithful reception 
of the Holy Communion, will do much to 
banish doubt from the mind. A constant 
fellowship with devout people, that is, the 
Communion of Saints, is a great help to 
constancy in faith. 

“ If any man will do His will, he shall 
know of the doctrine” (St. John vii. 17), 
are the words of the Master. An active 
missionary who had once doubted, when at 
work said, “ I have no time for doubts.” 
Even Moses and the Apostles were at times 
in doubt by reason of human weakness, but 
God gave them means of putting away their 
doubts. Some persons are given great power 
to assist others in such difficulties. Daniel, 
the prophet, is spoken of as having the 
power of “ dissolving of doubts” (Dan. v. 
12, 16). 

Our Lord’s rebuke to the sinking Peter 
was, “ O thou of little faith, wherefore 
didst thou doubt?” (St. Matt. xiv. 31). 
This is applicable to all. With regard to 
bodily wants Christ says, 44 Neither be ye 
of doubtful mind” (St. Luke xii. 29). 

St. Paul declares that the weak brother is 
to be received, “ but not to doubtful dispu¬ 
tations” (Rom. xiv. 1). 

Faith is natural to man. Children oniy 
learn to doubt by the deceptions that are 
practiced on them, and our Saviour makes 
a child the pattern of Christian life, and de¬ 
mands from all who would enter the king¬ 
dom of heaven a childlike character. 

Unbelief and doubt of God’s words were 
the sins by which the devil at first sought 
to cast men down. The doubt in paradise 
has propagated itself through all the de¬ 
scendants of Adam and Eve, and can only be 
dispelled by listening to those Divine words 
of the Blessed Son of God, “ Have faith in 
God” (St. Mark xi. 22). 

Newman’s expression, that a hundred 
difficulties need not produce a single doubt, is 
strictly true, for in worldly matters difficul¬ 
ties surround men on every side, and yet they 
act promptly. The farmer, in faith, sows a 
crop which may never ripen, or which may 
be gathered after he is dead. 

See the faith of men in the future of 
new countries, in building railroads at vast 
cost and planning public improvements, 
notwithstanding a host of obstacles. A 
nation of doubters would be a stagnant 
nation. 

This is especially the case in religion ; as 
Aubrey de vere says, the skeptic contracts 
his being. 

Colton, in “ Lacon” (cxlvi.), in speak¬ 


ing of doubt uses these words: 44 He is at 
once the richest and poorest of potentates, 
for he has locked up immense treasures, but 
he cannot find the key.” Still this strong 
man armed may not keep his palace 
in peace, for the “strong Son of God” 
comes to the humblest believers with the 
promise, “ Fear not. little flock, for it is 
your Father’s good pleasure to give you 
the Kingdom” (St. Luke xii. 32). 

“ Suppose a person deeply perplexed about 
the state of his soul, continually fluctuating 
between hope and fear, and overwhelmed 
with grief were to repeatedly utter this 
wish : 4 O that I certainly knew that I should 
be able to persevere! ’ He might be answered 
thus: 4 And what wouldst thou do if this 
certain knowledge were bestowed upon thee ? 
Do now that which thou wouldst do and 
rest secure of thy perseverance.’” (Thomas 
a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, ch. 
xxiii.) This thought occurs in Ps. xxxvii. 
3 : “ Trust in the Lord, and do good, so shalt 
thou dwell in the land and be fed.” 

Bishop Butler, in the “ Analogy” (Part ii. 
chap, vi.), affirms that even if a man doubts 
he ought to act: 44 because the apprehen¬ 
sion that religion may be true does as 
really lay men under obligations as a full 
conviction that it is true. It gives occasions 
and motives to consider further the impor¬ 
tant subject; to preserve attentively upon 
their minds a general implicit sense that 
they may be under divine moral govern¬ 
ment, an awful solicitude about religion, 
whether natural or revealed. Such appre¬ 
hension ought to turn men’s eyes to every 
degree of new light which may be had, 
from whatever side it comes, and induce 
them to refrain, in the mean time, from all 
immoralities, and live in the conscientious 
practice of every common virtue. Especi¬ 
ally are they bound to keep at the greatest 
distance from all dissolute profaneness ; for 
this the very nature of the case forbids; 
and to treat with highest reverence a mat¬ 
ter upon which their own whole interest and 
being and the fate of nature depends.” 

Authorities : Spectator, No. 191, Buck’s 
Theological Dictionary, Lange’s Commen¬ 
tary on Genesis, Subjective Difficulties in 
Religion (Answered). Aubrey de Yere, in 
the Nineteenth Century Review, May, 1883 
a.d. Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Doxology. An ascription of glory and 
praise to God. These Doxologies are fre¬ 
quent in the Old Testament, especially in 
the Psalms, and in the New Testament also. 
The Doxology closing the form of the Lord 's 
Prayer in St. Matt. (vi. 13) is held by 
many textualists to be interpolated from the 
Liturgies, and not to belong to its original 
delivery ( cf . St. Luke xi. 4). St. Paul has 
several fervent Doxologies in his Epistles, 
e.g ., Rom. xvi. 25-27; Eph. iii. 20, 21 ; 
Phil. iv. 20; 1 Timothy vi. 15, 16 ; so 1 
St. Pet. iv. 11 ; v. 11. But the Revelation 
is replete with Doxologies both of creatures 
on earth and spirits in heaven. Rev. i. 5, 6 ; 





DULIA 


238 


EASTERN CHURCHES 


iv. 11 ; v. 9, 12,13 ; vii. 10,12 ; xv. 3; xvi. 5, 
7 ; xix. 1, 6. The Liturgical Doxologies in 
the American Prayer-Book are the Gloria 
Patri , the Gloria in Excelsis. 

Dulia. A term used in Roman Theology 
to designate the reverence due to the Saints 
or to any worthy creature of God. But the 
root of the word doulos , and the verb dou- 
leuo , are used of servantship, service, and 
worship of God. St. Paul calls himself the 
doulos of Christ. He speaks of serving 


(douleuon ) the Lord. Dulia , is used of the 
slavery of corruption in Romans viii. 21. 
In no place is douleia used in a good sense 
in the New Testament, though its cognates 
doulos and douleuo , are. The interior mean¬ 
ing of the word is to serve as a servant bought 
with a price. Even if the theory of rever¬ 
ence to a creature were tenable, this term is 
most unhappily chosen, since no saint or 
angel has redeemed us. The doctrine itself 
savors of idolatry. 


♦ » ' ♦ 


E. 


Eagle. In Scripture, symbolic of God 
(Ex. xix. 4 ; Deut. xxxii. 11.); also the mys¬ 
terious creatures seen in vision by Ezekiel 
and St. John. There these Living Creatures 
appear in fourfold form. In Ezekiel “they 
four.” Apparently each of the four had 
the face of a man, the face of a lion on the 
right side, the face of an ox on the left side, 
and the face of an eagle. In St. John’s vis¬ 
ion the first Living Creature was like a 
lion, the second like a calf (ox), the third 
had a face as a man, and the fourth was like 
a flying eagle. The symbolism has been 
variously explained, and that upon which 
St. John’s vision has been most generally 
received is that they are symbols of the four 
Gospels. The lion has been connected 
with St. Mark’s Gospel, as setting forth our 
Lord as the Lion of the tribe of Judah; 
the ox with St. Luke’s Gospel, as setting 
forth our Lord’s sacrificial and intercessory 
acts ; the man with St. Matthew, as setting 
forth our Lord as the Messiah, the man 
acquainted with sorrows ; the eagle with St. 
John, as setting forth the Divinity of our 
Lord in His Incarnation. It is often used 
as a symbol placed beside the figure of St. 
John to distinguish him from the other 
Evangelists, since he has been permitted to 
soar upward into the Divine Presence as the 
eagle mounts upward to the sun. 

The eagle has been used as a lectern to 
support the Bible in the Church, and has 
been made a very effective part of the 
Church furniture. 

Easter. A Saxon word, Eostre, a heathen 
goddess whose festival fell in the spring. 
But the Feast of the Resurrection falling at 
the spring-tide, the name was transferred to 
the Christian feast. ( Vide Festivals and 
Feasts.) The Church, as soon as the re¬ 
pression caused by persecution permitted 
her, celebrated this feast with peculiar re¬ 
joicings ; not only the day itself, but the 
week following was kept with great pomp. 
In the Saxon Church it was a festal week. 
It was called the Queen of Festivals, the 


Royal Day of Days. It was the day of 
Light, and in the Eastern Churches from the 
midnight of Easter-eve till day the churches 
have ever been illuminated as brilliantly 
as possible, and the solemn services were 
celebrated with great magnificence. The 
catechumens who had just been baptized 
were admitted to their first Communion 
then. Every act that could testify to the 
glad reception of all that the Resurrection 
can mean was done. It is in truth the key, 
doctrinally, to our Faith ; liturgically, to 
our worship ; practically, to our life ; and 
must be kept with a joyous heart by every 
Christian. The date of the feast, year by 
year, was a cause of great solicitude. For sev¬ 
eral centuries it was the privilege of the See 
of Alexandria to announce to the Christian 
world the right date of Easter-Sunday, till 
at last perfect tables enabled the other 
Churches to arrive at the same result; and, 
too, the schisms and quarrels of the Church 
interfered with and broke up the custom. 
But the festal epistles of several Patriarchs 
of Alexandria are of great value. The con¬ 
troversy upon the date which divided many 
of the Eastern Church from the West ( vide 
Qtjartodeciman) was an evidence of the im¬ 
portance placed upon it everywhere. (Upon 
the rule for finding Easter-day, vide Cal¬ 
endar.) 

It is one of the days upon which the 
Church requires all her members to com¬ 
mune. The Epistle and Gospel for Easter- 
day is apparently a change from the older 
English use (Col. iii. 1, and St. John xx. 1, 
for 1 Cor. v. 7, and St. Mark xvi. 1). But 
the Prayer-Book of 1549 a.d. ordered two cel¬ 
ebrations, and gave two sets of Epistles and 
Gospels. In the revision of 1552 a.d., the 
older missal set was dropped and the later 
Epistle and Gospel kept. The Collect dates 
from 496 a d. 

Eastern Churches, The. No intelligent 
Christian can read the history of the Eastern 
Churches without emotion, or study their 
present condition and circumstances without 







EASTERN CHURCHES 


239 


EASTERN CHURCHES 


the deepest interest. When we hear of the 
Church of Jerusalem, we remember that 
“ out of Zion went forth the law and the 
word of God from Jerusalem,” so that 
that Church may well be esteemed the 
mother of all Churches. We cannot forget 
that “the disciples were called Christians 
first in Antioch.” What associations cling 
to the names of Bethlehem and Nazareth, 
Smyrna and Ephesus, Athens and Corinth, 
Nicaea and Chalcedon, Alexandria, re¬ 
nowned for its learning, Constantinople, the 
imperial city I To Eastern Christians, with 
scarce an exception, were addressed the 
Epistles of the New Testament, for them 
principally, we may say, were the Gospels 
written, and in a large part of Eastern 
Christendom the Gospels and Epistles are 
still read and understood—so little has this 
language changed—in the inspired original. 
“The humblest peasant,” says Stanley,* 
“who reads his . . . Greek Testament in his 
own mother-tongue on the hills of Boeotia, 
may proudly feel that he has an access to the 
original oracles of Divine truth which Pope 
and Cardinal reach by a barbarous and im¬ 
perfect translation.” 

The Eastern Churches, properly so called, 
are divisible into two groups : (1) the Or¬ 
thodox Churches; (2) the Armenian, the 
S}^rian,f the Coptic, and the Assyrian. 
Beside these, there are a number of Eastern 
Christians who, retaining in part, at least, 
their ancient rites, have come under the 
dominion of the Church of Rome. Not only 
are their ecclesiastical relations with the 
West, but seven-eighths of them live in the 
West, in Austro-Hungary. 

Let us consider first of the Orthodox 
Churches. The Holy Orthodox Eastern 
Churches are commonly designated, when 
taken collectively, as “ The Eastern 
Church,” “ The Oriental Church,” “ The 
Greek Church.” They not only outnum¬ 
ber the second group ten to one, but they 
are the truest representatives of the Church 
as first planted in those lands. Their spe¬ 
cial claim to the title Orthodox is from this, 
that they have carefully held to the doctrines 
set forth in the undisputed General Coun¬ 
cils, whilst the other Eastern Churches have 
refused, as we shall see farther on, to accept 
the decrees of, however it may be as to the 
doctrines asserted in, the Councils which 
have been throughout the Church accepted 
as oecumenical. One can hardly speak of 
an Eastern or Western Church as existing 
as such before the founding of Constanti¬ 
nople, and the division of the Roman Em¬ 
pire into Eastern and Western, which soon 
followed thereupon. Whilst the Gospel 
was soon carried into all lands, it would 
seem to have met with a more speedy re¬ 


* History of the Eastern Churches, Amer. edit., p. 101. 
f The Syrian is often called the Jacobite Church, and 
the Assyrian the Neslorian Church. The “ Christians of 
St. Thomas,” in India, are a dependency of the Syrian 
Church, and the Abyssinian bears a title relative to the 
Coptic. 


ception in those lands where it was first 
proclaimed. And, as Milman well says, 
“ For some considerable (it cannot but be an 
indefinable) part of the first three centuries 
the Church of Rome, and most, if not all, the 
Churches of the West, were, if we may 
so speak, Greek religious colonies. Their 
language was Greek, their organization 
Greek, their writers Greek, their Scriptures 
Greek, and many vestiges and traditions 
show that their ritual, their Liturgy, was 
Greek. . . . So, too, was it in Gaul: there the 
first Christians were settled, chiefly in the 
Greek cities which owned Marseilles as their 
parent, and which retained the use of Greek 
as their vernacular tongue.”| The chief 
theological writers of the first Christian 
centuries were Easterns, or men of Eastern 
training. The earliest writer of Latin theo¬ 
logical literature dates from the close of the 
second century. In the words of Dr. von 
Dollinger, “ The Eastern portion of the 
Church for a long time enjoyed a complete 
intellectual supremacy; the Western had to 
learn from their Greek co-religionists, and 
to receive from them their ecclesiastical 
and theological education. All Latin theo¬ 
logical literature before St. Augustine is, in 
substance, the application or imitation of 
Greek models.”£ And the present Bishop of 
Lincoln calls attention to a catalogue of ec¬ 
clesiastical authors, drawn up by St. Je¬ 
rome in 392 A.D., in these words : “ The cat¬ 
alogue (containing one hundred and thirty- 
five names) begins with St. Peter, and it 
is remarkable as a proof of the lack of theo¬ 
logical learning at Rome, that Jerome, who 
had been a secretary of a Pope, and had the 
best opportunity in this respect, could only 
enumerate four other Bishops of Rome— 
Clemens, Victor, Cornelius, and Damasus— 
in this long list of ecclesiastical writers.” |j 

Ages of persecution were not times for 
perfected organization. We find, however, 
the 6th Canon of the Council of Nicaea be¬ 
ginning with the words, “Let the ancient 
customs prevail,” and then going on to di¬ 
rect that the metropolitical authority which 
the Bishops of Alexandria and of Antioch 
had exercised through long custom over the 
respectively neighboring Bishops should be 
continued to them by law. And the 7th 
Canon of the same Council directs that the 
honors which usage and ancient tradition 
had accorded to the Bishop of Jerusalem, 
then called ^Elia, should still be preserved 
to it. 

It was but natural that the Imperial City, 
Constantinople, should have ecclesiastical as 
well as political pre-eminence, and in the 
3d Canon of the first General Council held 
in that city, it was decreed that the Bishop 
of Constantinople should takeprecedencenext 
after the Bishop of Rome, because Constan¬ 
tinople was near Rome.” This precedence 


t History of Latin Christianity, i. 32. 

\ Lectures on the Reunion of the Churches, p. 39. 
|[ Bishop Wordsworth’s Church History, iii. 202. 






EASTERN CHURCHES 


240 


EASTERN CHURCHES 


seems at first to have been.chiefly honorary. 
But the 29th Canon of the Council of Chal- 
cedon confirmed and extended the privileges 
of Constantinople, and made that See second, 
and scarcely second, to Rome in honor and 
in authority. At Chalcedon, also, the Bishop 
of Jerusalem acquired for his See patri¬ 
archal privileges, having previously held a 
position of marked honor, and with little 
authority. 

In the early part of the seventh century 
Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria fell 
under the power of the Moslem. The 
Churches in Patriarchates of which these 
were the Sees were wellnigh crushed, the 
Christians were subject to men of another 
race and of alien faith, who oft made them 
feel the insolence of their conquerors. Con¬ 
stantinople had, as we have seen, a pre-emi¬ 
nence ; it now became the only great Chris¬ 
tian city of the East. The title of (Ecumen¬ 
ical Patriarch , given at times in early days 
to the Bishop of the Imperial City, seemed 
not to ill befit one of so unrivaled influence 
in the Eastern Church, and ere long came 
to be recognized as his proper title. 

From time to time difficulties and misun¬ 
derstandings arose between the Eastern and 
the Western Churches, but the temporary 
divisions which thence occurred, “however 
much they diminished the glory of the 
Church, did not altogether destroy the prin¬ 
ciple of Christian charity. It was still uni¬ 
versally held that the Church formed but 
one spiritual fraternity, that all Christians 
were members of the same body, and that it 
was their duty to hold communion with each 
other. When divisions arose, excommuni¬ 
cation consisted generally in a simple with¬ 
drawal of communion. . . . These with¬ 
drawals of communion were intended to 
procure the reformation of the offending 
party, and the divided Churches . . . sin¬ 
cerely endeavored to be reunited to their 
brethren in Christ.”* 

At length the time came when there was 
to be a lasting separation. In regard to this 
lamentable division there was fault on both 
sides. Nevertheless, to use the words of Dr. 
von Dollinger, “No one acquainted with 
history can doubt that by far the greater 
share of the blame rests with the West. An 
imperious despotism, attended by the fear 
that the sight of the free Eastern Church 
might produce an unfavorable feeling to¬ 
wards the Papal monarchy in the West, an 
evil ignorance of Papal antiquity, and espe¬ 
cially of Greek tradition and ecclesiastical 
literature, on the part of the Westerns, these 
were the real causes of the schism.”f The 
separation, which some have dated from the 
time of Photius,in 880 a d., and others from 
that of Cerularius, in 1054 a.d., each of these 
being Patriarchs of Constantinople, was not 
consummated until the taking of the Im¬ 
perial City by the Latins in 1204 a.d., and 


* Palmer’s Church History, American edit., p. 67. 
f Report of the Bonn Conference in 1874, p. 23. 


then, “ above all, by the part which Innocent 
III. took throughout by supporting the acts 
of violence”! connected with the taking of 
Constantinople, “ with the whole weight of 
his authority and power, and openly for¬ 
warding the subjugation and Latinization of 
the Eastern Church,” setting Latin Bishops 
over Greek Sees, and so declaring the East¬ 
ern in a state of heresy and schism. At¬ 
tempts were made at Lyons in 1274 a.d., and 
at Florence in 1438 a.d., to bring about a re¬ 
union. But the Popes demanded an admis¬ 
sion of their autocratic power, which the 
Easterns would not give, and so the negotia¬ 
tions were fruitless. 

At the time of the separation of the East¬ 
ern and the Western Churches there is rea¬ 
son to think that, in number of Bishops and 
of the faithful, East and West were as nearly 
as might be on an equality. Palmer, in his 
“Treatise on the Church of Christ,”$ gives 
the data for believing there were in each 
about one thousand and twenty Bishops. 
A large part of the Patriarchate of Con¬ 
stantinople having already fallen under the 
power of the Turk, that city itself was taken 
by them in 1453 a.d. But while the ancient 
seats of the Eastern Church were fallen into 
the hands of the infidel, a hardy race of the 
north received the seeds of Christian en¬ 
lightenment from the East. There is a tra¬ 
dition that St. Andrew preached the Gospel 
within the bounds of what is now called 
Russia. But it is about the middle of the 
ninth century before we have historic men¬ 
tion of Christianity in connection with Rus¬ 
sia,—and shortly before the year 1000 a.d., 
that Russia, largely through the influence of 
Vladimir, its first Christian prince, adopted 
the religion of Christ. 

The Holy Orthodox Church of the East 
is made up at this time of ten independent 
Churches, in full communion with each 
other, and fully agreeing as to doctrine, while 
varying to some extent in discipline. These 
Churches, including in all about 80,000,000 
of the faithful, are the Churches in the 
Patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, 
Antioch, and Jerusalem, the Church of Rus¬ 
sia, of Cyprus, the Orthodox Church of Aus- 
tro-Hungary, the Church of Montenegro, 
of Greece, and of Servia. Roumania having 
been set free from Turkey at the same time 
with Servia, its Church claims a like inde¬ 
pendence with that of the Servian Church 
from the Patriarch of Constantinople, but 
this claim has not yet been allowed. The 
Bulgarian Church also claims an autonomy, 
which has not yet been conceded. There 
seems to be a difference of opinion among 
the Eastern Churches as regards the claims of 
these two Churches, which the Patriarch of 
Constantinople accounts as still subject to 
his jurisdiction. It is to be hoped that a 
satisfactory arrangement may soon be ar¬ 
rived at. 


J Dr. von Dollinger, Report of Bonn Conference. 1874 
p. 25. 

§ American edition, i. 198. 






EASTERN CHURCHES 


241 


EASTERN CHURCHES 


Let us take a survey of these various 
autonomous Churches in their order. 

1. The Patriarchate of Constantinople .— 
“ The Most Holy Archbishop of Constanti¬ 
nople, New Rome, and (Ecumenical Patri¬ 
arch,” Joachim III., has under his juris¬ 
diction in Turkey in Europe, and part of 
Turkey in Asia, including the Roumanian 
Church and the Bulgarians, about 11,500,000 
of the faithful; seventy Metropolitans, two 
Archbishops, and twenty-five Bishops in ac¬ 
tive service, six Metropolitans and eight 
Bishops who have retired from active duty, 
and seventeen other Bishops without Sees, 
but for the most part engaged in assisting 
other Bishops. In all one hundred and 
twenty-eight Bishops, of various degree, 
own him as their ecclesiastical superior. It 
should be said here that, throughout the 
East, the titles of Metropolitan and Arch¬ 
bishop are, for the most part, honorary dis¬ 
tinctions. In many cases, when the titles 
were first bestowed, they were most fitting. 
The Metropolitan of Ephesus, for instance, 
had once nearly as many suffragans as there 
are days in the year, now he has but four. 
It does not seem unreasonable that the title 
held of old should be continued to the pres¬ 
ent occupant of so venerable a See. 

The Patriarch of Constantinople has a 
recedence among his brother Patriarchs, 
ut claims no authority over them. As the 
chief representative of the Greeks in Turkey, 
he has a position which often exposes him to 
great annoyance, and not seldom to real 
danger. Faithfulness in the discharge of 
his duties has frequently led to his removal 
from office, by the more or less direct influ¬ 
ence of the Turkish government. Cyril 
Lucar, two hundred and fifty years ago, was 
four times removed from his office as Patri¬ 
arch, and when Patriarch the fifth time was 
basely murdered. Nor are such vicissitudes 
things quite of the past. Within a very 
few years there were living at one time five 
ex-Patriarchs of Constantinople. And no 
longer ago than 1821 a.d., the Patriarch 
Gregory, over fourscore years of age, with 
three of his Bishops and eight Priests, were 
hung on Easter-day, by the Grand Vizier’s 
order, at the door of the church in which 
they had just been celebrating the Paschal 
Feast. The present Patriarch is in the prime 
of life, and a man of zeal and enlighten¬ 
ment. 

2. The Patriarchate of Alexandria .— 
The early Patriarchs of Alexandria held a 
position not only of great dignity, but of 
authority and influence equally great. But 
Sophronius, “the Most Holy Pope and 
Patriarch of the Great City Alexandria, 
Libya, Pentapolis, and Ethiopia, and of all 
the land of Egypt; Father of Fathers, 
Pastor of Pastors, Archpriest of Archpriests, 
Thirteenth Apostle, and Universal Judge,” 
has under him at this time but one Bishop 
in active service, and 5000 of the faith¬ 
ful. When the Saracens took Alexandria, 
in 641 a.d. , the Greeks in Egypt for the 

16 


most part lost their lives or left the coun¬ 
try. The native Egyptians of the ancient 
race, who met with fitful favor from the 
conqueror, had previously become, as their 
descendants still remain, members of what 
is known as the Coptic Church, of which a 
brief account is given below. 

3. The Patriarchate of Antioch. —“ The 
Most Blessed and Holy Patriarch of the 
Divine City Antioch, Syria, Arabia, Cilicia, 
Ileria, Mesopotamia, and all the East; 
Father of Fathers and Pastor of Pastors,” 
Hierotheus, resides chiefly in Damascus, the 
principal * city in this Patriarchate. The 
Christians owning his authority number 
about 100,000. He has under him eleven 
Metropolitans and three Bishops, the latter . 
having no Sees. When, in 658 a.d., Antioch 
was captured by the Saracens, the throne of 
the successors of Alexander, the seat of the 
Roman government in the East, which had 
been decorated by Caesar with the title of 
free, and holy, and inviolate, was degraded 
under the yoke of the Caliph to the second¬ 
ary rank of a principal town.* The Crusa¬ 
ders, who held Antioch for many years, were 
scarcely less inimical to Eastern Christians 
than were the Saracens. Taken from the 
Latins, in 1268 a.d., by the Sultan of Egypt, 
its inhabitants were put to the sword or sent 
into captivity ; and for hundreds of years, 
indeed, until the beginning of this century, 
believers in Christ were almost absolutely 
excluded from the place where the disciples 
were first called Christians. The few Or¬ 
thodox Christians there, until very recently, 
had no proper church, but worshiped in a 
grotto in the mountain-side. 

4. The Patriarchate of Jerusalem. —“ The 
Most Blessed and Holy Patriarch of the Holy 
City Jerusalem, and all Palestine, Syria, 
Arabia beyond Jordan, Cana of Galilee, 
and Holy Sion,” has under him five Met¬ 
ropolitans, four Archbishops, and about 
20,000 of the faithful. After a vacancy 
of more than a year, Nicodemus, Arch¬ 
bishop of Mount Tabor, has just been chosen 
Patriarch, but when these pages went to 
press had not entered upon his high of¬ 
fice. 

Until the destruction of Jerusalem, it 
was regarded not only as the metropolis of 
Palestine, but in one sense of the whole Chris¬ 
tian world. On its overthow, Caesarea, the 
civil metropolis of Palestine, became the 
seat of the Metropolitan, though, from the 
the remembrance of what Jerusalem had 
been, its Bishops ranked next after the 
Metropolitan among the Bishops of the 
province. Jerusalem attaining a degree of 
prosperity under Constantine and his succes¬ 
sors, its Bishop acquired in the fifth cen¬ 
tury, as has been already mentioned, the 
Patriarchal dignity. From Persian, Saracen, 
Crusader, and Turk Jerusalem suffered 
like vicissitudes with Antioch. An object 


* Gibbon, Decline and Fall, li. 







EASTEKN CHURCHES 


242 


EASTERN CHURCHES 


of deepest interest to all Christians, it has 
not seldom given occasion to strifes, civil 
and ecclesiastical. 

“ 0 pray for the peace of Jerusalem !” 

5. The Church of Russia .—We now come 
from the consideration of ancient Patriarch¬ 
ates, depressed by long ages of subjection to 
the infidel, to study a daughter Church, the 
Church of a vast empire, by far the largest 
of National Churches ; numbering among 
its members about 64,000,000, or more 
than three-fourths of Eastern Christen¬ 
dom, and among its prelates three Metro¬ 
politans, fourteen Archbishops, thirty-six 
Diocesan Bishops, twenty-eight Vicars, or 
Assistant Bishops in active service. 

If, as tradition states, St. Andrew first 
preached the Gospel within the bounds of 
the Russian Empire, little, if any, visible 
fruit of his teachings remained when Queen 
Olga, about the middle of the tenth century, 
and her grandson, Vladimir, just before its 
close, embraced Christianity,—his conver¬ 
sion being followed by that of a large por¬ 
tion of his subjects. Vladimir asked that a 
Bishop might be sent from Constantinople 
to his capital city, Kieff, which for many 
years remained the ecclesiastical metropolis 
of Russia. Then Vladimir became the Me- 
tropolitical See, and in 1320 a.d. Moscow. 
Much of this time the Church of Russia 
was strictly dependent upon Constantinople. 
While Russia was overrun by the Tartars, 
and Constantinople retained its freedom, 
this arrangement had its advantages; but 
when the situation was reversed, and Rus¬ 
sia was freed from the Tartars, while Con¬ 
stantinople was subjected to the Turks, the 
Russian Church became virtually self-gov¬ 
erned. In 1583 a.d. a Patriarchate was 
established at Moscow. Ten Patriarchs in 
succession presided over the Church of Rus¬ 
sia, the last of them dying in 1701 a.d. It 
is considered that the Russian Patriarchate 
is still in existence, though, for a number 
of years, it was in charge of one of the 
Bishops, and since 1721 a.d. it has been ad¬ 
ministered by the Holy Governing Synod. 
This Synod now consists of the Metropoli¬ 
tans of St. Petersburg, Kieff, and Moscow, 
the Exarch of Georgia, two or more other 
Bishops chosen for two years at a time, 
and two priests, one the chief chaplain of 
the Emperor, the other the chaplain gen¬ 
eral of the forces. The Ober-Procurator 
represents the lay element in the Church. 
In matters of practical administration he 
has an influential voice, but none at all in 
questions of doctrine. 

Much has been done of late years to im¬ 
prove the position of the Russian clergy. 
Great attention is paid to their education, 
and for this purpose admirable institutions 
of learning are provided. A revised trans¬ 
lation of the Bible has recently been pub¬ 
lished, by authority, and steps have been 
taken to have it widely circulated. No 
little interest has been manifested lately in 


missions among the heathen, both within 
the Empire, in Siberia, and without it, in 
Japan. The Russian Church is one in 
which there are manifest and abundant 
signs of life and influence. 

6. The Church in Cyprus .—The story of 
the first planting of Christianity in Cyprus 
is no doubtful tradition, but is recorded by 
St. Luke in the Acts of the Apostles (ch. 
xi. 19-26; xiii. 4-13; xv. 36-41). Cyprus 
being reckoned from the time of Ha¬ 
drian a part of the civil prefecture of the 
East, the Patriarch of Antioch claimed 
authority over the Church in that island. 
This claim was stoutly resisted, and the 
question being brought before the Council 
of Ephesus in 431 a.d., it was decided that 
the Church in Cyprus should retain the in¬ 
dependent character it had had from the 
first. Cyprus has had its full share of trials 
from Saracen, Crusader, and Turk. It is now 
in the hands of the English. The Orthodox 
Christians of Cyprus number about 90,000. 
“ The Most Blessed and Holy Archbishop of 
Nova-Justiniana, and all Cyprus,” Sophro- 
nius, has under him three Bishops. 

7. The Orthodox Church in Austria. —In 
Austro-Hungary there are about 3,500,000 
members of the Orthodox Church, under 
three Metropolitans, entitled respectively 
“ Metropolitan of all the Servians in the 
Austrian Empire,” “ Metropolitan of all the 
Roumanians in the Austrian Empire,” 
“ Metropolitan of the Buckovine and Dal¬ 
matia.” There are also ten Bishops. 

8. The Church in Montenegro. —“ The 
Metropolitan of Scanderia and the sea- 
coast, Archbishop of Tsettin, Exarch of 
the Holy Throne of Pek, Vladika of Monte¬ 
negro and Berda,” Bessarion Lubitch, is the 
only Bishop in Montenegro, that brave lit¬ 
tle country which has for so many years 
withstood the Turk. Until about 'thirty 
years since, the Metropolitan of Monte¬ 
negro was also its ruling prince. A second 
See has lately been set up in the territory re¬ 
cently regained from Turkey. But it ap¬ 
pears that the new Diocese has at present no 
Bishop of its own. The inhabitants of 
Montenegro, with hardly an exception mem¬ 
bers of the Orthodox Church, number about 
300,000. 

9. The Church in the Greek Kingdom .— 
When Greece became independent of Tur¬ 
key, the Church of Greece, which had hith¬ 
erto been a dependency of Constantinople, 
naturally desired to be self-governed, and 
there were many reasons why it was best 
this should be the case. The Patriarch of 
Constantinople was often placed in a false 
position towards them,—kindly disposed 
himself, but forced by the Turkish govern¬ 
ment into a position of antagonism. A Na¬ 
tional Synod was held at Nauplia in July, 
1833 a.d., when it was declared, (1) “ That 
the Eastern Orthodox and Apostolic Church 
of Greece, which spiritually owns no Head 
but the Head of the Christian Faith, Jesus 
Christ our Lord, is dependent on no 





EASTERN CHURCHES 


243 


EASTERN CHURCHES 


external authority, while she preserves un¬ 
shaken dogmatic unity with all the Eastern 
Orthodox Churches. . . . (2) A permanent 
Synod shall be established, consisting en¬ 
tirely of Archbishops and Bishops, ap¬ 
pointed by the King, to be the highest ec¬ 
clesiastical authority, after the model of the 
Russian Church.” The Metropolitan of 
Athens is always the President of the Holy 
Synod. With scarcely an exception, the 
people of Greece, numbering something over 
1,600,000, belong to the Orthodox Church. 

10. The Servian Church .—When the Ser¬ 
vians became Christians, they acknowledged 
a sort of primacy over them as belonging to 
the Patriarch of Constantinople, but as they 
aspired to civil freedom so also they sought 
for ecclesiastical autonomy,—each being at¬ 
tained in the fourteenth centurj 7 , when 
Stephen Dushan took the title of “ the 
Macedonian Czar” and Joannicius was 
chosen Patriarch of Servia. The Servian 
kingdom lasted but a short time, but the Pa¬ 
triarchate continued. In 1689 a.d. the Pa¬ 
triarch Arsenius took part with the emperor 
of Austria against the Ottoman power, and 
when the movement proved a failure, with 
about 200,000 of his- people took refuge in 
Austria, where he was made Metropolitan of 
Carlovitz, retaining, as do his successors in 
the office, the title Patriarch of Servia. 
Since 1838 a.d. the Archbishop of Belgrade 
has been recognized as the head of the Servian 
Church. While Servia remained a depen¬ 
dency of Turkey, the Servian Church had 
a dependence, little more than nominal, upon 
Constantinople. Since Servia has become 
independent, the autonomy of its Church has 
been recognized. The Servian Church num¬ 
bers about 1,600,000, under an Archbishop 
and four Bishops. 

Beside the ten Churches which have a 
recognized position among the Orthodox 
Eastern Churches, there are two others, the 
Roumanian and the Bulgarian Churches. 
The Roumanian Church numbers about 
4,500,000, under two Metropolitans and six 
Bishops. When lioumania was set free 
from Turkey, its Church naturally claimed 
to be independent. But this independence 
is not recognized at Constantinople. It seems 
probable that the differences between the 
Roumanian Church and the Patriarchate 
will soon be settled by a compromise. In 
regard to the Bulgarian Church, the diffi¬ 
culties and the antagonisms are greater. It 
is to be hoped, however, that some means of 
settling these differences also may soon be 
devised, since the interests of religion are 
suffering, and a Romish propaganda has 
taken advantage of a time of discord to 
make proselytes. As has been said, the 
Bulgarian Bishops are not recognized by 
the Patriarchs. They number in all 16, viz.: 
Exarch, 1; Metropolitan, 8; Bishops, 2; 
Vicar Bishops, 2; retired Bishops, 2. 

To summarize the information given, ac¬ 
cording to the best authorities, the Orthodox 
Christians number: 


1. In the Patriarchate of Constantinople: 


Greeks, etc. 3,500,000 

Bulgarian. 3,500,000 

Roumanian. 4,500,000 11,500,000 

2. In the Patriarchate of Alexan¬ 

dria. 5,000 

3. In the Patriarchate of Antioch 100,000 

4. In the Patriarchate of Jerusa¬ 

lem. 20,000 

5. In the Russian Empire. 64,000,000 

6. In the Island of Cyprus. 90,000 

7. In the Austrian Empire. 3,500,000 

8. In Montenegro. 300,000 

9. In the kingdom of Greece. 1,600,000 

10. In the kingdom of Servia. 1,600,000 


82,715,000 

(For list of Sees, vide Episcopate, List 
of.) 

Doctrine, Discipline, and Worship 
of the Orthodox Eastern Churches.— 
The Orthodox Eastern Churches and the An¬ 
glican alike recognize that “ The only pure 
and all-sufficient source of the doctrine of 
Faith is the revealed word of God contained 
in the Holy Scriptures ; that “Everything 
necessary to salvation is stated in the Holy 
Scriptures, with such clearness that every 
one reading them with a sincere desire to be 
enlightened can understand them;” that 
“ Holy Scripture, being the word of God 
Himself, is the only supreme judge in con¬ 
troversies,” so that “No Council whatever 
can set up an article of faith which cannot 
be proved from the Holy Scriptures.”* 

The Eastern Orthodox Churches are not 
afraid of an appeal “ to the Law and to the 
testimony.” Philaret, in the work just 
quoted, says, “ Every one has not only a 
right, but it is his bounden duty, to read the 
Holy Scriptures in a language which he un¬ 
derstands, and edify himself thereby.” And 
Methodius, Archbishop of Syros and Tenos, 
in a Pastoral Letter addressed to his people, 
in June, 1882 a.d., uses, with other like 
words, this language: “ Lay hold upon this 
Book of Life, the Book of Light, the Bool^ 
of the world’s salvation. Study the Holy 
Gospel, meditate upon it day and night, 
regulate your lives by its holy teachings, 
and happy will you be.” 

The Anglican and the Eastern Orthodox 
Churches holding like views as to the su¬ 
preme authority of Holy Scripture, and as 
to the principles of its interpretation, we 
are prepared to find that, as to matters 
of chief importance, they are in essential 
agreement, and that in other cases, where 
there seem to be differences, such differ¬ 
ences may for the most part be shown to 
be rather in appearance than in reality. 
There is a seeming difference as to the num¬ 
ber of the Sacraments. The Anglican 
Churches defining a Sacrament as “ An 
outward and visible sign of an inward and 
spiritual grace given unto us, ordained by 


* These extracts are from “A Comparative Statement 
of Russo-Greek and Roman Catholic Doctrines,” by 
Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow; published in an 
English translation in Pm per No. IV. of the Russo- 
Greek Committee. Philaret, one of the leading prelates 
of this century, died November, 1867, after an Episco¬ 
pate of over fifty years. 



















EASTERN CHURCHES 


244 


EASTERN CHURCHES 


Christ Himself ,” acknowledge two Sacra¬ 
ments ; the Eastern Orthodox Churches de¬ 
fining a Mystery (the word they use instead 
of our word Sacrament) as “A visible 
sign of invisible grace,” sometimes say 
that “ their ■ number is indefinite, but that 
they are not all necessary to salvation. 
There are two Sacraments necessary to every 
man, namely, Baptism and the Holy Eu- 
charist f . M * Sometimes to the two which 
they and we esteem the chief Mysteries 
they add five others, as coming next after 
these in importance, namely, Confirma¬ 
tion,Penitence, Ordination, Matrimony, and 
Prayer Oil. In regard to Prayer Oil, which 
is not to be confounded with the Extreme 
Unction of the Romish Church, admin¬ 
istered only to the djdng, the Easterns fol¬ 
low literally the injunction of the Apostle 
(St. James v. 14, 15), and anoint the sick 
for their recovery. To them we seem to 
be neglecting a plain command of God’s 
Word. The Eastern Orthodox Churches 
have not attempted to define the mode of 
our Lord’s Presence in the Holy Commu¬ 
nion, believing it, in the words of a dis¬ 
tinguished Metropolitan of the Russian 
Church, to be “ A Mystery to be appre¬ 
hended by faith, and not a matter to be 
speculated and dogmatized upon, or reasoned 
about.” “All definitions, or pretended ex¬ 
planations,” continues this learned divine, 
“ such as the use of the word ‘ Transub- 
stantiation,’ are but attempts to penetrate 
the mystery, and in so far tend to overthrow 
the very nature of the Sacrament. ”f In the 
Eastern Churches the Holy Communion is 
always given in both kinds , according to 
our Lord’s commandment. The Eastern 
Orthodox Churches believe neither in Pur¬ 
gatory nor in works of supererogation. In 
the words of Philaret of Moscow, “ The 
condition of a man’s soul after death is fixed 
*>y his internal state, and there is no such 
thing as Purgatory, in which souls have to 
pa. c |3 through fiery torments in order to pre¬ 
pare them for blessedness.” . . “There is no 
need of any other kind of purification, when 
‘the blood of Jesits Christ cleanseth us 
from all sin.’ ” “ Works of supererogation in 
the saints are impossible, as they themselves 
are only saved by grace. 

It is well known that there has long been 
a difference between the Churches of the 
East and of the West in regard to what is 
commonly called the Nicene Creed. The 
Orthodox Eastern Churches have adhered to 
the original form of the Creed, while in the 
West, by steps which it is not always easy 
to trace, the words “ and the Son” long since 
made their way into the Creed at the end 
of the clause, “ And I believe in the Holy 
Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life, who 

* The Archbishop of Syros and Tenos, quoted in the 
Appendix to the Report of the Russo-Greek Committee, 
1871. 

f Quoted in Paper No. III. of the Russo-Greek Com¬ 
mittee. 

t Quoted in Paper No. IT. of the Russo-Greek Com¬ 
mittee. 


proceedeth from the Father.” From this 
addition to the Creed arose the “ Filioque 
Controversy” (the added word in Latin be¬ 
ing filioque). The Greeks were right in 
claiming that what had been established in 
a General Council should not be altered by 
any lesser authority, but they have often 
gone further than this, to find in the added 
words an heretical meaning. At the Con¬ 
ferences held at Bonn in 1874 and 1875 a.d., 
under the presidency of Dr. von Dollinger, 
between members of the Eastern Orthodox, 
the Anglican, and the Old Catholic Churches, 
it was freely admitted by all that “ the ad¬ 
dition of the Filioque to the Creed was not 
made in a canonical manfter;” but after a 
full discussion, a statement as to the Proces¬ 
sion of the Holy Ghost was drawn up, in 
which the members of these three com¬ 
munions could cordially unite, showing that 
whilst it might be difficult, at this day, to 
restore the Nicene Creed in the West to its 
earlier form, so far as concerned Anglicans 
and Old Catholics, there was no doctrinal 
difference between them and the Eastern 
Orthodox. 

We should find in no Orthodox Eastern 
Church sculptured representations of our 
Lord or of the saints, it being believed 
that such may have an ill influence. But 
sacred pictures abound in churches and 
in private houses, and much honor is paid 
to these icons , as they are called, as serv¬ 
ing “ to remind us of the works of God and 
of His servants, to the intent that we, by 
looking upon them, may be stirred up to 
the imitation of holiness.” Perhaps, at 
times, among the more ignorant, the honor 
paid to the icons goes beyond what the 
Church would approve, and has a character 
of superstition. 

A clergyman of the American Church 
conversing with a learned Russian priest, 
expressed the objection that we should have 
to the manner in which the Virgin and 
other saints are addressed in hymns and 
prayers. The reply was that, “ to under¬ 
stand these properly, we should interpret 
them in the Oriental sense, regarding them 
as poetical apostrophe and pious ejacula¬ 
tions, in accordance with the fervid imagi¬ 
nation which characterizes the Orientals, 
rather than as set prayers, in the literal 
matter-of-fact way of people of the West.” 
“ Translated into English,” he went on to 
say, “ and taken in the sense in which you 
use such language, I should object to many 
expressions no less than you do; but to 
understand us as using these expressions 
in your sense is quite to misunderstand us.”g 
There is much force in this answer. We 
would ourselves wish to be judged, not by 
the meaning that might be given to our 
words, but by our intent in using them. 
The language of many of the prayers we 
use, expressing the deepest emotions of our 


\ Quoted in Paper No. III. of the Russo-Greek Com¬ 
mittee. 







EASTERN CHURCHES 


245 


EASTERN CHURCHES 


hearts, would doubtless seem very cold to an 
Oriental. 

The Orthodox Eastern Churches wish to 
offer to God a reasonable service, and so the 
Liturgy is celebrated in not less than ten 
different languages. In Greece and Russia 
more ancient forms of the language than 
that in common use are employed in Divine 
service, but the difference between ancient 
and modern Greek, between Sclavonic, or 
old Russian, and modern Russian, is less 
than is often imagined. We are thankful 
not to have too modern English in our 
Bibles and Prayer-Books. 

So far are the Eastern Churches from en¬ 
forcing clerical celibacy that parish Priests 
among them must be married men. 

The Armenian , the Syrian , the Coptic , and 
the Assyrian Churches. —Besides the Ortho¬ 
dox Eastern Churches, there are in the East 
several other Churches, occupying an ab¬ 
normal position. They have been accounted 
heretical in regard to so important a matter 
as the Incarnation of Our Blessed Lord. 
The first three of these Churches reject the 
Council of Chalcedon, in which was con¬ 
demned the error of those who confounded 
in Christ’s Person those natures which they 
should have distinguished. The Assj^rian 
Church has refused to accept the Council of 
Ephesus, condemning the error of dividing 
Christ into two persons. But although 
these Churches have erred in not acknowl¬ 
edging Councils owned as General by the 
Church Catholic, it is not certain that in 
the case of any one of them is there a real 
departure from the Faith as set forth in those 
Councils. 

In regard to all of them we need fuller 
and more definite information than we have. 
In the brief sketches of these Churches which 
follow, the facts are given according to 
those statements which seem best authenti¬ 
cated. 

The Armenian Church is the largest and 
most important of these Churches at this 
time. When the Council of Chalcedon met, 
in 451 a.d., the Armenians, being at war 
with the Persians and hard pressed by them, 
were not represented at the Council. The 
reports of what was done at Chalcedon were 
either erroneous in themselves, or were mis¬ 
understood by them, and so the Armenian 
Church denounced the Council of Chalcedon, 
while, as there is good reason for saying, 
holding substantially the Faith as there es¬ 
tablished. Time and again has it seemed 
that the division between the Eastern Ortho¬ 
dox and the Armenians was on the point of 
being healed, but political or race feeling 
has thus far always prevented. A well-in¬ 
formed theologian of the Russian Church 
states that “ it is quite certain that the Ar¬ 
menian Church separated from the Church 
Catholic, in the fifth century, in conse¬ 
quence of a misunderstanding, and that it is 
quite orthodox in the Faith. . . . If a union 
is possible between any two Churches, it 
is between the Eastern Orthodox and the 


Armenian, since they are only kept apart by 
external circumstances.”* 

The Armenian Church numbers at this 
time about 4,000,000, and is presided over 
by a Catholicos, or Supreme Patriarch, at 
Etchmiadzin, at the foot of Mount Ararat; 
three Patriarchs, at Constantinople, Sis, and 
Jerusalem ; twelve Archbishops, and thirty- 
two Bishops. About forty Sees are vacant, 
and in charge of Vicars. 

The Syrian , commonly called the Jacobite 
Church , after the name of Jacobus Bara- 
djeus, an early leader among them, would 
seem, like the Armenian Church, to have at 
once rejected the Council of Chalcedon and 
to have held fast to its teachings. There is 
much in regard to the history of this Church 
which is not clear, but its authorities disavow 
at present, and in behalf also of their prede¬ 
cessors, erroneous doctrines which, as they 
say, have been falsely ascribed to them. The 
parent body of the Syrian Church numbers 
at this time about 125,000 souls, under the 
care of a Patriarch residing at the convent 
of Der Zafran, near Mardin, in Mesopota¬ 
mia, and eleven Metrans, or Metropolitans. 

In India a branch of this Syrian Church 
exists, numbering about 120,000, with one 
Metran. These Syrians of India are often 
called “The Christians of St. Thomas,” 
they having a tradition that their ancestors 
were converted to the faith by the preaching 
of the Apostle St. Thomas. For many years 
they formed part of the Assyrian (or “ Nes- 
torian”) Church, of which we shall speak 
presently. At the close of the sixteenth 
century the Portuguese made efforts, by force 
and guile, to bring them into communion 
with Rome. After nearly one hundred 
years of subjection, a large part of them 
threw off the Roman yoke, and, obtaining a 
Bishop from the Syrian Church, considered 
themselves henceforth as forming part of it. 

The Coptic Church of Egypt is in full 
agreement and communion with the Syrian 
Church. Dioscorus, Patriarch of Alexan¬ 
dria, was, as his people thought, unjustly 
condemned at Chalcedon. They took sides 
with him, and henceforth the Copts, the de¬ 
scendants of the ancient inhabitants of 
Egypt, have been in a state of formal sepa¬ 
ration from the Church Catholic. The few 
members of the Orthodox Church in Egypt 
have been almost entirely of the Greek race. 
An “Association for the Furtherance of 
Christianity in Egypt” has recently been 
formed in England, one of whose chief aims 
is to promote education among the Copts. 
It is believed by many who have given the 
matter attention that, whatever may have 
been their case in the past, the Copts at the 
present day are not averse to the true Faith. 
The Coptic Church has a Patriarch, three 
Metropolitans, and ten Bishops at this time, 
and numbers about 200,000. 

The Abyssinian Church is part of the 
Coptic. It numbers not less, it is believed, 


* L’Union Chretienne, December 2,1866. 





EASTERN CHURCHES 


246 


EASTON 


than 1,500,000, and has at present an Arch¬ 
bishop and two Bishops. 

The Assyrian , often called the Nestorian 
Church, was in early days distinguished for 
its missionary zeal. In the eloquent words 
of Gibbon, “ From the conquest of Persia 
they carried their spiritual arms to the 
north, the east, and the south. In the 
sixth century . . . Christianity was success¬ 
fully preached to the Bactrians, the Huns, 
the Persians, the Indians, the Pers-Arme- 
nians, the Medes, and the Elamites ; the bar¬ 
baric Churches from the Gulf of Persia to 
the Caspian Sea were almost infinite. . . . 
The pepper coast of Malabar, and the isles 
of the sea, Socotra and Ceylon, were peopled 
with an increasing number of Christians. 
. . . In a subsequent age, the zeal of the 
Nestorians overleaped the limits which con¬ 
fined the ambition and curiosity both of the 
Greeks and Persians. ... In their progress 
by sea and land, the Nestorians entered 
China by the port of Canton, and the 
northern residence of Sigan. . . . Under 
the reign of the Caliphs, the Nestorian 
Church was diffused from China to Jerusa¬ 
lem and Cyprus, and their numbers, with 
those of the Jacobites, were computed to sur¬ 
pass the Greek and Latin communities.”* 
The Assyrian Church now is reduced to 
little, if any, over 75,000, under a Patri¬ 
arch at Kochanes, in Kurdistan, and twelve 
Metropolitans. 

In regard to the orthodoxy of the Assyr¬ 
ian Church, these words of the learned 
Bishop of Maryland, Bishop Whittingham, 
are most weighty: “Since there is reason 
to doubt whether the doctrine condemned 
by the Council of Ephesus, and, in conse¬ 
quence, by the whole Church throughout 
tne world, was held by Nestorius; since 
it is certain that it is not now held by the 
Churches known as Nestorian ; . . . since 
the Churches called Nestorian have con¬ 
stantly denied that they held the error they 
have been called on to forsake; since they 
profess their faith in the Catholic Creed, con¬ 
formably with that of the Catholic Church, 
they are not lightly to be rejected from the 
number of the Churches of Christ, but 
rather to be regarded as brethren long 
alienated, not without some fault on both 
sides.”f 

Romanized , or so-called u United ,> East¬ 
ern Christians. Of these there are about 
4,000,000 of the Greek Rite, chiefly in Aus¬ 
tria, 120,000 of the Armenian Rite, 15,000 
of the Syrian Rite in Turkey, and 120,000 
in India, about 5000 of the Coptic Rite, 
20,000 of the Chaldee Rite, and about 150,- 
000 Maronites. These, while they have been 
allowed to keep many of their ancient ways, 
are members of the Church of Rome, and 
do not constitute, in any real sense, “ East¬ 
ern Churches.” 

Rev. C. R. Hale, S.T.D. 

* Decline and Fall, chap. iv. 

t In a note to Palmer on the Church, Amer. edit., vol. 
i. p. 388. 


Easton, Diocese of. The Diocese of 
Easton comprises that portion of the State of 
Maryland, known as the “ Eastern Shore,” 
lying east of the Chesapeake Bay and the 
Susquehanna River; it is composed of the 
counties of Cecil, Kent, Queen Anne, 
Talbot, Caroline, Dorchester, Wicomico, 
Somerset, and Worcester. The Diocese of 
Maryland, of which Easton was originally a 
part, is the oldest Diocese but one in the 
American Church. Connecticut was or¬ 
ganized in April, 1783 a.d., and Maryland in 
August of the same year. The history of the 
Church in Maryland, however, goes back 
to a much earlier date than that. It was 
in the year 1629 a.d. that a colony of about 
one hundred persons, composed of members 
of the Church of England, made a settle¬ 
ment on Kent Island. We learn from the 
scant records of that settlement that pro¬ 
vision was made for the maintenance of 
religious services, and we know that a 
clergyman of the Church of England offi¬ 
ciated on Kent Island for some years prior 
to 1637 a.d. Our space forbids us to enter into 
the early history of the Church in Mary¬ 
land, so we will pass at once to the history of 
the Diocese of Easton. Soon after his con¬ 
secration Bishop Whittingham declared that 
“ The time would soon come when the in¬ 
terests of the Church would be furthered by 
a division of the Diocese.” He had always 
been an advocate of small Dioceses, and 
while a Presbyter in the Diocese of New 
York had published an article in defense of 
his views upon that subject, which had 
great weight in causing the first division of 
the Diocese of New York, and which has since 
done good service in promoting the same 
good work in other Dioceses. Though 
the Bishop gave expression to his views so 
soon after his consecration, they do not 
seem to have had any effect until the year 

1867 a.d. At the Diocesan Convention of 
that year a memorial was presented, asking 
“for the erection of the Eastern Shore into 
a separate and distinct Diocese.” The 
memorial was referred to a committee, who 
recommended that the request be granted. 
Acting upon this recommendation, the Con¬ 
vention voted to grant the request, the 
Bishop gave his consent, and there the mat¬ 
ter rested until the General Convention of 

1868 a.d. , when that body ratified the action 
of the Diocese of Maryland. The Bishop of 
Maryland called a Convention of the clergy 
and laity of the Eastern Shore to meet in 
Christ Church, Easton, on Thursday, the 
19th day of November, 1868 a.d., “then 
and there to assemble and organize as a 
new Diocese.” 

The Convention met on the day appointed. 
The opening sermon was preached by the 
Rev. John O. Barton. The Rev. John 
Crosdale was elected President, and the 
Rev. James L. Bryan, M.D., Secretary. 
Twenty-one clergymen and twenty-eight 
lay delegates, representing thirty-two incor¬ 
porated parishes and congregations, were 





EASTON 


247 


EASTON 


found to be present. “ Easton” was the 
name given to the new Diocese, and the as¬ 
sent of the Bishop and Standing Committee 
of Maryland to this name was announced. 
After the transaction of certain routine 
business, the Convention proceeded to the 
election of a Bishop, and the Rt. Rev. 
Henry C. Lay, D.D., LL.D., Missionary 
Bishop of Arkansas and the Indian Terri¬ 
tory, was chosen. The Rev. Henry M. 
Mason, D.D., who had taken an active in¬ 
terest in the division of the Diocese, had 
entered into rest before this meeting, and 
the Convention adopted resolutions of regret 
at his decease. The Constitution of the 
Diocese of Maryland was so amended as to 
adapt it to the use of the new Diocese, and 
resolutions respecting the separation from 
the Bishop and Diocese of Maryland were 
adopted and ordered to be spread upon the 
journal. The Episcopal fund was reported 
as pledged or paid to the amount of $41,- 
845, and the Bishop’s salary was fixed at 
$2500 per annum. After the transaction 
of some other business, Christ Church, 
Easton, was chosen as the place of meeting 
for the next Convention, and 26th of May, 
1869 a.d., appointed as the time. Upon the 
day appointed the clergy and laity assembled, 
but owing to the absence of the Bishop and 
the Standing Committee, in accordance 
with an informal arrangement previously 
made, the Convention adjourned until the 
9th of the following June. The Convention 
met pursuant to this adjournment. The 
opening sermon was preached by the 
Bishop. Sixteen clergymen and twenty- 
four lay delegates were in attendance. The 
Bishop in his address gave a detailed ac¬ 
count of his Episcopal labors from the 1st 
of April, when he surrendered his mission¬ 
ary jurisdiction of Arkansas. The address 
closed with specific recommendations un¬ 
der the following heads: “ Review of the 
Diocese,” “The Diocese of Maryland,” 
“ The Diocese Convention,” “ Convoca¬ 
tions,” “ Church Work in the Future,” and 
“Specific Recommendations.” Under the 
latter head the Bishop urged the attempt to 
sustain missionaries in every county, and 
the appropriation of offerings at Episcopal 
visitations to Diocesan missions. The Dio¬ 
cese was divided into three Convocations: 
the northern, comprising the counties of 
Cecil and Kent, containing seven clergy¬ 
men ; the middle, comprising Queen Anne, 
Caroline, Talbot, and Dorchester, contain¬ 
ing thirteen clergymen ; and the south¬ 
ern, comprising Wicomico, Somerset, and 
Worcester, with seven clergymen. These 
Convocations were made the subordinate 
missionary organization of the Diocese, and 
were to be composed of the rectors and 
assistant ministers of the counties contained 
in the Convocation, with two lay delegates 
from each parish. They were to meet at 
least three times a year. And at each meet¬ 
ing there was to be a mission service, and 
an offering made for Diocesan missions. 


Having traced the history of the Diocese 
from the preliminary steps taken towards 
its separation from the old Diocese to its 
organization, we have but little else to 
add. It has gone on quietly doing its 
appointed work, and those who have been 
identified with it from the beginning are 
satisfied with its quiet and steady progress, 
and feel that they have reason to thank God 
and take courage. If our space permitted, 
we would like to speak more in detail of the 
men who, under God, were the means of 
securing for us a separate Diocesan organi¬ 
zation. Of John Crosdale, the faithful 
priest and missionary, who spent his entire 
ministry in an obscure country parish in 
order to strengthen the things that remained 
and that were ready to die; of the faithful 
rector of St. Michael’s Parish, who canvassed 
the Diocese and raised the Episcopal fund, 
and of others whose labors in the same good 
cause were none the less zealous or effective. 
But we can only say of them all that 
they did their work well ; some of them 
still survive to see the good results of their 
labors, and the names of those who have 
fallen asleep will be held in everlasting 
remembrance. In conclusion, it may be 
said that, in spite of the declaration made 
in certain quarters that the Diocese of 
Easton is a failure, those who are familiar 
with her affairs are quite satisfied with the 
result of division, and see no reason for dis¬ 
couragement. "While the growth of the 
Diocese has not been startling, it has been 
real, and the following statement by the 
Bishop of what has been accomplished 
during the first twelve years of her exist¬ 
ence, while it proves that the growth of 
the Diocese has been steady and marked, 
will serve as a sufficient answer to the state¬ 
ments of those who, from an insufficient 
knowledge of the facts in the case, were led 
to take a different view of the matter : 

“ The nine counties on the Eastern Shore of 
Maryland were made a Diocese by reason of 
a geographical necessity. As a matter of 
fact and experience, it had proved impossible 
for the Bishop of Maryland, with the supe¬ 
rior claims of.the Western Shore, and the 
intervention of Chesapeake Bay, to render 
the necessary offices to the less significant 
region. It does not at all follow that the 
like course should be pursued where there 
is no like necessity, and where nobody is 
neglected in the Episcopal ministrations. 

“ Furthermore, I suppose that none of our 
people anticipated that our Diocese would 
be a splendid example to others. It is penin¬ 
sular, no tide of travel or emigration flow¬ 
ing through. It has no cities, no towns of 
more than 3000 inhabitants. It has no ex¬ 
tensive manufactures, no foreign trade. In 
a word, it is emphatically a rural Diocese, 
made up of farms of moderate extent and of 
the villages necessary to supply the local 
trade. As for population, it has 157,000, 
which is less (according to late estimates) 
than that of the one city of Washing- 





EASTON 


248 


EASTON 


ton in the old Diocese from which it was 
taken. 

“ Reasonable people must see that we can¬ 
not vie with Dioceses of large numbers and 
resources, having the centralized wealth of 
a city to sustain Diocesan institutions. . . . 

“ So far as we ourselves are concerned, we 
are not at all discomposed, and would not 
care to make reply. But inasmuch as our 
example is imported into the general ques¬ 
tion, it seems right to demur to this dispar¬ 
agement. It has occurred to me that the 
fairest test of success or failure would be to 
take the roll of the parishes as I found it at 
the first Convention over which I presided 
(viz., that of 1869 a.d.), and to state in each 
instance the gain or loss, if any, in those par¬ 
ticulars which can be computed and meas¬ 
ured. I freely grant that success and fail¬ 
ure in the highest and truest sense cannot 
be thus computed. Yet a certain signifi¬ 
cance attaches to the outward manifestations 
of zeal and enterprise. Let us, then, go 
over in order the list of the parishes. I 
omit none,—not even those which exist only 
on paper. What are the changes within the 
last twelve years ? 

“1. St. John’s, Caroline. —A new church 
builded at Greensboro’, and rectory im¬ 
proved. Increase, $3000. 

“2. St. Mary’s, Whitechapel. — Revived 
after a vacancy in the rectorship of a cen¬ 
tury. Chapel building at Denton. Increase, 
$1500. 

“ 3. Augustine. —Nominal. No change. 

“ 4. North Elk. —Divided into two. Two 
churches builded in Port Deposit and on the 
fishing shore, and one rectory purchased. 
Increase, $10,000. 

“ 5. North Sassafras. — Parish church re- 
builded. Church builded at Cecilton. In¬ 
crease, $10,000. 

“ 6. Trinity, Elkton. —Rectory purchased. 
Increase, $3000. 

“ 7. Dorchester. —New church on Taylor’s 
Island. Increase, $3000. 

“ 8. East New Market. —No change. 

“9. Great Choptank. — Chapel at Maple 
Dam; other churches restored. Increase, 
$ 2000 . 

“ 10. Vienna. —No change. 

“ 11. Chester. —Parish church rebuilt and 
other improvements. Increase, $6000. 

“ 12. I. V. Parish. —No change. 

“13. North Kent. —New church at Mill¬ 
ington. Rectory added. Increase, $6000. 

“ 14. St. Paul’s, Kent. —No change. 

“ 15. Shrewsbury. — Parish church re¬ 
stored. New church at Galena. Increase, 
$6000. 

“ 16. Kent Island. —New chapel. Increase, 
$1500. 

“17. St. Luke’s, Queen Anne. — Parish 
church restored. New church at Sudlers- 
ville. Increase, $5000. 

“ 18. St. Paul’s, Queen Anne. —No change, 
except the establishment of an excellent 
parish school and some restorations of church. 

“ 19. Wye. —No change. 


“20. Coventry. — Rectory builded. In¬ 
crease, $2000. 

“21. Somerset. —New church at Monie. 
Increase, $3000. 

“ 22. Wicomico. —Nominal. No change. 

“ 23. Pocomoke. — Rectory purchased. 
New church at Naswaddux. Increase, 
$2500. 

“24. St. Michael’s. —Divided into three 
self-supporting parishes. Parish church re- 
builded. Two new churches at Cleburne 
and Longwoods. Rectory builded. In¬ 
crease, $20,000. 

“ 25. St. Peter’s, Talbot. —Parish church 
enlarged and restored at a cost of $10,000. 
New congregation formed under the Bishop, 
with two chapels (shanties, to be sure). Rec¬ 
tor} 1 ' builded. Orphanage established. In¬ 
crease, $25,000. This includes partial en¬ 
dowment of Home for Friendless Children. 

“26. Holy Trinity, Oxford. — Nominal. 
Served from Whitemarsh. 

“ 27. Whitemarsh. — Chapel builded at 
Oxford. Increase, $1500. 

“28. St. Matthew’s. — Nominal. No 
change. 

“ 29. Spring Hill. —Divided into two par¬ 
ishes. 

“30. Stepney. —Nominal. No change. 

“31. All Hallows. —No change, except 
restorations. Increase, $1000. 

“32. Worcester. —New church at Ocean 
City. Increase, $1000. 

“To sum up these ‘simple annals of the 
poor,’ nowhere has there been any loss. A 
few parishes on the list are nominal. A few 
others exhibit no material gain. In all the 
rest there has been substantial advance. 
During the twelve years the communicants 
have increased one-half; the parochial clergy 
one-third. The missionary expenditure is 
three or four times as much as before divis¬ 
ion. No stated pecuniary aid has come 
from without. 

“ I respectfully submit that if the prosper¬ 
ity of the whole can be measured by the pros¬ 
perity of its parts, the Diocese of Easton is 
not a failure, to be held up as a warning to 
others. 

“ The clergy tell me that my estimates are 
below the mark. I may add that out of 
sixty-one churches and chapels, fifty-eight 
have all the seats free. 

“ I have endeavored to emancipate myself 
from the influence of imagination, ‘that 
delusive faculty ever obtruding beyond its 
sphere.’ I have purposely weakened my 
statement by including a number of parishes 
which have no real existence. 

“ The facts may readily be verified.” 

Statistics. — Clergy, 36; parishes, 37; 
church edifices, 62; families, 1537; indi¬ 
viduals, 7130; baptisms, adults, 21, infants, 
333, total, 354; confirmed, 80; communi¬ 
cants, 2683; marriages, 90; burials, 217; 
parish schools, teachers, 3, scholars, 58; 
Sunday-school teachers, 224, scholars, 1634 ; 
contributions, $44,640.15. 

Rev. J. Worral Larmour. 




ECCLESIASTES 


249 


ECONOMY 


Ecclesiastes. One of the books written 
by Solomon. It contains many difficulties 
which have proved to be a great puzzle to 
commentators. So much so that though its 
inspiration and Canonical authority have 
been admitted, yet it has been denied that 
it was written by Solomon. The internal 
difficulties are confessedly very great; but 
objections can readily be mustered against 
any theory of interpretation, so that it may 
very well have been the genuine work of 
Solomon the Preacher, the Son of David, 
king in Jerusalem. It has been alleged 
that the Aramaisms (words and phrases from 
one of the dialects of Babylonia) number 
one hundred, and show a late date,—later by 
four hundred years and more than Solomon’s 
time,—probably after the return from the 
Babylonian exile. The reply reduces the 
number of Aramaisms to eight, and denies 
that they and the style are out of harmony 
with Solomon’s reign, for the Hebrew was a 
singularly poor language, and was better 
fitted for sententious, pithy aphorisms than 
for any diffuse discourse. It is alleged that 
the tone is not such as Solomon could have 
felt, but so far from that, it is directly in the 
line of thought a man who had a large share 
of insight and keenness would feel after hav¬ 
ing blunted his spiritual perceptions and then 
have repented. The first tender devoutness 
is lost, the trustful innocence has disappeared, 
and the conclusion is that of a man who, 
having tried everything in his reach of 
human joys and earthly excesses, at last finds 
the sum of the whole matter to be, Fear 
God and keep His commandments. It is, 
however, a result in words identical with, 
but in tone dissimilar to, the trustful, “ The 
Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, a 
good understanding have they that do there¬ 
after, the praise of it endureth forever.” It 
is a shock to our ideas of truthfulness to sup¬ 
pose that a book written under the name of 
Solomon, by a later writer, could be admitted 
into the Canon without a comment or note 
explanatory of it. It might be defended in 
ordinary literary work, but it is absolutely 
opposed to any right conception of the fact 
that the Canon of Scripture was formed by 
men, but by the defending and guiding in¬ 
fluence of the Holy Ghost. 

The truest appreciation of the book is 
found in considering it the Confessions, in 
a kind of mental debate, of one who, having 
had wisdom for spiritual things given him, 
debased it to searching the depths of earthly 
happiness; and is in accord with what one 
in Solomon’s position—having wealth, yet 
corruptions in the state and society destroy¬ 
ing his pleasure; having royal power, yet 
seeing it thwarted ; enjoying life keenly, yet 
having its cup dashed from his lips—would 
acknowledge to be the sum of his experience. 
In fact, the objections are more ingenious 
and plausible than really sound ; since we 
know that conclusions drawn from internal 
evidence not buttressed by external facts are 
very treacherous, as they are based upon ar¬ 


bitrary assumptions that may be wholly out 
of accord with the real contents of the book. 
The Salomonic authorship may be considered 
as established. 

Ecclesiasticus. A book of the Apocry¬ 
pha, written by Jesus, the son of Sirach, 190- 
170 b.c., and translated from the Hebrew by 
his grandson (130 b.c.). The book was com¬ 
posed at Jerusalem, and was translated in 
Egypt. It is based upon and imitates the 
Proverbs, and was evidently the work of a 
very devout and earnest student of the Scrip¬ 
tures. It is well worth reading and study, 
since it is full of practical wisdom. It was 
considered Canonical by a few writers, and 
was quoted by them freely,—Clement of 
Alexandria, Origen, Cyprian. It Is quoted 
by Augustine and Jerome, but as useful, ex¬ 
cellent, but not in the Canon. 

Economist. An officer in some Irish 
Cathedrals, who is appointed to manage the 
common Cathedral fund, to see to necessary 
repairs, to pay Church officers, etc. 

Economy. The management of a house¬ 
hold by a steward, but used to mean a dis¬ 
pensation, as the Christian Economy ad¬ 
ministered by the Son of God. It was so 
used by the Apostle St. Paul (Eph. i. 10): 
“ That in the dispensation of the fullness of 
times he might gather together in one all 
things in Christ.” It also was used to 
signify the Apostolic office: “I have in¬ 
trusted to me a dispensation” (as a steward) 
(1 Cor. ix. 17). “For His body’s sake, which 
is the Church whereof I am made a min¬ 
ister, according to the dispensation of God” 
(Col. i. 25). But the Fathers generally 
keep it to refer to the administration of re¬ 
demption by the Son of God. St. Atha¬ 
nasius speaks of the Economy of the Cross, 
of His blood-shedding, of His human na¬ 
ture. St. Basil of the Economy of our God 
and Saviour in man’s behalf, which is the 
calling from falling and the restoration to 
the household of God. So, too, Gregory 
Nazianzen: “But when we speak of God 
as saving, avenging, justifying, as the God 
of peace, of Abraham, of Isaac, and of 
Jacob, or of all Israel, as spiritual and see¬ 
ing God, these phrases are used of the 
Economy.” Such a term could also readily 
fall into Gnostic phraseology very readily, 
and was so misused. But there was another 
use of the word too. It was used to express 
the plan by which the Catechist limited (or 
was limited by the Church) the amount of in¬ 
struction which would be intrusted to the 
catechumens. They were intrusted “ accord¬ 
ing to the stewardship,” with varying de¬ 
grees of knowledge in Christian doctrine. It 
lost this sense with the disappearance of the 
catechetical classes. It has been very se¬ 
riously debated how far this concealment 
was carried, and whether the catechumens 
were purposely misled or had unfairly with¬ 
held from them the proportion of the Faith. 
To us now it is by no means so important, 
still, in a lesser degree, it is a very impor¬ 
tant question how far a teacher, having to 




EDIFICATION 


250 


ELECTION 


attract those ignorant of Church doctrine 
to receive it, should ignore differences, and 
dwell upon the agreements and harmonies 
of the truths held in common. So Clem¬ 
ent of Alexandria dwells upon the apparent 
agreement of Platonic philosophy with 
Christian truth. St. Paul’s speeches at 
Lystra and at Athens give the fundamental 
rule to be followed. What we need is a 
deeper study of irenics, not of polemics; 
there has been too much of that. 

The word Economy has returned into use, 
latterly, in its older theological sense. 

Edification. A building up ; a growth 
in grace, in love, in faith, in all Christian 
virtues by the help of the Holy Ghost. It 
is not identical with sanctification, which 
has a larger meaning. It is rather applied 
to individual than to communal develop¬ 
ment and growth, though this sense is very 
frequent in Holy Scripture. It includes the 
idea of instruction, and this has often been 
wrongly made the exclusive import of the 
word. Edification refers for its primal force 
to house-building. Hence this word is used, 
ekodome, by St. Paul in 1 Cor. iii., to de¬ 
scribe a spiritual building, and often else¬ 
where. Ekodomos is used in Acts iv. 11 
as a builder, an edifier. And this term 
wherever used implies man’s co-operation. 
So the discipline of the Church is for edify¬ 
ing, “building up” the Church. The teach¬ 
ing in the Church is for edification, Apostles, 
Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors, Teachers,— 
i.e., government and instruction for the same 
end, “ till we all come into the unity of 
the Faith and of the knowledge of the Son 
of God, . . . may grow up unto Him in all 
things which is the Head, even Christ, from 
whom the whole body fitly joined together 
and compacted by that which every joint sup- 
plieth according to the effectual working in 
the measure of every part maketh increase 
of the bod} 1, unto the edifying of itself in 
love.” The growth in all virtuous and godly 
living, the example of patience, courage, 
love, of all the Christian virtues, is edify¬ 
ing,— i.e ., it builds up others, who see it and 
who are influenced by our conduct. There¬ 
fore edification comes by the indwelling of 
the Holy Ghost, and is in a sort the work 
of confirmation, which builds us as conse¬ 
crated stones into God’s Temple, and by 
which we are built up in our most holy Faith, 
and through the gifts thus come to us by it 
are edifying others in the truth. The unity 
of the Church and our own union with it 
in the power and grace of the Holy Ghost 
are the means of our receiving edification 
and contributing to the edification of others. 
The compactest building is best built. The 
closest communion in the Church is the 
truest edification, for it is most deeply bound 
up in the graces of the Spirit. 

Elder. In Holy Scripture, the office of 
the Presbyter (from which the word Priest 
is formed by contraction), who exercised a 
spiritual function. In scriptural usage and 
in Church history such a person as a lay 


Elder is an impossible person ; the words 
contradict each other. The first hint of 
such an officer was given by Calvin. 

Election. I. The title of the XVII. “Ar¬ 
ticle of Religion” is, “ Of Predestination and 
Election.” The words are used as though 
they were synonymous, and the first sentence 
is a definition of their meaning. “ Predesti¬ 
nation to life is the everlasting purpose of 
God, whereby (before the foundations of the 
world were laid) He hath constantly de¬ 
creed by His counsel, secret to us, to deliver 
from curse and damnation those whom He 
hath chosen ( elegit ) in Christ out of man¬ 
kind, and to bring them by Christ to ever- i 
lasting salvation.” After enlarging upon 
the last clause of this sentence, the Article 
goes on to state the comfort and the danger 
which attend the consideration of the doc¬ 
trine, and closes with an appeal to the gen¬ 
eral (generaliter —universally) promises of 
God as set forth in Holy Scripture. The 
word “elect” occurs also in the Collect for 
All-Saints’ day. In the English Prayer- 
Book it is also found in the Office for Bap¬ 
tism, “Thy faithful and elect children;” 
and in the Catechism, “ me and all the elect 
people of God.” The natural question is, 
how these different uses of the term agree 
with each other and with the doctrine of 
Holy Scripture. For as the terms, and 
therefore the doctrines of predestination and 
election, occur in the Scriptures, all Chris¬ 
tians must hold some “doctrine” upon the 
subject, and the question for us is, whether 
what we hold is the doctrine of Holy Scrip¬ 
ture. 

In the first place, however, it is well to 
remember that questions about fate and fore¬ 
knowledge, providence and free-will, are not 
confined to any time or class of men. “ The 
Essenes among the Jews, Zeno and the. 
Stoics, and the followers of Mohammed 
were all rigid predestinarians, believing 
that all the affairs of the world and the ac¬ 
tions of the human race were ordered by an 
eternal and inexorable decree.” St. Augus¬ 
tine, in the fourth century, was the great 
exponent of the doctrine in the Church. 
Owing to his authority and influence, it was 
the more general doctrine of the Western 
Church. After St. Augustine, its great ex¬ 
pounder was St. Thomas Aquinas. It was 
the doctrine of Zwinglius and John Calvin. 
It is natural that the questions which it in¬ 
volves should arise whenever men think at 
all, but it is certain that when they depend 
entirely upon their own reason and knowl¬ 
edge they will fall into one of two errors. 
Reasoning from the sovereignty of God they 
exclude the freedom of man, which they 
cannot reconcile with it, and are led into fa¬ 
talism. Reasoning from the freedom of 
man, they are led to deny the sovereignty 
of God. 

II. The Christian faith does not explain 
to us the problems which we discover in na¬ 
ture and in ourselves, but it reveals to us 
Him in whom God and man are reconciled, 




ELECTION 


251 


ELECTION 


and by whom evil is conquered and man 
delivered from it. It does not remove the 
darkness, hut it throws light upon us and 
around us to guide us. It does not explain 
God’s eternal purposes, but it declares to us 
one purpose and one “decree,” the coming 
of the Son of God for man’s salvation. 
“ I will declare the decree. Thou art my 
Son. This day have I begotten Thee” (Ps. 
ii. 7). If we are to understand the meaning 
of “the election” of God, we must begin 
from the ground of Christian faith, and not 
narrow that faith by some preconceived no¬ 
tion of the doctrine. 

Another principle is as necessary. The 
Old Testament and the New are one, and 
the union of them is in Christ. The Old 
foretells Him and prepares for Him. The 
New reveals Him. The New is the fulfill¬ 
ment of the Old. The faith of the Old Tes¬ 
tament is the faith of expectation, believing 
the promises of God, looking for Christ. 
The faith of the New Testament is the faith 
of possession, having Christ. The Old and 
the New will use the same words even, and 
their meaning will unite in Christ. 

III. We find this word election, a choice, 
in frequent use in the Old Testament. It is 
perhaps unfortunate that the more frequent 
word in the authorized version of the Old 
Testament is choose, chosen ; and elect is 
rare, while in the New elect is used in a 
large proportion of cases. But it will help 
to clear our view if we fix it in mind 
that the words are translations of the same 
word. The chosen are the elect. Election is 
choice. 

In the Old Testament the choice or elec¬ 
tion of God falls upon men, cities, peoples, 
inanimate things. He chooses “ a place to 
set His name there” (Neh. i. 9), one man 
for a king (Deut. xvii. 15), a people to be 
His people (Deut. vii. 6, 7), a tribe to be 
His priests (Deut. x^xi. 5), a family to be 
High-Priests (Ps. cv. 26). Israel is His 
chosen generation (Ex. xix. 5, 6), Abra¬ 
ham His servant, David His servant (Ps. 
lxxviii. 70), Israel His elect (Isa. xlv. 4). God 
has a purpose, and with that purpose in 
view He chooses men to carry it out, while 
as regards that purpose He passes by and 
puts aside others. That purpose becomes 
more and more clear as time goes on. It is the 
purpose which was indicated by the promise 
made in the Garden of Eden, and repeated to 
Abraham, and again to David. Abraham 
is chosen with reference to that purpose, and 
after him the people Israel. Israel was 
therefore elect “ according to the purpose” of 
God, and for that purpose elect to special 
privileges. Pharaoh stood in the way of 
that purpose and went down before it. Esau 
was set aside and set himself aside, and in 
comparison with his brother and with re¬ 
ference to this special purpose of God is 
“hated” (Rom. ix. 14). This, therefore, is 
election or choice in the Old Testament, the 
choice of the people Israel, and of men and 
things belonging to them for the carrying 


out of God’s one purpose of blessing the 
world “in Christ.” In the way of that 
purpose their choice to special blessings ; a 
choice which was indicated by God and 
claimed by them in the rite of circumcision. 
By which rite they entered upon an inherit¬ 
ance not only of temporal but of spiritual 
and eternal blessings,—unless indeed they 
forfeited them. 

IV. The purpose of God with Israel was 
fulfilled when “ of them Christ came, who 
is over all God blessed forever.” That pur¬ 
pose was His eternal purpose, and had been 
declared before Abraham in the Garden. 
It entered “the parenthesis of the Law” 
(Rom. v. 20) with Abraham and passed out 
through the “broken wall of partition” 
(Eph. ii. 14) into its fulfillment in Christ. 
The Kingdom of Israel is fulfilled in the 
Kingdom of Christ, the law in the Gospel 
“ preached to every creature,” the election 
of Israel in the Church of Christ, “which 
is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth 
all in all.” The same principles underlie 
the old dispensation and the new. The re¬ 
lation of one to the other throughout is de¬ 
fined in our Lord’s words, “ I am not come 
to destroy but to fulfill” (St. Matt. v. 17). 

Two of St. Paul’s Epistles may be said to 
deal especially with this subject of the elec¬ 
tion and eternal purpose of God. The 
Epistle to the Romans is often appealed to 
as though it taught the narrowest doctrine 
of individual election. If we will remind 
ourselves that it was manifestly written to 
rebuke the narrowness and exclusiveness of 
those Jewish Christians who would have 
claimed the Church as the special heritage 
of Judaism, and to show how God’s pur¬ 
pose reached out towards all who would be¬ 
lieve in Him, we will agree with the early 
Church, which read it as though it breathed 
the spirit directly opposed to exclusiveness 
and narrowness, the very spirit of liberty 
and liberality. It sets before us the purpose 
of God and the election of God according 
to that purpose, but it shows us how that 
purpose extended to all men, and how it is 
being accomplished in its fullness by Christ. 
Love and hate, honor and dishonor, calling, 
glory, and mercy, and hardening and cast¬ 
ing off and destruction are defined by this 
purpose of God and explain the relation of 
men to it (Rom. ix.). 

Next after the Epistle to the Romans St. 
Paul wrote that to the Ephesians, and the 
two are closely connected by common words 
and thoughts. In both he bases his argu¬ 
ment on the eternal purpose of God as it is 
revealed in Christ, but in Ephesians he ad¬ 
vances a step in the development of the 
thought which he had sketched in the Ro¬ 
mans, and the subject of the Epistle is, the 
Church as the Body of Christ and the 
body of the elect, “ whom God hath chosen 
in Him before the foundation of the world, 
that we should be holy and blameless before 
Him in love, having predestinated us to 
adoption by Jesus Christ to Himself, ac- 





ELECTION 


252 


ELECTION 


cording to the good purpose of His will, to 
the praise of the glory of His grace” (i. 7), 
“being predestinated according to His pur¬ 
pose, who maketh all things according to 
the council of His will” (i. 11). If we use 
the Epistle to the Galatians as a preface to 
the Homans, we will therefore have in these 
three a chain of thought like this,—first, in 
Galatians, the setting aside of the old sys¬ 
tem of the law ; then, in Romans, the transi¬ 
tion stage, the transfer of the rights of the 
old election to the new ; and last, in Ephe¬ 
sians, the full purpose of God being fully 
accomplished in the sight of angels and of 
men by the Church. 

The Epistle to the Ephesians is perhaps 
the most systematic and complete treatise of 
any of the Epistles. The thoughts and ar¬ 
guments can be arranged without violence 
in a kind of concentric circles, of which the 
centre and sun of the system is Christ. 
“ In Him” all things are summed up in 
heaven and in earth, past, present, and to 
come. In Him the purpose of God is re¬ 
vealed and in Him accomplished. From 
Him the influence goes put and fills the cir¬ 
cle of the Church, which is “ His fullness,” 
by which His “ wisdom is made known to 
the powers in heavenly places,” which, 
“ with all saints,” as a body comprehends 
His surpassing love, and in which and by 
which the glory that goes out from Him is 
returned to Him. Then that circle widens 
into another, of the members of that body 
who are made members of it by the one 
baptism, hold the one faith, belong to the 
one Lord, worship one God the Father. 
By that union by our baptism God’s pre¬ 
destination of us is manifested and His elec¬ 
tion effected. The reason and final cause of 
His choice of us is “ the good pleasure of 
His will.” The fact of our election is 
proved by His act of calling and receiving 
us. Then this circle widens again into the 
practical lessons of the duties which belong 
to them that are members of the body of 
Christ and elect of God. If we bear in 
mind and add to all this the further thought 
that God is “ the living God” and “ the 
God of the living,” and that therefore what¬ 
ever is His “hath eternal life,” so that, as 
the purpose of God is from eternity, so it 
goes on through eternity, we will have a 
fair idea of this wonderful Epistle, and of 
what St. Paul meant by election. The 
Church of God is the body of the elect. 
Election is the choice of men according to 
the will of God to special privileges for the 
carrying out of His eternal purpose, and 
with the purpose included of their present 
and eternal blessing. 

One fact will show us how true the view is 
which identifies the Church with the body 
of the elect, viz.: that the Apostles con¬ 
stantly address the whole body of the 
Christians as elect and holy. St. John ad¬ 
dresses them as “in Him that is true ” St. 
Peter salutes them as “ elect according to 
the foreknowledge of God,” and addresses 


them as “ a chosen generation, a royal priest¬ 
hood,” quoting the very words addressed to 
the Church in the wilderness, and bids them 
“make their calling and election sure.” 
And the idea of all St. Paul’s Epistles is the 
same, as can be seen by reading the saluta¬ 
tions to them. They are addressed as a body. 
There is no if or hesitation. They have 
these rights and privileges. The one ques¬ 
tion is not whether they are sanctified and 
elect of God, but whether they live accord¬ 
ingly. 

Otherwise, unless they “ work out their 
salvation,” and “ make their calling and 
election sure,” their present gifts shall be¬ 
come their condemnation, and they “ become 
castaways,” even as “ all our fathers were 
baptized into Moses, and ate the same spir¬ 
itual food and drank the same spiritual drink. 
For they drank of that spiritual Rock that 
followed them, and that Rock was Christ. 
But with many of them God was not well 
pleased: for they were overthrown in the 
wilderness. Wherefore let him that thinketh 
he standeth take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor. x.). 
But, on the other hand, “ by their fruits ye 
shall know them.” “ The fruits of the Spirit 
are in all goodness, and righteousness, and 
truth.” And by them “ the Spirit witnesseth 
with our spirit that we are the children of 
God. And if children then heirs. Heirs of 
God and joint heirs with Christ.” So when 
“ the Lord shall present unto Himself a 
glorious Church,” “an entrance shall be 
ministered unto you abundantly into the 
everlasting Kingdom of our Lord and Sa¬ 
viour Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. i. 11). 

V. This view of election leaves many 
questions unanswered of which we would be 
glad to know the answers, but which we do 
not and cannot, because they have not been 
revealed. But it has this advantage,—that 
it does not profess to be wise above what is 
written ; and this also,—that it does not need 
to explain away anything that is written 
either in the Old Testament or the New. It 
was the view which was accepted in the 
Church before St. Augustine, and is now the 
generally accepted view in the Church of 
England and in our own Church. It will 
not satisfy those who are determined to 
have a logical theology, even though they 
come to conclusions like those of Calvin 
when he said of his own dogma, “It is a 
horrible decree indeed.” But it will satisfy 
Christian faith. 

It only remains to inquire whether this 
view of election, which identifies the body of 
the elect with the Church of Christ, agrees 
with the doctrines and formularies of the 
Church. The view which would give a Cal- 
vinistic meaning to the XVII. Article is neg¬ 
atived by the fact that the language of that 
article is of Lutheran and not of Calvinistic 
origin, and was drawn up before the Cal¬ 
vinistic system had made any headway in 
England, by the fact that thorough-going 
Calvinists have never been satisfied with 
its language, and at one time made seri- 





ELEMENTS 


253 


ELEVATION 


ous efforts to change it. But the strong¬ 
est argument is that the Calvinistic inter¬ 
pretation cannot he made to harmonize with 
other articles even, and still less with other 
formularies. In the Collect for All-Saints’ 
day, and in the Church of England offices 
for Baptism and the Catechism, “the elect” 
is synonymous with “ the baptized,” and 
though the word is omitted in our office, the 
idea is the same throughout,—that by bap¬ 
tism this child “ is made the member of 
Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor 
of the Kingdom of Heaven,” by God’s “good 
will towards him.” And in the Holy Com¬ 
munion, “ Christ died for thee” is asserted 
to each communicant. And throughout the 
services of the Church the same idea pre¬ 
vails and underlies them all,—that those who 
believe and are baptized are numbered with 
the elect and are in the ark of salvation. 
Now let them see to it that they “make 
their calling and election sure.” 

Authorities: Wordsworth on Epistles, 
Browne, Burnet, Forbes, on Articles, Faber 
on Election. Rev. L. W. Gibson. 

Elements. The outward and visible signs 
in the Sacraments, so called both because 
water, wine, and bread are simple substances, 
and because they are of the very essentials 
of a complete Sacrament. They are the 
channel of conveyance, the sign and the seal 
of the Sacrament. How God chooses to use 
them we cannot tell. It is a mystery; but 
that He does so use them He has repeatedly 
taught us, and we have but to use them as 
He appoints : water to the mystical washing 
away of sin, bread and wine for giving us 
the Body and Blood of our risen Lord, 
“ whereby He does assure us of His favor and 
goodness towards us; and that we are very 
members incorporate in the mystical Body 
of His Son, . . . and are also heirs through 
hope of His everlasting kingdom.” No 
baptism can be administered otherwise than 
by water, nor the Holy Communion other¬ 
wise than with bread and wine. These are 
elementary to the administration of the Sac¬ 
raments. 

Elements ; human and divine in Holy 
Scripture. In the discussions so rife at pres¬ 
ent about all parts of religion, there is a sin¬ 
gular omission to weigh well the different 
elements which make it up. It is of God, 
and so divine. It is for man, and so must suit, 
and sympathize with, his nature at all points. 
It is lived in and assumed by man, and so 
.there is mingled in it a human element. As 
a document perfect and flawless when it 
issues from the author’s pen, by repeated and 
careless copying becomes filled with errors 
and varying readings, and sometimes with 
perversions, which yet do not destroy, though 
may nominally impair their own authen¬ 
ticity, and which all point by their varying 
errors to the true text, so is religion. Its 
Divine authorship is overlaid or perverted 
in minute things which amount to real 
errors, if they do not compensate each other 
or are not eliminated with care by the 


human elements. This mixture of the human 
and Divine is most completely exhibited in 
the Church, which is the Body of Christ and 
yet is made up of men, and in the Holy 
Scriptures, which are inspired by God and 
yet were intrusted to men to write and to 
transmit. Indeed, we bear about in our body 
the same wonderful com mixtion,—our souL 
the Breath of God, our bodies of dust. 

Inspiration takes and uses men for its pur¬ 
poses, as heralds, declarers, accurate record¬ 
ers, and mouth-pieces for its messages. It 
does not destroy, but it sanctifies and greatly 
magnifies the powers of such men. Isaiah in¬ 
spired by the same Holy Spirit did not speak 
as did Jeremiah or Daniel. Balaam divinely 
directed by the same Holy Ghost was not 
more willing to bless the People than the 
High-Priest was to prophesy of the death of 
Christ as a blessing for all men. David 
sang by the Holy Ghost, but so did Isaiah. 
And they were preserved from error in any 
way; their own natural idiom He used to 
accurately convey His messages, whether of 
mercy or of warning, of love, and of peace, 
or His revelations. There was the human 
element. Each man, with his capacities and 
devout or indevout temper, his command of 
language, peculiarly his own,—this man with 
all his traits of character was chosen and 
used by that one and eternal Spirit of God. 

The Church receives the inspired record, 
but is herself founded upon the Resurrection 
of Christ, each member being united to 
Him by baptism, and bound up with his 
brother by the double bond of a natural and 
spiritual brotherhood. The Head, Christ, 
is immortal, the members of Christ are now 
mortal. He is sinless, they are struggling 
with sin. He is ever present, and educates, 
feeds, and reconciles us, yet we are restless, 
oblivious, willful, and ungrateful, still the 
bond is never broken between the Head and 
His body, which is to grow in holiness. 

The omission to comprehend these two 
apparently conflicting yet actually ever¬ 
present facts both in inspiration, the Church 
of God, and our own nature leads many into 
fundamental errors upon religion and the 
soul’s relation to God, and through Him to 
his neighbor. 

Elevation. The elements of bread and 
wine in Canon of the Mass in the Roman 
Church, after consecration, and for the pur¬ 
pose of adoring them. It was an innova¬ 
tion introduced in the twelfth century, and 
afterwards defined by a rubric in 1271 a.d. 
by Gregory X., enjoining the celebrant and 
people to kneel and adore. There was an 
elevation of the elements in the earliest Lit¬ 
urgies, also after consecration, which was 
made with the words “ Holy things for holy 
places” (according to Archdeacon Free¬ 
man). Neither the later nor the earlier ele¬ 
vations are sanctioned in the Prayer-Book ; 
nor are they consonant with the leading 
feeling of our Liturgy. The Article 
XXVIII. closes with this sentence: “The 
sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was not by 





ELOHIM 


254 


EMANATION 


Christ’s ordinance reserved, carried about, 
lifted up, or worshiped.” It was a mere 
deduction of common logic from the pre¬ 
vious rejection, in the Article, of the Homan 
figment of transubstantiation. 

Elohim. God. One of the names by 
which He was known to the Jew, and the 
first name used by Moses. “ In the beginning 
Elohim made the heavens and the earth.” 
It is a plural noun, and when used in He¬ 
brew with a singular verb always refers to 
the Creator ; with a plural verb it may refer 
to the false gods and idols. It is translated 
God, while Jehovah (Jah) is translated by 
the word Lord. The word Elohim means 
mighty one, strong one (and is referred to the 
Messiah in Isaiah ix. 5), while the root 
of Jehovah is Jah, the Living One. The 
plural form, Elohim, then wraps up the 
doctrine of the Holy Trinity, while the 
singular, Jehovah, sets forth the self-exist¬ 
ence of God. The use of the name God 
thus in the first chapter of Genesis is very 
significant when compared with the first 
verses of St. John’s Gospel, and we can un¬ 
derstand why these words, “ let us make 
man in our image;” “behold, the man is 
become as one of us, to know good and evil,” 
could be used by Moses, whose language is 
ever supposed to teach the unity of God in 
person as well as in nature; but he does 
teach really the Unity and the Trinity in 
the famous Shema: “ Hear, oh Israel, the 
Jehovah Elohim is one Elohim.” Keep¬ 
ing these facts in mind we can easily see 
why Moses could use both names, and we 
shall have a ready answer to those who ob¬ 
serve only that Moses did use these names 
separately, and so conclude that he compiled 
his first book out of two separate documents, 
one in which the name Elohim was used, 
and a second in which the name Jehovah 
was used, but who refuse also to observe 
that he uses the words interchangeably or 
together. These hypercritics are compelled, 
to be consistent, to divide sentences into two 
parts in order to show where, according to 
their theory, Moses wove two distinct docu¬ 
ments into one narrative. The absurdity 
of the criticism is made glaring by such an 
effort. That Elohim and Jehovah were 
names of their fathers’ God, well known to 
the Jews, and that Moses used these napies 
not by direct inspiration and revelation, but 
from the very religion he was taught, is true. 
But his use of each name, separately in some 
places and together in others, is based upon 
the inner meaning of those passages, and 
when duly considered will give them a depth 
which they had not before for the student. 
To take but the Decalogue: in the first 
commandment, “Thou shalt have no other 
Elohim but me.” In the second command¬ 
ment, against graven images, “For I, Je¬ 
hovah, thy Elohim, am a jealous Elohim,” 
where all the names are used with the deep¬ 
est meaning of the Christian religion. In 
the fourth,—“ For in six days Jehovah 
made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that 


in them is, and rested the seventh day, 
wherefore Jehovah blessed the sabbath day 
and hallowed it”—the unity of the Divine 
nature of God and His self-existence is ap¬ 
propriately used, setting forth His awful, 
perfect omnipotence over all His works. In 
the fifth, “ that thy days may be long in the 
land which Jehovah, thy Elohim, giveth 
thee,” brings out the deeper meaning of the 
words land,—in the land of the living ( i.e. } 
in heaven,—and they desire a better country, 
that is, a heavenly), and at once Jehovah 
Elohim acquires a wonderful richness of 
reference to the life and immortality which 
Jehovah, by His Christ, has brought to 
light for us. The absurd criticism has the 
use of developing the deeper hidden mean¬ 
ings of the sacred text. 

Elvira. The Council of Elvira (or Illi- 
beris), in Spain, was held early in the fourth 
century. Some place it in the year 300 a.d., 
others as late as 309 a.d., both being in¬ 
fluenced by doctrinal views probably to fix 
it either before or after the date of Constan¬ 
tine’s edict of toleration to Christians in 
Spain (306 a.d.). The occasion of the Coun¬ 
cil appears to have been troubles in the 
Church arising out of persecution and op¬ 
pression by the heathen. There were pres¬ 
ent at it Hosius, Bishop of Cordova, and 
eighteen other Bishops; while twenty-six 
Priests and certain Deacons took part in the 
deliberations. A large number of strict 
Canons were passed relating to discipline, 
some of the chief ones being as follows : 
Those who had voluntarily sacrificed to idols 
were to be finally excommunicated ; those 
who had not gone beyond offering a present 
to an idol might be received into commun¬ 
ion again, after penance, at the point of 
death ; the use of marriages was forbidden 
to the clergy; pictures ought not to be 
allowed in churches; and severe penalties 
were enacted in detail against adultery, 
prostitution, murder, false swearing, and 
slander. 

Authorities : Landon, Robertson. 

Emanation. A Gnostic theory, which 
was worked out in Alexandria, of the crea¬ 
tion. It was founded upon the Zoroastrian 
doctrine of Light,—as the type of the Divine 
nature, and so that the higher we ascend the 
nearer we are to the true source of all mat¬ 
ter and spirit,—conjoined to the Platonic 
theory of the Archetypal idea, that is, the 
self-existent Being,—Plato’s idea,—and the 
absolute light of the Persian coincided, for 
as the thought and as the substance receded 
from the central light and self-existence, so 
it became more attenuated, and the fullness 
(c/. Col. i. 19; Eph. i. 23) became empti¬ 
ness when the limit was reached. This was 
worked up into the Gnostic doctrine of 
aeons ( vide HSon), and probably, as the 
Gnostic taught successions, emanations, and 
generations of oeons, it was against their 
wild vagary of “ the fullness” St. Paul used 
the phrase as referred to above, and against 
these generations of aeons that he warned St. 




EMBER-DAYS 


255 


ENCYCLICAL 


Timothy “ neither to give heed to fables and 
endless genealogies which minister ques¬ 
tions.” Emanation appears to have been 
an early form of the now so-called doctrine 
of evolution. 

Ember-days. The derivation of the word 
ember is very doubtful. It has been derived 
from ember,—ashes, i.e., of each of the four 
seasons, which is not at all a probable deriva¬ 
tion ; from a corruption and contraction of 
the Latin jejunia quatuor temporum; Ger¬ 
man, Quatember ; Dutch, Quartertemper; 
Danish, Kratember; or from the Saxon 
Yrnbren ,—a revolution or circuit, which, as 
these are recurrent days in the Church’s 
year, seems to be the most likely. They are 
three days of fasting in the four seasons, 
which have been specially observed, to inter¬ 
cede for God’s mercy on each of these four 
divisions of the year. The Wednesday, 
Friday, and Saturday after the first Sunday 
in Lent, the Feast of Pentecost, September 
14 and December 13. The date of the 
establishment of these fasts lies probably 
between the Council of Nice and the time 
of Pope Leo I., 440 a.d. Four fasts were ob¬ 
served, according to Philastrius, after 325 
a.d., but they were not the ember fasts, 
though it is likely that the ember fasts grew 
out of them. In Leo I.’s time we have a 
clear description of them, and from that 
time on there is a continuous notice of them. 
But they were of Italian origin. The Galli- 
can Church did not receive them much be¬ 
fore the ninth century. The African and the 
Milanese Churches could not have observed 
them, at least in Leo’s time. They were 
accepted in Spain in the seventh century. 
In the East they have received no observ¬ 
ance. From the beginning of their appoint¬ 
ment, it is probable that they were connected, 
though not canonically till later, with the 
ordinations of the clergy, a connection 
which has ever since been maintained with 
more or less laxness. There are two prayers 
appointed for those to be ordained, either 
one of which is to be read at these seasons. 
They should be used on the Sunday previous 
and throughout the week, ending with the 
Sunday after the Ember Saturday. The first 
of the two prayers is probably by Bishop 
Cosin, a remarkably beautiful prayer, and 
the second is from the Collects appointed 
for the ordination of Priests and Deacons, 
which is an imitation rather than a transla¬ 
tion of the older Salisbury Collects in the 
like offices. 

Emblem. A symbol, or typical repre¬ 
sentation of some spiritual thing. Under 
some symbol a solemn Christian truth may 
be suggested, as the Anchor represents 
Hope ; the Circle and the Triangle within it 
represents the Mystery of the Trinity ; a 
Dove symbolizes the descent of the Holy 
Ghost. These and many others, as the 
Cross with the Crown, the Fish (which 
was an ancient emblem), the Ship, the 
Chalice, the Emblems of the four Evange¬ 
lists, the Lily, and others which are in 


common use. These lire natural and proper, 
and may be fitly used as suggestions of the 
great truths of Christianity, being them¬ 
selves alluded to in Scripture (as the Anchor, 
the Ship) in metaphor or in parable. 

Embolismus. An intercalated prayer,— 
i.e., a prayer added after the petition “ Lead 
us not into temptation, but deliver us from 
evil,” and before the doxology, “For 
Thine,” etc. It was a universal custom at 
one time, but has left scarcely a trace in the 
Western Church. A single petition is all 
that is left, “ Deliver us, Lord, we beseech 
Thee, from all evil,” in the West. But in 
the early Eastern Liturgies this Embolismus 
holds a very important place, and is often 
of extreme beauty. It was as it were an 
expansion of the last petition, uttered in 
passionate entreaty, as is finely exemplified in 
this example from the Liturgy of St. Mark: 
“ Even so Lord, Lord, lead us not into 
temptation, but deliver us from the evil 
one; for Thy long-suffering knoweth that 
we through our great infirmity are unable 
to resist him, but make with the temptation 
also a way to escape, that we may be able to 
bear it; for Thou hast given power to tread 
on serpents and scorpions and on all the 
might of the enemy ; [aloud) for Thine,” 
etc. The deep fervor of this prayer is well 
expressed. Possibly it may bo some such 
feeling of desiring to expand the perfect 
compression in the Lord’s Prayer that has 
placed as a preface to it in the Mozarabic 
and Gallican Liturgies a short, humble pe¬ 
tition which varies with the season. This 
is for Christmas-day from the Mozarabic 
Liturgy : “ That which the Word showed us 
to follow, that which the Life taught us to 
speak, that which the Truth instructed us to 
hold, to Thee, Father Almighty, let us 
pronounce from on earth with fear and 
trembling, Our Father,” etc. It is after 
this example, though probably not con¬ 
sciously following it, that in the Institution 
office the Collect, Direct us, O Lord, pre¬ 
cedes and is joined to the Lord’s Prayer 
with the words, “ who hath taught us to 
pray unto Thee, O Almighty Father, 
in His prevailing Name and words, Our 
Father.” 

Enccenia. The anniversary festival of 
the dedication of a Church. The word 
means the “renewal,”— i.e., the remem¬ 
brancer ; hence, the Feast of the Dedication. 
This feast was also kept on the anniversary 
of the day on which a city was founded. 

Encyclical. Originally meant a letter 
sent by a Bishop or by the officers in 
authority to other Dioceses for certain 
purposes. The letter from the Church in 
Smyrna, recounting the noble martyrdom 
of St. Polycarp, was an encyclical. The 
Bishops who deposed Paul of Samosata 
sent an encyclical to other Dioceses de¬ 
claring their act and the reasons for it, and 
warning them of the heresy. The Festal 
Epistles of the Patriarch of Alexandria were 
also Encyclicals announcing to all the 





ENGLAND, CHURCH OF 


256 


ENGLAND, CHURCH OF 


Churches of the East and of the West the 
true date of Easter-day. A Primate would 
send an Encyclical to his suffragans. But 
though they do not bear this title, it may 
help us to appreciate better the Catholic 
Epistles of St. James, St. Peter, and St. 
John, to consider them (what they were) 
Encyclicals. So too, as many copies of the 
Epistles to the Ephesians do not contain the 
words “in Ephesus," it has been supposed 
that this was an Encyclical Epistle from St. 
Paul to that and the neighboring Churches. 
But the term now is used solely of a circular 
letter from the Pope to the Bishops and 
Churches which acknowledge his authority. 

England, Church of. Under the title 
British Church will be found an outline of 
Early English Church History preceding the 
Reformation. Under this last title will be 
found a sketch of the work of Henry VIII. 
In the rapid sketch which follows only the 
most salient points can be cited. 

Edward VI. succeeded his father in 1547 
a.d. A council of sixteen, by his father’s 
will, formed a Regency. In this Regency 
the reformers, led by the Lord Protector and 
Cranmer, were balanced by the Chancellor 
and Bishop Tonstal. The strong hand of 
Henry being removed, confusion was im¬ 
minent, especially as the lay lords were 
greedy for Church lands. Much violent 
preaching was common. A royal visitation 
was ordered (1547 a.d.). Injunctions were 
issued, and a book of Homilies, chiefly by 
Cranmer, was left for the use of each 
Church. Resistance was made by Gardiner, 
Bonner, and a remonstrance came from the 
Princess Mary. Gardiner apparently had 
legal grounds, since the Homilies were with¬ 
out Parliamentary and Convocational sanc¬ 
tion ; for this he was imprisoned. Bonner 
protested but yielded. Serious alterations 
of the law were initiated ; the Bishops were 
to be appointed by Letters Patent, not by a 
conge d'elire; the clergy were to administer 
the Communion in both kinds ; the treason 
acts of the late reign were repealed ; the 
charities, hospitals, and guilds were despoiled 
of their endowments. Convocation relieved 
of the penalties threatened by the Six Arti¬ 
cle Act, demanded a revision of the Canon 
law, representation in Parliament, a review 
of the remodeled services to be acted on by 
them, but their demands were disregarded. 
A new Communion office was set forth 
(March, 1548 a.d.) upon the sole authority 
of the Privy Council, but it was not unan¬ 
imously received. The many proclamations 
which were issued show how disturbed the 
state was with fanatical and imprudent 
preaching and disputation. Sacrilege was 
rife, for the Councillors themselves set the 
example. But by the close of this year the 
draft of the first Prayer-Book of Edward 
VI. was submitted to Convocation (Novem¬ 
ber), and was approved by the Commons 
(December) and, after some opposition by 
eight of the non-reforming Bishops, by the 
Lords (January, 1549 a.d.). Its use was 


legally enjoined by Whitsunday, but many 
Churches began its use on Easter (April 21). 

It was generally received, but there was 
some disturbance, especially in the Devon¬ 
shire rising. Many who disliked the change 
made it as nearly like the Romish cere¬ 
monial as they could. Its tone and spirit 
were thoroughly Anglican, and as such it 
won its way quite as much as for its sim¬ 
plicity, rhythm, and devoutness. In' 1549 
a.d. the act permitting the marriage of the 
clergy was passed. In the fall, the efforts 
to assimilate the Prayer-Book to the 
“Popish Mass" was checked by a second 
royal visitation. Bonner, for encouraging # 
such attempts and for his unsatisfactory 
apologetic sermon at Paul's Cross, was tried, 
but refusing to admit the authority of the 
Commission appointed, was imprisoned. 
When Somerset was replaced by Warwick 
(1549 a.d. ), the reforming policy was still 
carried on. Old service-books were called 
in and destroyed. A Commission was 
ordered to revise the Canon Law. The 
Ordinal was drawn up and approved (Feb¬ 
ruary, 1550 a.d.). Cranmer now desired to 
form a sort of bond of union among the 
English and Continental Reformers against 
the Council of Trent, and so admitted them 
to a partial influence in English Church 
affairs. This brought Hooper to the front 
as Calvin’s friend. He was offered the 
Bishopric of Gloucester (July, 1550 a.d.), 
but he refused to be consecrated in the pre¬ 
scribed vesture. Since he would not yield 
to argument, he was sent to the Fleet. 
After two months, rather than lose the 
power of the proffered office, he withdrew 
his objection and was consecrated March 8, 
1551 a.d. Ridley, Bishop of London, so wise 
in all else, removed the altars and ordered 
Communion-tables. This introduced un¬ 
seemly contentions, which have not since 
been wholly quieted. Cranmer was now busy 
drawing a series of articles, and was also oc¬ 
cupied with a review of the Prayer-Book. 

It is said that Bucer and Peter Martyr in¬ 
fluenced the formation of the second Prayer- 
Book. But their objections were not as 
many as the English Divines themselves ad¬ 
mitted, nor were the corrections made as 
they wished. Peter Martyr had seriously 
influenced Cranmer upon the doctrine of the 
Eucharist, and indirectly it effected a great 
deal, as was apparent when the second 
Prayer-Book was issued (November, 1552 
a.d. ). This book made some alterations 
for the better, but it sacrificed much which 
was worth retaining. A revision of the 
Ordinal was also made, and some symbolic 
ceremonies dropped. Cranmer now reverted 
to the articles he was drawing up. These 
were rapidly drawn up and submitted to the 
King, who had them reviewed, and then 
they were laid before the Council. They 
were ratified (May, 1553 a.d.) by Convo¬ 
cation and signed by the King ; with them 
was bound up Poynet’s Catechism,—the 
basis of Nowel’s Catechism later. This 





ENGLAND, CHURCH OF 


257 


ENGLAND, CHURCH OF 


work, which could not be undone, was a 
great gain. Still, in other ways much evil 
had been done. Church furniture and ves¬ 
sels had been embezzled ; Church lands were 
appropriated; parishes were defrauded and 
wasted by the lay lords in office. The King 
alone seemed to see the evil, by trying to 
apply the money to Church uses. From his 
care two hospitals, once monastic houses, 
are now in London, and he founded twenty- 
two Grammar Schools. His death (July 6, 
1553 a.d.) delayed reform. The cruel use 
made of the Lady Jane Grey only deepened 
Queen Mary’s avowed purpose of restoring 
Romanism. Out of sympathy with the tem¬ 
per of her subjects, ready to make every sacri¬ 
fice, deeply attached to Philip of Spain, and 
therefore under the lead of Spanish 
policy, had it not been for Bishop Gar¬ 
diner’s wise advice she would have acted in 
a more headlong fashion. Cranmer, who 
could have escaped, Latimer, Holgate of 
York, and Ridley, were imprisoned together 
in the Tower. Rogers, Saunders, and Taylor 
and Bishop Hooper were the first martyrs 
(February, 1555 a.d.). This fatal policy, 
due to secret Spanish influence, horrified 
all England. Gardiner withdrew from the 
work. Meantime, the Parliament refused 
to repeal the statutes against the Papal 
supremacy and to be reconciled to Rome 
until the Pope had confirmed the titles to 
the holders of the monastic lands. Re¬ 
luctantly the Pope sent Cardinal Pole as 
Legate to England, with a Bull empower¬ 
ing .him to “give, aliene, and transfer” all 
Church property to its present holders. 

On St. Andrew’s day (November 30, 1554 
A.D.) the assembled Parliament at Lambeth 
were solemnly absolved and the nation recon¬ 
ciled to Rome. Later (December 6) he ab¬ 
solved and reconciled the clergy in Convoca¬ 
tion, and (December 24) confirmed the lay 
titles to all Church property. 

Farrar, Bishop of St. Davids, was burned 
at Carmarthen (March 30, 1565 a.d.). The 
horror at the ; e executions brought on a 
pause, till the Queen’s Council urged the 
civil magistrates to present cases to the 
Commission. But the greatest cruelties 
were principally in three Dioceses,—London, 
Canterbury, and Norwich ; in these in three 
years one hundred and eighty-nine persons 
suffered. In fourteen other Dioceses, ninety- 
seven, and in six none were burnt. But 
now it did not avail to recant. The perse¬ 
cution descended to the lower classes, and 
many poor persons were burned. After 
much disputing and delay, Cranmer, Ridley, 
and Latimer were tried and condemned at 
Oxford. Ridley and Latimer lighted “that 
candle which by God’s grace in England 
shall never be put out” on October 16, 1555 
a.d. Cranmer wavered and signed several 
recantations (which would not have saved 
him), but suddenly he cast off all fear and 
publicly denounced his past vacillation, 
though he supposed he was pardoned, and 
was burnt March 21,1556 a.d. The next day 

17 


Cardinal Pole was consecrated Archbishop 
of Canterbury. 

The civil magistrates now shrank back, 
and a list of twenty laymen was added to 
the ecclesiastical commission to proceed to 
extremes. The Pope, who was opposed to 
Spain and was prejudiced against Pole, re¬ 
voked his legantine commission, but the 
Queen wrote to him that it was her pleasure 
that Pole should continue legate, and the 
Pope finally yielded. The Convocation took 
advantage of the loss of Calais, and the 
consequent demand on them for a war sub¬ 
sidy, to urge the continuance, in another 
shape, of some of the practical reforms 
already gained ; but before these could be 
properly presented the Queen died (Novem¬ 
ber 17, 1558 a.d.) ; Cardinal Pole died the 
next day. The check which this reign placed 
on the Reformation brought in the seeds of 
future trouble from the Continent, but the 
persecutions thoroughly alienated the nation 
from Romanism. 

Elizabeth was received enthusiastically. 
The exiles flocked home and began to act in 
a violent manner, and to introduce the un¬ 
church ly principles they had learned abroad. 
The Roman See, of course, tried to hamper 
her. The violent language of Paul IV. 
caused the cessation of all intercourse, which 
has never been renewed. It influenced some 
of the clergy who had conformed, but none 
as yet renounced their mother-Church to set 
up a foreign schism. The Queen, herself of 
wide statesmanlike purposes, and her advis¬ 
ers sought to unify and conciliate all parties ; 
but the excesses of the returned exiles alien¬ 
ated her sympathy. The Prayer-Book of 
1552 a.d. was put into revision. Meantime, 
the English Litany and Ante-Communion 
and the Mass as it was in use were ordered, 
till Parliament (1559 a.d.) restored to the 
Crown its ancient jurisdiction of power to 
visit in causes ecclesiastical. It was a broad 
and dangerous power. The Queen would 
accept only the title of “ Supreme Gover¬ 
nor” of the Church on earth. The Bishops 
were to be nominated by the Crown to the 
Cathedral Chapters. In opposition to the 
Queen’s known wishes the revising commit¬ 
tee adopted the Prayer-Book of 1552 a.d. 
It was sanctioned by Parliament, but appar¬ 
ently the Queen had among other things the 
now vexed Ornaments Rubric inserted after 
the act was passed. By the Act of Uni¬ 
formity the use of the Book was made bind¬ 
ing from June 24, 1559 a.d. The Marian 
Bishops, except Landaff, manfully refused to 
take the oath under the Act of Supremacy 
and were deprived. All but one hundred 
and eighty-nine clergy yielded. The Queen 
now issued a series of Injunctions and Ar¬ 
ticles of Inquiry. Pius IV. tried a concilia¬ 
tory policy, and it is said offered to recognize 
the Prayer-Book and her right to the throne 
if the Queen would return to the Roman 
obedience. But her reply was to forbid the 
Nuncio to set foot in England. Dr. Parker 
was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury 





ENGLAND, CHURCH OF 


258 


ENGLAND, CHURCH OF 


(December 17,1559 a.d.) by Bishops Barlow, 
Scory, Coverdale, and Hodgkin. In January, 
Parker consecrated ten Bishops for vacant 
Sees. They found much to set right. The 
parishes were badly served, and few fit men 
came forward for orders. There was needed 
a new translation of the Scriptures. Ecclesi¬ 
astical Courts needed reform. Fanatical 
preachers gave much trouble. It was diffi¬ 
cult to enforce a decent rubrical use of the 
Prayer-Book. Parker had a difficult course 
to steer, but he had much tact and re¬ 
source. 

The Convocation of 1563 a.d. arranged 
and agreed to the XXXIX. Articles, but the 
Queen quietly interpolated the opening 
clause of Article XX. before ratifying 
them. The rejection of all holy-days and a 
lowering of ritual was barely defeated, and 
the second Book of Homilies was ordered. 
Parliament, to meet disorders, passed a 
second, more stringent Act of Supremacy. 
It was tendered by Bishop Horne to Bonner, 
who was in his charge. Bonner raised some 
questions upon the Ordinal, which led to an 
act re-establishing the legal (not the spirit¬ 
ual, for that was undoubted) authority of 
the Ordinal of Edward VI. These acts, 
yielding to neither Pope nor Puritan, 
offended both, and both now strove to de¬ 
stroy the English Church. 

To enforce the rubrical use of the Prayer- 
Book, Parker issued his Book of Advertise¬ 
ments. It enjoined a minimum of ritual 
with the use of surplice, or of alb and 
chasuble. But it was now decided to force 
conformity, and scruples against the sur¬ 
plice led to a formal schism 1566 a.d. 
Four years later the rash act of excommuni¬ 
cation by Pius V. caused many, under a 
mistaken notion, to withdraw from the 
Church and set up a Roman schism, adding 
to the troubles and intrigues of the time. 
England’s reply was to make the presence 
of a Roman priest in England a capital 
offense.. Conspiracies followed rapidly, 
making the position of the Roman party 
uncomfortable and adding violence to the 
Puritan faction. The Queen, misled by 
those lay councillors who looked to profit 
by the troubles, would not aid the Bishops, 
but urged them to unpopular policy which 
they would have avoided. This added fuel to 
troubles, which led to Parliament requiring 
the clergy to subscribe to the Supremacy, the 
Articles, and the Book of Common Prayer, 
with a recantation of past rubrical disobedi¬ 
ence. 

Political plots fomented by Rome, and 
hard measures almost compelled by zealots 
at home, made England a scene of great tur¬ 
moil. Parker died in 1575 a.d. Wise, firm, 
tolerant, had he been thoroughly backed by 
' the Queen he could have added much to the 
great work he did. Grindal, a Marian exile, 
was translated to Canterbury from York, to 
the joy of those who sided with him. But 
his acts were restrained by the Queen. He 
tried to enforce discipline, and established a 


plan of prophesyings resembling a modern 
Methodist class-meeting. The Queen or¬ 
dered him to withdraw it. This order he 
resisted as an interference, and wrote a very 
admirable letter to her. The Queen sus¬ 
pended him, and had the prophesyings sup¬ 
pressed ; but his suspension did not interfere 
with his proper Episcopal functions, as many 
acts could be in the name of his, subordi¬ 
nates. It lasted for five years, when he made 
a partial submission. The next year he died. 
Whitgift (1583 a.d.) was a man prompt 
and ready with resources. Cartwright and 
Travers, the leaders of the nonconformists, 
hoped to defeat his measures. Travers was 
nominated to the Mastership of the Temple 
bv the lay advisers of the Queen. But 
Whitgift succeeded by a compromise to 
place Hooker there. He also protected the 
Church property from overvaluation. 1587 
a.d. was marked by the scurrilous Mar- 
Prelate libels. The controversy with 
Travers set Hooker to produce his splendid 
Ecclesiastical Polity. The effort to silence 
the libels led to recourse to the Queen’s 
Bench, and this drove out of the country 
many of the libelers. Whitgift’s Calvin- 
istic leaning led him to draw up the famous 
Lambeth Articles, but they were after¬ 
wards quietly withdrawn. After a glorious 
but troubled reign, Queen Elizabeth died 

1603 a.d. 

James s-howed his leaning at the Hamp¬ 
ton Court Conference when he had the Dis¬ 
senters and Bishops confer upon some of the 
chief objections to the Church. Whitgift 
was succeeded by Bancroft (1604 a.d.). In 
the interval between the two Primates the 
Canons of 1603/4 a.d. were passed, which 
are the chief English Church Law, and 
which bear upon our own polity, and may be 
really in force with us. 

Bancroft tried to push the Test Oath, but 
the courts interfered, with the result that 
many emigrated to Holland and to this 
country. The absurd Gunpowder-plot and 
the conspiracies of the Jesuits made the 
position of the Romanists still more uncom¬ 
fortable, and led to the, to us indefensible, 
act compelling Popish recusants to receive 
yearly the Eucharist at the Parish Church. 
Yet James, a little later, was negotiating 
a Spanish alliance for his son Charles. 
The glory of the reign was the translation 
of the Bible. James had projected it soon 
after his accession. It was discussed in 

1604 a.d. , resolved on 1607 a.d., and com¬ 
pleted 1611 a.d. The king tried to intro¬ 
duce Episcopacy into Scotland (1607-1610 
a.d.), and had three Bishops consecrated. 
Abbot succeeded Bancroft (1610 a.d.), and 
was as lax as Bancroft had been vigorous. 
What with his inattention and James’s in¬ 
termeddling, chiefly by the notorious Book 
of Sports, trouble and nonconformity were 
stirred up afresh. Court intrigues and 
change of policy led indirectly to Dr. Laud’s 
advancement to the Bishopric of St. Davids, 
1621 a.d. The negotiations with Spain had 





ENGLAND, CHURCH OF 


259 


ENTHUSIASM 


led to such relaxation of the laws against 
recusants that Abbot remonstrated. 

Charles succeeded his father (1625 a.d.) 
and to his principles as well. His main mis¬ 
fortune was in having Laud as an adviser. 
Laud was honest, conscientious, but inflex¬ 
ible, and with no sympathy for those who 
differed from him. Brave, imprudent, 
and gifted with power to influence friends 
by his sincere singleness of purpose, he 
could not conciliate opponents. 

He had a minute mind that descended to 
details, yet he saw and initiated remedies for 
greater evils. He tried to protect the poorer 
clergy and the Church from spoliation, and 
he made a strong effort to restore ritual, 
which bore fruit in happier times, in more 
decent setting of the furniture, and the 
seemlier celebration of Divine service. Tol¬ 
eration was not known to either side, it was 
not thought of by friend or foe. His action 
drove many to New England, where they 
enforced the like intolerance. The laxness 
of the past had taken the fancy of influen¬ 
tial laymen, and the attack upon Laud was 
partly from the desire to do as they pleased. 
The wish for a moderate Episcopacy was 
only apparent. His inflexible conduct, and 
abetting the conduct of others in the Council, 
led to his arrest in 1641 a.d. He was kept 
in the Tower for three years, his papers were 
seized and misused, and finally he was tried 
upon the monstrous principle that petty in¬ 
fractions by cumulation constitute a treason, 
and was martyred 1645 a.d. The King was 
powerless to save him, hampered by his own 
troubles. He was beheaded in 1649 a.d. 
The Church was beaten down, the Bishops 
driven off, the clergy ejected, the use of the 
Prayer-Book made a crime ; and the country 
for ten years was given over to swarms of 
sectaries. At the Restoration (1660-85 a.d.) 
Charles promised full liberty to religious 
opinion, but he held that later political events 
absolved him from the pledge, and by harsh¬ 
ness towards Dissenters tried to hide his 
Roman intrigues. The Savoy Conference be¬ 
tween the Bishops and leading Dissenters did 
no direct good, but led to the Revision of the 
Prayer-Book (1662 a.d.). The State now 
led the Church into painful blunders. The 
Divine right of kings, held by a majority, 
led to difficulties in resisting James II., and 
a reaction as a Latitudinarian party sprang 
up, which led to Arian views in some influ- 
ential men in Queen Anne’s reign. The 
false political principles misled James as to 
what he could hope to effect. His effort to 
coerce the Church in the famous case of the 
“Seven Bishops” was a part of the many 
acts which led to his expulsion. Those of 
the Bishops and clergy who could not give 
up their absolutism became non-jurors, re¬ 
fusing the oath of allegiance to William and 
Mary (1688-1702 a.d.) The men now at the 
head of affairs sought to carry out a “ scheme 
of comprehension,” but the clergy in Con¬ 
vocation saved the Church by refusing to be 
lowered to the grade of Dissenting bodies, 


and be numbered as one of several holding 
the “Protestant religion.” A Toleration 
Act was passed, a tardy and imperfect ac¬ 
cordance of right to Dissenters. The devout 
and lofty tone of the non-jurors measurably 
counteracted the lowering ideas of such men 
as Tillotson and Tennison. Guilds, associa¬ 
tions, and societies for Church instruction 
were very numerous. Queen Anne’s reign 
(1702-1714 a.d. ) was mainly marked by con¬ 
tests between the upper and lower Houses 
of Convocation, and by the notorious Sa- 
cheverell trial. The influence and hold of the 
Church on the nation was at its height. 
She was active and doing good work, and 
her services were full, and frequent and de¬ 
corous. 

The importance of what followed later, 
the Bangorean controversy with its disas¬ 
trous influences, the depressing effect of the 
Georgian reigns, the laxness and deadness 
because of the change in the character of 
the body of the clergy, the rise of the Wes¬ 
leys and the form it resulted in of Method¬ 
ism, the giving the Episcopate to the Ameri¬ 
can Church, the lethargy of the early de¬ 
cades of this century, and the wonderful 
awakening of the past forty-five years, de¬ 
mand a space and a fullness of treatment, 
bearing as they do upon our own develop¬ 
ment and conduct, which cannot be afforded. 
In fact, this history has yet to be written. 

Enthronization. In England, after a 
Bishop has been consecrated, he is solemnly 
admitted to the Cathedral of his See and 
placed on the Throne by the Dean and 
Chapter, thus taking possession of his See. 
So too the Archbishop is enthroned in his 
Archiepiscopal Throne. 

Enthusiasm. However much this term 
is misused, the feeling is a real and a deep 
motive-power in the Church of God. En¬ 
thusiasm as we generally see it displayed is 
fitful, wanting depth and wanting stability. 
For this cause sober men are afraid of any 
manifestation of an enthusiastic spirit. En¬ 
thusiasm is generally connected in our 
minds with the system of Revivals, and with 
prearranged efforts to produce an excite¬ 
ment. This must be rejected as a spurious 
form. But a truer understanding of this 
feeling, and an appreciation of the fact that 
it requires not little tact and some wisdom 
to guide it, will lead us to see that God puts 
into our hands an'instrument of great power. 
It was enthusiasm in this sense that enabled 
the first converts to not only endure perse¬ 
cution and to suffer with joy, but to go 
forth upon the work of evangelizing the 
world. St. Paul is one of the most wonder¬ 
ful examples of true, sustained, and well- 
controlled enthusiasm. Enthusiasm really 
underlies all great movements, and so far 
from suppressing or rejecting it, it should 
be fostered and developed and guided. It 
can‘take the shape of energetic guilds, 
brotherhoods, co-operative work in the Par¬ 
ish work, or any form that the religious 
earnestness of each Christian can display 





EPACT 


2G0 


EPHESIANS 


itself in readiness and zeal for work. If the 
test of obedience be applied and can be 
endured, the person is really enthusiastic. 
For this reason, every member in a Parish 
should have some of its work intrusted to 
him to do faithfully, and as proof of his love 
to God in return for the love shown him. 
This impression of enthusiasm is one of the 
oversights we have been too long guilty of 
committing, and have consequently lost 
the valuable work of many who would be 
ready to labor faithfully. The cultivation 
of a true, holy, persevering enthusiasm de¬ 
velops greater depth and spiritual power. 
It does more to strengthen the character 
than any other thing. It helps to form 
holy habits, and to grave them indelibly upon 
the soul. It gives intensity to our convic¬ 
tions of the reality of the unseen, under 
the guidance of the Holy Ghost. It was 
enthusiasm which led to the efforts and work 
of the missionaries of the Primitive Church. 
It was such an enthusiasm which gave 
power to the martyrs to endure. It was 
such an enthusiasm which drove men into the 
desert to escape the pollutions around them. 
It is such an enthusiasm now in this genera¬ 
tion which is filling the souls of the many 
engaged in developing the Church’s work 
here. It will be such an enthusiasm which 
will attempt to solve the problems given us 
to work out for this nation. It has been 
well said, “ Most religions have sprung from 
an enthusiast and a band of disciples ; but no 
religion save Christianity has been revived 
from time to time by a succession of enthu¬ 
siasts.” “One thing is certain, that no com¬ 
munity save that against which ‘the gates 
of hell shall not prevail’ has shown so won¬ 
drous a power of self-repai# from within, 
of renewing by the spontaneous ardor of its 
own members the vigor of a religious senti¬ 
ment which has been tending to dissolu¬ 
tion.’ ” “ When we see that the light which 

enthusiasm has kindled in men’s minds, 
however fitful and delusive, has yet cast its 
rays into the darkest corners of the world,— 
that its fervor, however morbid and unreal, 
has often given a healthy glow to the chilled 
heart of Christendom, we ought to conclude 
that it too comes from the Father of 
Lights, and that we should attempt wisely to 
direct rather than sternly to resist its mani¬ 
festations, ‘ lest haply we be found to fight 
against God. ’ ” 

It is an instrument for good within, and 
a weapon of attack upon the world which 
we are slow to use as we well can. 

Epact. Vide Calendar. 

Ephesians, Epistle to. This Epistle— 
one of the noblest of the Pauline Epistles— 
was written during St. Paul’s first impris¬ 
onment at Rome (61-63 a.d.), probably in 
the spring of 62 a.d. There was, so far as 
appears now, no cause beyond that care of 
the Churches that lay upon the Apostle’s 
heart to move him to write this Letter. It 
was quite likely that it was written to sev¬ 
eral of the Churches in Asia Minor, and that 


the copy we have was the one directed to 
Ephesus, for the words “at Ephesus” are 
not found in some of the best manuscripts, 
but are yet too well attested to doubt their 
genuineness. Then there is another fact: 
the Ephesians were to exchange this with 
the Laodiceans, who had received a letter 
from him. The title may have been readily 
dropped out of the copy of a letter sent to a 
neighboring Church. But there can be no 
doubt at all that this is a letter from the 
great Apostle which was intended for and 
received by Ephesus, even if we suppose 
that it was to be sent to other Churches. 
But the contents of this Epistle are as re¬ 
markable, its enunciation of revealed truth 
as profound, as any in the whole number of 
St. Paul’s letters. It is chiefly occupied 
with the unity of the Church of Christ ; 
with the gracious gifts which are given by 
it; and it has been well said that a thorough 
study of the Epistle to the Ephesians, with 
prayer, together with a devout use of the 
Litany, would bring any fair-minded man 
into the Church. Its arguments are so 
clearly put, its declarations of God’s revela¬ 
tion are so cogently worded, that the conclu¬ 
sions from them are irresistible. The con¬ 
tents may be divided into two parts,—the 
doctrinal portion and the hortatory. 

The doctrinal (ch. i.), beginning imme¬ 
diately after the salutation, recites in a 
long sentence, reaching from the 3d to the 
14th verse, the outline of the redemption, 
the Atonement of Christ, their faith in the 
Gospel, which involved Baptism and Confir¬ 
mation. A second similar sentence (15-33) de¬ 
clares to us that wonderful outpouring of the 
Love of the Father to us through Christ 
in the gifts of wisdom and knowledge of the 
inheritance of His glory, that we may be in 
Him whom He raised from the dead, and 
under whom He put all things and made 
Him head over all things to the Church, 
which is His body, the fullness of Him that 
filleth all in all. But as we, forgiven, 
washed, accepted, are in Him, He hath 
raised us to heavenly places (ch. ii. 1-10) 
in Christ Jesus, and created us in Him for 
good works, which God prepared that we 
should walk in them. Thence the Apostle 
declares the unity of the Church for both 
Jew and Gentile in a magnificent passage, 
which, beginning with “He is our Peace,” 
•goes on to show the breaking down of the par¬ 
tition between them, the reconciliation in 
one body, the gift of the one Spirit, the 
membership in the household of God, upon 
the Apostolic foundation, the sanctification 
of our bodies by being temples of the Holy 
Ghost. And (ch. iii.) the mystery of the 
Church of God founded in Christ, with its 
gifts, its inclusion of all men, was now re¬ 
vealed through the Church itself to the 
principalities and powers of heaven. The 
chapter closes with a prayer that strength¬ 
ening and increased wisdom should be given 
to the Ephesians, and a beautiful ascription 
of praise. In the fourth chapter the Apostle 




EPIPHANIES 


261 


EPISCOPACY 


gathers up into one all the practical results 
of the doctrinal foundation. “ As we have 
the vocation, let us with all Christian grace 
use it. Endeavoring to keep the unity of 
the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is 
one body and one Spirit, even as ye are 
called in one hope of your calling; one 
Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and 
Father of all, who is above all, and through 
all, and in you all.” On His ascension 
our Lord bestowed the manifold gifts which 
He had received upon His Church, in Apos¬ 
tles, in Prophets, in Evangelists, in Pastors 
and Teachers for our perfect training in the 
body of Christ, which is His Church. 
Within the remainder of the Epistle are con¬ 
tained, under practical directions to a holy 
life, allusions to Baptism (ch. iv. 24; com¬ 
pare with Rom. vi. 4), to Confirmation (vs. 
30 and Acts xix. 6), and the use of music in 
the Eucharist (giving of thanks, ch. v. 18- 
21) antiphonally in psalms, hymns, and spir¬ 
itual songs. Their unity in the Church un¬ 
der the type of marriage is again taught 
(ch. v. 23-33). The spiritual warfare, the 
reality of the unseen and supernatural, is 
grandly described (ch. vi. 10-20). If we 
may reverently say so of a Book wherein all 
is given by the wisdom of the Holy Ghost, 
this Epistle is one of the most valuable at 
this day for the Church in the series of 
Pauline Epistles. Its study will prove to 
the devout reader the Divine origin, the 
Apostolic continuity of the Church, its mys¬ 
terious supernatural relations to the unseen 
world around us and to our Lord at the 
right hand of the throne on high, and the 
need of the constant use of His gifts through 
the Holy Spirit for our spiritual life. We 
need no better devotional and doctrinal 
manual could we enter into the depths of 
its revelations. 

Epiphanies. Manifestations [vide Angels • 
and Theophany) of a spiritual messenger 
sent from God to His people. 

Epiphany. The “ manifestation ” of 
Christ. The word is not confined merely 
to the Feast-day, for which it stands usually, 
but it is also used to mean (2 Thess. ii. 8) 
the Second Advent, and (vide Epiphanies) 
the manifestation of Christ to His Prophets 
as the Jehovah Angel. But we generally 
mean by Epiphany the Feast-da}' on the 
6th of January. On it we in the West 
celebrate the manifestation of Christ to the 
Gentiles, who were guided to His cradle at 
the inn in Bethlehem by the miraculous 
star. The Eastern Church commemorated 
His birth and His baptism on this day as 
representing the natural birth of our Lord, 
and also the Lord’s baptism, which was a 
rophecy in act of our own mystical second 
irth. Upon it fell one of the three solemn 
seasons at which baptism was administered. 
But, except in Spain, this was not the cus¬ 
tom of the West. 

It is not necessary to seek for astronomical 
explanations of the wonderful star which 
led the magi to the Infant Jesus. Ignatius 


(Ep. to the Eph., 19) speaks of it as a won¬ 
drous phenomenon. The Evangelist records 
that the star led them, moved, and “ went 
before them till it came and stood over where 
the young child was. ” All of which forces us 
to accept the account as it stands, 'that it 
was a miraculous star, or to reject it alto¬ 
gether. 

The Feast in the West has always com¬ 
memorated this visit of the wise men. All 
the homilies and liturgical services of this 
part of the Church’s year have reference to 
this fact, and all make some spiritual or 
figurative explanation of it. The worship 
of the wise men, as representatives for the 
whole Gentile world, was offered Him. 
Their gifts of gold in honor of His kingly 
birth, were laid at His feet. The frankin¬ 
cense, as due to Him as Eternal God, wor¬ 
shiped forever more, was given to Him. 
The myrrh, signifying by its bitterness the 
sorrows of His coming human life, and by its 
perfume the spicery of His burial, was pre¬ 
sented, too. And so, at the outset of that 
wondrous life, were typical gifts given by 
wise men, themselves miraculously led by 
the star of Jacob to Him whose true human¬ 
ity and perfectly sinless life were to be the 
most precious gifts ever given to man, and 
these given to us by miracles. 

Episcopacy. The form of polity of the 
Church Catholic as represented by the suc¬ 
cession of her Bishops from the Apostles, 
who were themselves the Divinely-appointed 
emaKOTTOL from whom all others since derive 
their authority and commission. In sacra¬ 
mental form, this transmission, known as the 
Apostolic succession, is conveyed through 
the “ laying on of hands” by three or more 
Bishops, as set forth by Canon in the Coun¬ 
cil of Nice. In spiritual efficacy the suc¬ 
cession is transmitted by the Holy Ghost, 
who gives His seal to the external act of the 
laying on of hands for the continuation of 
the Apostolic ministry, the conservation of 
the Apostolic faith, and the perpetual wit¬ 
ness to the Resurrection. 

The word itself is accommodated from the 
Greek, and signifies overseership. In the 
New Testament the title emoiconog is ap- 
lied interchangeably to Bishops and Pres- 
yters; but as, when the last of the orig¬ 
inal twelve had passed away, the name 
Apostle, signifying any one who had been 
sent, was thenceforth confined to those who 
had first borne it under Christ, in like 
manner emononoL, or Bishops, came to desig¬ 
nate those only who were the Apostles’ suc¬ 
cessors in rank and order. Episcopacy is 
thus the Apostolic regimen, which was for¬ 
mally instituted by our Lord when He gave 
to the first ministry its commission in the 
words, accompanied by solemn action, “ Re¬ 
ceive ye the Holy Ghost. As my Father 
hath sent Me, so send I you.” That this 
commission was not intended by Him to be 
limited to those on whom it was originally 
conferred, but was to be extended to their 
successors, is seen by the promise which ac- 




EPISCOPACY 


262 


EPISCOPACY 


companied it: “ Lo, I am with you always, 
even unto the end of the world.” 

Although Episcopacy was thus constituted, 
in its original membership, in one order, it 
was invested by its Divine Author (as ap¬ 
peared soon by Apostolic sanction and prac¬ 
tice) not only with the power of self-per¬ 
petuation, but of setting apart other orders 
of clergy inferior in spiritual power and dig¬ 
nity to itself. Hence by Episcopacy is un¬ 
derstood generally the threefold ministry of 
Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, derived by 
an unbroken succession from the Apostles. 

Erom the oneness of this threefold minis¬ 
try, always existing from age to age and in¬ 
hering in its original and highest order, 
comes, as a corollary, the primitive principle 
of the Church’s concrete unity. 

Thus St. Ignatius (circa 106 a.d.) writes 
to the Philadelphians: “ Take ye heed to 
have but one Eucharist. For there is one 
flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one 
cup to show the unity of His blood; one 
altar ; as there is one Bishop, along with the 
Presbytery and Deacons.” 

This threefold ministry in the Christian 
Church was held by many in ancient times 
to harmonize with, and even to fulfill in a 
completed and more highly spiritual and per¬ 
fect form and function, the ancient Levitical 
institution of the priesthood. Some of the 
earliest writers do not scruple to apply the 
title of High-Priest to the Bishop, and 
of Levite to the Deacon. To this Hooker 
seems to refer approvingly when he says, 
“ Bishops are now as High-Priests were then 
in regard to power over other Priests; and 
in respect of subjection unto High-Priests, 
what Priests were then the same now Pres¬ 
byters are, by reason of their place under 
Bishops.” 

Against the Papal or Italian theory of 
Episcopacy, viz., that all other Bishops are 
by Divine appointment made inferior in 
spiritual authority and order to him who is 
the alleged successor of St. Peter; and that 
our Lord conferred on St. Peter a primacy 
and spiritual principality which made the 
throne of his successors for all time the Di¬ 
vinely recognized centre of unity and foun¬ 
tain of authority for the Universal Church, 
the Anglican Communion utters her pro¬ 
test. She maintains, with the ancient 
Church, the absolute Unity of the Episco¬ 
pate , and the consequent equality of all 
Bishops in respect of spiritual order and 
function. She adopts the rule of St. Cy¬ 
prian (circa 240 a.d.) as her own : “ Epis- 

copatus unus est; Cujus a singulis in soli- 
dumparsteneturf —“ The Episcopate is one; 
each part of which is held by each member 
for the substantial whole.” From this prin¬ 
ciple springs her rule of the independence 
of National Churches, whose independence 
of any one central human authority, except 
that of a General Council, which she ac¬ 
cepts and appeals to, does not, therefore, 
make them judges of doctrine, but rather 
custodians of a doctrine once for all re¬ 


ceived ; each sharing in this regard with 
the others a common responsibility. The 
Anglican Communion does indeed accept 
for convenience’ sake and as a Catholic tra¬ 
dition, the ancient arrangement of Prov¬ 
inces, with their Archbishops and Metro¬ 
politans, *and is not unwilling to accede 
even to a Primacy which shall be founded 
upon universal consent claiming no Divine 
prescription in its favor. But the principle, 
which she maintains as inherited from the 
Fathers, of the Unity of the Episcopate, 
forbids her acceptance of the sovereignty of 
one Bishop over the rest founded on preten¬ 
sions of Divine right and superior order 
which were unknown, as she is firmly per¬ 
suaded, to primitive times. 

As the Apostolate or Episcopate first 
called and then Divinely commissioned 11 to 
send out other faithful men” was the norm 
of the original Christian ministry, and, as 
continued in Episcopacy, it has been its 
alone fountain since, it follows that validity 
of orders is dependent upon Episcopal con¬ 
secration, and that no true Episcopacy can 
exist which has not historic continuity. “ It 
is evident unto all men diligently reading 
Holy Scripture and ancient authors (says 
the preface to the Ordinal), “ that from the 
Apostles’ time there have been these orders 
of ministers in Christ’s Church, Bishops, 
Priests, and Deacons.” From this fact, 
simply considered as such, it results, by 
stress of necessary inference, that the conti¬ 
nuity of the faith, sacraments, and discipline 
of the Church must be in historic connec¬ 
tion with the same order of men who have 
from the first administered them. Accord¬ 
ingly the preface to the Ordinal first referred 
to continues: “ No man shall be accounted 
or taken to be a lawful Bishop, Priest, or 
Deacon in this Church, or suffered to exe¬ 
cute any of the said functions, except he be 
called, tried, examined, and admitted there¬ 
unto according to the form hereafter fol¬ 
lowing (i.e., the forms for making Bishops, 
Priests, and Deacons), or hath had Episco¬ 
pal consecration or ordination.” In this 
rule the English Church and our own do 
but echo what St. Ignatius, in the second 
century, wrote to the Smyrnaeans: “ Let 
that (says St. Ignatius) be deemed a proper 
Eucharist which is administered either by 
the Bishop or by one to whom he has in¬ 
trusted it.” And again : “ Wherever the 
Bishop shall appear, there let the multitude 
of the people also be.” 

The objection that is commonly brought 
against Episcopacy as necessarily “ un¬ 
churching” all who do not receive it, has 
no value or force as an argument against it. 
Those who hold such are not responsible for 
inferences that may be drawn from it. But 
aside from this consideration, this Church 
maintains that all who are baptized are 
made in baptism “ members of Christ,” 
and she declines to dogmatize upon the ques¬ 
tion of God’s sovereign will and power, or to 
affix limits to the operations of His grace. 





EPISCOPACY 


263 


EPISCOPATE 


On the human side Episcopacy is largely 
paternal. While it does more than reflect 
in its spiritual character, rather while it 
supplies, and in a higher sense fulfills the 
mission and significance of the Levitical, it 
is at the same time comprehensive even of 
the Patriarchal Priesthood. Ruling with 
such authority as Christ’s law gives, it 
should blend with its rule the love, forbear¬ 
ance, and mercifulness of a genuine father¬ 
hood ; and as every Bishop is, in Hooker’s 
sense, High-Priest and ruler, so he should be 
father also over that portion of God’s family 
committed to his care. But Episcopatus 
unus est; and as Episcopacy viewed as a 
whole does on its spiritual side symbolize , 
so should it on the human side, t.e., in the 
persons of its members, illustrate the Father¬ 
hood of God. 

Episcopacy, thus broad in its comprehen¬ 
siveness, strong in its unity, and paternal 
in its character and spirit, offers the best 
remedy for the distractions of the day, in 
being able to reconcile fidelity to ancient 
and Catholic truth with the diversities of 
opinion which, on minor pointy, reflect the 
enlarged intelligence of the age and the con¬ 
sequent demands of a greater mental free¬ 
dom. While on the one hand the rigor of 
a central and despotic spiritual rule and 
headship either enfeebles the will or drives 
it into rebellion, and on the other hand the 
unchecked license of private judgment de¬ 
thrones authority and substitutes, in the 
end, the reign of rationalism for that of 
faith ; primitive and Catholic Episcopacy, as 
illustrated in the branches of the Church 
which maintain it, knows how to reconcile 
faith with a reasonable exercise of private 
judgment. “ Quod semper ubique et ad om¬ 
nibus ,” is with them but the complement 
of another truth which underlies the entire 
spirit of their teaching: “ In essentials 
unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things 
charity.” 

Episcopacy is not affected in its spiritual 
character by the varying civil conditions 
under which it is found existing in the 
world. In the Empire, while it remained 
heathen, it was marked by a greater sim¬ 
plicity than when Christian Rome rebuilt 
its churches and endowed its Bishoprics. 
In England, where alliance with the State 
gives prestige to the clergy and baronial 
privileges to the Bishops, it wields a greater 
influence than in the colonies or in this 
country, where it is unendowed and free 
from the honors as from the trammels of the 
State. But everywhere, and in all times, when 
not overridden by a despotic ruler, civil or 
ecclesiastical, Episcopacy has been, to the 
extent of its ability and the measure of its 
light, the conservator of ancient law and 
the promoter of present and reasonable lib¬ 
erty. It suffers to-day, in this land, from 
many popular encroachments, as in the past 
it has suffered from usurpations of another 
and very different kind. But it is destined 
to endure. It has the Divine promise, “ Lo, 


I am with you always, even unto the end of 
the world. 

Et. Rkv. Thos. A. Starkey, D.D., 
Northern New Jersey. 

Episcopate, List of the Anglican and 
Eastern. 

The Essential Unity of the Church of 
Christ , for which every Christian should 
pray, for which our Lord pleaded in the 
night in which He was betrayed, is ever 
presented before Him in the Church’s ser¬ 
vice. 

“We humbly beseech Thee ... to in¬ 
spire continually the Universal Church with 
the spirit of truth, unit} 7 , and concord ; and 
grant that all those who do confess Thy 
Holy Name may agree in the truth of Thy 
Holy Word, and live in unity and godly 
love.” 

“They are one in their One Original 
from which they continually and unchange¬ 
ably derive their being. They adore God, 
the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, with 
the same new song of the Gospel; they con¬ 
fess Him in the same words of Apostolic 
Faith; they offer to Him the same incense 
of praise, and the same Holy Offering 
whereof Malachi foretold, ‘ from the rising 
of the sun even unto the going down of the 
same,’ pleading on earth to the Eternal 
Father that One Sacrifice as presented in 
heaven ; they receive the same ‘ Bread 
which came down from Heaven to give life 
to the world.’ Unknown in face, in place 
separate, different in language, opposed, 
alas! in some things to one another, still 
before the throne of God they are One 
Holy Catholic Apostolic Church ; each sev¬ 
eral portion praying for itself and for the 
rest, united in the prayers and oblation 
which it offers for all, by the One Bread and 
the One Spirit which dwelleth in all.”— 
Dr. Pusey. 

In the following list of the Anglican 
and Eastern Communions, the first place is 
given to the Anglican Churches, than which 
we believe that, to say the least, none come 
nearer, in all essential respects, to the Primi¬ 
tive Church. Then come the “ Old Catholic” 
Churches, professing, as do the Anglican, to 
hold fast all Catholic doctrine, while, and 
therefore , rejecting the innovations of later 
days. In grouping these Churches together, 
it is not meant to be implied that they all 
carry out to like extent their good purpose. 
The Eastern Orthodox Churches have, in 
good degree, preserved the Christian tradi¬ 
tions of the first-ages. Among those set 
down as “Other Churches” are some whose 
doctrinal position has been questioned, 
others the validity of whose orders has been 
disputed. It may well be that, with fuller 
information on points of which we know too 
little, some at least of these objections may 
be found to have come from misconcep¬ 
tions. 

In the list of the Anglican Episcopate, 
care has been taken as to the due arrange¬ 
ment in Ecclesiastical I^rovinces. 





EPISCOPATE 


264 


EPISCOPATE 


THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION. 

I. THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 
Canterbury. —The Archbishop of Canter¬ 
bury is “ Primate of all England and Me¬ 
tropolitan. ” Under him are the Bishops of 


Bath and Wells, 
Exeter, 

Oxford, 
Chichester, 

St. Asaph, 

Ely, 

St. Davids, 
Rochester, 
Lichfield, 
Llandaff, 

Truro. 


London, 

Winchester, 

Norwich, 

Bangor, 

Worcester, 

Gloucester and Bristol, 

St. Albans, 

Hereford, 

Peterborough, 

Lincoln, 

Salisbury, 

Besides these, there are in the Dioceses 
of Canterbury, London, Lincoln, and St. 
Albans, respectively, the Suffragan Bishops 
of Dover, of Bedford, of Nottingham, and 
of Colchester; and three Retired Colonial 
Bishops assist in the Dioceses of London, 
Winchester, and Peterborough. 

York. —The' Archbishop of York is “ Pri¬ 
mate of England and Metropolitan.” In 
his Province there are the Bishops of 
Durham, Manchester, 

Ripon, Sodor and Man, 

Chester, Liverpool, 

Carlisle, Newcastle. 

A Retired Colonial Bishop assists in the 
Diocese of Huron. 


II. THE CHURCH OF IRELAND. 
Armagh and Clogher. —The Archbishop 
of Armagh is “ Primate of all Ireland and 
Metropolitan.” In his Province there are 
the Bishops of 
Meath, 

Down, Connor, and Achonry, 

Derry and Raphoe, 

Kilmore, Elphin, and Ardagh. 

Dublin , Olendelagh , and Kildare. —The 
Archbishop of Dublin is “Primate of Ire¬ 
land and Metropolitan.” In his Province are 
the Bishops of 

Limerick, Ardfert, and Aghadoe, 

Cashel, Emly, Waterford, and Lismore, 
Corjk, Cloyne, and Ross, 

Ossory, Ferns, and Leighlin, 

Killaloe, Kilfenora, Clonfert, and Kilmac- 
duagh. 

III. THE SCOTTISH CHURCH. 

Bishops. 

Moray , Ross , and Caithness. —The present 
Bishop is “ Primus of the Scottish Church,” 
by election. 

St. Andrews, Dunkeld, and Dunblane, 
Edinburgh, 

Glasgow and Gallouay, 

Brechin, 

Aberdeen and Orkney, 

Argyle and the Isles. 

IV. THE AMERICAN CHURCH. 

(a) Bishops of organized Dioceses. 

Kentucky. —The present Bishop is “ Pre¬ 
siding Bishop” of the American Church by 
seniority. • 


Delaware, 

Mississippi, 

Albany, 

Central New York, 

Connecticut, 

Arkansas, 

California, 

New Hampshire, 

New York, 

South Carolina, 

Rhode Island, 

Central Pennsylvania, 

Texas, 

Massachusetts, 

Ohio, 

North Carolina, 

Minnesota, 

Wisconsin, 

Easton, 

New Jersey, 

Pennsylvania, 

Western Michigan, 

Alabama, 

Southern Ohio, 

The Province of 11- J 
linois, 

r Illinois, 

Quincy, 

[ Springfield, 

Kansas, 

Fond du Lac, 

Western New York, 

Iowa, 

Tennessee, 

West Virginia, 

Nebraska, 

Michigan, 

Maine, 

Northern New Jersey, 

Florida, 

Louisiana, 

Georgia, 

Virginia, 

Vermont, 

Missouri, 

Pittsburg, 

Indiana, 

East Carolina, 
Maryland. 

Long Island, 


( b ) Assistant Bishops. 

Of these there are four, in the Dioceses of 
Kentucky, Mississippi, New York, and Vir¬ 
ginia. 


(c) Bishops in Charge of Missionary Juris¬ 
dictions within the United States. 


Idaho and Utah, 
Oregon, 

Nevada, 

South Dakota, 
Western Texas, 
Northern California, 
Northern Texas, 


Arizona and New 
Mexico, 

Montana, 

Colorado and Wyo¬ 
ming, 

Washington Terri¬ 
tory, 

North Dakota. 


(d) Bishops in Charge of Missionary Juris¬ 
dictions outside the United States. 
Yeddo (Japan). 

(The Missionary Episcopates of Cape Pal¬ 
mas (Africa) and Shanghai (China) are 
vacant, January 1, 1884.) 

( e ) Bishops retired from their Sees. 
There are five such, January 1, 1884. 


V. THE CHURCH IN THE ENGLISH COLONIES. 
(a) The Church in India. 

Calcutta. —The Bishop of Calcutta is Met¬ 
ropolitan of the Church in India and Cey¬ 
lon. In this Province there are also the 
Bishops of 

Madras, Travancore and Co- 

Colombo, chin, 

Bombay, Rangoon. 

Lahore, 

There are also two Suffragan Bishops in 
the Diocese of Madras. 


(b) The Church in the Province of South 
Africa. 

Capetown. —The Bishop of Capetown is 
“ Metropolitan of the Church in the Province 







EPISCOPATE 


265 


EPISCOPATE 


of South Africa.” In this Province there 
are also the Bishops of 
St. Helena, Pretoria, 

Maritzburg, Zululand, 

Grahamstown, Bloemfontein. 

St. John’s Kaffraria, 


(c) The Church in Australia and Tasmania. 

Sydney .—The Bishop of Sydney is “ Pri¬ 
mate of the Church in Australia and Tas¬ 
mania.” In this Province there are also the 
Bishops of 


Brisbane^ 

Goulburn, 

Perth, 

Grafton and Armi- 
dale, 

Bathurst, 


Ballaarat, 

Melbourne, 

North Queensland, 
Newcastle, 
Adelaide, 
Tasmania. 


(i) Bishops retired from their Sees. 

There were nineteen such Bishops Jan¬ 
uary 1, 1884. 

THE OLD CATHOLIC CHURCHES. 

There is in Holland an Archbishop (of 
Utrecht) and two Bishops (of Haarlem and 
of Deventer) of the Old Catholic Church 
(often called “the Jansenis" Church). 
There is in Germany a Bishop of the Old 
Catholic Church. There is in Switzerland 
a Bishop of the Christian Catholic Church. 
There is in Hayti a Bishop of the Orthodox 
Apostolic Church. 

THE ORTHODOX EASTERN 
CHURCHES. 


(i d) The Church in New Zealand. 

Christ Church .—The Bishop is “Primate 
of the Church in New Zealand.” In this 
Province there are the Bishops of 
Nelson, Dunedin, 

Auckland, Waiapu, 

"Wellington, Melanesia. 


(e) The Church in the Province of Canada. 

Fredericton .—The Bishop of Fredericton 
is “ Metropolitan of Canada” by election. 
In this Province there are also the Bishops of 
Nova Scotia, Montreal, 

Ontario, Toronto, 

Quebec, Algoma, 

Niagara, Huron. 

There is a Coadjutor Bishop in the Dio¬ 
cese of Fredericton. 


('/) The Church in the Province of Rupert's 
Land. 


Rupert's Land .—The Bishop is “ Metro¬ 
politan of the Church in the Province of 
Rupert’s Land.” 

Moosonee, Athabasca. 

Saskatchewan, 

(g) The Church in the West Indies. 
Guiana .—The Bishop of Guiana is “Pri¬ 
mate of the Church in the West Indies” 
by election. There are also in this province 
the Bishops of 

Antigua, Nassau, 

Trinidad, Jamaica, 

Barbadoes and Windward Islands. 

The Diocese of British Honduras is in 
charge of the Bishop of Jamaica. There is 
a Coadjutor Bishop in the Diocese of An¬ 
tigua. 


(A) Bishops of Dioceses not yet organized 
into Ecclesiastical Provinces. 


Gibraltar, 

Victoria (China), 
North China, 

Mid China, 

Japan, 

Singapore, Labuan, 
and Sarawak, 
Mauritius, 
Madagascar, 


Central Africa, 
The Niger, 
Newfoundland, 
Columbia, 
Caledonia, 

New Westminster, 
British Honduras, 
Falkland Islands, 
Honolulu. 


I. THE PATRIARCHATE OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 


Presided over by 
Constantinople, New 
cal Patriarch.” In 
the Metropolitans of 
Caesarea in Cappado¬ 
cia, 

Ephesus, 

Heraclaea and Rhae- 
destum, 

Cyzicum, 

Nicomedia, 

Nicaea, 

Chalcedon, 

Dercus, 

Thessalonica, 

Tirnova, 

Adrianople, 

Amasaea, 

Joannina, 

Brusa, 

Pelagonia. 

Necaesarea and Enea, 
Iconium, 

Berrhaea, 

Pisidia, 

Crete, 

Trapezus, 

Nicopolis, 

Philippopolis, 

Rhodes, 

Serrae, 

Drama, 

Smyrna, 

Mitvlene, 

Didymotichus, 

Ancyra, 

Philadelphia, 

Melenicus, 

Enos, 

Methymne, 

Mesembria, 

Samos and Icaria, 
Bizya and Midia, 
The Archbishops c 
Discate, 

The Bishops of 
Heliopolis and Thy- 
atira, 

Crene and Anaea, 


“ The Archbishop of 
Rome, and (Ecumeni- 
this Patriarchate aTe 

Anchialus, 

Varna, 

Maronea, 

Silivri, 

Sozoagathopolis, 

Xanthia, 

Ganus and Khora, 
Chios, 

Lemnos, 

Imbros, 

Dyrrachium, 

Scopia, 

Castorea, 

Rasca-Prisrend, 

Bodeno, 

Coritza, 

Belegrad, 

Castentil and Stipi- 
urn, 

Strumnitza and Ti- 
beropolis, 

Grebeno, 

Sisanium and Siatest, 
Mogleno, 

Presper and Ochrida, 
Debri, 

Cassandria, 

Chaldaea and Cheri- 
ana, 

Elasson, 

Praeconnesus, 
Drynopolis and De- 
brino, 

Cos, 

Lititza, 

Aleppo, 

Carpathus and Caxus, 
Serbia and Cozania. 


Neurocopion. 

Callopolis and Ma- 
dytus, 

Metra and Athyra, 




EPISCOPATE 


266 


EPISCOPATE 


Myriophytum and Arcadia, 

Peristasis, Rhithymene and Au- 

Citras, lipotamus, 

Campania, Petra, 

Poliana and Barda- Cydonia, 
sium, Cheronesus, 

Petra, Hiera and Sitea, 

Ardamerium, Cissamus and Seli- 

Hierissus and Monte mus, 

Santo, Lampe, 

Paramithia, Leros, 

Bella, Moschonesus. 

Nicopolis, 

The Titular Bishops of 
Cariopolis, Troas, 

Irenopolis, Abydos, 

Pamphylia, Leontopolis, 

Supelum, Chrystopolis, 

Myrina, Poristera, 

Erythrasa, Argyropolis, 

Synada, Lite, 

Meletopolis, 

There are in this Patriarchate fourteen 
Bishops retired from their Sees. 


II. THE PATRIARCHATE OF ALEXANDRIA. 

Presided over by “ The Pope and Pa¬ 
triarch of the Great City Alexandria, 
Libya, Pantapolis, and Ethiopia, and of all 
the land of Egypt.” The seven Sees in this 
Patriarchate are all vacant at this time. 
The Patriarch is assisted by a Vicar Bishop 
with the title of Bishop Xanthopolis. 
There is also a retired Patriarch of Alexan¬ 
dria, and a retired Metropolitan (of Pelu- 
sium). 


III. THE PATRIARCHATE OF ANTIOCH. 


Presided over by “ The Patriarch of the 
Divine City Antioch, Syria, Arabia, Cilicia, 
Iberia, Mesopotamia, and all tbe East.” In 
this Patriarchate there are the Metropolitans 
of 


Seleucia, 

Epiphania, 

Tripoli, 

Theodosiopolis, 

Arcadia, 

Laodicea, 


Edessa, 

Tyre and Sidon, 
Amida, 

Tarsus and Adana, 
Berytus, 


and the Bishops of 

Irenapolis, The Hauran. 

Palmyra, 


IV. THE PATRIARCHATE OF JERUSALEM. 

Presided over by “ The Patriarch of the 
Holy City Jerusalem, and all Palestine, 
Syria, Arabia beyond Jordan, Cana of Gali¬ 
lee, and Holy Sion.” 

In this Patriarchate there are the Metro¬ 
politans of 

Scythopolis, Bethlehem, 

Petra, Nazareth, 

Ptolemais, 

and the Archbishops of 

Lydda, The Jordan, 

Mount Tabor, Mount Sinai. 

Gaza, 


V. RUSSIA. 

In Russia there are the Metropolitans of 
Novgorod, St. Petersburg, Finland, Kieff 
and Galicia, Moscow and Kolomna. 

The Archbishops of 
Kherson and Odessa, 

Voronej and Zadonsk, 

Penza aijd Saransk, 

Yakoutsk and Viluis, 

Orloff and Sievsk, 

Riazan and Zaraisk, 

Archangel and Kholmogor, 

Kamchatka, the Kouriles and Blagova- 

shensky, • 

Astrachan and Enotaevsk, 

Koursk and Bielgorod, 

Oufa and Menzelinsk, 

Tamboff and Shatz, 

Tchernigoff and Nijni, 

Podolia and Bratslalf, 

Pskoff and Porkhoff, 

Tobolsk and Siberia, 

The Taurida and Simpheropol, 

Polotsk and Vitebsk, 

Minsk and Touroff, 

Yenisee and Krasnoairsk, 

Calouga and Boroff, 

Simbirsk and Syzran, 

Turkestan and Tashkend, 

Smolensk and Dorogobouge, 

Kharkoff and Akhtyr, 

Saratoff and Tsaritsin, 

MogilefF and Mstislav, 

Riga and Mittau, 

Orenburg and the Ural, 

Kholm and Warsaw, 

Toula and Bieleff, 

Lithuania and Vilna, 

Poltava and Periaslav, 

Irkutsk and Nerchinsk 
The Don and Novocherkask, 

Kisheneff and Khotinsk, 

Tver and Kashin, 

Viatka and Slobodsk, 

Kazan and Sviajsk, 

Volhynia and Jitomir. 

The Bishops of 
Tomsk and Semipalatinsk, 

Vologda and Oustiog, 

Olonetz and Petrozavodsk, 

Nijni Novgorod and Arsamas, 

Jaroslav and Rostov, 

Samara and Stauropol, 

Vladimir and Souzdal, 

Ekaterinoslav and Taganrog, 

Perm and Verchotour, 

Kostromo and Galitz, 

Caucasia and Ekaterinodar. 

In Georgia there are “ The Exarch of 
Georgia, Archbishop of Kartalenia and 
Cachetia,” and the Bishops of Imeretia and 
Gouri. 

In America there is the Bishop of the 
Aleutian Islands and Alaska (vacant Jan¬ 
uary 1, 1884 a.d.). 

Assisting in the various Dioceses, there are 
the Vicar (or Suffragan) Bishops of 
Staria Russa, Viborg, 

Ladoga, Tchigirin, 






EPISCOPATE 


267 


EPISCOPATE 


Ouman, 

Dmitroff, 

Mojaisk, 

Novomirgorod, 

Elizabethgrad, 

Ostrog, 

Ostrogod, 

Lublin, 

Kovno, 

Brest, 
Selenginsk, 
Aksaisk, 
Akkerman, 
Tcheboksar, 
Sarapoul, 
Staritz, 


Biisk, 

Totma, 

Ekaterinburg, 

Mourom, 

Kineshma, 

Balachna, 

Mozdok, 

N ovgorod-Sieversk, 
Kozloff, 

Soumsk, 

Beresoff, 

Revel, 

Balta, 

Gori, 

Vladikavkaz, 

Mingrelia. 


Michael off, 

There are in Russia three Archbishops 
and eight Bishops retired from their Sees. 


VI. CYPRUS. 

The “ Archbishop of Nova-Justiniana and 
all Cyprus” has under him the Metropoli¬ 
tans of 

Paphos, Cyrene. 

Citium. 

VII. AUSTRIA. 

“ The Patriarch of Servia, Metropolitan 
of all the Servians residing in the Austrian 
Empire, Archbishop of Carlovitz,” has un¬ 
der him the Bishops of 
Bats and Szegedin, 

Buda, St. Andrew’s, Pesth, Stuhl-Weissem- 
burg, Mosjiacs, Segesed, 

Verschatz, Lugos, and Orsova, 

Temesvar, Lippa, Nagy-Beckserk and Pano- 
sova, 

Pakrats, Slavonia, Posega, and all the Gen- 
eralate of Warasdin, 

Carlstadt, Costanitza, Corbava, and the sea- 
coast towns of Trieste, Rick, and Segni. 
“ The Metropolitan of all the Roumanian 
nation in the Austrian Empire, Archbishop 
of Transylvania,” has under him the Bish¬ 
ops of 

Arad, Grosswardim, Yenopolsk, and Chal- 
matosh, 

Caran-Sebesh. 

“ The Metropolitan of the Buckovine and 
Dalmatia” has under him the Bishops of 
Dalmatia, 

Bocca di Cattaro, Dulrovnikick, and Spitz. 


VIII. MONTENEGRO. 

“ The Metropolitan of Scanderia and the 
Sea-Coast, Archbishop of Tsettin, Exarch 
of the Holy Throne of Pek, Yladika of 
Montenegro” has no Suffragan. 

IX. GREECE. 

In Greece there are the Metropolitans of 
Athens, Phanarium and Phar- 

Arta, salus, 

Larissa, Demetris and Zagori- 

um. 

The Metropolitans of 
Mantineaand Cynou- Leucadia, 
ria, Zacynthus, 

Acarnania and JEto- Chalcis, 
lia, . Messania, 


Syros and Tenos, 
Cythera, 

Phthiotis, 

Corinth, 

The Bishops of 
Thebes and Livadia, 
Carystia, 

Phocis, 

Andros and Cea, 
Ithaca, 

Stagon, 

Tricca, 

Thaumacus, 
Calavryta and iEgi- 
alia, 

(Etylon, 

Gytheum, 


Monembasia and 
Sparta, 

Cephalonia, 

Corcyra. 

Platamon, 

Gardicium, 

Thera, 

Hydra, 

Triphylia and Olym¬ 
pia, 

Paros and Naxos, 
Naupactus and Eury- 
tania, 

Gortyna and Megalo¬ 
polis, 

Paxos. 


X. THE SERVIAN CHURCH. 


“ The Archbishop of Belgrade, Metropoli¬ 
tan of all Servia,” having under him the 
Bishops of 

Negotin, Shabatz, 

Uschidze, Nissa. 


XI. THE ROUMANIAN CHURCH. 

In this Church are the “ Metropolitans of 
Hungro-Wallachia, Primate of all Rouma- 
nia,” and the “Metropolitan of Moldavia 
and Suceava.” 

The Bishops of 
Roman, Chotza, 

Rimnik on the Alouta, Ardjetsch, 

Bizya, Stratonicia. 


THE BULGARIAN CHURCH. 

(This Church is not recognized as in com¬ 
munion with Constantinople.) “ The Ex¬ 
arch of Bulgaria,” having under him the 
Metropolitans of 
Widdin, Lophitzus, 

Varna-Prestilava, Tirnova, 

Samocab, Bratch, 

Castentil, Philippopolis, 

Sophia, Slivno, 

Dorostolo-Tchervlen, Adrianople. 

There are also two Yicar Bishops and two 
Bishops retired from their Sees. 


THE ARMENIAN CHURCH. * 

“The Supreme Catholicos of all the Ar¬ 
menians, exercising special jurisdiction in. 
Russia and Persia,” has under him the 
Archbishops of 

Erivan, Bessarabia and New 

Tiflis, Nakikheran, 

Karabagh, Tabriz, 

Zhirvan, Ispahan and Calcutta, 

Astrachan, 

together with an Archbishop and five 
Bishops without Sees, residing at Etehmiad- 
zin as members of the Holy Synod. 


* The Armenian, Syrian, Coptic, Abyssinian, and As¬ 
syrian Churches have long been thought to have de¬ 
parted widely in essential matters from the Catholic 
faith. It would appear, however, that their doctrines 
are, to say the least, much less erroneous than has been 
supposed. Further information in regard to them is 
much to be desired. 






EPISCOPATE 


268 


EPISTLE 


The Patriarch of Constantinople has un¬ 
der him the Archbishops of 


Brousa, 

The Bishops of 
Adrianople, 
Sivas,. 

Caesarea, 

Urho, or Edessa, 
Harpoot, 

Smyrna, 

Arapkir, 

Erzinguian, 

Bhodosto, 

The following 


Van. 

Moosh, 

Balekissar, 

Trebizond, 

The Convent of Ar- 
mash, 

The Convent of Surp 
Daniel, 

The Convent of Mag- 
hapayetzolz-V ank. 
Sees in the Patriarchate 
are vacant, and in charge of Vicars : 

Aguen, Amasea-Marzuan, Angora, Ap- 
hion, Kara-Hissar,Arghen,Babert, Babylon, 
Bagdad, Bayazid, Biledjig, Bitlis,jCharsand- 
jak, Chenkoosh, Diarbekir, Djanig, Egypt 
and Alexandria, Erzeroum, Givindj-Moosh, 
Gurin, Hassan-Kale, Kars, Keghi, Kemack, 
Kutahia, Moldo-Wallachia, Nicomedia, 
Palu, Papert, Shaborn, Kara-Hissar, Siourt, 
Tertchan, Themesyadzak, Tokat, Varna. 

The Patriarch of Jerusalem. 

The Patriarch of Sis, having under him 
the Bishops of 

Hadjin, Yozghad, 

Malatia, Zeitoun. 

Adana, 

The following Sees in this Patriarchate 
are vacant, and in charge of Vicars : 

Aintab, Aleppo, Antioch, Behesne, De- 
rende, Divringhi, Gurium, Halys, Husni- 
mansur, Marash. 

The Patriarch of Akhtamar, having 
under him the Bishops of 
Limm-Anabat, Guedontz-Anabat. 

THE SYRIAN CHURCH. 

(Commonly called the Jacobite Church.) 
“ The Patriarch of Antioch (resides at the 
Convent of Zaaferan, near Mardin), having 
under him the Metropolitans of 
Jerusalem, .Damascus, 

Mosul, Constantinople, 

The Convent of Mar Egypt (the Convent of 

Mattai near Mosul, Mar Behnam), 
Jezirah, Boudgia, 

4 Nisibis, Bishirii, 

Midyat, Aleppo, 

Diarbekir, Adana, 

^Harpoot, Malabar (in India). 

Oorfa, 

THE COPTIC CHURCH. 

“ The Patriarch of Egypt, Jerusalem the 
Holy City, Nubia, Abyssinia, the five 
Western Cities ( i.e . the Pentapolis), and 
all the Preaching of St. Mark,” having 
under him the Metropolitans of 
Cairo, Kouds (the Holy City, 

Lower Egypt, Jerusalem), 

Menouf (Memphis), 

and the Bishops of 
Fayoum and Beh- Abuteg, 


mase, 

Miniyeh, 

Kuskam, 

Manfalout, 

Siout, 


Aschumin, 

Kos, 

Esna and Luxor. 
Khartoum and Nubia. 


THE ABYSSINIAN CHURCH. 

The Metropolitan of the Abyssinian 
Church is called “ The Abouna.” The office 
is now vacant, and the Church is in charge 
of an Archbishop and two Bishops. 

THE ASSYRIAN CHURCH. 

(Commonly called the Nestorian Church.) 

“ The Patriarch of the Chaldeans and of 
the East.” (Besides at Kochanes.) 

He has under him at 
Be Sheems Ood-Deen, 

Ooromiah, 

Berwari, 

Jelu, 

Gawar, 

Doori, 


4 Metropolitans. 
3 “ 

2 “ 

1 Metropolitan. 
1 - “ 

1 “ 


THE CHURCH OF SWEDEN* 

Upsala .—The Archbishop of Upsala, 
Primate of Sweden. Under him are the 
Bishops of 

Linkoping, Lund, 

Skara, Gothemburg, 

Strengas, Calmar, 

Westeras, Hermosand, 

Wexio, Wisby. 


THE CHURCH IN FINLAND. 

Abo .—The Archbishop of Abo. Under 
him are the Bishops of 
Borgo, Kuefico. 

THE MORAVIAN CHURCH* 

This Church has no Diocesan Bishop. 
In the German Province it has five Bishops, 
in the British three Bishops, in the Ameri¬ 
can four Bishops, in the West India Mis¬ 
sion Province one Bishop. 

Bev. C. B. Hale, S.T.D. 

Epistle. 1. A letter. Chiefly the Epis¬ 
tles of St. Paul, St. James, St. Peter, St. 
Jude, and St. John in the New Testament. 
These were letters called forth by various 
circumstances, which were addressed by the 
writers to the several Churches or persons 
needing the teaching, advice, or warning 
contained in them. St. Paul’s fourteen 
Epistles cover nearly all the ground of 
Christian doctrine and practice. Each of 
them has some special doctrinal subject ex¬ 
cept that to Philemon, while some of them 
are more largely hortatory than others. In 
doctrine we may group together Bomans, 
Galatians and the three Epistles of the Boman 
imprisonment, Ephesians, Philippians, and 
Colossians, and the Epistle to the Hebrews. 
The two to the Thessalonians and the two to 
the Corinthians may be classed as hortatory 
and minatory. The two to Timothy and 
that to Titus are upon Church government, 
but both doctrinal and hortatory topics are 
included. While that to Philemon is an 
intercession in behalf of Onesimus. The 
Catholic (or Encyclical) Epistles of St. 


* The Orders of these Churches, fully believed in by 
some, are seriously questioned by others, who have ex¬ 
amined into their validity. 






EPISTLE 


269 


EPISTOLER 


James, St. Peter, St. John, and St. Jude are 
chiefly hortatory upon the principles of 
Christian life, as works (St. James), practi¬ 
cal duties (St. Peter), minatory (St. Jude), 
love (St. John). There is but little cer¬ 
tainty as to the year in which either of these 
Epistles in the New Testament were writ¬ 
ten, except in the date of the Epistle to the 
Romans, but we know with certainty enough 
within what limits of the Apostolic age they 
must have been written. The approximate 
dates of the Epistles are as follows : 


1 Thessalonians.53 a.d. 

2 Thessalonians.54 a.d. 

1 Corinthians.57 a.d. 

2 Corinthians...57 a.d. 

Galatians.57 A.D. 

Romans...58 a.d. 

fiphesians.62 a.d. 

Colossians.63 a.d. 

Philippians.....63 a.d. 

St. James...62 a.d. 

Philemon.63 a.d. 

1 Peter.64 a.d. 

Jude.65 a.d. 

2 Peter.65 a.d. 

Hebrews, ) ( 

1 Timothy, V...-< 66 to 68 A.D. 

Titus, j t 

2 Timothy. 

St. John’s Epistles, after.....98 a.d. 


These dates are, after all, but approxima¬ 
tions, except in the case of the Epistle to 
the Romans, whose date is so nearly ascer¬ 
tained that it forms one of the points from 
which the other data of the Apostle’s life 
maybe fixed. The dates of St. John’s Epis¬ 
tles are wholly conjectural. The other 
dates have an approximate and a very prob¬ 
able accuracy. 

II. But this title, Epistle, is used to des¬ 
ignate that portion-of Scripture (usually 
from the Epistles of the New Testament) 
which is read before the Gospel for each 
Sunday, holy, or fast-day in the Church’s 
year. It is so called because it is very gen¬ 
erally taken from the Epistles. 

This selection of sections of the Epistles 
for each Sunday, holy-day, saints’ day, and 
fast-day must have, in principle at least, 
been an early custom. The Epistles and 
Gospels, arranged nearly as we now use them 
for the Sundays, are found in the book at¬ 
tributed to St. Jerome,—the Comes (vide 
Comes). But there must have been an ear¬ 
lier use, though it probably varied in dif¬ 
ferent Dioceses. Basil the Great (389 a.d.) 
comments on Matt. ii. 1-12 as the Gospel for 
the Feast of the Epiphany; Gregory Nozi- 
anzen on Acts ii. 1-13 as Epistle for Whit- 
Sunday. Ambrose refers to portions of 
Scripture selected for Christmas-day and 
Feast of the Epiphany and St. John’s day, 
which are identical with our own. These 
show a concurrent usage before the year 400 
a.d. If the Comes is St. Jerome’s work 
and brought to us from Gaul, as seems 
likely, then our Epistles and Gospels now 
are of ancient British use and were found 
here by Augustine the Monk in 596 a.d. 

As the Epistle was taken usually from 
some portion of the Apostolic writing, the 
Liturgies called it “ the Apostle.” 


The Epistles and Gospels were chosen 
with very great care to illustrate, first, the 
two great divisions of the Christian year,— 
the Sundays from Advent to Trinity-Sun- 
day, and then the Sundays after Trinity ; 
and, second, and more in detail, to fit in with 
the glorious recital of our Lord’s redemp¬ 
tive acts from Advent to Pentecost. His 
acts are presented with an inspired fitness 
in the selections of the Gospels, and the 
Epistles are the practical comment upon the 
history or parable in the Gospel. The orig¬ 
inal idea of the harmony between the two 
Scriptures in the mind of the persons who 
arranged them is not in all cases very clear 
at first sight to us now. But a little study 
will often show that there does exist such a 
special fitness between the two. 

These Epistles are not always selected 
from the Apostolic writings ; but some are 
taken from other books of the Bible, ac¬ 
cording to their fitness for the lesson to be 
given on the days for which they are ap¬ 
pointed. 

The Epistles for these two Sundays are 
taken from other Scriptures: 

Whit-Sunday, Acts ii. 1; 

Trinity-Sunday, Rev. iv. 1. 

The Epistles on Fast-days from other 
Scriptures are: 

Ash-Wednesday, Joel ii. 12; Monday be¬ 
fore Easter, Is. lxiii. 1; Tuesday, Is. 1. 5. 

The Epistles for Holy-days from other 
Scriptures are: 

Monday in Easter-week, Acts x. 34 ; Tues¬ 
day, Acts xiii. 26; Ascension-day, Acts i. 
1; Monday in Whitsun-week, Aots x. 34; 
Tuesday, Acts viii. 14. 

The Epistles for Saints’ days, taken from 
other Scriptures, are: 

St. Stephen, Acts vii. 55; Innocents, Rev. 
xiv. 1 ; Conversion of St. Paul, Acts ix. 1: 
Purification, Mai. iii. 1 ; St. Matthias, Acts 
i. 15; Annunciation, Is. vii. 10; St. Barna¬ 
bas, Acts xi. 22; St. John Baptist, Is. xl. 1; 
St Peter, Acts xii. 1 ; St. James, Acts xi. 27 ; 
St. Bartholomew, Acts v. 12; St. Michael 
and All-Angels’, Rev. xii. 7; All-Saints’, 
Rev. vii. 2. Also in the Ordinal for Dea¬ 
cons, Acts vi. 2 may be read in the Ordinal 
for Bishops ; the alternate Epistle is from 
Acts xx. 17. The Puritans at the Savoy 
Conference objected to the heading as it then 
stood, “the Epistle, Acts,” etc., for the 
Acts and the Prophets were not Epistolary 
Scriptures at all, and charged that it was a 
falsehood to say here beginneth the Epis¬ 
tle written in Acts or in other Scripture 
than an actual Epistle; so, to remove all 
objection, the heading in such places was 
changed to “ For the Epistle,” and the ru¬ 
bric in the Communion office was changed 
also to agree with this alteration. 

Epistoler. The Priest or Deacon who reads 
the Epistle. Where there are two clergymen 
present at a service, the one who reads the 
Epistle should stand on the south side of the 
Holy Table, while the Gospeler stands on 
the north side. An old custom was when 





















EPOCH 


270 


ESDRAS 


there was but one clergyman officiating, that 
he should read the Epistle from the south 
side, and then cross to the north side to read 
the Gospel. 

Epoch. An era; a cycle of time, or a 
series of events having a closer interconnec¬ 
tion and sequence than other events form¬ 
ing an era in history. These are variously 
described by different historians,, as each 
groups historical facts or appreciates the 
boundaries of the different eras in the world’s 
career. The word epoch is applied almost 
indifferently with the word era to the same 
general divisions, but more usually it is used 
with the date of the creation of the world, 
according to Archbishop Ussher, and in our 
Bibles on the margin, b.c. 4004, with the 
date of the deluge usually given as 2349 b.c. 
But these epochs are discussed in the article 
Chronology. 

Erastianism. Erastus, a physician of Ba¬ 
den (1524-83 a.d.), who asserted the author¬ 
ity of secular legislation over the Church. 
It was a reaction from the opposite theory of 
Calvin. It was a favorite principle of the 
Independents against the Presbyterians, and 
seems to have been taken as a refuge from 
the natural claim of Divine authority set up 
by each dominant sect. It really destroys 
all true conception of the foundation and 
functions of the Church, making it a crea¬ 
ture of the State, and reducing its work to 
one but little more important than that of 
doing a sort of moral police duty. Erastian¬ 
ism will always exist as a reaction against 
extravagant and bigoted conceptions of Di¬ 
vine authority in the Church ; but especially, 
whenever any sect obtains a controlling 
power, it will be held by opponents. The 
Church of England, because of the aid it 
receives from the State to enforce its Can¬ 
ons, has become at times deeply tinged with 
Erastian notions, especially among the states¬ 
men who give their aid or influence to her 
work. But it is not true to charge the 
Church as countenancing any such principle 
in any way. In this country, with the utter 
separation between Church and State, it 
would seem impossible that such ideas could 
become at all prevalent, yet the current view 
of those outside of the Church is practically 
an Erastian view. 

Eschatology. The Revelation concern¬ 
ing the Last Things, and the doctrines and 
conclusions drawn from it. These “ Last 
Things” are Second Advent, Judgment, 
Death, Hell, Resurrection, Heaven, State of 
Souls in the future world, and the Millen¬ 
nium. Purgatory and other “fond things 
vainly invented” concerning the Last 
Things cannot be discussed here. To us as 
we are living in time, the eternal world 
around us, but beyond our spiritual grasp or 
comprehension, must be in the future. So 
however present in God’s Presence all 
things are, yet the Judgment, Heaven, and 
our eternal Condition must, be treated by 
us as of the “ Last Things.” Since Death is 
not only a physical act,^ but involves spirit¬ 


ual acts and conditions, that must be the 
starting-point for us in considering the end 
of all things. What lies beyond ? Revela¬ 
tion has really given us central facts and 
has added but few details. As these several 
facts can here be only enumerated, and will 
be discussed under their several titles more 
fully, it will be only necessary to give the 
definition of each here, and it is hardly 
needed to load the page with texts familiar 
to every Christian. 

I. The Place of Departed Spirits. The 
Greek translations of the Old Testament 
and the Evangelists call it by its heathen 
name Hades. It is unfortunately (now by the 
drift of language principally) translated Hell 
in King James’s Version. Hades (A. V. 
grave) in the Old Testament is for the He¬ 
brew Sheol. It is in the New Testament 
also called (1 Pet. iii. 19) a guard-house 
(prison A. V.). It is diviaed into two, (a) 
Abraham’s bosom, or Paradise. ( b ) That 
side parted off by an impassable gulf,—the 
place of sorrow and torment, or Tartarus 
(2 Pet. ii. 4), the lowest abyss of pain and 
despair. 

II. The Second Advent. The revelation 

is clear and emphatic. It is the sole proph¬ 
ecy embodied in the Creed: “ He shall 

come to judge the quick and the dead.” 

III. The Millennium. So many commen¬ 
tators differ upon the place of the Millen¬ 
nium, whether before or after the Second Ad¬ 
vent, that it is best to refer the discussion of 
it all to that title. 

IV. The Resurrection , involved in and 
consequent upon the Second Advent. 

V. Judgment. The immediate purpose 
of the Resurrection. 

VI. Heaven. The award to those who 
die in the Lord given at the Bar of Judg¬ 
ment. 

VII. Hell. The sentence passed upon the 
wicked at the same time. 

VIII. A further discussion which in¬ 
volves the last two topics, but must be 
noticed under a different title, is the States 
of Heaven and of Hell. 

Several minor topics, Angels of Judg¬ 
ment, the physical, mental, and spiritual 
nature of the joys or pains in the future of 
the Soul after Judgment, the seat of Hea¬ 
ven or of Hell, are really speculative 
topics. But it is to be clearly noted that 
there is no final conciliar declaration by the 
Church defining what Christ has chosen to 
leave so indefinitely described. The Resur¬ 
rection and the Life of the world to come, in 
the Creeds, is the nearest definition. She has 
chosen to declare upon this whole class of 
subjects, and upon these her words are clear 
and positive. 

Esdras. The Apocryphal books num¬ 
bered 1 and 2 Books of Esdras. They were 
very generally rejected in the Primitive 
Church, though they were quoted by some 
with approval. Jerome, however, rejected 
them with decision. The absurdities, the 
contradictions, not only of the Canonical 




ESPOUSALS 


271 


ESTHER 


Scriptures, but of the facts as recorded in 
profane history, are such as to destroy their 
claim to any historical value. The first Book 
seems to be a rearrangement, according to 
the compiler’s idea of the sequence of events, 
of the sacred history from the last twochap- 
thers of 2 Chronicles to the close of the 
books of Ezra and Nehemiah, whose con¬ 
tents he has altered and mistaken. Its facts 
may have had some basis as isolated occur¬ 
rences, but the book is worthless historically. 
The.second Book of Esdras is quite as value¬ 
less historically, though it is a record of Jew¬ 
ish dreams and anticipations at the period 
of its composition. The precise date is not 
known, but it lies about 25 b.c. and 110 
a.d. It is influenced in its numerous inter¬ 
polations, and, if it be by different writers, 
in later editions by the Christian Scriptures. 
(An excellent account of these two books is 
to be found in Smith’s Bible Dictionary ) 

Espousals. The Betrothal. There is a 
distinction between Marriage and Espousals. 
Espousals were binding indeed, but pre¬ 
ceded the Marriage ceremony often for 
years. The ancient Canon Law recognized 
this and acted upon it. But its basis was to 
be found in the Old Testament ( e.g ., Jere¬ 
miah ii. 2; Hosea ii. 19, 20), where it is 
used typically of God binding His Church 
to Himself, and in the New Testament, 
where St. Paul tells the Corinthians that as 
a bridesman he has espoused them to Christ 
(2 Cor. xi. 2). There are only passing ref¬ 
erences to the espousals or betrothal, in the 
Law, as a fact, e.g., “a betrothed damsel.” 
But Eleazar, Abraham’s steward, betrothed 
Rebecca for Isaac with formal presents, 
jewelry, and raiment (Gen. xxiv.). The 
forms of betrothal are only dwelt upon by 
the prophets, and then in a very slight and 
allusive manner, most fully, however, in 
Ezek. xvi. 10-13; compare Rev. xxi. 2. 

Established Church. The idea of the 
“ Established Church” is misunderstood 
very often. It is not that any government 
ever imagined the absurdity that it could 
establish the Church, but that religion being 
necessary to the well-being of the State, the 
Church was recognized, protected, and al¬ 
lied to the State by law. Its officers re¬ 
ceived political recognition, and part of the 
revenues of the State went to its support. 
Its canons and discipline were enforced by 
civil enactments, and in time the State had 
great influence in the affairs of the Church. 
This joining of Church and State began in 
the time of Constantine (320-350 a.d.). The 
alliance was not at all at variance with the 
notions then current. It was inherited from 
the protection pagan religions received by 
becoming State religions, and in their ideas 
of religion it was an indifferent matter 
whether they worshiped Jupiter, or Serapis, 
or Astarte. These notions being current, to 
divorce Church and State would have seemed 
to them an unnatural proceeding. That this 
alliance should ever have been formed, and 
that the Church ever should be recognized 


as the religion of the State established by 
law, is to us quite as unnatural. Yet it was 
inherited from the Jewish Church, and in 
it was involved the popular idea of ortho¬ 
doxy. In fact, the Church and State, both 
in New England and in the other colonies, 
was a constitutional fact, and the final sev¬ 
erance of the State from religious affairs was 
effected, e.g., in Massachusetts in the early 
decades of this century. The perverted idea 
that the State created the Church only shows 
how little attention is paid to history. 

Esther. The Queen of Ahasuerus,—a 
very remarkable character. Noble, lovely, 
deeply devout, obedient even in the king’s, 
harem to the traditions of her race, she 
was probably not raised to the rank of the 
Queens of Persia, but was chief among the 
royal concubines, whose state was within 
that of a real marriage, who yet had no po¬ 
litical rank. Her patriotism and wisdom 
were of the greatest use to her people in 
their dire need. Her grace and loveliness 
and exquisite charms are told in such simple 
language, that we see how holily she bore 
her honors in the midst of a licentious court. 
She is to be judged by the ideas and man¬ 
ners of her age and surroundings, and under 
this test she is one of the fairest characters 
in Holy Scripture. 

Book of Esther .—Its author is not known, 
but may have been Mordecai, the Queen’s 
uncle. The minute details given, both his¬ 
torical, social, and personal, make this con¬ 
jecture quite probable. The book of Esther 
was brought from Babylon and placed in 
the Canon by Ezra, and put afterwards 
under the (later) arrangement of the Hagi- 
ographa (which see). The simple, straight¬ 
forward flow of the narrative is strongly 
marked, while the strangeness of the inci¬ 
dents and the picture of the manners of the 
sensual despot, the audacity and superstition 
of Haman, the passive, proud bearing of the 
Jew, are all fully borne out by what is well 
authenticated of that time. ' That Ahas¬ 
uerus is the Xerxes of the Grecian war is 
quite clear, and gives to this book almost 
the appearance of touching upon profane 
history. In another way, too, this coinci¬ 
dence of time has a curious relation to its 
contents. The name of God does not occur, 
in it, though fasting, prayer, and weeping 
attest the devoutness of the Jews in their 
danger. But we have a book placed in the 
inspired Canon which does not draw aside 
the veil, as is done in so many other books, 
and does not show us the presiding care and 
watchful Providence, but leaves that to be 
surely inferred from the events of the his¬ 
tory itself. In this respect it is to be most 
highly valued. The translation of Esther 
in the Septuagint is interpolated, and con¬ 
tains some items which were very likely 
traditional. 

Latter Chapters of (Apocrypha .).—Those 
chapters contain a supposed dream of Mor¬ 
decai, in which Esther is likened to a little 
fountain which became a river, an account 







ETERNITY 


272 


ETERNITY 


of the conspiracy against the king, and Mor- 
decai's revelation of it, the king’s letters to 
destroy the Jews, and the prayers of Morde- 
cai and Esther to the God of Israel. There 
is also a description of Esther’s intercession 
with the king, and of the king’s mercy to 
her people. Mordecai’s pedigree is also given. 
These apocryphal additions may have arisen 
in part on account of the desire of the Jews 
“ to dwell upon the events of the Babylonish 
captivity, and especially upon the Divine 
interpositions in their behalf.” Traditions 
would be rife. The most popular, or most 
historical, or those by the most eminent 
-authors, or the most ancient stories, and 
those which fed the love of national great¬ 
ness, might obtain special authority. The 
deliverance of the Jews by Mordecai and 
Esther would be a favorite subject. The 
chapters in the Apocrypha are not found in 
the Hebrew or Chaldee. They were written 
in Greek, translated into Latin, and were a 
“part of the Italic, or old Latin version in 
use before the time of Jerome.” They are 
thought by Horne to be “evidently the pro¬ 
duction of an Hellenistic Jew.” 

Authorities: Archdeacon Hervey, inWm, 
Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible, Horne’s 
Introduction. Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Eternity. In a strict sense, and as it re¬ 
lates to God, eternity has neither beginning 
nor end. As regards human beings, it has 
a beginning but no end. “ One day is with 
the Lord as a thousand years, and a thou¬ 
sand years as one day” (2 St. Pet. iii. 8). 
As Estius “ expresses it, all eternity is one 
day.” (Liddon’s Bampton Lectures on our 
Lord’s Divinity, p. 301, note.) Ages are 
lost in eternity. No human being can grasp 
the idea fully, because he measures things 
by comparing them with the finite things 
about him. 

Addison (Spectator, No. 590) calls eter¬ 
nity a line which has neither beginning nor 
end. The present time he says has been 
wisely compared to an isthmus in the midst 
of an ocean. He allows the division into an 
eternity past and an eternity to come. While 
this is not strictly scientific, it is convenient, 
and desirable as a help in grasping the sub¬ 
ject. 

. The incessant anticipation of the human 
mind has been adduced as a proof that it is 
fitted for future endless existence. Cato 
calls it, “This longing after immortality.” 
Time, like a constantly flowing stream, ever 
rolls- on, but it empties into the ocean of eter- 
nity. 

Eternity is constantly spoken of as future, 
but we are already in it. Aubrey de Yere 
(The Subjective Difficulties in Religion) 
uses this illustration. Eternity is not a pro¬ 
longation of time, but a vaster sphere clasp¬ 
ing a smaller one, and reaching with its pen¬ 
etrating influences to beings at once inclosed 
within both. 

Still time, as but a piece of eternity, so to 
speak, is transient. Thucydides may speak 
of a possession for eternity, and Keats of the 


“joy forever” that springs from “ a thing of 
beauty,” but nothing earthly can abide, and 
outward adorning must perish, as the earth 
itself, which hastens on to destruction. 

In striving to catch an idea of eternity by 
means of time, astronomy comes to our aid. 
The thought of heavenly bodies which have 
kept their appointed courses for thousands 
of years, while men and nations have van¬ 
ished from the earth like forest leaves, is a 
step towards the knowledge of that infinite 
duration which none can perfectly search 
out. The idea of Huygenius, that there may 
be stars whose light has not reached us since 
creation, is one of the vastest that may be 
imagined. 

When it is considered that time is measured 
by the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, 
and yet that the period during which they 
have revolved in space since the creation is 
as nothing in comparison with an eternity 
past, the subject assumes a majestic and over¬ 
powering aspect. A spectacle of the starry 
heavens belittlesrrian in his own estimation, 
as David expresses it in the eighth Psalm: 
“ When I consider Thy heavens, the work of 
Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which 
Thou hast ordained ; what is man, that Thou 
art mindful of him ? and the son of man, 
that Thou visitest him ?” But he fails not 
to add, “For Thou hast made him a little 
lower than the angels, and hast crowned him 
with glory and honor.” When the Blessed 
Saviour declares that the very hairs of our 
head are numbered, God’s peculiar care is 
evident over apparent creatures of a day, 
who are, however, only waiting on the 
threshold of eternity. 

As character can never change in a future 
state of existence, the “ ornament of a meek 
and quiet spirit,” which may be attained in 
this life, will beautify the next; the charity, 
which never faileth hereafter, is to be learned 
and practiced here. In the eternal loss of 
earthly things by death are foreshadowed the 
irrecoverable losses met with during life by 
reason of wastefulness, forfeiture, dishonor, 
robbery, or defective title. When men 
daily see the fearful effect of improper 
actions on this present life, what can be 
said of the supreme folly and utter mad¬ 
ness of those who treat the passing hour as 
if it were given them merely for pleasure, 
or sin, and even crime, careless as to the 
conditions of a future state commensurate 
with the existence of God, in which they 
are to continue to be the same persons essen¬ 
tially as they have been on earth ? “ ‘ For 

evermore!’” (Rev. i. 18.) “Words easily 
uttered, but in comprehension vaster than 
human thought can grasp, till man, enter¬ 
ing upon eternity, shall rise to faculties 
fitted for the scene! ‘ For evermore’; for 

an existence to which the age of the earth, 
of the starry heavens, of the whole vast uni¬ 
verse is less than a morning dream; for a 
life which, after the reiteration of millions 
of centuries, shall begin the endless race 
with the freshness of infancy, and all the 






ETHICS, CHRISTIAN 


273 


ETHICS, CHRISTIAN 


eagerness that welcomes enjoyments ever 
new. The blight of all our earthly pleas¬ 
ures is decay ; our suns have scarcely risen 
when they set; we have but just persuaded 
ourselves that we are happy when the happi¬ 
ness is vanished. Pining after something 
that will endure, we are not to be forever 
disappointed; born for eternity, eternity 
shall surely be ours. But, oh !—horrible 
thought!—if all this tendency to the eter¬ 
nal, this longing for everlasting mansions, 
be to any of us but the prophetic twilight, 
the forecast shadow of unending darkness! 
oh ! agony insufferable, if the eternal life 
of Christ— the Christian’s warrant of justi¬ 
fication, of sanctity, of happiness—be but 
the guarantee of a death as everlasting as 
His everlasting life; if the prolongation of 
His divine existence be but the seal and 
surety of that never-dying death which, by 
a dread union of opposites, seems described 
as protracting dissolution itself into immor¬ 
tality !” (Archer Buller’s Sermons, Eirst 
Series, Sermon x.) 

'When Christianity, with its “life and 
immortality,” presented itself to the notice 
of Edwin, the Saxon King of the North of 
England, he held a consultation about it, 
and a nobleman remarked that he had seen 
a swallow flying through the king’s house, 
entering one door and passing out of another, 
while the king sat at supper in the hall, and 
the fire was burning on the hearth, and a 
tempest of rain or snow raging without. 
The bird felt the temporary warmth, and 
escaped. Such he declared was the life of 
man without Christianity, buried in dark¬ 
ness as to what preceded or followed it. 
Hence he advised a consideration of the new 
doctrine. 

On the dark future Christianity sheds its 
light. While it tells of coming years more 
numerous than the sands on the sea-shore, 
it declares that they may all be happy if 
time is spent in preparation for eternity. 

See Buck’s Theological Dictionary, and 
Illustrations of the Catechism of the P. E. 
Church, by an English clergyman, revised 
by Rev. W. W. Spear, D.D.,and Addison’s 
Essay in The Spectator, No. 565. 

Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Ethics, Christian. In order to get a dis¬ 
tinct idea of Christian Ethics we must con¬ 
sider it in relation to “the Law.” In St. 
Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, he contrasts 
“the Law” very sharply with the Gospel, or 
with the grace which came by Jesus Christ 
(Rom. iii. to v.). There can be no doubt 
but that St. Paul in this discussion had in 
view chiefly the Jewish Law. But the Law 
of the Jews, the laws or religions of all 
other nations, and the Law of nature as in¬ 
dicated in Natural Theology and in Moral 
Philosophy were viewed in common, so that 
what St. Paul says of the one is applicable 
with certain modifications and with greater 
force to all the others. 

Moral Philosophy tries to find from a study 
of man’s nature the circumstances under 

18 


which he lives, the ideal of perfection at 
which he ought to aim, and the laws 'and 
rules of life and duty for men. It appeals 
to the ideal as a motive, and often doing 
what it can to excite and cultivate the best 
motives, it leaves the result to depend on 
will force, upon the power or the weakness, 
as it may happen to be, of each one’s own 
will,—his power of self-control and of per¬ 
sonal exertion. Its rule is justice,—a law of 
equality or of rights. It has no idea of for¬ 
bearance, of pardon, of mercy, or of help 
from above. Its tendency is therefore to 
produce rather a sternness of character than 
the more amiable disposition and that soft¬ 
ness of character at which Christianity 
aims. It tends to puff one up with pride, 
self-reliance, in view of what he has attained 
or done for himself, rather than make him 
humble and self-denying, in view of what 
has been done for him. 

All heathen religions were alike in this 
very important respect: their ideal of life 
was not very high; and although they 
taught and inculcated some form of worship 
to the gods in which they believed, they did 
not ascribe to their gods the very highest 
excellence of character; nor did they teach 
their devotees to look to their gods for 
spiritual help. The heathens prayed to their 
gods and worshiped them with sacrifices, 
but the help they sought was deliverance 
from some present evil or some future im¬ 
pending calamity of a temporal or purely 
physical and bodily nature. For purity of 
heart, and inward strength to resist tempta¬ 
tion and to do right, they relied on them¬ 
selves, so far as they had any thought or 
care for such things. They did not expect 
nor seek for any help from the gods in which 
they believed, or from their religion, in this 
direction. Hence their religion can hardly 
be regarded as a help to their morality, or to 
their efforts at moral purity and moral ex¬ 
cellence. And in many cases its influence 
was quite the reverse. Their religion often 
led and even compelled them to. acts which 
the very instincts of their nature abhorred, 
and it familiarized their minds with such 
vices by ascribing them to their gods. 

The Jewish religion, while it was unmeas- 
urably superior to all the others in most re¬ 
spects, was much like them in the one that 
we have chiefly in view now. It was a re¬ 
ligion of law and not of grace. It did in¬ 
deed inculcate the idea of God’s moral 
excellence, not only His power, but His 
purity, His goodness, and His righteousness 
and justice in all things. This idea exerted 
a most powerful influence for good on the 
Jewish mind. It was a help upward and 
not a debasing influence, tending downward , 
as did all the heathen religions. And, too, 
the Jewish system of sacrifices was intended 
as a help and served that end. It inculcated 
the idea of sin as constituting personal ill 
desert on the part of the offender, and that 
all our unhappiness and misfortunes in this 
world come either directly from our own 






ETHICS, CHRISTIAN 


274 ETHICS, CHRISTIAN 


faults and sins, or indirectly from the sins 
and transgressions of God’s most righteous 
laws by others with whom we are most inti¬ 
mately connected. It recognized the impos¬ 
sibility of ever living up to the perfect 
standard, and of fulfilling all the require¬ 
ments of the Law. In view of this fact, 
it made a fuller and clearer revelation of 
that Law, in order that the people might 
better understand what to do, but more es¬ 
pecially, and above all in importance, for 
our present purpose, it provided sacrifices of 
such a nature that there was no one who 
could not provide the victim that was re¬ 
quired, and have it offered for him as an 
atonement or expiation for his sins and short¬ 
comings. There was thus a help to the per¬ 
formance of duty, and a means of escape 
from the penalty and punishment which this 
view of the Divine justice could not but force 
upon them as a consequence of their trans¬ 
gressions and the failures in duty, which, 
after they had done their very best, would 
sometimes occur; but this was rather a help 
by way of escape from deserved punishment 
than a means or help to greater purity and 
holiness of heart or life. Immeasurably 
superior therefore as the Jewish religion 
was to all others, in these two respects it 
falls, nevertheless, far below the Christian 
religion, in the one respect of inward help 
and grace. 

It does not come within our present pur¬ 
pose to discuss the matter of the J ewish sacri¬ 
fices and contrast them with the one Sacrifice 
of our Lord, in reference to their efficiency 
in securing forgiveness of sins and Divine 
favor. The contrast which we wish now to 
pursue is of a different nature. The Jewish 
religion put into the foreground the Law to 
be fulfilled. It presented all rites and sacri¬ 
fices of this religion as a help, a means to 
either fulfilling the Law or making amends 
and atonement for its non-fulfillment. The 
Christian religion, on the other hand, put 
into the foreground, and in the most con¬ 
spicuous position, “ the grace” that is to 
help us. This is indeed a fuller disclosure 
of the love of God and the more attractive 
attributes of His character, if we may prop¬ 
erly so speak of them. There is also a fuller 
revelation of the future life and of what 
depends there upon our conduct here. But 
all these things serve only to strengthen 
motives. Over and above this there is a 
fuller exhibition of the efficiency and the 
sufficiency of the sacrifice which God has 
provided for us, and the assurance of Divine 
help by the inward operations of tbe Holy 
Ghost in the heart of every one that truly 
believes and will submit himself to that 
holy influence. And this, what the Law, 
the natural law of morality, or the Jewish 
Law, with rites and sacrifices, could not do, 
through no fault of its own, but on account 
of the weakness of the flesh, Christ hath 
done for us through grace. 

Nor is this all. Christ has added to all 
the motives we had before, and, in addition 


to the clearer views and brighter hopes of 
the future life, a motive still stronger and 
more efficacious in His own example and 
suffering for us. He said of Himself, signi¬ 
fying what death He should die, “ And I, if 
I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all 
men unto me.” This has been found in all 
experience to be the strongest motive if 
measured by its influence upon the human 
heart. Men are touched and drawn by the 
simple story of the Sayiour’s life and 
death for us as they are by no other motive, 
and often when all other considerations have 
failed to reach them. 

No life on earth was ever so beautiful, no 
death so tragic as His. The thought of it 
when truly presented softens and wins the 
heart and makes one’s sins and ingratitude 
seem too odious to be any longer persisted 
in. Men and women are melted and won 
to repentance and newness of life by the 
consideration of what Christ has done and 
endured for them, when they could not be 
reached or touched by any consideration of 
their own imperfections considered as a 
mere matter of morality and of “ law,” or 
by any estimate or apprehension of the con¬ 
sequences of their own guilt as seen merely 
in the light of nature or of reason. We 
have, then, as constituting the Christian 
Ethics, clearer light, stronger motives, and 
Divine help, the immediate influences of the 
Holy Ghost, and the result is, accordingly, 
a type of Christian character which is pe¬ 
culiar and unlike everything else ever seen 
anywhere else. The doctrine of the Atone¬ 
ment, of our dependence for salvation upon 
such a Sacrifice, upon the suffering of such a 
Person, is well calculated to take away all 
tbe pride of self-sufficiency, and to produce 
a disposition to do and to endure in all hu¬ 
mility and submission whatever God’s will 
may require or appoint for us. Then, too, 
in the promised help we have our trust, and 
thus accomplish what we might otherwise 
fail even to undertake through want of con¬ 
fidence and hope of being able to accom¬ 
plish anything. 

Another important peculiarity of Chris¬ 
tian Ethics is the fact that the attraction is so 
much fixed on the motives, and the assur¬ 
ance that right motives are more important 
than right actions whenever there is, or can 
be, any doubt about our having both. 
Our Lord made this contrast very conspic¬ 
uous in His Sermon on the Mount, by put¬ 
ting three cases in which He contrasted His 
teaching and the character of His Gospel 
with the law: “Ye have heard that it 
was said to them of old time, Thou shalt 
not kill, . . . but I say unto you, That 
whosoever is angry with his brother without 
a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: 
and whosoever shall say to his brother, 
Raca, shall be in danger of the council : 
but whosoever shall say Thou fool, shall be 
in danger of hell-fire” (St. Matt. v. 21, 22). 
So likewise with the other two examples 
that are given in the same connection, the 







ETHICS, CHRISTIAN 


275 


EVANGELIST 


design of our Lord was evidently to im¬ 
press on His hearers and followers the doc¬ 
trine that the greatest evil, in the evil of 
each case, was the motive, the condition of 
the heart from which the evil act proceeds. 
Law seeks to prevent wrong acts by prohib¬ 
iting them and by punishing the offender. 
The Gospel, on the other hand, while dis¬ 
approving of the wrong acts not less se¬ 
verely than the Law does, aims rather at 
making the heart right first,—the tree good 
that the fruit may be good also. And in 
the Epistles, especially those of St. Paul, 
are the doctrines brought out, that we are 
saved or depend for our salvation rather 
upon the state of the heart, upon faith, than 
upon the perfection or merit of any works 
we can perform. 

In fact, in the Christian view there can 
be no merit properly so called. In the esti¬ 
mation of mere Law merit is possible. The 
Law prescribes a duty, and the extent to 
which we are obliged to perform tbe duty, 
and, of course, it implies also a limit be¬ 
yond which we are not to go, or need not 
go. But the Gospel, by summing all duty 
in the Ten Commandments, love to God 
and love to man, removes all these limits; 
and then by representing an excess of love 
as impossible it removes all possibility of 
any limit to obedience. Whatever may be 
done must be; nor can it ever be regarded 
as more than duty or as work of superero¬ 
gation. We may easily come short of Di¬ 
vine requirement, but we can by no possi¬ 
bility and in no conceivable way go beyond 
it; so that, do what we may, we still have 
reason to consider ourselves but “ unprofit¬ 
able servants,” and, feeling so, to continue 
to recognize our dependence on Divine 
grace. 

But while Christianity thus directs the 
attention of the believer to his motives,— 
the state of his heart, as if that were the 
most important thing, if not the only thing 
to be kept in mind,—it clearly recognizes 
the possibility of self-deception, and of our 
mistaking or misdirecting our motives. 
Here it refers to the acts that our motives 
lead us to perform as the best and only in¬ 
fallible test bj 7 which to judge of our mo¬ 
tives. “ By their fruits ye shall know 
them” is His statement. And our Lord 
urges the fact that “ A good tree cannot 
bring forth corrupt fruit, nor a corrupt tree 
bring forth good fruit.” “Men do not 
gather grapes of thorns, nor figs of thistles.” 
Any system of mere “law” is defective also 
in another very important point. Such a 
system can lay down general rules, but it 
cannot go into the thousand details and 
“ small cases” that will arise in the practical 
affairs of life. Here for any system of moral 
rules prescribed as a mere matter of moral¬ 
ity there must be a department of “ Casu¬ 
istry,” consisting of rules to enable us to de¬ 
cide such questions when they arise. These 
rules look only to the decision of what we 
ought to do. And they might be all-suffi¬ 


cient if only we could always be able to de" 
cide by means of them when we are really 
in doubt. But that is impossible as a mere 
matter of intellect or judgment; we are 
often still in doubt after we have done all 
we can. Besides that, there is always the 
very great danger that we shall be misled 
by feelings and self-interest in the case. 

To meet this difficulty our Lord prepared 
His “Golden Rule,” as it has been called. 
“ All things whatsoever ye would that men 
should do unto you, do ye the same unto 
them.” Now it is not supposed that this 
rule will guide us to the exact knowledge 
of right actions and to what ought to be 
done in all cases, irrespective of motives, 
but it is a plain and practical guide for us to 
what it is, in a spiritual point of view, al¬ 
ways best for us to do in the circumstances. 
Considered as a principle of mere morality 
or moral philosophy, the rule is open to 
criticism, and quite fairly. But as we come 
short of our duty mainly from either self- 
indulgence or self-love, or from deficiency 
of .love towards our neighbors, — while it 
may not be best for us always in a selfish or 
worldly point of view to do to others as we 
would like to have them do to us or for us,— 
it is better always in a spiritual point of 
view to err, if we must err at all, on the 
side or in the direction of self-denial rather 
than in the direction of self-indulgence, and 
on the side of generosity towards others than 
in the direction of selfishness. We had bet¬ 
ter go beyond the rule,—the mere require¬ 
ments of Law in the direction of self-denial 
and generosity,—rather than run any risk 
of sinning and injuring our own souls by 
indulging our ease or our pleasures, or pur¬ 
suing our own private or personal ends to 
the detriment of others. Whatever we may 
lose of the things of this life and its enjoy¬ 
ments, honors, or possessions, this we gain 
in and for the world that is to come. Nor 
is this all. Even in this life it is seldom 
the recollection of an occasion of self- 
indulgence or an act of selfishness affords us 
any pleasure; but the recollection of gen¬ 
erosity or self-denial for the good of others 
is a never-failing source of enjoyment. 

Rev. W. D. Wilson, D.D. 

Eucharist. Vide Lord’s Supper. 

Euchologion. A service book of the Greek 
Church, containing the offices, rites, and 
ceremonies of that Church, and correspond¬ 
ing to our own book of Common Prayer. 
It is the Ritual book for all the greater 
offices, as the Anthologion contains the 
hymns and festal offices. 

Evangel. The Gospel. The glad tidings 
of salvation through our Lord. The word 
is used with the greatest latitude. It may 
mean but the glad tidings of the Resurrec¬ 
tion, or it may embrace the Four Gospels. 
Any central fact of the whole extent of the 
Redemptive work ol Christ may be called 
an Evangel. 

Evangelist. An office in the Apostolic 
Church,—mentioned three times in the New 






EYE 


276 


EVIDENCES, CHRISTIAN 


Testament. St. Philip the Evangelist (Acts 
xxi. 8) is the only one spoken of as actually 
exercising it. St. Timothy, who held another 
office, was bidden to do the work of an 
Evangelist (2 Tim. iv. 5); and it is enumer¬ 
ated by St. Paul in the passage in the Epis¬ 
tle to the Ephesians (iv. 11), together with 
other divinely-appointed orders. “ And 
He gave some (to be) Apostles, and some 
Evangelists, and some prophets,” etc. It 
was not an order in the Church, as were 
the Apostle, the Presbyter, and the Deacon, 
hut an office connected with them, and exer¬ 
cised by any one who had the proper gift. So 
St. Philip is one of the seven Deacons, St. 
Timothy is an Apostle; St. Paul saying of 
himself and Silvanus and Timothy, “ We 
might have been burdensome as the Apostles 
of Christ” (1 Thess. ii. 6); but they have a 
special gift,—that of preaching the Gospel, 
as Evangelists. 

The “ work of an Evangelist,” as the mis¬ 
sion intrusted to special men, has been 
revived in the Church of late years. It is 
practically an itinerancy. The Evangelist 
has certain limits assigned him, within 
which he visits those places where the 
Church has not yet been preached and 
searches out those church-members who 
have been cut off from their privileges and 
opportunities. Very efficient work has been 
done by these Evangelists. 

Eve. The day before a festival. If a 
fast is appointed for that day it is a Vigil, if 
it is not a fast-day it is called an Eve. There 
are but two Eves observed in the American 
Church,—Easter-Even and NewYear’s Eve. 
The Vigils have been dropped out of our 
Prayer-Book. According to the old rule, 
all festivals are preceded by an Eve or a 
Vigil, including Sundays. All martyrs 
have Vigils, except those which fall upon 
Christmas-, Easter-, and Whitsuntide. The 
other feasts are preceded by Eves. The 
Collect for the day is said, according to 
English rule then, on the evening service 
before, if it be an Eve, but if it be a Vigil, 
the Collect for the week is recited, and then 
the Collect of the Eeast-day of the morrow. 

Eve. The woman whom God formed of a 
rib from Adam’s side. Her name is taken 
from the Hebrew “ Havah,” living, for 
she was the mother of all living. Her 
temptation and fall, and her own tempting 
Adam in turn, with the fatal results, are 
most intimately woven into our history, and 
form the sufficient motive for our redemp¬ 
tion. To her was given the promise of the 
Messiah, the restorer, in very enigmatic 
language, yet she certainly knew somewhat 
of its import, for she named her first-born 
Cain,—Acquired, Gotten,—for she said, “I 
have gotten a man from Jehovah.” Then 
when at the birth of her second child she 
thought herself disappointed, she named 
him Abel,—Vanity. After Abel’s murder, 
when Seth was given her, she named him 
bo in her gladness. “For God hath ap¬ 
pointed me another seed instead of Abel 


whom Cain slew.” It is, of course, impos¬ 
sible to say how far she comprehended the 
promise of the Redeemer, but that she 
must have known something of its meaning 
is but reasonable, both from the names she 
gave her children and from the use of sacri¬ 
fice, of the meaning of which she must have 
been aware. The history about her closes 
with her joyous naming of Seth (Gen. iv. 25). 

Everlasting. Vide Eternity. 

Everlasting Punishment. Vide Hell. 

Evidences, Christian. In its ordinary and 
natural significance this expression means 
any evidence by which Christianity comes 
to human knowledge, whether in the facts 
of its origin or in the material of its doc¬ 
trines ; or by act, in these facts and doctrines, 
it is proved a revelation of Divine truth. 
Technically, its meaning is more restricted, 
and has reference more predominately to 
such evidence defensively exhibited,—evid¬ 
ences of Christianity, called forth in view 
of objections and difficulties urged against 
it, misconceptions of friendly inquiries, mis¬ 
representations of enemies. At the same time, 
from the very nature of the case, and mani¬ 
fested in every great period of conflict, the 
defense, as part of a successful defensive 
movement, becomes an assault; such as¬ 
sault involving the positive exhibition of 
Christianity, by contrast, and as superior to 
the opposing, and all other systems. Even 
in such case, however the expression “ Evi¬ 
dences of Christianity,” or “Apologetics,” its 
more recent equivalent, carries with it pre¬ 
dominantly to ordinary readers its techni¬ 
cal and more restricted meaning. Thus 
taken we recognize the necessity for such 
Christian evidences, or evidential defense, 
in its first contact with Jewish and Heathen 
feeling and thought, in their respective com¬ 
munities. While to a large portion of what 
afterwards became the Jewish discipleship, 
there was no existing prejudice, nor even 
specific knowledge of the person and min¬ 
istry of Jesus, and the task of the Apostolic 
teacher, as with Philip to the Eunuch, was 
simply to show from the Old Testament 
Scriptures that “ this Jesus was the Christ,” 
yet with others there was a very different 
condition of things. Many of them, and 
this more peculiarly the case with Pales¬ 
tinian Judaism, were full of bitter animosity 
against Christian doctrine. Looking upon 
Christianity as a system of imposture, upon 
its object of loyalty and devotion as a teacher 
of falsehood, a blasphemous claimant of 
Messianic and Divine honors, they were not 
only indisposed to any reception of its claims, 
but were ready to use all means to arrest 
its progress. Saul of Tarsus was the type 
of a class by no means small or insignifi¬ 
cant. This class it was by which he him¬ 
self was so bitterly opposed during his sub¬ 
sequent career. And in his defenses of him¬ 
self, as a preacher of Christianity, first to 
the multitude after his rescue by Lysias, 
and afterwards before Festus, and again 
before Agrippa, we have the earliest forms 





EVIDENCES, CHRISTIAN 


277 


EVIDENCES, CHRISTIAN 


of defensive Christian evidence, the first 
specimens of Christian Apologetics, as 
addressed to the removal of Jewish preju¬ 
dice and misrepresentation. But the 
Apostle never forgot to address himself to 
the removal of Jewish prejudice. This 
must have been especially the case in that 
last recorded interview of the Apostle with 
his Jewish countrymen, soon after his 
arrival at Rome. The lengthened argu¬ 
ment, “ from morning until evening, out of 
the law of Moses and the Prophets,” fail¬ 
ing with some but successful with others, 
while directed to the main conclusion that 
Jesus was the Christ, was also directed, 
as it began and went on, to the removal of 
existing specific prejudices and misconcep¬ 
tions against the sect of the Nazarenes, that 
is, His disciples and followers “everywhere 
spoken against.” Such existing prejudice and 
odium against Christianity, “ this new sect,” 
is given by the Roman Jews as a reason for 
their desire to hear more fully about it from 
the Apostle. In other words, to put the 
matter in later form of expression, they 
asked of him an exhibition of the “evi¬ 
dences of Christianity.” A request with 
which he promptly complied,—in that com¬ 
pliance removing the prejudices and secur¬ 
ing the conviction of at least a portion of 
his hearers. “ Some believed.” 

So too, as to the necessity of such defen¬ 
sive and explanatory evidence, as passing 
outside of the circle of Judaism, Christi¬ 
anity was preached and made its converts 
among the heathen. It thus came in con¬ 
tact with heathen thought and feeling, 
not only in the persons of its converts, but 
of those with whom they were in daily as¬ 
sociation. As both new and diverse from 
existing forms of. worship, it soon called forth 
not only attention, but prejudice and oppo¬ 
sition. Such prejudice would, of course, be 
intensified as the character of Christianity 
became manifest. While, unlike Judaism, a 
world religion, it was, like it, an exclu¬ 
sive one. Its undertaking was to overthrow 
idolatry in all its forms, to absorb anything 
that might be good in them, to throw oft' 
what was evil, and eventually to supplant 
them. In the very terms of its existence 
and progress, it demanded unconditional 
surrender,—a surrender of systems as of 
individuals. At first, however, regarded as 
a Jewish sect, and therefore a form of re¬ 
ligion sanctioned by imperial legislation, a 
“ religio licita” there was no interference 
with it by the Heathen authorities. Perse¬ 
cuted by Judaism during the first forty 
years of its existence, it was, by its sup¬ 
posed Jewish character, saved from that of 
the Heathen magistracy. But when Judaism 
passed away, in its terrible overthrow, it was 
found that Christianity was something dif¬ 
ferent. Here was a new religion, with its 
converts in every city in the Empire, 
rapidly spreading, antagonistic to existing 
religions, itself a u religio illicita,” having, 
under imperial sanction, no legal existence, 


and, therefore, demanding either repression 
or specific legal toleration and freedom of 
exercise. This latter it fully obtained (after 
a long struggle) during the first quarter of 
the fourth century. In the mean time, effort 
was made to repress it. These efforts of 
legal repression were usually local; the 
repression of lawful authority to local prej¬ 
udice and feeling, finding expression in 
distinet accusations. Sometimes, doubtless, 
they originated in the personal animosity 
of particular officials; and in some few 
cases, by direction or instruction from the 
imperial centre. 

But these efforts in the way of legal repres¬ 
sion, as showing prejudice and misconcep¬ 
tion, called forth very soon its response 
in the Apologies,—the defensive Christian 
evidences of the second and third centuries. 
This, indeed, is the characteristic of the 
Christian writings of that age. The new 
religion was on trial. The question at issue 
was, shall it be extirpated or shall it be toler¬ 
ated ? The argument of the Christian apolo¬ 
gists was for the latter, for freedom of re¬ 
ligious opinion and belief. Such argument 
was occupied with prevalent impressions 
against Christianity, and to show that they 
were unfounded. It went on to exhibit its 
real character and teaching, and then, still 
further, its superiority to existing systems of 
belief and practice. There were other Chris¬ 
tian writings during this period. Even 
those who are specifically known as writers 
of Apologies wrote on other subjects, some¬ 
times on practical or controversial questions. 

Still, this is peculiarly the characteristic 
of this period, and it enters even into the 
writings of those who are not usually 
classed with the Apologists. Of these latter 
some are known only by their names, others 
by fragments of their writings ; with others, 
again, their works have been preserved to 
our times nearly complete. Those of Quad- 
ratus, Aristides, Herminus, and Melito are 
but fragments. Those of Justin, Tatian, 
Athenagoras, and Theophilus are still ex¬ 
tant. That of Tatian was addressed to the 
Greeks, that of Theophilus to a private in¬ 
dividual, and the other two to the Emperor. 
The probability is that they all had refer¬ 
ence to this last destination. They are de¬ 
fenses rather of Christians as individuals, 
Christians accused or under suspicion, than 
of Christianity as a doctrine. 

Of course, in such effort, they would deal 
with the accusations upon which these per¬ 
secutions proceeded. When a man confessed 
that he was a Christian and was condemned, 
it was not merely for practicing an unli¬ 
censed religion, but for the supposed char¬ 
acter of that religion. These accusations 
may be comprehended under three main 
charges: first, atheism; secondly, gross 
immorality; and, thirdly, cannibalism. The 
first of these accusations seems to have 
found its origin in the spiritual nature 
of Christianity itself; for in their places of 
worship, as in their abodes, there were none 





EVIDENCES, CHRISTIAN 


278 


EVIDENCES, CHRISTIAN 


of the visible representations of Deity. In 
this new religion there were none of what 
seemed the great realities to heathen wor¬ 
shipers. The Christians were never seen to 
how before the image of a god. They had 
no sacrificing priests. They offered no sacri¬ 
fices, having no temples. The inference to a 
heathen mind was inevitable that the Chris¬ 
tians had no gods, no belief in beings of a 
superior power, were atheists ; and, as such, 
outside of the circle of human sympathy and 
of human confidence, the proper objects of 
universal execration. 

This impression was naturally connected 
with the two others,—indiscriminate licen¬ 
tiousness, and the eating of human flesh. 
In both of these, as in the charge of athe¬ 
ism, there was something real in which these 
charges originated. The absence, as we have 
seen, of the only sort of religion which poly¬ 
theists could understand or appreciate led 
to the charge of no religion at all, that is, 
atheism. So, too, the freedom of Christian 
association of the sexes, an immediate result 
of Christian teaching and practice as to the 
sacredness of marriage, and as to the law 
of purity in all its bearings ; the meeting to¬ 
gether of the sexes in Christian worship, as 
in the reception of the Lord’s Supper ; the 
ties of love among believers were interpreted 
to show the very opposite of what they really 
meant. 

The other of these charges, that of eating 
human flesh, in all probability originated in 
the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, the 
symbolical eating by faith of the body and 
blood of the ascended Master, and expres¬ 
sions in regard to it perverted and misun¬ 
derstood to mean a literal eating of human 
flesh and blood. Whatever its origin and 
however perpetuated, as first making its ap¬ 
pearance in heathen opinion, it tended to in¬ 
crease the odium against the new religion. 
Atheists, grossly licentious, unnatural feed¬ 
ers on human flesh, what else could be done 
with them than hurry them out of the world 
as speedily as possible ? 

To these charges the Apologists address 
themselves. This they do by positive de¬ 
nial of the supposed opinions upon which 
those facts were asserted of the facts. They 
further appealed to maxims and principles 
(the opposite to everything of this kind in 
the teaching of the Master); to the lives of 
Christians as in accordance with this teach¬ 
ing. They demanded of the Emperors that 
the case of persons accused of any of these 
crimes should be determined upon its own 
merit; not that the fact of a man’s being a 
Christian should be accepted prior to all 
proof, and in absence of all proof, that he 
was a civil and social outlaw. 

But these defenses proceed further. It 
was scarcely possible for men, under these 
circumstances, to indicate their characters 
without a positive defense of their faith, of 
Christianity itself. This would necessitate 
comparison with that of their accusers, that 
from which they themselves had departed. 


They had grown up Heathens and became 
Christians. Their reason was the abomina¬ 
ble evils of polytheism, social and moral, 
and the purity, the holiness of Christianity. 
This defense of Christianity involved an as¬ 
sault upon Heathenism. 

Thus it was during the earlier period of 
the Apologists. At a later period, as other 
points of attack were made, the defenses were 
constructed to meet them. Still further, as 
this new religion spread, and its facts and 
doctrines were promulgated, there were pos¬ 
itive attacks upon it by the heathen philoso¬ 
phers and literati. To all these forms of ob¬ 
struction and misconception there was the 
response of Christian argument, exhibition 
of its evidences. Among the writings of 
this class may be mentioned those of the 
North African school, Tertullian, Minucius, 
Eelix, and at a later period Arnobius and 
Lactantius; of the Alexandrian school, 
Clement and Origen. The characteristics of 
these writers and their peculiar modes of 
argument we have no space for exhibiting. 
The necessity of works of this character, so far 
as protests or protectives against legal perse¬ 
cution, ceased to exist with the triumph of 
Christianity under Constantine. With the 
great majority, after this change, the success¬ 
ful argument for Christianity was a prosper¬ 
ous Christendom, the Church under the pro¬ 
tection of imperial power. With the excep¬ 
tionally brief retrogression under Julian,— 
his attack upon Christianity and the reply to 
it of Cyril; the work of Eusebius in his reply 
to Hierocles, his Evangelica Preparatio and 
Evangelica Demonstratio (the first written 
against the philosophers, the second to 
heathen readers in general, and the last to 
Jewish readers and inquirers) ; the still later 
writings of Augustine, intended to meet the 
difficulties and objections still lingering in 
the heathen mind against the Gospel;—with 
these exceptions, the intellect and scholarship 
of Christendom were absorbed in a different 
undertaking: dogmatics, the settlement and 
definition among Christians themselves of 
doctrinal issues and points of internal con¬ 
troversy. So far, too, as regarded the call 
for works of specific defensive evidences, this 
continued the case during most of the inter¬ 
val until the Reformation. A series of 
Jewish writers defending their own system 
and attacking Christ, moving on from the 
twelfth to the sixteenth century, called forth 
replies from Christian authors. As to the 
Mohammedans, it has been said the Apolo¬ 
getics of the crusades dealt with these diffi¬ 
culties. Occasional hints occur in mediaeval 
writers of objections by Jews and Moham¬ 
medans to the doctrine of the Trinity, —also 
of their attacks upon the worship of saints 
and images. It is to be said, that in the 
last, the Jews and Mohammedans were really 
occupying the Christian position ; and the 
professedly Christian defenders of the faith 
had gotten back upon the old ground of poly¬ 
theism. 

To one form of Christian evidence, how- 




EVIDENCES, CHRISTIAN 


279 


EVIDENCES, CHRISTIAN 


ever, it is to be recognized that this medi¬ 
aeval period made a large contribution : that 
evidence of the truth and Divine origin of 
Christianity as it is seen in the clear exhibi¬ 
tion of its truths, in their systematic connec¬ 
tions and relations of interdependence, in the 
rationality of their existence and applica¬ 
tions. Those same skeptical tendencies in 
Christian thought, represented by such men 
as Duns Seotus and Abelard; and it thus 
became necessary for such men as Anselm 
and Aquinas consecutively to neutralize this 
by their constructive theology. This was, 
of course, imperfect, and much of it has had 
to be, and will have to be, done over again. 
But it is, after all, the ultimate and satisfac¬ 
tory form in which Christian evidence will 
receive its final statement; the truth, shining 
in its own clear light, the lesser as well as the 
greater truths recognized in their proper 
position’perfecting the illumination. 

With the revival of literature in the 
Western Church and the general awaken¬ 
ing of intellectual activity there were 
germinant elements of skepticism and pos¬ 
itive unbelief, and with these the occasion 
for a manifestation of Christian evidences. 
Christianity had been so corrupted and cari¬ 
catured by its accredited representatives, that 
the world outside—heathen, Jewish, and 
Mohammedan, as well as the great mass of 
nominal believers—needed to know its real 
character. As with the average French¬ 
man or Spaniard now, the Christianity of 
the average layman of the first quarter of 
the sixteenth century was that of the Papal 
system, with its manifest and manifold 
abominations. When such men were 
awakened to intellectual activity in the 
humanist movement, these abuses and the 
accepted system of which they formed 
part became their point of attack. But 
there were two powerfully restraining in¬ 
fluences modifying the power of such at¬ 
tack,—prevention of avowed unbelief, open 
assault upon Christianity. One of these 
was the risk and personal danger involved ; 
in other words, the Church process of an¬ 
swering heretics and unbelievers. Mere 
philosophical and literary skeptics make very 
poor martyrs. It is pleasanter to doubt or 
philosophize in private than to burn or hang 
in public. The machinery of ecclesiastical 
repression was so effectively worked that 
nothing short of genuine religious convic¬ 
tion ventured to tamper with it. Then 
again, a great deal of the literary and philo¬ 
sophical skepticism and rejuvenated Hea¬ 
thenism of this period was in the Church 
itself or among ecclesiastics of the highest 
order. There was great necessity for an ex¬ 
hibition of Christianity in its reality and its 
power ; of the evidence within of its Divine 
origin. 

This necessity was met in the movements 
of the Reformation. In that great move¬ 
ment, and the fundamental issues with 
which it was occupied, all others were ab¬ 
sorbed. The triflers were swept aside. The 


reactive effect of Protestantism, even upon 
the old system, was to its awakening and 
purification, saving it from the cancer of 
skepticism with which it was threatened. Its 
result and mode of working resembled much 
those of Methodism in England during the 
last century. Men thoroughly and relig¬ 
iously in earnest have no time and less taste 
for theories of skepticism. 

But this spirit of earnestness, which had 
thus put in abeyance the rising skepticism 
of the new culture, was itself subject to de¬ 
teriorating influences. The mere division 
of outward Christianity, and its interference 
in men’s minds with the idea of its essential 
unity ; the divisions and bitter controversies 
among Protestants and the religious wars of 
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; 
produced a condition of things in which 
unbelief could make itself manifest. The 
forms of this unbelief are more fully 
developed at a later period. These have 
been divided into three classes: first, 
the Deistic, with its two types, the one more 
spiritualist, represented by Lord Herbert of 
Cherbury, the other more materialist, rep¬ 
resented by Hobbes ; secondly, the Pantheis¬ 
tic, represented by Spinosa; and, thirdly, 
the Skeptical, represented by Bayle. The 
object of Herbert of Cherbury was to get 
rid of revelation, by attempting to show its 
uselessness, and incapability of being proved. 
The object of Hobbes was to deny and do 
away with all moral obligations in ethics 
and politics, in the ordinary sense of those 
words, and, of course, to sap the foundations 
of religion. The result, whatever the intent 
of Spinosa, was to absorb the world in 
Deity, to destroy alike the personality of 
Creator and creature, and, of course, with 
the latter, all personal responsibility. The 
representative of the last of these divisions, 
the skeptical, Bayle, was not like these 
others a system builder to replace or put 
aside that of the existing faith, but a uni¬ 
versal critic, skeptical in his spirit as in the 
result of investigations. The position of 
these writers is not, by themselves, closely 
and consistently defined. They write and 
express themselves, at times, as approving of 
the existing system. But it was not very 
long before their position was recognized. 

These, however, were merely precursive 
to something more clearly and positively 
defined, the Deistic contest of the next cen¬ 
tury. “ The principal phases of this period 
of the maturity of Deism, which we shall 
now successively mention, are four : 

“ First, what may be called the intellectu¬ 
ally rationalistic, that of Toland and Col¬ 
lins. This involved an examination of the 
first principles of religion, doctrinally, as¬ 
serting the supremacy of reason, and, of 
course, its sufficiency to interpret all mys¬ 
teries. What reason could not thus inter¬ 
pret was not rational, was irrational, and to 
be rejected.* 


* Farrar’s History of Free Thought, p. 125. 








EVIDENCES, CHRISTIAN 


280 


EVIDENCES, CHRISTIAN 


“ Secondly, what may be called the ethic¬ 
ally rationalistic, that of Lord Shaftesbury. 
This involved the examination of religion 
morally; and it asserted the supremacy of 
natural morality as a rule of conduct, de¬ 
nying the propriety of motives of reward or 
punishment. 

“ Thirdly, as following upon the two for¬ 
mer, and for which they had prepared the 
way, was the more direct attack upon the 
specific Christian evidences, that by Collins 
of the prophecies of the Old Testament, and 
that by Wollaston of the miracles of the 
New. 

“Fourth, a combination of all these, in 
different proportions, by Tindal, Morgan, 
and Chubb. This effort with each, while 
destructive, was also constructive. The de¬ 
structive part was to show that all of Chris¬ 
tianity, plus natural religion and natural 
morality, was irrational and to be rejected, 
so far as, in accord with them, it demands 
acceptance. And they undertook to show, 
upon these principles, how much of Chris¬ 
tianity may be rationally accepted as true.” 

Of the three other noted English writers of 
this century, Bolingbroke really added very 
little to his predecessors; Hume, exercising 
influence in his day through his argument on 
miracles, is now more influential through his 
philosophical speculations; and Gibbon, with 
his natural explanations of the success of 
Christianity, and his halting defense of 
heathenism and its persecutions, has lost 
his power of mischief. His own testimony 
to the power of Christianity, and the magni¬ 
tude of its effects upon the world, is to be 
found everywhere in his volumes. 

But to all of these forms of assault there 
were numberless replies of great power, 
some of them even by anticipation, others 
as the unbelieving scheme was put forth. 

Two of the most important during the sev¬ 
enteenth century were the De Veritate Relig- 
ionis Christiance of Grotius and the Pensees 
of Pascal on the Continent, while in England 
the names of Bacon, Cud worth, Locke, Boyle, 
Tillotson, Burnet, Leslie, Littleton, Bentley, 
Clarke, Butler, Warburton, Sherlock, Jen¬ 
nings, Leland, Paley, with many others, 
met the various issues. Hume’s argument 
against miracles received various replies, the 
most noted of that century being those of 
Campbell and Paley, while Gibbon and 
Paine, coming in rather later, were answered 
by Bishop Watson. The assault (to use the 
language of Principal Cairns) “ was a failure. 
The assaults of Deism had been repelled, 
and the ammunition shot away, and nothing 
remained but to raise the siege. Churchmen 
forgot their party differences, and Noncon¬ 
formists fought by the side of Churchmen 
against the common enemy. The best works 
of their antagonists, after the replies to 
them, look poor and shallow, and hardly 
anything remains in Christianity to be 
struck at but the external difficulties of 
reason and of theology.” Connected, how¬ 
ever, with these monuments of skeptical and 


infidel thought in England, and receiv¬ 
ing largely their impulses from them, were 
those of similar character in France and 
Germany. The character of the French in¬ 
fidelity, "taking its tone largely from Vol¬ 
taire, was more bitter and scoffing than that 
of the English Deists. At the same time, 
there was a large infusion (through Rous¬ 
seau and his imitators) into it of sentimen¬ 
talism. And with these, through the 
writings of Diderot, Helvetius, and D’Hol- 
bach, were the combinations of Atheistic 
materialism. Their practical result was the 
worst excesses of the French Revolution. 
For, while it may be recognized that the 
materials had been long in gathering, yet 
this was the spark to the actual conflagra¬ 
tion, and heightened its fury. There were 
various replies of the Romish clergy. But 
there was not spiritual life nor intellectual 
power in the French Church fully to meet 
these various attacks, and its reconstruction 
under Napoleon was rather a matter of 
State policy. Later works from French 
Protestant and Romish writers of an effec¬ 
tive character have appeared. But the spirit 
of unbelief largely predominates. Renan’s 
legendary theory of the Gospels has per¬ 
haps had a wider circulation than any 
work of a similar character. As a matter 
of argument, it goes back to the oft-refuted 
position of Paine and his lame school of 
English Deists, that of conscious decep¬ 
tion. De Pressense gave an effective reply 
to it, which has been followed by many 
others. 

In Germany the principles of English 
Deism passed into what has been called the 
Rationalistic, or Naturalistic, movement. 
The peculiarity in this was that its leaders, 
represented by Paulus and Semler, were 
clergymen and theological professors, advo¬ 
cates and defenders of supernatural revela¬ 
tion, undertaking to show that there was 
nothing really supernatural in it. 

Coming back to English unbelief and that 
of this country, we find in the beginning of 
this century, in England, first the positive 
effects of a revived Christianity through the 
movements of Wesley and Whitefield, ex¬ 
tending in its influence to the Established 
Church. Still further, in .the revulsion 
from the infidelity of the French Revolu¬ 
tion there was called forth a strong popular 
sentiment in favor of Christianity. To 
some degree the same facts had exerted a 
like influence in this country,—modified, 
however, by sympathy with France as a 
people, and especially in view of her assist¬ 
ance rendered during the Revolutionary 
struggle. There was introduced a great 
deal of the infidelity of French principles, 
as that embodied in Paine’s “ Age of Rea¬ 
son.” The religious movements of the first 
two decades of the century checked a great 
deal of this, and it was, moreover, met in 
specific replies and works on Christian evi¬ 
dences. The arguments, as directed to the 
nature of the objections, were largely his- 




EVIDENCES, CHRISTIAN 


281 


EVIDENCES, CHRISTIAN 


torical, reproductions in a more popular 
form of the materials of such writers as 
Lardner and Paley. At the same time the 
internal, moral, and experimental evidences 
received more specific attention. The work 
of Hartwell Horne contains a full exhibi¬ 
tion of these evidences of this period, say 
the first forty years of this century. Those 
of Bishop Williams and of Doctor Chalmers, 
in Great Britain, and those of Doctor Alex¬ 
ander, Bishop Mcllvaine, and President 
Hopkins, in this country, present them in 
briefer compass and better adapted to popu¬ 
lar use. The great work of Butler, also, 
was used, with those of the Rationalists, 
showing the necessity of Christianity. 

It remains that we briefly indicate the ne¬ 
cessities of Christian evidences at present, 
and in view of recent tendencies, as of 
those of the last quarter of a century. 
There are, first, those claiming to be philo¬ 
sophical, Positivism, Agnosticism, Material¬ 
ism, including in the latter Material Evolu¬ 
tionism. Secondly, those in the domain of 
science, antagonizing Science and Theology 
or depreciating the latter as a ground of 
rational belief or action. Thirdly, those in 
the domain of Criticism, the old rationalistic 
movement largely revived in its spirit and 
processes, and reducing to its minimum in 
Scripture the element of the supernatural. 
And, fourthly, those in the sphere of moral 
life; the Pantheism which absorbs personal 
life and personal accountability in a material 
or ideal universe; the Pessimism which 
finds this universe with a plan and purpose 
indeed, but one that is evil. And, last of 
all, in the sphere of Comparative Religion, 
the effort of unbelievers (in this) to make 
Christianity one of the natural religions of 
the world, a little better in some respects 
than other theories, not so good, perhaps, in 
others, but at the best, a religion of the past, 
to be superseded by a, or the, religion of 
the future, and that by its future of human 
development, and so on indefinitely. Against 
each of these powers of unbelieving thought, 
the Christian apologist needs to present his 
defenses and urge his attack. And it is to 
be said that the ability and scholarship of 
Christian writers have nobly responded to 
this demand. “ The assault,” to use the 
expression of Professor H. B. Smith, “has 
been along the whole line.” But such 
assault, at whatever point made, has found 
defenders inside. And these defenders, re¬ 
pelling the attack, have gone out of their 
lines for aggressive movement. These dif¬ 
ferent forms of unbelief, in their respective 
fields of investigation, have been met by the 
researches and replies of Christian scholar¬ 
ship. Over against the objections and as¬ 
serted difficulties, for instance, of physical 
science, made by infidel and atheistic scien¬ 
tists, are the replies of Christian scientists of 
equal scientific reputations,—such men, for 
instance, as Whewell, Brewster, Forbes, 
the Duke of Argyle, Dawson, Dana, Hop¬ 
kins, and Chadbourne. The efforts, again, 


of skeptical comparative religionists, have 
found their answers in the labors and con¬ 
clusions of Christian scholars and investi¬ 
gators, such men as Hardwicke, Moffett, 
De Pressense, Rawlinson. Then, again, in 
the department of metaphysics and moral 
science, the assertions of Positivism, Ag¬ 
nosticism, Materialism, Pessimism, are find¬ 
ing their answers with almost every weekly 
issue of the press,—in the works of such men 
as Flint, Caird, McCosh, Harris, Fisher, and 
Pasteur. What, again, claims to be the 
higher, criticism which disposes of Scripture 
alike in its inspired and its historical claims, 
has been met by a thorough investigation, 
in a profoundly reverential spirit and by 
conclusions of an opposite character,—in 
the labors of Lightfoot, Dean Smith, Pusey, 
Westcott, Brett, Delitsch, Green, Fisher, 
Wright, and Leathes. These are but sam¬ 
ples in each department. Connected too 
with these may be mentioned Christian re¬ 
views and journals in which these items re¬ 
ceive discussion, and also regular endow¬ 
ment lectures, the Boyle and Bampton and 
Hulsean and Warburtonian in England, 
with several of a similar character in this 
country. Even the coarse reproduction of 
some infidel materials, in the efforts of In- 
gersoll and those of his kind, have not 
passed without replies,—those of Judge 
Black and Thurlow Weed fully meeting 
them. Whenever the demand has been 
made on Christian ability or scholarship, it 
has been promptly and effectively met. In 
each form of contest, too, as in the past, the 
result has been not only a repulse to false¬ 
hood, but a clear gain to the truth of re¬ 
ligious conviction and assurance. There 
has never been a time in which Christian¬ 
ity had such a hold upon the intellect and 
heart of the world. There has never been 
a time in which it has had as many 
and able defenders; when so many, even 
of its enemies, have felt and confessed 
its power, and are endeavoring, if not to 
destroy it, to solve the problem of its origin. 
Finally, two positive results may be men¬ 
tioned in connection with these assaults and 
repulses of unbelief and faith in the last 
quarter of a century. The quickening of 
interest and the enlargement of the area of 
investigation and study in national theology; 
the position and prominence given to the 
person of Christ in specific Christian 
thought as in Christian evidences. The two 
grand issues are over these points: Is there 
a Lord in nature ? How has He revealed 
Himself in Christ? As these are rightly 
answered, all others fall into their proper 
position. And the drift of human thought 
as of Christian evidence is to bring man to 
a practical decision. As the contest works 
on in these various departments of human 
thought and investigation, that final point 
of decision, with its alternative, becomes 
more clear and manifest,—out and out 
Christianity or out and out Atheism 

Rev. C. Walker, D.D. 





EVIL 


282 


EXAMINATION 


Evil. Evil differs from sin in that sin re¬ 
fers more to the act and its consequences, 
while evil refers more to the state and its 
conditions. But the two terms are used so 
often interchangeably that this distinction is 
not clearly kept in view. The Evil One 
made an evil suggestion to Eve, and she 
sinned and caused Adam to sin, and so 
broughtevil intoour life. Yet this distinction 
is not preserved in the translation of the Bible, 
—e.< 7 ., in Ps. li. 4 : “ Against Thee only have 
I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight.” 

But the great question that has* over¬ 
shadowed all other questions upon sin and 
evil is, Why is it permitted and whence is 
it? There can be no complete reply, since 
our spiritual nature is not known to us, nor 
is the future life so known that we can cer¬ 
tainly reply to minor objections. Created 
beings must be so far (as a higher limit) im¬ 
perfect, and from that limit there is a de¬ 
scending scale into sin. The sinless angels 
are charged with folly and the heavens are 
not clean in His sight, perfect and glorious 
and lovely as they are. The'vanity St. Paul 
urges we are subject to is the defect whereby 
we are open to sin. But as law for us im¬ 
plies obedience and its opposite, and these 
two imply a choice of either course, as obe¬ 
dience and disobedience are moral quali¬ 
ties, we have not the absolute reason, but 
the relative conditions upon which sin could 
and did enter into the world. Freedom of 
will, is a proper reply to the question why 
it is, for it implies the power, not the neces¬ 
sity nor the willing desire to sin, but that 
power to act which the will holds as of its 
own essence; a power it exercises for good 
or for evil whenever motives and persua¬ 
sions, sufficiently enticing, are presented to 
it in either direction. The effects of evil in 
the soul, of course, affect the intellect, and 
therefore the body; consequently physical 
evil and pain, with sorrow, suffering, and 
natural defects, follow. These mould our 
whole earthly life. It is to be noted that 
while the guilt of sin is pardoned and a 
counter remedy given, the effects of evil 
in the system, spiritual and natural, are not 
removed. Our probation is founded upon 
the principle that we accept the forgiveness, 
use the remedy offered as faithfully as pos¬ 
sible, and endure the consequences of sin 
patiently, till the law of restitution in 
Christ shall gain its full power. As sin 
and its evil consequences work their effect 
slowly, so the undoing of these effects must 
he slow. The same wisdom which permit¬ 
ted evil must guide the elimination of evil, 
and as its inscrutable purposes in permitting 
it overshadow us, so the like mysterious 
plans of freeing us must be taken and used 
in faith. It is for this purpose the Church 
was founded,—the hospital for sin-sick souls 
wherein Christ the physician has left a per¬ 
fect remedy, were we but to use it as He has 
directed and would submit to the guidance 
of those who are empowered to adminis¬ 
ter it. 


But evil, a poison in the spiritual system, 
is properly foreign to it, and since its effects 
are so loathsome and hideous, the conscience 
exclaims against it. This is the key to St. 
Paul’s passionate self-analysis, and with its 
triumphant hope of victory (Rom. vii.): “O 
wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver 
me from the body of this death ? I thank God 
through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then 
with the mind I myself serve the law of God ; 
but with the flesh the law of sin. “There 
is therefore now no condemnation to them 
which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not 
after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” 

These facts are, then, clearly within our , 
grasp, and these only. We cannot now 
know why sin was permitted or whence it 
came, only we know God cannot be its 
author. We can know how it has power 
over us, because of our (a) imperfection, 
because we are finite, because of our (b) free¬ 
dom of choice, which is a law of our being 
and the basis of all probation. We know 
that (c) all spiritual, intellectual, and physi¬ 
cal defects, sins, and suffering flow from it. 
We know that (d) it is a poison deeply 
seated, needing the medicine of a Divine 
healer. We know ( e ) that its consequences 
are continuous, recurring, and were it not 
for the constant presence of God, would be 
fatal in every respect. We know (/) that 
while the guilt of evil can be forgiven its 
temporal consequences are not removed, 
but that the mode in which these are used 
or submitted to forms an important part in 
our training. Further than this, upon the 
mystery of our future restoration, upon the 
effect of our individual conduct, upon our 
future condition, we know nothing. We 
can trace but cannot fully comprehend the 
reason why evil in the soul should cause the 
ruin which befell the material nature around 
us. There is but one thing open to us for 
our own good, to feel deeply the evil and to 
use faithfully the remedy in Christ. 

Examination for Holy Orders. In the 
early subapostolic Church this examination 
must have been rather one in the candidate’s 
moral fitness and general acquaintance with 
the Scriptures, and varied with the circum¬ 
stances both of the time and the person. 
That it was public and well known, accord¬ 
ing to the Apostolic injunction, “ having a 
good report of them which are without,” we 
have the singular testimony of the Emperor 
Severus, who ordered that in appointing a 
new governor inquiry should be made about 
his character, adding that this was the man¬ 
ner of both Jews and Christians in selecting 
their priests. There is no minute canonical 
law such as we have now, at least no mention 
is made of any, but doubtless the Bishop 
was the responsible person. The candidates 
were selected probably by the clergy, and 
were then presented for acceptance to the 
Bishop. They were often men of great cul¬ 
ture (as Tertullian), and well acquainted 
with the literature of the day, but the larger 
number were not so well trained. There are 




EXAMINATION 


283 


EXAMINATION 


numerous minor canons in the Western 
Canon Law against too deep a study of the 
classics, but this was under the influence of 
Jerome and of Augustine, who in his con¬ 
fessions records his delight in the beauties of 
Virgil. The examination of a Bishop was 
rather dependent, as to its extent, upon his 
fame, and therefore the inquiry into his hold¬ 
ing the right faith upon the Creeds would 
vary very much. With the Middle Ages 
and the era of Bishops holding political 
preferment came a general laxness. Yet 
the learning of the day was almost wholly 
with the ecclesiastics. Every age, even 
the darkest, had some bright lights,—men 
who often were not above the superstitions 
of their times, but who were nevertheless 
men of marked ability. Such were Gregory 
of Tours (573 a.d.), Isidore of Seville (595 
a.d.), Cassiodorus (539 a.d.). Later Boni¬ 
face (730 a.d.), the Apostle of Germany, led 
in ability, though not in learning. Under 
Charlemagne many notable scholars were 
trained, Agobard, Haymo, Rabanus Maurus. 
Later, Hincmar proved that the line of 
able and learned Bishops had not died out, 
and much care in those troublous times to 
keep up the schools was taken. So too in 
the East, Photius, Michael Psellus, and 
others show that diligent care was taken 
according to their opportunities to see that 
their priests were trained. Theophylact’s 
Commentary is still valuable. These facts 
show us that, though we do not know how 
stringent the examinations were, yet, with 
whatever ease men were admitted to Holy 
Orders, their training was not wholly over¬ 
looked. 

In England the examination for orders is 
upon the lines of the Divinity studied in the 
University, though each Bishop has his ex¬ 
amining Chaplains. According to the Eng¬ 
lish Canons, the candidate must be a graduate 
of one of the Universities, or else show his 
learning by a thesis in Latin upon the 
XXXIX. Articles, defended by Scripture 
proof. He must bring certificates of good 
life and conversation for the “three years 
next before.” The Bishop is himself to ex¬ 
amine him in the presence of those ministers 
who are to assist him in the imposition of 
hands. Lawful impediments are to be in¬ 
quired into, Canons 34, 35. Subscription 
ex animo is to be made, I. To the acknowl¬ 
edgment of the Royal Supremacy in mat¬ 
ters Spiritual and Ecclesiastical, as well as 
Temporal, and the acknowledgment in the 
same subscription to the denial that any 
“Foreign Prince, Person, Prelate, State, or 
Potentate hath, or ought to have, any Jur¬ 
isdiction, Power, Superiority, Pre-eminence, 
or Authority, Ecclesiastical or Spiritual,” in 
England and its dependencies. II. To a 
declaration that “the Book of Common 
Prayer contains nothing contrary to the 
Word of God,” and that he will use it ex¬ 
clusively. III. To the XXXIX. Articles 
and their Ratification. 

The American Church is equally careful 


to have her ministers properly trained, and 
for this purpose there are numerous theo¬ 
logical schools in different parts of the 
United States. The Canon (Title i., Can. 
iv.) is full and precise in its directions for 
the examination of the postulant or the can¬ 
didate. 

Each Diocese shall have two or more ex¬ 
amining Chaplains, who shall examine the 
postulant or candidate in his literary quali¬ 
fications and report to the Bishop. If the 
candidate is a graduate of a college, this ex¬ 
amination is usually omitted. If he be a can¬ 
didate for Deacon’s orders only, he shall be 
examined thoroughly in the Hoi}'’ Scriptures 
and in the Pray.er-Book in all its parts and 
adjuncts and in the Book of Articles ; in his 
reverent and edifying performance of the ser¬ 
vice of the Church and of his diaconal duties. 
If the candidate has been an ordained or li¬ 
censed minister in any other denomination 
of Christians, then he is to be examined spe¬ 
cially upon his soundness upon the points 
of difference. The Bishop may or may 
not be present, at his pleasure. The candi¬ 
date for Priest’s orders shall pass through 
three examinations, which, except for ex¬ 
traordinary reasons, shall not be held on the 
same day, but on three separate days. Each 
must be both oral and written, and the spe¬ 
cial subjects may or may not be given pre¬ 
viously to the candidate. At each examina¬ 
tion he shall read a sermon upon an assigned 
text and hand in two others composed on 
texts of his own choice ; and he shall be ex¬ 
amined upon the reverent conduct of the 
services and upon his knowledge of his 
duties ; and if he comes to the Church from 
any denomination, he shall be examined 
upon his soundness upon the points of dif¬ 
ference. No examinations in a theological 
seminary shall supersede these examinations, 
which can by no means be dispensed with. 
These three are : I. On Holy Scripture, its 
history, and on the Hebrew and the Greek ; 
though these two may, for sufficient cause, 
be dispensed with. II. On the evidences of 
Christianity, Christian Ethics, and System¬ 
atic Divinity. III. Church History, Ec¬ 
clesiastical Polity, and the history and con¬ 
tents of the Book of Common Prayer, and on 
the Constitution and Canons of the Church. 

The Bishop may, as he chooses, preside or 
not, and he may invite the Presbyter, who 
shall present the candidate at the ordination, 
to take part in the examination, but the 
Bishop must take part in one of these ex¬ 
aminations at least, or else examine him be¬ 
side in a fourth examination. If the candi¬ 
date be in a vacant Diocese, the Bishop who 
shall ordain him must hold this fourth ex¬ 
amination. 

Since a candidate for Deacon’s orders may 
be also a candidate for Priest’s orders, the 
first examination for the Priesthood shall be 
sufficient for the Diaconate examination, 
but the examination on the Prayer-Book for 
the Diaconate must be repeated for the 
Priesthood at the third examination. Signed 





EXAMINATION 


284 


EXCOMMUNICATION 


certificates are required after each examina¬ 
tion for either office, and violation of above 
provisions for examination shall disqualify 
the candidate and subject the other party con¬ 
cerned to canonical procedure and censure ; 
and the candidate for Priest’s orders must 
apply for his first and second examinations 
within three years, and for his third within 
five years, after his admission, and, unless he 
can give sufficient reasons for this neglect, 
if he fail to fulfill these enactments he shall 
he stricken from the list of candidates after 
due warning from the Bishop. 

The conditions are not at all difficult to 
fulfill, but they are to be stringently en¬ 
forced. 

Examination, Self-. It has been well 
said that self-examination is forestalling, by 
devout repentance, the decision of the day 
of Judgment, when all secrets not blotted 
out of His Book of Iiemembrance will be 
revealed. It is of the greatest importance 
to the soul, both here in moulding the life, 
the principles, the conduct, and hereafter as 
its lessons teach the earnest soul wherein re¬ 
pentance and amendment is necessary, and 
so it aids to avert the condemnation of the 
Judgment-day. To be an examination at 
all it must honestly be carried into the mo¬ 
tives, secret or unconscious, until thought 
upon or avowed ; into the thoughts cher¬ 
ished and habitually entertained, to be tested 
by Christian law and • morality ; into the 
words, to be weighed according to the rule 
both of the Psalmist (Ps. xxxix.) and of 
Christ (Matt. xii. 36); and into the actions, 
to be tried by the Law of God and by the 
earnestness with which the soul sought the 
guidance of the Holy Ghost. By impli¬ 
cation the Ten Commandments, placed at 
the beginning of the Communion Service, 
and prefaced by a prayer for purity, are the 
guides the Church would have her children 
follow in their hearty self-examination. 
They should question themselves as to the 
spiritual as well as temporal obedience they 
yield to these positive laws. Almost from 
the earliest writings of the Fathers onward, 
the Church possesses a vast number of most 
useful manuals, directions, and counsels 
upon this duty. Every age has special 
manuals, which have been prepared by de¬ 
vout men upon self-examination into the 
current sins and temptations of that time, 
and many outlines have been put forth 
which meet the needs of the soul in all ages. 

Excommunication. The cutting off 
from the communion of the Church a faith¬ 
less, evil member. Suspension from priv¬ 
ileges is not excommunication, which de¬ 
prives a person of all spiritual commun¬ 
ion with the faithful and of all the spiritual 
gifts in the Church of Christ. It is the 
delivering the guilty person unto the power 
of Satan (1 Tim. i. 20). Excommunication 
is not intended to be perpetual unless the 
guilty person continues impenitent and so 
prevents its removal, and besides, its true 
purpose is disciplinary, not punitive. Like 


the consequences of sin, which we may make 
disciplinary if humbly submitted to in faith, 
so excommunication may be used. The 
Lord instructed the Apostles about this 
matter of discipline (St. Matt, xviii. 15-18), 
and repeated this, with the direct gift of the 
proper authority (St. John xx. 23), after 
His Resurrection. The Apostles used it, as 
did St. Paul in the matter of the incestuous 
Corinthian (1 Cor. v. 4) and of Hymenaeus 
and Alexander (1 Tim. i. 20). But as 
baptism confers the birth into Christ’s 
Church, and as excommunication is a dis¬ 
inheriting inflicted with greater or less 
severity, it is not such a final expulsion that 
it annuls the baptism. There are two kinds 
of excommunication, the lesser and greater ; 
both are apparently recognized in the 
Apostolic Canons, which are the earliest 
form of Church Law extant. The lesser 
was called Aphoresis, the greater Catharesis. 
The Bishop and Clergy together were the 
party sentencing. No other but the Bishop 
could try a case occurring in his Diocese. 
But if he neglected it, his Primate could 
summon both parties before the Provincial 
Synod, and could suspend the negligent 
Bishop, who could only be restored to com¬ 
munion by the Synod. 

In mediaeval times wild and fearful 
precations were used in the forms of ex- 
communication. These varied in fullness 
in different places, and in different times, 
but were framed upon the curses recorded 
by Moses in Deuteronomy. The secular 
arm was called in to uphold the ecclesiasti¬ 
cal power, and the sentence was made to 
involve civil disabilities also. 

The forms which accompanied the sen¬ 
tence were made as scenically terrible as 
possible. The bell was tolled. The Pres¬ 
byters surrounding their Bishop, as he pro¬ 
nounced out of the Book the sentence, each 
extinguished a lighted candle he held in his 
hand. Thence came the saying to excom¬ 
municate with Bell, Book, and Candle. 
The older English Law upon ipso facto ex- 
communications has been much modified 
since time and the development of society 
has changed the older condition of things, 
and it is confined only to definitive sen¬ 
tences and decrees pronounced as spiritual 
censures for offenses of ecclesiastical cogni¬ 
zance. 

The Lesser Excommunication deprived a 
person of the Sacraments. The Greater 
Excommunication deprived him of all rights 
and privileges. Certain disobediences of 
Canon and Ecclesiastical Law, by their com¬ 
mission (technically 11 ipso facto’ 1 ) placed 
the guilty clerk under excommunication. 
So, too, certain offenses, as robbing churches, 
placed the laymen under the same ban. 
According to the gravity of the office, it 
was either the lesser or the greater ban. 
Many of the offenses for which it is inflicted 
could not occur in this country. Deposition, 
deprivation, and degradation are used to ex¬ 
press one and the same severer punishment 





EXEDRA 


285 


EXODUS 


for an offending clergyman. Suspension is 
the lesser sentence. With regard to the laity, 
the Rubric in the front of the Office for the 
Holy Communion is the only law in general 
force. The Paragraph 3 of Section ii., Can. 
xii. of Title ii., provides for a future enact¬ 
ment for trying the laity, but in the mean¬ 
while recognizes the jurisdiction of the 
Diocesan Conventions. 

Exedra. A building, such as a baptistery, 
which was not attached to the church, and 
yet was within the grounds attached to the 
church. 

Exegesis. Vide Hermeneutics. 

Exemption. Many Monasteries and Con¬ 
vents were in their later stage exempted 
from the rule of the Bishop in whose Diocese 
they were built. The abuse was protested 
against by St. Bernard (1163 a d.), but it 
wont on till a large number of Monasteries 
and Abbey Churches were under the protec¬ 
tion of the Pope or the King, and so were 
withdrawn from Episcopal visitation. The 
Abbey of Westminster is a Peculiar, that is, 
an Exempted Church, amenable not to the 
Bishop of London, in whose Diocese it is 
situated, but to the Queen. 

Exhortation. A sermon or address, but 
technically it is the name for the several 
addresses to the congregation in the Com¬ 
mon Prayer-Book. There are traces of such 
exhortations in the Mozarabic or Spanish 
Liturgy. Besides the familiar one of the 
daily service and the four incorporated into 
the Communion office, there are four apiece 
in the two Baptismal offices. An exhorta¬ 
tion occurs in each of the offices for Confirm¬ 
ation, Marriage, and The Sick. Two are in 
the Visitation of Prisoners, and a very sol¬ 
emn one in the Ordering of Priests, and one 
in the Form of Consecration of a Church or 
Chapel. They are, in fact, short, clear, 
forcible sermons, which the Church authori¬ 
tatively provides for the instruction of her 
children in the offices in which she has placed 
them. It proves her very great care to have 
her members well instructed. 

Exodus is the continuation of Genesis, 
with which it is linked most closely ; indeed, 
it may be almost accounted as a part of the 
same work. The facts narrated have been 
often called in question, but never with suc¬ 
cess. The remains of Egyptian customs 
and the notices of Egyptian history all bear 
out the minutest accuracy of the work, and 
would of themselves nearly fix the date of 
the Exodus. In this book, as well as in 
Genesis, the two pretended documents, the 
Elohistic and the Jehovistic, are asserted to 
exist, but the same difficulty of proof con¬ 
futes their existence here as well as in Gene¬ 
sis. An analysis of the book will set before 
us clearly its purpose. For now it is the 
history of God’s deliverance of the family 
He had chosen for Himself out of all na¬ 
tions. He had placed them while yet fee¬ 
ble in Egypt, in the most fertile country of 
the globe, and had given them its best por¬ 
tion,—Goshen,—and there in the two. hun¬ 


dred and fifteen years of their sojourn they 
had increased wondrously, and were an 
element of danger to the Egyptian polity. 
Not quite eight generations, allowing a four¬ 
fold increase to each generation, which is 
not too extravagant, would raise the number 
to upward of two and a half millions out of 
the fifty-six pairs usually supposed to have 
gone down into Egypt in Jacob’s family. 
These had been protected by the Pharaohs 
till about the time of Moses’ birth, when the 
policy of the Egyptian rulers changed. 
Alarmed at the vast increase, they attempted 
to check it by destroying the male children 
It was at this point that the history opens, 
or, to speak more accurately, the most re¬ 
markable autobiography in literary history. 
The book may be divided into two parts,—the 
autobiographical and the ritual. The auto¬ 
biographical extends from chapter i. to chap¬ 
ter xviii. 27 ; the ritual from chapter xix. to 
the end. This part, however, has much his¬ 
torical matter interspersed. 

I. The Autobiographical .—The historical 
circumstances preceding the birth of Moses 
are recounted in chapter i. The parent¬ 
age and birth of Moses and his adoption by 
Pharaoh’s daughter are given in chapter 
ii. to verse 11. Then follow the events of 
the homicide of the Egyptian who was beat¬ 
ing a Hebrew, his flight into Midian, where 
he became an inmate of the family of 
Reuel, the priest of Midian, and married his 
daughter. Chapters iii. and iv. to verse 18, 
contain the calling of Moses and his mis¬ 
sion. Chapter iv. 24, contains an incident full 
of mystical import. Moses had neglected 
to circumcise his son, and the Lord met 
him at the inn and “ sought to kill him,” 
when Zipporah circumcised their son, “so 
He let him go.” Moses and Aaron now 
proceed to execute their commission by 
delivering the message to Pharaoh (ch. v.) 
which only resulted in the placing of heavier 
burdens upon the Israelites. The first threat 
delivered to Pharaoh (ch. vii.), was accom¬ 
panied with the sign of Aaron’s rod becom¬ 
ing a serpent. The Magicians did the same, 
not by a miracle, but by a sleight of hand, 
but Aaron’s rod swallowed them up. The 
first plague of turning the water into blood 
(ch. vii. 17-22), the second of the frogs (ch. 
viii. 5-15) were not difficult to imitate; but 
of the third plague, that of lice (ch. viii. 16- 
19), they had to confess this is the finger of 
God, and did not try their enchantments any 
more. St. Paul (2 Tim. iii. 8) has preserved 
to us the names of Jannes and Jambres, the 
leaders of the order of Magicians. From 
this plague on (ch. viii. 21) there followed 
in quick succession the plague of flies, the 
murrain of beasts, the plague of boils and 
blains, of hail, of locusts, and of darkness, 
and then Moses was finally driven from 
Pharaoh’s presence. The king was obsti¬ 
nate and impolitic and hardened. It would 
lead us too far from our subject to point out 
more than that Pharaoh hardened his own 
heart, and because he had gone too far God 





EXODUS 


286 


EXORCISM 


used him for His judgments upon Egypt. 
Moses now saw Pharaoh’s face no more (ch. 
x. 29), but proclaimed the last plague, the 
most terrible of all, the death of the first¬ 
born. But the passover was instituted, 
the lamb was chosen and the preparations 
were made and the blood was sprinkled, that 
His People might be protected when that 
last fearsome shock should fall upon Egypt. 
On the appointed night, when the angel of 
the Lord went forth, there was a great 
cry in Egypt, for there was not a house 
where there was not one dead (ch. xi., 
xii.). Then followed the expulsion, the 
flight, the pursuit, and the wonderful deliv¬ 
erance at the Red Sea (ch. xiii., xiv.); and 
Moses’ magnificent song of triumph (ch. 
xv.); the journey to Sinai and the giving 
of the Law (ch. xvi.-xx. 21.) We have 
called this autobiographical simply because 
it is Moses’ record, so simple, direct, modest, 
of the mighty deeds he was directed to do. 
Throughout it is Moses who is the actor, for 
God chose then as later to deliver men by a 
man. 

II. The Ritual .—Though there is some his¬ 
torical matter interspersed,—as the sealing of 
the covenant with the sprinkling of blood, 
the founding of the molten calf, the second 
fast of forty days and nights,—still by far 
the larger part of the matter of this section is 
occupied with the details of ritual,—the mak¬ 
ing an altar. The offering for the taber¬ 
nacle, the form and size of the tabernacle, 
the appointment of Aaron and his sons, the 
sacrifices and their ceremonies, the details 
of the altar of incense, of the holy oil of the 
ark, and the mercy-seat overshadowed by 
the Cherubim, the brazen altar and the 
brazen laver,—all these, with many minute 
directions, form the principal part of this 
portion of the hook. Only one legislative 
section is given here. But throughout the 
whole book is most consistent, and is full of 
instruction to him who will read it aright. 
Like Genesis, it has a miraculous element 
running through it, but not always recog¬ 
nized. The Deluge would have been at¬ 
tributed to natural causes. Pharaoh doubt¬ 
less thought that Moses was simply a 
mightier magician than those he had about 
him. Men were not then any more than 
now willing to admit the power of God be¬ 
hind them, using, guiding, overruling them 
and their wishes and plans. And when they 
would have submitted if they had consented 
to it, they were smitten for their obstinacy 
and hardness. Not only Pharaoh, but the 
Israelites themselves were afterwards guilty 
of this blindness, which was far more culpa¬ 
ble in them, and would have been fatal but 
for Moses’ powerful intercession. True, 
God chose to use human means or natural 
instruments, but the results were not the 
less mighty and of Divine power. The 
book of Exodus is a work that, humanly 
speaking, could only have been written by 
the actor himself in the mighty deeds which 
God had commissioned him to do. To de¬ 


stroy the authenticity of its contents and 
the fact that Moses was really its author, 
would be to overthrow the Christian re¬ 
ligion. Again, it is well worthy of remark 
that we have here the weaving of religion 
into the national life. In heathen thought 
any form of religion sat easity upon them, 
and it did not cling so closely but that it 
could be and was materially modified. But 
in the history of Israel, it is not a nation 
unless it is a religious nation. This is the 
cause of its existence. It is to be a royal 
priesthood. In its after-history it pros¬ 
pered as it carried out the law; it declined 
and perished as it violated this law. And 
here in Exodus we have recorded for us the 
Covenant God made with the people, and 
the giving of that typical ritual which made 
them not only His in a peculiar sense, but 
also the prophecy of the people of Christ 
and of His spiritual kingdom. 

Exorcism, Exorcists. There was in the 
Apostolic Church, following our Lord’s 
first conference of spiritual powers upon 
both the Twelve and upon the Seventy, an 
order of Exorcists who had power to cast 
out unclean spirits. The Apostles them¬ 
selves exercised it, and St. Philip, the dea¬ 
con, cast out unclean spirits (Acts viii. 7; 
xvi. 18). It was- a power which was used 
by some of the Jews themselves, as our 
Lord’s argument against them (Matt. xii. 
27) shows. This office was necessarily tem¬ 
porary, since as the spiritual conditions of 
the world changed after the Resurrection, 
the needs for such officers in the Church 
would disappear gradually. (For the subject 
of Demoniacs see that article.) The Ex¬ 
orcists and Exorcism are first mentioned by 
Justin Martyr and in the Apostolic Consti¬ 
tutions ; the Apostolic Constitutions saying 
that they were not ordained, as their power 
was a free gift by the grace of God through 
Christ, and that whoever had this gift 
would be made manifest by exercising it. 
But any one having this power was not 
thereby debarred from receiving Holy Or¬ 
ders. 

That the power was a continuation of the 
gift given by our Lord to His Apostles, 
and was one of the weapons for their ag¬ 
gressive warfare, must be acknowledged by 
every Christian. How long it was retained 
we do not know. It could not have been 
an authority used at the mere will of the 
exorcist, since that was contrary to the 
economy under which the Lord’s power 
was exhibited. It is probable that the order 
survived its actual need, and we know that 
it was organized into one of the minor or¬ 
ders, with a solemn setting apart of the per¬ 
son by giving him a written book of forms, 
with the sentence, “Take and commit to 
memory and receive power to lay hands on 
energumens, whether baptized or catechu¬ 
mens.” His work was therefore confined to 
those over whom the Church had some au¬ 
thority. The forms of exorcism were at 
first a mere command, as in our Lord’s 




EXPECTATION WEEK 


287 


EZEKIEL 


own act and in the act of St. Paul (Acts 
xvi. 18). But from a hint our Lord gives 
(“This kind can come forth by nothing but 
prayer and fasting”), it is more than probable 
that they to whom this wonderful power was 
given had to keep themselves in a state of 
spiritual preparation for their conflict. In¬ 
deed, this is the best interpretation to be put 
upon Tertullian’s apparent implication that 
all Christians possessed this power. But 
from the realizing sense of these spir¬ 
itual battles, they then felt that their 
prayers did have power. As time went on 
and all work fell into grooves, there were 
ritual forms ; and as the Church brought 
the possessed into the public services and 
had public prayers for them, those who had 
charge of them would naturally have formu¬ 
las ready for use. Such forms are still ex¬ 
tant.* But the principle that each person 
was possessed by an evil spirit was acted on 
in the form of exorcism (by breathing on 
the hair and by the sign of the Cross) used 
over each postulant for admission to the 
rank of catechumens. It was also connected 
with the rites immediately preliminary to 
the administration of baptism. And such 
a prayer of exorcism was retained in the 
English office books till the second Prayer- 
Book of Edward VI. (1552 a.d.). 

Expectation Week. The name given to 
the ten days from the Ascension-day to 
Whit-Sunday,—in memory of the waiting of 
the Apostles till the gift should be given 
them of the Holy Ghost. 

Expiation. The purgation from sin, 
whether performed by the sinner or by some 
one for him. So our Lord offered an expi¬ 
ation for our sins. Its meaning is not so 
extensive as that of Atonement, but Expi¬ 
ation, together with Propitiation, cover the 
same ground. Sacrifice included both mean¬ 
ings, and this term expresses all of our Lord’s 
atoning acts. 

Extravagants. Extravagantes, a collec¬ 
tion of Papal Decretals and decisions which 
Pope John XXII. (1315 a.d.) edited under 
the title of Extravagantes seu Constitutiones 
Viginti, to which were added five books 
more of Extravagantes Communes , edited by 
several Popes after Pope Sextus IV. (1478 

A.D.). 

Ezekiel, whose name means “ whom God 
will strengthen ; or, the strength of God,” 
was the great prophet of the Babylonish Cap¬ 
tivity. He was a priest, and therefore of the 
family of Aaron, in the tribe of Levi ; his 
father’s name being Buzi, of whom nothing 
else is known ; though it may be inferred 
that he was careful and conscientious in ed¬ 
ucating his son. It is probable too that he 
belonged to the higher class (2 Kings xxiv. 
14). Of the birthplace of Ezekiel nothing 
is known (most likely it was not far from 
Jerusalem); but we are told by the prophet 
himself that he dwelt among the captives on 


* Th« writer possesses a paper manuscript of the four¬ 
teenth century with such exorcisms written out in full. 


the river Chebar (at Tel-Abib?), where he 
lived with his wife in a house of his own. 
He was carried into captivity 597 b c., eleven 
years before the destruction of Jerusalem, 
yet a young man (a boy according to Jose¬ 
phus) ; and as the call to the prophetical of¬ 
fice came to him 595 b.c., and, as some infer 
(from Ezek. i. 1), in the thirtieth year of his 
age, he must have been born about 625 b.c. 
Tradition relates many things concerning 
Ezekiel, to which, however, not much au¬ 
thority can be attached. He is reputed to 
have performed various miracles ; and while 
some have tried to identify him with Zoro¬ 
aster, others have thought him to be the 
same with a poet of Jewish tragedy, one 
Ezekiel who lived about 40 b.c. Perhaps 
the most probable of such traditions is that 
Ezekiel is the same with Nazaratus, the 
Assyrian instructor of Pythagoras. As al¬ 
ready said, Ezekiel dwelt among the Jewish 
captives at Tel-Abib, on the Chebar; a 
stream once confidently identified with the 
Khabour, a tributary of the Euphrates, but 
now thought by many to be the great canal 
of Nebuchadnezzar; and there, in the thir¬ 
tieth year, the call to prophesy came to him 
Ezek. i. 1). It is not easy to determine what 
ate is intended by the thirtieth year ; but of 
all suggestions and opinions the most reason¬ 
able appears that which makes it the thirti¬ 
eth j^ear of Nabopolassar, whose reign began 
625 b.c. ; and this would place the beginning 
of Ezekiel’s prophecy in 595 b.c. ; so agree¬ 
ing with the fifth year of Jehoiachin’s cap¬ 
tivity, according to the second note of time 
given by the prophet (Ezek. i. 2). From 
this time onward the word of the Lord came 
often to Ezekiel to warn and rebuke, to 
counsel and encourage the captive Israelites, 
and to foretell the future of the nations. No 
prophet is more varied in the style of his 
writings ; visions and symbolic actions, par¬ 
ables, proverbs, and poems, allegories and 
direct prophecies abound; and in them all 
are displayed much varied knowledgq and 
learning, great vigor of style and eloquence. 
Of Ezekiel, Bishop Lowth says, he “ is much 
inferior to Jeremiah in elegance; in sub¬ 
limity he is not even excelled by Isaiah; 
but his sublimity is of a totally different kind. 
He is deep, vehement, tragical; the only sen¬ 
sation he affects to excite is the terriole ; 
his sentiments are elevated, fervid, full of 
fire, indignant; his imagery is crowded, 
magnificent, terrific* sometimes almost to 
disgust; his language is solemn, pompous, 
austere, rough, and at times unpolished ; he 
employs frequent repetitions, not for the 
sake of grace or elegance, but from the vehe¬ 
mence of passion and indignation. ... In 
many respects he is perhaps excelled by the 
other prophets; but in that species of com¬ 
position to which he seems by nature adapted, 
the forcible, the impetuous, the great and 
solemn, not one of the sacred writers is 
superior to him.” Critics have made two 
chief divisions of the prophecy of Ezekiel, 
the first consisting of the prophecies given 






EZEKIEL 


288 EZRA, BOOK OF 


before the destruction of the Temple in Je¬ 
rusalem (ch. i.-xxiv.), the second of those 
spoken after that event (ch. xxv.-xlviii.). 
These divisions are again arranged in vari¬ 
ous sections as distinguished by their dates 
or superscriptions. The following synopsis 
is that of Hiivernick : “I. Ezekiel’s call, i.- 
iii. 15. II. The general carrying out of the 
commission, iii. 16-vii. III. The rejection 
of the people, because of their idolatrous 
worship, viii.-xi. IV. The sins of the age 
rebuked in detail, xii.-xix. V. The nature of 
the judgment, and the guilt which caused it, 
xx.-xxiii. VI. The meaning of the now 
commencing punishment, xxiv. VII. God’s 
judgment denounced on seven heathen 
nations (Ammon xxv. 1-7; Moab 8-14; the 
Philistines 15-17 ; Tyre xxvi.-xxviii. 19 ; 
Sidon, 20-24; Egypt, xxix.-xxxii.). VIII. 
Prophecies, after the destruction of Jeru¬ 
salem, concerning the future condition of 
Israel, xxxiii.-xxxix. IX. The glorious con¬ 
summation, xl.-xlviii.” (Smith’s Diet, of 
the Bible.) A chronological order is followed 
throughout, though it is interrupted in sev¬ 
eral places, especially in the prophecies 
against the heathen nations; and a general 
unity of subject is obvious in the whole book, 
which is thought to have been studiously 
arranged by Ezekiel himself. Owing to a 
passage of Josephus, who speaks of two books 
of Ezekiel, it has been thought that there 
was a second volume of prophecies, of which 
no trace has been found for ages ; but it seems 
more probable that there is some error about 
the passage of Josephus, or better still, that 
the single book of Ezekiel may have been 
at one time divided into two, perhaps at 
chapter xl. Though there are no direct 
quotations of Ezekiel in the New Testament, 
no one can read this prophet and the book 
of the Revelation without being impressed 
by the parallels and allusions contained in 
the latter ; and it is not in language only 
that Ezekiel and St. John are to be associated 
together, for while the prophet, “ writing be¬ 
fore the old dispensation had passed away, is 
guided to represent the perfection of worship 
under the form of a renewed and more com¬ 
plete ritual, the Christian seer, writing under 
the new dispensation, represents to us the true 
character of the worship of God, foretold by 
Our Lord Himself, ‘not in Jerusalem, nor 
in this mountain, but everywhere, in spirit 
and in truth,’ by the striking announce¬ 
ment, ‘ I saw no temple therein; for the Lord 
God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple 
thereof’ (Rev. xxi. 22).” (Bible Commen¬ 
tary, Introd. to Ezek.). Ezekiel is said to 
have been murdered by some Jewish prince, 
whom he had convicted of idolatry, and to 
have been buried in the tomb of Shem and 
Arphaxad on the banks of the Euphrates, 
where a town built by Jehoiachin was pointed 
out for many centuries as the resting-place 
of the prophet. 

Authorities: Gray’s Introduction, Bible 
Commentary, Lowth, Smith’s Bible Diction¬ 
ary. 


Ezra. One of the most useful of the men 
God raised up to restore the nation to re¬ 
build the Temple and prepare the way for 
Christ. The period of his activity begins 
about fifty years after the decree of Cyrus, 
which (Ezra i.-vi.) had been suspended by 
the political opposition of the Samaritans, 
and renewed b}' Darius, and now with the 
influence he had given him in the Persian 
court he is permitted to go to Jerusalem 
with the second band of exiles, with full 
power from the king, Artaxerxes. As a 
descendant of Aaron he had kept a full 
register of the priestly descents, a most 
necessary record for the legal discharge of 
the Temple worship. When he reached 
Jerusalem with his company (ch. viii.) he 
was stricken with intense sorrow at the dis¬ 
soluteness of the Jews of the first company, 
who had intermarried with the people 
around them, and his first care was to separate 
them from these foreign wives (chs. ix., x.). 
In this he succeeded, but not entirely (Neh. 
xiii. 28). It was left to Nehemiah to record 
how he restored the law (Neh. viii.). His 
influence was very great. The Jews have 
many tales of the grace that was in him. It 
is most probably to his recension and addi¬ 
tions that we owe the present condition of 
the Hebrew Canon, with, of course, the ex¬ 
ception of Malachi, the last of the prophets. 
The tale that he restored the whole of the 
Canon of the Old Testament is, of course, an 
idle one, but shows in what reverence he 
was held, and may have had its source in 
the fact that he wrote the book of the Chroni¬ 
cles, which, in its genealogies, ascends to 
Adam. Undoubtedly his influence in the 
restoration of the Temple, in the reviving 
the national life, in the work of instructing 
the people in the law, and his influence in 
the Persian court is not readily to be esti¬ 
mated. It is said, too, that he was president 
of the first Sanhedrim, which arranged the 
Canon. The tradition that he died at an 
advanced age is probably well founded. 
Altogether, without the brilliant genius of 
Daniel or the executive ability of Nehe¬ 
miah, his learning, devoutness, noble de¬ 
scent, and his great capacity made him a 
most worthy instrument in the restoration. 

Ezra, Book of. The work of the man of 
God to whom it has always been ascribed. 
Ezra, however, put together much material 
to which he had access, and which gave a 
connected outline of the events from the 
decree of Cyrus to his own visit to Jerusa¬ 
lem, from 536 b c. to 456 B.c. The first 
part of the book is made up of the copy of 
the text of the decree to rebuild Jerusalem 
and to lay the foundation of the Temple, and 
a list of those who formed the earliest com¬ 
pany of the Return under Zerubbabel and 
Joshua, with their first efforts to restore the 
Mosaic ritual (ch. i.-iii. 8). The list of 
those who went back first is repeated in 
Nehemiah, as he found it in Jerusalem 
when he made his visit, but it very properly 
belongs here. Ezra placed next the account 






EZRA, BOOK OF 


289 


FAITH 


of the laying of the foundations of the Tem¬ 
ple, which was probably written by some 
eye-witness. It is conjectured that it was 
Haggai. In the narrative Ezra inserts the 
correspondence from the archives upon the 
interruption of the work of rebuilding and 
its resumption (ch. iii. 9 ; vi. 12). From 
thence to the end is the account of Ezra’s 
own share in the effort to restore the ob¬ 
servance of the moral and religious precepts 
of the law. He was a man of vast personal 
influence, for “he had prepared his heart 
to seek the law of the Lord and to do it, and 
to teach in Israel His statutes and judg¬ 
ments.” Artaxerxes, the son of the famous 
Xerxes, in 457 b.c., sent him, with ample 
powers, to regulate the executive and ad¬ 
ministrative department of the restored 
people. He carried with him a second com¬ 
pany, who carried the offering of the king 
for the worship at Jerusalem. The great 


reform which he records as his own effort, 
was to break up the marriages which the 
Jews had already made with the people of 
the country about them. It was a trans¬ 
gression of the law, a source of danger to 
the weak colony, and destructive of any 
effort to rouse and intensify that exclusive 
national jealousy which, however wrong 
now , was then the strongest means of pre¬ 
serving the nation from being absorbed into 
the surrounding population. His delicate 
task he effected with great skill. It would 
seem that this was all he could do indepen¬ 
dently. When, thirteen years later, Nebe- 
miah came to finish the work, Ezra was an 
important aider, but what he did in the in¬ 
terval we are not informed. The book 
ends abruptly with the list of those who 
had put away their stranger wives. ( Vide 
Smith’s Bible Dictionary, Speaker’s Com¬ 
mentary.) 


F. 


Faculties. In its technical sense a fac¬ 
ulty means a special body of men who teach 
certain sciences, as a college faculty, which 
is really a body of teachers formed by the 
combined faculties of the separate depart¬ 
ments,— e.g., the faculties of law or of phi¬ 
losophy. But it also came to mean a trans¬ 
ference of the power of canonical or eccles¬ 
iastical jurisdiction. In this sense it passed 
into use as a commission to perform acts, not 
involving spiritual power, for the Bishop by 
a Presbyter. It was the office of a Commis¬ 
sary in fact. But then it passed into a dis¬ 
pensation for a Bishop to perform acts for 
his Primate. Then the Papacy gave the 
faculty to the Nuncio, and as this produced 
trouble with the Bishops, the Bishops them¬ 
selves took faculties from the Pope,— i.e., 
powers defined and determined by these fac¬ 
ulties for the administration of their Dio¬ 
ceses. This last form arose after the Coun¬ 
cil of Trent, since the Nuncios were multi¬ 
plied in order to give greater enforcement 
to the Council’s decrees, and to foster the 
efforts to recover lost ground in Germany. 
The faculties were usually given for only 
five years. This consequence has followed: 
the Council practically determined that the 
Bishop of Rome was the sole Bishop, and 
that all others received their mission from 
him. Then these faculties are really the 
mission each Bishop receives from him, and 
when they expire they must be renewed, or 
his rights over his Diocese are forfeited. 
This is also the purpose of the promise in 
the oath the Bishop under the Roman obe¬ 
dience takes, that he will visit the See of 

19 


Peter every five years unless canonically 
excused or hindered (for nearer Sees three 
or four years is the time). It is one of the 
most serious perversions and extensions of a 
power which was but a simple right with 
really definite limits belonging to every 
Bishop. It destroys all true conception of 
the solidarity of the Episcopate, all consti¬ 
tutional rights, and overthrows the author¬ 
ity of the Church by giving all ultimate 
disciplinary power to one man. The truer 
canonical exercise of this power of granting 
faculties is yet used in England, where a 
faculty must be obtained to do anything or 
to have any alteration effected without the 
limits of the Canons, but not contrary to 
them. There is a special Court of Facul¬ 
ties, under a Master of Faculties. It can 
give license to marry without the previous 
proclamation of banns. It can license any 
change in the ornamentation of a church, 
as a faculty for placing a reredos in a cer¬ 
tain position. It can grant a dispensation 
permitting a Deacon to be ordained under 
age, or a benefice to be succeeded to by a 
clergyman’s son. 

Faith denotes, both in Scripture and in 
common usage, several distinct, though in¬ 
ter-related things. In its broadest use it 
means that belief, more or less lofty, in God, 
His justice, love, and mercy, which leads to 
the adherence to principles and to actions 
which avow it. It may be merely an in¬ 
tellectual, or it may be an intensely prac¬ 
tical, faith. It may mean a trust in, and de¬ 
votion to, the person of Christ our Lord. 
It may mean the Church as the teaching 









FAITH 


290 


FAITH 


body, or again, the body of Doctrines, or 
also the Creed, as the sum of the Faith. 
Each of these senses is used more or less 
freely in Holy Scripture, and they all pass 
into daily use. But we are not careful to 
use them accurately, the rather since they 
are derived the one from the other. To point 
out briefly each of these senses and to show 
that they are severally necessary to a full 
knowledge and use of what our Heavenly 
Father has done for us through the grace 
of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the 
sanctification of the Holy Ghost, we must 
dwell first on Faith in its widest sense. 

I. God does not require of us any act 
which is not within our capacity, nor 
any belief that is not reasonable, or any 
principle which does not lift up and enno¬ 
ble our natures. Our ability or capacity 
may be lessened, or weakened, or blurred, or 
even blotted out either by inheritance (Kom. 
v. 13), or by defect or default in ourselves ; 
it is our failure and loss individually, not 
that of the race, and above all God has fore¬ 
seen it and provided for it. It is His right 
to demand of us belief and performance of 
acts upon this belief, which is above our sin¬ 
ful present level, but to which we can rise, 
while He is ready to give, yea, has prepared 
help and means. To require Faith in Him, 
then, is nothing but His right; to yield it 
is our true natural power with which we 
were endowed. A lower, defective form of 
this Faith we give each other in the belief, 
credit, and trust which is the bond of all so¬ 
ciety. On it all science, all government, all 
commerce, all covenants of daily intercourse 
are based. Without it, the fairest share of all 
our work, and certainly all our happiness, 
would vanish. We trust each other rightly 
by our nature, despite so many disappoint¬ 
ments. Through this capacity religion is 
founded. God bids us believe upon suffi¬ 
cient evidence which He supplies, yet such 
as calls for trust and sacrifice on our part. 
By the very structure of our moral being 
we must believe, and upon the evidence He 
has given in other lives, He requires us to 
frame our life. And this course of conduct 
is not concerning the things of time, but, 
accepting and using this present probation, 
it looks forward to a future reward. Abra¬ 
ham believed God, and it was counted unto 
him for righteousness. An intellectual act, 
passing through and lifting up the moral 
powers, it becomes a spiritual act. It ele¬ 
vates, ennobles every capacity of our nature, 
and must show itself in overt acts that bind 
body and soul to obedience to God. “ Out 
of the abundance of the heart the mouth 
speaketh.” It is a primal gift of God, as 
every ability is, but when we are co-workers 
with Him an increased ability is given us. 
Our response obtains the gift of greater 
strength through often increased tests of this 
Faith, and the trust of our love and faith ob¬ 
tains the blessing of being allowed to wor¬ 
ship Him, serve Him in daily act, and kin¬ 
dles a burning desire to prove at all cost our 


Faith by a still deeper devotion. An increas¬ 
ing power of insight into God’s dealing 
with us is also a gift as a part of Faith, which 
in turn adds still to our Faith and brings 
forth greater fruit. In this He shows the 
firmness of His promise, “ I will never leave 
thee nor forsake thee.” 

II. This Faith in God must be through a 
Faith in His Son Jesus Christ. For the 
Faith that our Heavenly Father requires is 
taught us by His Son, and this Son requires 
Faith in Himself. “Ye believe in God ; be¬ 
lieve also in Me.” No man cometh to the 
Father but by Him. Through Him we both 
have access by one Spirit to the Father. 
In Him we are builded together for an 
habitation of God through the Spirit. Would 
we come to God, —He is the Way ; would 
we receive the Truth,—He is the Truth; 
would we live forever,—He is the Life. 
“ Whosoever believeth in Him shall never 
die.” Since God was in Christ, reconciling 
the world by Him, there can be no other 
way. He stands forth before us and is 
our bondsman. The covenants of life 
are in Him. Life and all everlasting 
gifts pass through Him. He stands for 
us and pleads our cause. He hides our 
life in Himself. He is our peace. We 
cannot come to God therefore but by 
Him. Faith in God must be equally Faith 
in Christ as a Person having eternal and 
co-equal power with His Father our God. 
And claims our Faith. It is this man whom 
the Apostolic Christianity preaches as the 
one who, having made an atonement as vic¬ 
tim, and by His Kesurrection received con¬ 
secration to plead as High-Priest and kingly 
authority, He is set forth as the interceding 
and offering Person upon whom our hopes 
must rest, and through whom alone the 
Father will receive us. It is reason¬ 
able, for the exceeding love of the Son, so 
wondrously shown forth. The passionate 
words of St. Paul are but sober fact: 
“ If any man love not the Lord Jesus 
Christ let him be anathema.” Faith in 
Him is a deeper act yet, and the New Tes¬ 
tament supposes this Faith to proceed to 
Baptism and Confirmation and Holy Com¬ 
munion. For He demands of those who 
love Him (and to love demands Faith, and 
Faith involves something of love) to keep 
His commandments. Therefore the mem¬ 
bers of the Church are called the Believers 
and the Faithful. And a moment’s thought 
proves that mere Faith without such bands 
as these is but a feeble grasp, easily lost, and 
is purposeless, a slight mental act and 
struggle, without the slightest adequate re¬ 
sult. 

III. Thence the Church is sometimes 
said to be the Faith, the Household of Faith, 
since within it we are fellow-citizens with 
the saints, and are of the Household of God, 
and have obtained the like precious Faith 
with the Apostles. For the spiritual Faith 
leads to using the Sacraments under which 
Christ gives Himself, and these Sacraments 




FAITH 


291 


FALL 


make us one with Christ. Therefore we 
recognize that this Faith leads to touch Him, 
and that touch is in the unity of the Church. 
So that, as we are taught that there is one 
Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, so there is 
but one hope of our calling, which can be 
found only in that Church which He bought 
with His blood, loved, sanctified, and adorned 
for Himself. The whole Epistle to the Ephe¬ 
sians is but an exposition of the Church as 
the result of Faith, the means of Faith, the 
strengthener of Faith, and therefore of the 
unity of the Church as a living body capa¬ 
ble of giving those gifts which such an orga¬ 
nization has intrusted to it by its Founder 
to dispense, in the order which He has di¬ 
rected and under the conditions He requires. 
And as a result, since we may not fully 
know how His gifts bear upon our eternal 
life, nor why He has chosen them and none 
others, it is also an act of Faith to receive 
them and use them, since we know in whom 
we have trusted, and that what we are re¬ 
ceiving will have a power upon our future 
eternal glory. It follows, then, that this be¬ 
lief in God through Christ, and received 
in the Church with a full honest love, gives 
us another meaning to the word Faith, for 
IY. The Faith refers also to the deposit 
of doctrine, full and entire, which is given 
to the Church, and which each faithful mem¬ 
ber of Christ is bound to receive. Ana¬ 
lyzing the contents of this deposit of doc¬ 
trine, we find it based upon the Faith in the 
Trinity, which is involved in the words 
with which we are baptized: In the name 
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
Holy Ghost. Upon this outline is framed 
the Creed, which is evidently an expansion 
of the baptismal formula. The revelations 
which illustrate and set forth this are 
summed up in the Creed. In its widest 
sense the deposit of the Faith is in the 
Holy Scripture, but its elements are stated 
in compressed form in the Creeds. The 
Faith means a belief in God as the Framer 
of the seen and unseen works of nature, of 
power, and glory. In the eternal nature, 
and in the several parts of His acts for 
our redemption. In the work of the Holy 
Ghost, in and by the visible office of the 
Church for our salvation. So by a com¬ 
parison of the several sermons preached by 
St. Peter ( e.g ., Acts iii. and v. and x.) with 
St. Paul’s sermon (Acts xiii.) and the sermon 
in Heb. vi., we would see how largely the 
Creed reproduces them, and would be con¬ 
vinced that it was the form of sound words 
which St. Paul ordered St. Timothy to hold 
fast ( cf . liev. ii. 24, 25), or that it was the 
proportion of the Faith according to which 
the prophet was to prophesy (Rom. xii. 6). 
It was the Faith which St. Timothy was to 
hold, of which some made shipwreck, which 
heresies overthrow, which the Apostle had 
kept in fighting the good fight (vide Ep. to 
Tim.). Faith then, in a word, is applied to 
the whole range of beliefs and of applications 
of that belief, sanctified and purified by being 


from God the Friend and offered to God the 
Father, and bound up in God the Son, and 
sanctified by the Holy Ghost. And the 
Faith in its several parts and in its unity is 
required of us rightly, because God is our 
God, and fairly, because we have the ability 
by nature, by His gift, by our use of it to 
yield it to Him. 

Faithful. The Faithful, the very ancient 
name for the communicants of the Church. 
Every person baptized was immediately 
confirmed and was a communicant at once. 
He then was called one of the Faithful. It 
meant this in the New Testament, in Ephe¬ 
sians i. 1, “ To the saints which are in 
Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ 
Jesus.” 2 Cor. vi. 15, “ What part hath a 
believer with an unbeliever ?” So too 1 Tim. 
iv. 3, 10, 12 ; v. 16. Where the Revised 
translation makes a phrase out of an adjec¬ 
tive used as a noun, e.g., iv. 12, “be thou 
an ensample to them that believe in word, 
in manner of life, in love, in faith, in 
purity,” the Authorized Version has “to 
the believers.” It is literally “ to the faith¬ 
ful.” We have given so different a mean¬ 
ing to the word “ believer” that it has lost 
its synonymous technical signification of 
“ communicant” rightly belonging to it in 
many places in the New Testament. It 
was so used in the Liturgies and in Clemens’ 
Rom. Epistles (a.d. 97) and in Ignatius’ 
Epistles (a.d. 107), and thence in the Apos¬ 
tolic Canons, after which time it is not neces¬ 
sary to quote examples. 

Faldistory was a low armless folding¬ 
chair in which a Bishop sat at the altar after 
his enthronization or on other solemn occa¬ 
sions. It was a portable chair, and prob¬ 
ably would be the proper description of 
what we now call the Bishop’s chair. 
But since the Bishop’s chair strictly can be 
only in his Cathedral Church, it seems that 
the present chair, though something more, 
is really the old faldistory. The name is 
found in the Capitulary in the inventory of 
the Monastery and Church at Staffelsee (812 
a.d. ). The faldistory is probably the Bish¬ 
op’s chair ordered in the Rubrics of the Or¬ 
dinal. 

Faldstool. A Litany stool placed in the 
Choir from which the Litany is recited. 
It should be a low desk, merely high enough 
to kneel at. It was placed in the midst of 
the Choir, facing eastward. It was retained 
at Canterbury, York, Lincoln, and Exeter 
Cathedrals, and is used in St. Paul’s. It is 
becoming much more common, and is fre¬ 
quently found in many Parish Churches. 

Fall. There is no real difficulty in re¬ 
ceiving the narrative in Genesis iii. as liter¬ 
ally true. The condition of all nature and 
its relations to man were materially differ¬ 
ent then from what they became through the 
Fall. Therefore, admitting that sin did 
come into the world by the disobedience, 
there can be no disproof alleged of the truth 
of the details recorded of the act of the sin 
drawn from our present fallen state, wherein 




FAMILIARS 


292 


FASTING 


the relation of man to the lower creation is 
in a disrupted antagonizing condition from 
that one act. Then there was no fear, there 
was thorough subjection of all creatures to 
Adam, and there well could be an intercourse 
between man and the creation below him 
which has been practically lost; though 
even now some wonderful examples occur 
of man’s intercourse with animals. There 
is, therefore, no reason to be drawn from the 
history that leads us to reject its literal truth. 
The three main results of the conscious will¬ 
ful disobedience are, (1) The change of man’s 
relation to God. (2) The loss of his original 
holiness and of the special gifts it contained. 
(3) The impulse downward in all his desires 
and passions, and therefore a greater aliena¬ 
tion from God. 

Familiars. Officers of the Inquisition, 
who arrested obnoxious or suspected persons. 
These Familiars were often of excellent 
families, who from special privileges given 
them, both by the order and by the king,were 
induced to lend themselves to its iniquitous 
work. The Order of Inquisition lent its 
Familiars its protection under all circum¬ 
stances, for as often as a legal process for 
any offense was issued against any one of 
the members, the process was transferred in 
some way to the Inquisition, who could 
thereupon stop proceedings. 

Fanaticism. A mistaken and senseless 
misuse of enthusiasm and zeal, chiefly in a 
religious cause. It is a violation of all the 
laws of Christian charity, and the fanatic is 
guilty of a great sin. 

Fanon. A term which has several mean¬ 
ings. I. A head-dress worn by the Pope 
when he celebrated mass pontifically. It 
was a veil of four colors, like the Mosaic 
ephod, put upon the head after the Pope 
was vested with the alb. It was tied round 
the neck, forming a kind of hood, and the 
tiara was put on above it. When the Pope 
performs the ceremony of washing the feet, 
on Maunday-Thursday, he is to wear the 
fanon without the mitre. II. The nap¬ 
kin or handkerchief which the priest used 
to wipe away the perspiration from his face 
during service. III. In later times, the 
white linen cloth in which the laity made 
their oblations of bread and wine at the 
altar. IY. A still later use of the word 
is that of Church-banners used in proces¬ 
sions. (Smith’s Dictionary of Christian An¬ 
tiquities.) 

Farse. A stuffing out ( farcio ); a prac¬ 
tice, before the Reformation, of adding, as 
each verse was recited, in Latin, an inter¬ 
pretation in the common tongue for the 
benefit of the people. This was not a com¬ 
mon practice, yet some singular examples 
of it may be seen in Neal’s “ Essays in 
Liturgiology.” 

Fasting. To fast for a longer or shorter 
time or over a stated period has been from 
earliest ages a means of showing grief, of 
roving sorrow, of gaining self-mastery, of 
earing a spiritual discipline and practice. 


It was not enjoined by the Law, as exten¬ 
sively as it was afterwards carried out by 
the people. There was only one fast, that 
of the Day of Atonement, appointed by the 
Law, but during, and after, the Captivity, 
four fasts were kept, the fast of the fourth, 
fifth, seventh, and tenth months. In the 
details of Jewish history we find fasts pro¬ 
claimed for the people or ordered for some 
sudden occasion. Fasting was acknowledged 
by God Himself. It delayed Ahab’s pun¬ 
ishment; it prevented the immediate de¬ 
struction of Nineveh. Our Lord assumed 
the use of fasts as of ordinary spiritual use \ 
in the Sermon on the Mount. He set us 
the great example in His own practice. He 
said that some spirits were only quelled by 
fasting and prayer. When St. Peter was 
sent to baptize Cornelius it was when he was 
fasting, and Cornelius received the grace of 
baptism because of his fasts, alms, and 
prayers. When Barnabas and Saul were 
sent forth, it was with fasting as well as 
prayer. St. Paul was constant in it as a 
means of spiritual discipline. Fasting is, 
then, a weapon in our spiritual warfare and 
an exercise in our spiritual training, one 
which should be laid aside for no light 
reason. But one or two principles must be 
kept in mind: (a) Fasting, unless with a 
distinct spiritual purpose or from a habitual 
use of it as in obedience to the Church’s 
rule, is not worth anything. ( b ) Fasting 
without prayer is shorn of its power, and 
if alms are neglected also, it is of but little 
advantage, but with prayer and alms it is 
mighty in the inner soul life. 

It would seem that in our heedlessness we 
overlook the fact that fasting is something 
more than a sorrow, or than a half restitu¬ 
tion, but it should be used only for more 
than that. To too many this use of fasting 
is a necessary practice, but it is seldom done, 
whereas it should be used as a prayerful 
self-discipline by which we may draw nearer 
to God; so the Church intends it shall be, 
when she orders that Friday shall always 
be accounted a Fast, with the single excep¬ 
tion when Christmas-day falls upon it; and 
the forty days of Lent, the Fasts at the 
Ember seasons, and on the Rogation days, 
are all intended for that use. Indeed, she 
has ordered an hundred and four fasting 
days in the year, and the number is still 
further increased if Advent be accounted as 
a lesser Lent. It is necessary, then, to give 
more heed to what she teaches us upon "this 
duty, which was needful even for the sinless 
human nature of our Lord that He might 
learn obedience (Heb. v. 7, 10; cf. St. Mark 
ix. 28, 29), and may not with safety be neg¬ 
lected by us. Our Church has laid down 
no positive rule as to the extent of our fasting, 
leaving it to each one to exercise it accord¬ 
ing to his ability and to his opportunity. 
Certain classes are exempt,—convalescents, 
children of tender years, and women about 
to become mothers or with young infants. 
Those on whose bodily strength depends the 




FASTS, TABLE OF 


293 


FATHER 


maintenance of a family should carefully 
regulate their fasting. Those who are aged 
should be careful. It is not intended that 
fasting should injure the health and useful¬ 
ness of the person. But this should by no 
means be made a cloak for a general 
excuse. Few there are but could fast 
oftener and more to their own and others’ 
profit than now do so. Fasting may be a total 
abstinence from food for a certain time, or 
it may be a partial abstinence for a longer 
period, or it may take the form of a giving 
up for a given time all pleasant food and all 
ordinary and extraordinary social pleasures. 
The Church expects an abstinence in greater 
or less strictness from us on her appointed 
days other than two, on which she looks for 
a total abstinence from each of her children, 
Ash-Wednesday and Good-Friday. What¬ 
ever rules we may lay down for ourselves 
for the other days in Lent, we should 
on these two days—the one the Church’s 
call to her children to sorrow and self- 
examination, the other the solemn com¬ 
memoration of the sacrifice made for 
all sin — fast with absolute strictness. 
A reason for the difficulty in carrying 
out a purpose to fast which some find as 
a hindrance, is that they plunge into a sea¬ 
son of fasting without any previous train¬ 
ing. The Lenten fast is to many not as 
spiritually profitable as it should be, be¬ 
cause they have not practiced the lesser 
abstinence of the weekly Friday fast; a loss 
to them in their weekly devotional life and 
a hindrance to them in their larger efforts to 
gain it. 

Fasts, Table of. A table of Fasts in the 
tables prefixed to the Book of Common 
Prayer, is part of the tables and rules for 
the movable and unmovable Feasts, to¬ 
gether with the days of Fasting and Absti¬ 
nence through the whole year. The Fasts 
which are absolutely strict are the two, 
Ash - Wednesday and Good-Friday. Of 
these, Ash-Wednesday is as ordered by the 
Church, and is only by her express authority 
made a strict fast, while Good-Friday has 
yet higher force as universal observance 
is added to the command of the Church. 
Indeed, Christmas-day, Good-Friday, and 
Easter-day—the Birth, Sacrifice, and Resur¬ 
rection of our dear Lord —compel from the 
devout Christian an observance which he 
cannot conscientiously pretermit. 

“Other days of Fasting on which the 
Church requires such a measure of Absti¬ 
nence, as is more especially suited to extraor¬ 
dinary Acts and Exercises of Devotion: 

“1. The Forty days of Lent. 

“ 2. The Ember-days at the four seasons, 
being the Wednesday, Friday, and Satur¬ 
day after the first Sunday in Lent, the Fast 
of * Pentecost, September 14, and Decem¬ 
ber 13. 

“ 3. The three Rogation days, being the 
Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before 
Holy Thursday, or the Ascension of our 
Lord. 


“ 4. All the Fridays in the year except 
Christmas-day.” 

These several fasting days are noted in 
their proper places in the Cyclopaedia, but it 
is proper to note one or two things in the 
table. The Church requires, and as good 
children we should use, such measure of ab¬ 
stinence, not of full fasts, but of self-denial 
that helps to self-control, that will regulate 
the pleasures of the palate and be ready to 
forego pleasant meats, that the mind may be 
less under the power of self-indulgence. It 
is not required of us to fast, but to abstain, 
and, too, no rigid rule is fixed. We should ab¬ 
stain from everything to which we are too 
much attached; whatever pleasant meats de¬ 
light us lay these aside. There are ninety- 
seven such days of abstinence. And if they 
were devoutly observed, as we are in com¬ 
mon duty bound and as our love to the 
Church should urge us, the devoutness of 
our spiritual life would be much heightened. 
What we should abstain from must be left 
to the circumstances and condition of each 
person. 

Fatalism. “ What has been decreed can¬ 
not be revoked” is the fundamental idea of 
the Fatalist. It was the necessity of the 
Greek, the Fate of the Latin, and is the 
Fatalism of the Christian who perverts the 
true doctrine of Predestination. Fatalism 
is the practical creed of those who overlook 
the fact that predestination is not taught of 
individuals but of the Churcfi, in the Bible. 
God raised up certain men, both for honor 
and, as they chose, for dishonor {eg., 
Balaam, who was a prophet and sank to a 
petty demagogue under Balak’s temptation), 
but this is not the basis of Predestination. 
But when the stern, narrow logic of later 
ideas of Predestination is applied to life and 
to individuals, Fatalism is the unavoidable 
conclusion. Mohammed brought this for¬ 
ward and made it the Creed of Islam. “ Ye 
cannot will except the Lord willeth” (Ko¬ 
ran, Sura 81). It led to wild fanaticism on 
the field of battle, it leads now to political 
supineness, and will be one of the final ele¬ 
ments in working the destruction of Islam- 
ism. But the Spinozism which fashions too 
much the current of predestination thought, 
is itself a fatalistic system. Education and 
the freedom of thought, and the power to 
reason and also to use the insight of rela¬ 
tivity, will be the best corrective to its in¬ 
fluence, apart from the deeper devout study 
of the Scriptures. Fatalism was made in¬ 
directly a part of Luther’s theology (De 
Servo Arbitrio), though he afterwards 
changed it very much. Zwingli also held 
it, by teaching that the elect were so by the 
determinate decree of God, the correlative of 
which proposition must follow. 

Father. The distinguishing note of the 
Christian dispensation is the doctrine of the 
Fatherhood of God, through the revelation 
of His only-begotten Son Jesus Christ 
our Lord. The Father is confessed in 
the Creeds. “ I believe in One God, the 






FATHER 


294 


FATHERS 


Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and 
earth, and of all things visible and invisi¬ 
ble, ” is the Confession of the Nicene Creed. 
“ I believe in God the Father Almighty, 
Maker of heaven and earth,” is the Confes¬ 
sion of the Apostles’ Creed. In the records 
of the earlier dispensation, in which the 
revelation was mainly of the Unity of the 
Godhead, this is not so distinctly traced ; 
hut, nevertheless, it is taught., and still 
oftener implied. The Father is Himself 
the source and self-existent Essence of the 
Divine Nature, and is properly a Father in 
that He hath an only-begotten Son, the 
eternal Word (Ps. ii. 7 ; Heb. i. 5). There¬ 
fore, in the highest, most proper sense, He 
is the Father of the Word, and holds and 
displays in the Divine perfectness all the 
relations and attributes which belong to the 
Father towards His Son (St. John v. 19, 20, 
and vs. 17). He grants to His Son all the priv¬ 
ileges, and demands for Him all the honors 
which belong to Him as His Son (St. John 
v. 21-23). He gives of His own to His 
Son (St. John xvi. 15). In the Unity of the 
Divine Essence the Son is all that the 
Father is, in Majesty, Glory, Power, Eter¬ 
nity, and Incomprehensibility, save in that 
which belongeth to God as the Father (St. 
John x. 30; xvii. 5, 21, 22). But, as He is 
Father of the eternal nature, so that Son is 
no less His Son when by the Holy Ghost He 
took upon Hirnself flesh, and was born of 
the Virgin Mary, and became man. “ For 
God so loved the world that He gave His 
only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth 
in Him should not perish, but have everlast¬ 
ing life” (St. John iii. 16). This only- 
begotten Son, born of the Virgin, and called 
then the Son of God (St. Luke i. 35) was testi¬ 
fied to by the Voice from heaven, “ This is 
my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” 
(St. Matt. iii. 17). By the eternal Son of 
God, who in His human nature, being the 
Son of Adam, was as we the Son of God, we 
become immortal sons of God in partaking 
His nature, putting Him on us as becoming 
man. IJe became the Son of God, as we 
are, by creation. He was glorified openly 
by His Father. He was confessed by the 
Devils (St. Mark iii. 11). He gave to them 
that received Him power to become the sons 
of God, even to them that believe on His 
name, which were born, not of blood, nor of 
the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, 
but of God. Through His revelation and 
gift we have God to our Father in the high¬ 
est sense, for He is not ashamed to call us 
brethren. But in the Christian Church this 
is only attainable. “ For as many as are led 
by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of 
God ; ... ye have received the Spirit of 
adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father” 
(Rom. viii. 14, 15; cf. Gal. iv. 5, and St. 
Mark xiv. 36). So the Lord’s Prayer, 
“ Our Father,” etc., sets forth the crown¬ 
ing act of our right as sons of God ; and the 
first imploration of the Litany but repeats it. 
Yet this Son of God was born a Jew, ac¬ 


cording to the flesh, and in this dispensation 
the Father’s love is shown, for the Psalm¬ 
ist cried, “ Like as a father pitieth his chil¬ 
dren, even so the Lord pitieth them that 
fear Him.” They that remember the Lord 
shall be spared, “ as a man spareth his own 
son that serveth him” (Mai. iii. 7). In the 
first chapter of Proverbs the Fatherhood 
of God is brought out, for the Father and 
the Mother are God and the Church. Moses 
exclaimed in his song, “Is not He thy 
Father that hath bought thee ?” God sent 
His message by Moses to Pharaoh concern¬ 
ing the people in their bondage. Israel is 
my son, my first-born. Wider cry yet com- 
eth from the Gentiles through the Prophet 
Isaiah: “Doubtless Thou art our Father, 
though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Is¬ 
rael acknowledge us not: Thou, O Lord, 
art our Father, our Redeemer; from ever¬ 
lasting is Thy name” (Is. lxiii. 16). And 
these who so stretch out their beseeching 
hands to God are the sons of Adam, who 
is the son of God. Therefore, in the Creeds, 
in the Lord’s Prayer, in every address to 
Him as the Father, we approach Him by 
the right of creation in Adam, of revelation 
in the Jew, of sonship through His Son, who 
standeth evermore at the right hand of the 
Father, to receive our prayers and to give 
us access, as He has said, “No man cometh 
unto the Father but by Me.” 

Fathers, The. The crudest notions are 
entertained by the antagonists of Episcopa¬ 
lians respecting their estimation of the 
Christian Fathers. They look upon us as 
regarding the Fathers like a secondary sort 
of Evangelists or Apostles; as though their 
assertions ranked next to Scriptural ones, 
if not quite equal to them. They fancy we 
treat them as St. John would fain have 
treated the Angel in the Apocalypse, and 
give them reverential homage if not down¬ 
right worship. 

It is really hard to impress upon them the 
simple but essential distinction that the 
Fathers, like many other authors, sustain a 
twofold character,—that of divines and that 
of witnesses. As divines, they may have 
peculiar and personal opinions. St. Augus¬ 
tine, for example, is supposed by multi¬ 
tudes to have been what would now be 
called a Calvinist, because he talked so freely 
of predestination ; albeit, his idea of predes¬ 
tination was a predestination to grace in 
this life, and not a predestination to glory 
or perdition in the next. St. Jerome was 
monkish, and Tertullian what we might 
call somewhat of a Quaker. But, as divines, 
we receive any peculiarity in their opinions 
as we receive the opinions of divines now 
living, for what they are worth, and not as 
authoritative or directive because of the 
men who entertained them. 

It is as witnesses to Christian history, and 
especially as witnesses to a general or Catho¬ 
lic interpretation of Scripture, that we chiefly 
value them. They lived near the times 
when the Christian Scriptures were written ; 





FATHERS 


295 


FATHERS 


and of course could tell us how primitive 
Christians had received their signification, 
as handed down by the Apostles and their 
contemporaries. This sort of interpretation 
in relation to ancient documents, and docu¬ 
ments whose signification has been a matter 
of serious dispute, is of the very highest 
authority, common sense and common law 
teach us this; for we find one of the estab¬ 
lished maxims of courts to be, “ Contempo- 
ranea expositio est optima et fortissima in 
lege ”—“A contemporaneous exposition is 
the best and strongest in law.” (Wharton’s 
Legal Maxims, p. 57.) This is the exposition 
which a judge upon tne bench esteems above 
any mere opinion, or grammatical criticism, 
of the present day. A man’s genuine mean¬ 
ing, in anything he says or writes, is what 
he intends by that which he says or writes. 
The dictionary and grammar may make a 
man’s apparent intention, in his last will and 
testament, quite unlike his real and actual 
intention. And therefore a surrogate, or 
judge of probate, cares much less for the dic¬ 
tionary and grammar than for the genuine 
intention of the testator, if he can reach it 
without them. And the same rule should 
govern if the question respected the signi¬ 
fication of a Constitution, a Statute, a 
Treaty, or a Contract. We want the aim, 
the design, the inward resolve of the authors 
of a Constitution, a Statute, a Treaty, or a 
Contract as a key, and the best of keys, 
to their actual and permanent significa¬ 
tion. 

Now it is under the influence of such 
sentiments that we go to the Fathers for 
the proper construction of the Scriptures 
and primitive Christian History. They are 
the persons to tell us what was the contem¬ 
poraneous exposition of the Bible, what 
construction the Primitive Church put upon 
the Bible, because they are the best wit¬ 
nesses in the case we can possibly obtain. 
They were nearest the minds of the Apostles 
among all in the old Christian world. They 
were conspicuous and trustworthy persons. 
As witnesses, they could hardly be mistaken 
concerning the books which the Primitive 
Church gathered into a volume, which it 
called the Bible. They could also tell what 
sort of a Church had come down from Apos¬ 
tolic times, what rites it cherished, what 
officers governed it, and how it perpetuated 
its own existence. 

Where else could we go (if we neglected 
or discarded such witnesses) when the drift 
of the Bible about such matters is called in 
question ? The Bible does not attest its own 
Canon, or the construction of its disputed 
passages. It is a Latin Church book, or 
a Greek Church book ; an Episcopal book, 
or a Presbvterian book ; a Baptist book, or 
a Congregationalist book ; a Methodist book, 
or a Quaker book ; a Unitarian book, or a 
Free Church book ; or, finally, a Rationalistic 
book ; as denominations, or schools, or self- 
satisfied thinkers choose to account it. We 
must go outside of it for contemporaneous 


interpretation, or we must dispute and 
wrangle to the world’s last day. 

“ We hold, and say we prove, from Scripture plain, 

That Christ is God ; the bold Socinian, 

From the same Scripture, urges he’s but man. 

Now what appeal shall end the important suit? 

Both parts talk loudly, but the rule is mute.” 

Even such a mind as Dryden’s, layman 
if he were, could see this issue by an act of 
intuition, and put it to his fellows in a 
most characteristic way. (Works, 12mo ed., 
pp. 146, 147.) 

True, he put it in the shape of poetry. 
But Dryden is said to have reasoned better 
in poetry than in prose ; and certainly there 
is unmistakable and fruitful logic in his 
quoted lines. 

The Church of Rome once saw, and in¬ 
sisted triumphantly, that the Scriptures 
must be interpreted according to the unani¬ 
mous sense of the Fathers. Well, this test 
was applied to one of her most favorite au¬ 
thorities,—the text in Matthew, so often ap¬ 
pealed to as establishing the Pope’s suprem¬ 
acy. The unanimous consent of the Fathers, 
however, did not sustain her. Cardinal 
Newman saw this at a glance, and so he 
broached his theory of Development, which 
finds the germs of Romanism in the Bible, 
but not its full-blown dogmas. 

But suppose the question to have been, 
Did the Primitive Church acknowledge a 
Trinity in the Godhead, or an Episcopacy 
in Church Government?—and we can find 
even a Gibbon acknowledging that such 
things were notorious down to the sixteenth 
century. And this leads us to say that the 
general, the all but unanimous, testimony 
of history respecting chief matters , funda¬ 
mental matters, is singularly uniform. The 
Church Catholic, to this very day, believes 
in such points with all but consolidated 
unanimity. And if the Church Catholic 
would take the two points instanced and 
make them a basis of a Concordat, she would 
be a consolidated unity still, and the Com¬ 
munion of Saints exist no longer as a mere 
article of a creed. They are sufficient for 
the basis of a Concordat which would ren¬ 
der all Christendom essentially and harmo¬ 
niously one. And this is not spoken with¬ 
out book. When the American Episcopal 
Chqrch first sent a Bishop to the East, he 
was charged by our Presiding Bishop to of¬ 
fer Christian communion, the fellowship of 
Christianity, to all who would receive it on 
the basis of the Nicene Creed for doctrine, 
and Apostolic Episcopacy for discipline, 
leaving form of worship and liturgies out of 
the question, as matters which might be 
conformed to national customs and educated 
tastes. The offer was listened to, and proved 
enough for Greek Christians and Oriental 
Christians generally. 

But Rome, on the one hand, and anti- 
Episcopalians on the other, will not accept 
such a basis for a Concordat. By no means. 
There must be a Pope on this side, or minis¬ 
terial parity on the other side, or the hand 





FEAST 


296 


FEAST 


of brotherhood cannot cross the chasm and 
give the clasp of consanguinity. Who, 
then, are the hinderers, who the schism- 
makers, if the Church of 'Christ is still 
divided, and hot likely to be one for cen¬ 
turies? 

Doubtless we Episcopalians are considered 
a very exclusive and a very uncharitable 
people; but we have asked of our tallest 
Churchmen again and again, and of the most 
intelligent among them, too, if the Nicene 
Creed for doctrine, and Apostolic Episcopacy 
for discipline, would not be enough to start 
from, for a Concordat , with any body of 
Christians under heaven. And the invaria¬ 
ble and cheerful answer has been that it 
would be. And is not this enough to show 
that, while we continually deprecate “false 
doctrine, heresy, and 801118111“ in our Lit¬ 
any, our prayers are as continually an¬ 
swered, and that we are as free from “all 
uncharitableness’’ as any body of Christians 
beneath the sun,—as near a primitive stand¬ 
ard as any other Christian body,—and that 
the Bible, interpreted according to the 
unanimous consent of the Fathers, is our 
true profession and our filial inheritance? 

Rev. T. W. Coit, D.D. 

Feast. It is a principle in natural relig¬ 
ion to seek by some joyous observance to ex¬ 
press our religious feelings of happiness or 
thankfulness. This natural readiness, shown 
in innumerable heathen festivals and holi¬ 
days, was used by Divine Providence for the 
teaching of His religion and for training 
mankind in His Life. He used it for the 
Israelites, beginning with the Passover. 
“ And this dai r shall be unto you for a memo¬ 
rial ; and ye shall keep it a feast to the Lord 
throughout your generations : ye shall keep 
it a feast by an ordinance forever’’ (Ex. xii. 
14). And so of the other Feasts, of Pentecost, 
of Tabernacles, of Trumpets, the weekly 
sabbath, the seventh year, the year of Jubi¬ 
lee. Thrice a year each male was to appear 
before the Lord. It is not the place here to 
do more than note the binding unifying ef¬ 
fect of such feasts as these. Since, then, the 
demands of natural devoutness and God’s 
command conjoin to make Feasts a neces¬ 
sity, the Church has followed this principle ; 
in fact, the Passover has become our Easter, 
Pentecost is Whit-Sunday, and by the guid¬ 
ance of the Spirit the Sabbath of the Jew 
has been transferred to the Lord’s day,— 
Sunday. These are Feasts commemorating 
redemptive acts by, and enabling gifts from, 
our Lord ; the round is completed by the 
joyful celebration of Christmas-day. The 
Christian year falls into two distinct parts, 
(I.) the Sundays from Advent to Whit-Sun¬ 
day, in which the Life, Work, Passion, Cruci¬ 
fixion, Death, and Resurrection, Ascension 
of Christ, and His sending to us the all- 
containing gift of the Holy Ghost are com¬ 
memorated ; and (II.) the Sundays extend¬ 
ing from Trinity-Sunday on till Advent is 
reached again. All Sundays are minor 
Feasts of the Resurrection, but with this they 


as well as certain week-days have an added 
teaching and memorial joyfulness. Christ¬ 
mas-day and Epiphany generally, and Ascen¬ 
sion-day always, fall upon a week-day, but 
all other Feasts founded on His work fall on 
Sunday. Feasts are divided into movable 
and immovable. Those are movable which 
depend upon Easter, which Feast depends 
upon the full moon on or after the 21st of 
March, giving a latitude of a month (from 
March 22 to April 25). Upon Easter de¬ 
pend the number of Sundays after the Epiph¬ 
any, the date of the Ascension-day, Whit- 
Sunday, and Trinity-Sunday, as these fall 
at fixed spaces before or after Easter. Those 
which are immovable are the Feasts which 
fall on days of the month. Thus Christmas- 
day is always the 25th of December, and may 
fall on any day of the week, and Epiphany 
is the 6th of January, and also may fall on 
any day of the week. 

The Act of Edward VI. (5 and 6, c. 3, s. 
1) so clearly sets forth these reasons, is the 
foundation of our Table of Feasts, and shows 
Cranmer’s hand so plainly, that the first sec¬ 
tion. is here given: 

“ For as much as men at all times be not so 
mindful to laud and praise God, so ready to 
resort and hear God’s holy word, and to come 
to the Holy Communion and other lauda¬ 
ble rites which are to be observed in every 
Christian congregation as their bounden 
duty doth require; therefore, to call men to 
remembrance of their duty, and to help their 
infirmity, it hath been wholesomely pro¬ 
vided, that there should be some certain 
times and days appointed wherein Christians 
should cease from all other kinds of labors, 
and should apply themselves only and 
wholly unto the aforesaid holy works prop¬ 
erly pertaining unto true religion ; the which 
times and days specially appointed for the 
same are called holidays, not for the matter 
or nature either of the time or day, nor for 
any of the saints’ sake whose memories are 
had on those days (for so all days and times 
considered are God’s creatures and all of 
like holiness), but for the nature and condi¬ 
tion of those godly and holy works wherein 
only God is to be honored and the congre¬ 
gation to be edified, whereunto such times 
and days are sanctified and hallowed, that 
is to say, separated from all profane uses, 
and dedicated and appointed not unto saint 
and creature, but only unto God and His 
true worship ; neither is it to be thought that 
there is any certain times or definite number 
of days prescribed in Holy Scripture, but 
that the appointment both of the time and 
also of the number of days is left by the au¬ 
thority of God’s word to the liberty of 
Christ’s Church, to be determined and as¬ 
signed orderly in every country by the dis¬ 
cretion of the rulers and ministers thereof as 
they shall judge most expedient, to the true 
setting forth of God’s glory and the edifica¬ 
tion of their people ; it is, therefore, enacted 
that all the days hereinafter mentioned shall 
be kept and commanded to be kept holidays 





FESTIVAL 


297 


FILIOQUE 


and none other ; that is to say, all Sundays 
in the year, the days of the Feast of the Cir¬ 
cumcision of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
of the Epiphany, of the Purification of the 
Blessed Virgin, of St. Matthias the Apostle, 
of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin, 
of St. Mark the Evangelist, of St. Philip and 
Jacob the Apostles, of the Ascension of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, of the nativity of St. 
John the Baptist, of St. Peter the Apostle, 
of St. James the Apostle, of St. Bartholo¬ 
mew the Apostle, of St. Matthew the Apos¬ 
tle, of St. Michael the Archangel, of St. 
Luke the Evangelist, of St. Simon and Jude 
the Apostles, of All-Saints’, of St. Andrew 
the Apostle, of St. Thomas the Apostle, of 
the Nativity of our Lord, of St. Stephen the 
Martyr, of St. John the Evangelist, of the 
Holy Innocents, Monday and Tuesday in 
Easter-week, and Monday and Tuesday in 
Whitsun-week; and that none other day 
shall be kept and commanded to be kept holy, 
or to abstain from lawful bodily labor.” It 
will be observed that the Feast of the con¬ 
version of St. Paul and the Feast of St. Bar¬ 
nabas were omitted in the act, but their 
names are inserted properly in the Table of 
Feasts. 

We have here the rules clearly laid dcwn 
upon which the Churches of England and of 
these United States have acted in these mat¬ 
ters, and from which their practice has never 
swerved. The office for Thanksgiving-day 
is a movable one, being the only link 
which connects the Church’s offices with the 
authority of the State in the appointment of 
national holidays. 

To close with Hooker’s noble words: 
“ Well to celebrate these religious and sacred 
days is to spend the flower of our time hap¬ 
pily. They are the splendor and outward 
dignity of our Religion; forcible witnesses 
of ancient truth, provocations to the exercise 
of all piety, shadows of our endless felicity in 
Heaven, on earth everlasting records and 
memorials ; wherein they which cannot be 
drawn to hearken unto that we teach may, 
only by looking upon that we do, in a man¬ 
ner read whatsoever we believe.” (Hooker, 
Eccl. Pol., v., sect. 71, ad fin.) 

Festival. The main difference between 
the words Feast and Festival seems to be 
that Feast is more often applied to the sacred 
Feasts which commemorate our Lord’s life, 
while the Festival is applied to the days com¬ 
memorative of God’s Saints. And here we 
may remark that wherever in the calendar 
there is a Feast of our Lord’s life falling on 
a week-day there should be a celebration of 
the Holy Communion. The Epistle and 
Gospel are ordered in all cases for both 
classes of Feast-days as well as for Sundays 
for such a celebration. This is their purpose. 
But at the least, the Feasts not only of 
Christmas and Ascension, but also of the Cir¬ 
cumcision and the Epiphany, should be so 
kept. It is a growing custom to commem¬ 
orate the Saints’ days by that celebration 
which the Church intends should be had, by 


providing the Liturgic Scriptures of the 
Epistle and Gospel, for it is the sign of our 
unity in the Body of Christ which is His 
Church, and we profess the Faith once given 
to the saints as unchanged and unchange¬ 
able. 

It may be asked, Why not commemorate 
the Saints of the Old Testament as well as 
those of the New? Hooker’s reply is com¬ 
plete when he remarks that “ we are content 
to imagine, it may be perhaps true, that the 
least in the Kingdom of Christ is greater 
than the greatest of all the Prophets of God 
that have gone before.” (Eccl. Pol., v., sect. 
71.) We thank God for their examples, 
and beseech Him to walk in their holy foot¬ 
steps, and we desire to be made partakers of 
that blessedness He has given them, and we 
acknowledge thereby the deep bond of a 
common brotherhood in Christ our Lord, 
and note wherein we too can tread in those 
holy ways which He has prepared for us to 
walk in. 

Filioque. In the controversies which 
raged in Spain between the Orthodox and 
the Arians (580 a.d.) the procession of the 
Holy Ghost from the Son as well as from 
the Father was a powerful argument 
against the heretics. The third Council of 
Toledo (589 a.d.) directed that in the Creed, 
the clause upon the procession of the Holy 
Ghost should read, Qui, ex Patre , Filioque , 
procedit. It was accepted in the Spanish 
and Gallican Churches. It was noticed as 
an interpolation by the Greek ambassadors 
at the Council of Gentilly (767 a.d.). Popes 
Adrian I. (790 a.d.) and Leo III. (806 a.d.) 
declined to sanction it, though it was per¬ 
sistently used in Gaul. But Nicolas I. (866 
a.d.) found it convenient to use it in his con¬ 
troversy with Photius, the intruding Patri¬ 
arch of Constantinople. Photius expressed 
the general denunciation of the East against 
it, and it continued to be the subject of sharp 
contentions between the Greek and the 
Latin Churches till the final rent (1054 
a.d.). A conference upon it was held at 
Nice (1234 a.d.) and a Council at Nym- 
phaea without fruit. So, too, it was dis¬ 
cussed at Lyons (1274 a.d.). A reluctant 
assent to it was wrung from the Greek en¬ 
voys at Florence (1439 a.d.), which was 
immediately repudiated by the Oriental 
Churches. The only discussion of any 
value since, was at Bonn (1874 a.d.), where 
its insertion was declared to be illegal, and 
an effort for its removal was urged. Re¬ 
peated efforts both in the English Convoca¬ 
tions and in our General Convention have 
been made to have it removed. But it was 
felt that the reception was so general in the 
West that it would be well, in view of the 
apparent course of events, to have it done 
by a larger portion and more representative 
of the Western Church than by merely 
the Anglican Communion acting alone, 
however needful the removal of the offend¬ 
ing clause may be. The objection of the 
Eastern theologians is that it may be made 





FINANCE, CHURCH 


298 


FINANCE, CHURCH 


to teach a dual source of procession, for the 
Father as self-existing is the sole source 
of the procession of the Spirit, the mission 
to us being through the Son. The interpo¬ 
lation was also bitterly condemned as wholly 
extra vires , as incurring the anathema of the 
Council of Chalcedon against all tampering 
with the Creed, and as necessarily forcing a 
schism in the body of Christ. This is a 
continued protest, and will so remain till 
the Filioque is cast out. It must be added 
that these objections do not lie against the 
imploration in the Litany. There the words 
are liturgically used, to Him who proceed¬ 
ed by His mission from the Son to teach us 
how to pray aright. 

Finance, Church. First, the Basis. The 
ministrations of public worship and of 
Christian charity cannot be sustained with¬ 
out a large outlay of money. But in our 
Lord’s teaching the Kingdom of God is 
that thing which a man is “ first” to “seek.” 
For one’s self, therefore, and for one’s fam¬ 
ily, when one is making up the tabje of the 
very necessaries of life, nothing can take 
higher rank on that list of things indispens¬ 
able than the ministrations of religion. Noth¬ 
ing can more reasonably expect for itself 
adequate provision. This is the mere pru¬ 
dence of a wise man in taking care for him¬ 
self and for his own household. 

But the Church is the Representative of 
that Christ who came to this world upon 
a Foreign Mission, and who both took to 
Himself a human nature and went about 
doing good, healing men’s bodies, enlighten¬ 
ing men’s minds, lifting burdens from hu¬ 
man souls. The precept is, “ Let this mind 
be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” 
The Church that is His must be a mission¬ 
ary Church. Hospitals, likewise Asylums, 
Homes for the Aged and for the Orphans, 
Training Schools of Nurses, and seminaries 
of good learning spring up wherever this 
Church has gone. 

Reason commends the stern words written 
in Scripture of him “ that doeth the work 
of the Lord negligently.” Here, if any¬ 
where, low maxims and loose practices must 
be shunned. Titles to Church property and 
insurance of buildings require honest, that 
is, scrupulous attention. It ought to be 
clearly understood that rashly to incur debt 
in the building of churches is just as rep¬ 
rehensible as to do it in other relations. 
To leave the rector’s salary unpaid a week 
after it falls due is the same thing as to let a 
note lie dishonored at the bank. Those 
clergymen, held in esteem of their people, 
who have distinctly declared at the first that 
they should instantly resign the charge if 
ever the salary was one hour behind in the 
payment, have done good service in toning 
up the lazy flocks. And, in all the under¬ 
takings of Christian beneficence, the busi¬ 
ness parts require the same sound principles, 
wise methods, and careful attention for 
which men look in secular affairs. 

Second. The methods of securing moneys 


and of disbursing them, and the tenure of 
Church property. 

The Diocese, the real churchly unit as 
distinguished from the parish, both carries 
on works within itself and aids works with¬ 
out itself; within the Diocese, the local 
(parochial) and the more general. 

Provision for parochial needs in self- 
sustaining parishes and the management 
of their finances the Diocese now leaves 
almost wholly with the parish. Through 
the parish the Church fixes the rector’s sal¬ 
ary and provides for its payment. In this 
way all parochial needs are met, with few 
canonical regulations or restrictions,provided 
the canonical requirements regarding offer¬ 
ings for specified Diocesan objects without 
the parish be not set aside. 

Parochial Needs, the rector’s salary, 
the parish’s portion of the Bishop’s salary, 
and other current local expenses are met in 
various methods. The chief source of rev¬ 
enue are Pew-rentals, Subscriptions, Pledged 
Weekly Offerings, Unpledged Weekly Of¬ 
ferings, and Endowment Funds. 

From Rental of Pews very many large 
and important parishes derive their income. 
Among these must be counted many that 
are most liberal in contributions to Missions 
and to all works of love. Taking men with 
their inherited views and habits, in the 
average strong city parish probably so large 
and so steady an income for parochial uses 
as comes through the Pew-rental will not 
at first be yielded in any other way. It is 
also true that the system of renting pews 
for revenue is often so charitably adjusted to 
individual cases, and is so guarded other¬ 
wise, as to be free from the worst evils that 
accompany it when it is severely carried 
through. But to large numbers of Church¬ 
men it seems a grave evil that privileges in 
God’s House should be sold for money, 
an evil that would become a wrong if per¬ 
petrated after it can reasonably be brought 
to an end. So profound has this feeling 
become with the more vivid apprehension 
of what is meant by our Lord’s Incarna¬ 
tion, that other methods have been sought 
but for the maintenance of the Lord’s 
House more in harmony with primitive 
practice, and involving no special privileges 
accorded to wealth in sacred things. 

Probably in every Diocese churches will 
now be found in which no pews are rented. 
In several more than half the congregation 
do not resort to Pew-rentals. A few Bishops 
no longer deem it right to consecrate to Al¬ 
mighty God a House afterwards to be sold 
in parcels, and never do it. “ Tolerate no 
restriction at the door, by pride or tax, 
which can bar out any child of the Father,” 
are the earnest words of the House of Bish¬ 
ops in their Pastoral Letter of 1883 a.d. 
Wherever Pew-rentals are not had, the aim 
is to bring the parishioners to contribute each 
according to his ability to meet the paro¬ 
chial expenses, for these plainly must be 
met in some way. 




FINANCE, CHURCH 


299 


FINANCE, CHURCH 


Pledged Weekly Offerings have frequently 
been introduced. If their introduction have 
been intelligently followed and preceded, 
not by mendicant appeals, but with rich, 
generous instruction out of Christ’s Gospel, 
and if the pledges and their fulfillment have 
been so attended to that every family is 
reached, and that it is known to the proper 
person whether the pledge received at the 
year’s beginning is weekly made good, the 
results have almost invariably been satis¬ 
factory. In a large class of parishes, espe¬ 
cially in manufacturing towns, but else¬ 
where as well, this “ Envelope Plan” (as it 
is named) of pledged weekly offerings, has 
succeeded in a marked degree. 

The Weekly Offering Unpledged is in 
other instances the reliance. This is in 
several respects the best of all. But for its 
ermanent success the congregation must 
e of some intelligence and substantial 
character, and self-respecting. It must be 
composed of persons who have the mental 
and the moral power to sit down and quietly 
decide what they ought to do, and then to 
hold themselves steadily, year after year, to 
the doing of it. To the writer of this para¬ 
graph a self-supporting parish is known 
which with neither pledge nor account kept 
with individuals, in the Sunday offering has 
nigh a score of years contributed for paro¬ 
chial uses hundreds of dollars annually more 
than the vestry formerly secured by Pew- 
rentals. Nor were contributions to objects 
without the parish suffered to fall off, as they 
do and will fall off if care be not taken and 
if some preventive system be not adopted 
where the offering replaces the Pew-rental. 
But by and with the change missionary con¬ 
tributions can even be increased, save among 
folk of the narrowest vision, if the clergy¬ 
man himself be a man wise, vigilant, and 
of large heart. 

By this method the parish cannot know 
at the year’s beginning precisely upon what 
income they can rely. To set over against 
this inconvenience is the pecuniary advan¬ 
tage which the Plan of Offerings, whether 
pledged or unpledged, every Sunday pos¬ 
sesses, that a considerable sum is sure to be 
received from strangers who happen to be 
in church, and from other persons who 
would not “ hire a pew.” And they whose 
wages are paid weekly, and many others, 
find it less difficult to bring weekly their 
money, some part of which would otherwise, 
perhaps, have been needlessly spent, than to 
go on to the quarter’s end and then to find 
a large sum due at one time. And St. 
Paul’s “ order” to the Churches in Galatia 
and in Corinth, on “the first day of the 
week” carefully to “lay by,” as God had 
prospered them, is helpful likewise in these 
days. 

Upon Subscriptions a few parishes largely 
in rural, agricultural regions principally de¬ 
pend. The Subscription is made yearly to 
a collector, and the sums are commonly 
paid to him quarterly. In some places, 


particularly among farmers whose money 
comes in at one season of the year, or at two 
or three seasons, the times of full payment 
are apt to be determined partly by this fact. 
In an increasing number of parishes that 
rely on Subscriptions, the money subscribed 
is, the first Sunday in each Quarter, placed 
by the individual contributor in the alms- 
basin in church, with the person’s name. 
This is done both for spiritual reasons and 
to save much of the labor of “ collecting.” 

Parochial Endowments, also, have been 
made in some parishes, by which part of the 
yearly wants are supplied. The general 
opinion in the Church is, that if there be 
considerable Funds belonging to a parish, 
the parishioners are likely to do less than 
their own duty in giving, and that in such 
parishes they have actually done less. For 
rector’s salary and the ordinary expenditures 
vigorous, healthy, substantial parishes usu¬ 
ally deem it best to rely on themselves to 
furnish, year by year, what is requisite. 
But even these parishes could often enlarge 
themselves, and add much to their useful¬ 
ness, if they were enabled to improve their 
services and to multiply their ministrations 
of worship, charity, or instruction. 

One sees at this time an evident tendency 
to encourage the new energies by endowing 
those particular things in the parish in 
which the individual benefactor feels the 
deepest interest. Funds are now established 
more and more in parishes of all kinds, to 
secure a large and well-taught choir, to 
meet the cost of more frequent Services on 
week-days, for the better Christian instruc¬ 
tion of the children, for parochial Homes 
and Hospitals, and for the poor of the par¬ 
ish. Repair Funds, Rectory Funds, Chapel 
Funds, and the like are slowly multiplying 
on every hand, greatly to the glory of 
God. Gifts for special purposes, parochial 
like these, are thankfully welcomed. For 
its more ordinary expenses the strong parish 
does best with few funds or with none. 

Three classes of parishes are recognized as 
forming exceptions, and as calling very ur¬ 
gently for Endowments to furnish a part of 
that which the ordinary expenses require. 
First is the parish in sparsely-populated 
regions, the decaying hill parish it may be. 
From many a place like this, to which it can 
hardly be expected that missionary aid will 
cheerfully go forever, the light of God’s 
Church would have gone out were it not for 
the permanent Funds which thoughtful piety 
has supplied. 

These Funds are established by a devout 
parishioner at his departure from this life 
or before, or by some generous man or 
woman reared in that parish, or by the son 
or daughter of one whose native parish it was. 
With the assistance thus lovingly given for all 
time, and perhaps, in addition, by the com¬ 
bining of two such cures, the ministrations of 
our holy religion go on. The dead are buried 
with words of hope, and the young grow up 
in God’s fear. And from just these Chris- 






FINANCE, CHURCH 300 FINANCE, CHURCH 


tian rural homes hundreds of young men go 
forth to stand among the country’s most dis¬ 
tinguished men, and to be th£ Church’s 
stanchest sons. The strength and value of 
the men who have grown up in these rural 
hill towns is probably out of all proportion 
to their numbers. So far as one can see, the 
parishes in townships which have a station¬ 
ary or a diminishing population will not be 
continued in existence, and remote rural 
homes will not be kept Christian without 
the aid of Parochial Endowments. 

The larger manufacturing towns, in the 
second place, not seldom present congrega¬ 
tions of working people in numbers that re¬ 
quire the expenditure which pertains to a 
large church. Yet not one person of any 
wealth at all may be found; and the 
congregations are ever changing, with 
discouraging rapidity. These people are 
second to none in liberality. Yet it is 
fast coming to be evident that in such 
congregations a portion of the yearly needs 
ought to be assured by Endowments, and 
Endowments to this end are (alas! too slowly) 
multiplying. 

The third class needing and gradually re¬ 
ceiving large permanent Funds for the gen¬ 
eral ordinary uses of the parish comprises 
but few, but these have peculiar importance, 
and ought to be recognized as presenting 
very exceptional claims. They are the par¬ 
ishes by the side of large Colleges and Uni¬ 
versities in villages in which the Church 
people are neither many nor rich. Perceiving 
that these people, with the help of the small 
contributions of students, cannot hope to 
maintain Divine service respectably as it 
ought there to be maintained, it is obvious 
that Endowments are the one thing upon 
which the Church in these College towns that 
are small towns must, under God, depend. 

This is equally true of villages that are the 
seat of powerful Academies and other im¬ 
portant Schools. Endowments for this blessed 
work have been built up and are now build¬ 
ing, and must go on in building, through 
gifts of those students who chance to be at 
once wealthy and thoughtful, and of their 
friends, through gifts of prosperous persons 
once students in these institutions, and gifts 
of any others whose discernment is sufficient 
to show them how wide-reaching and far- 
reaching are all strong influences about 
these centres of learning. 

To these three sets of parishes which, it is 
agreed, ought to look much to Endowments, 
and which ought to rely greatly thereon, it 
may be fit to add that some observing men 
are watching to see in the more populous 
cities a few large churches, free churches, 
centrally placed and well appointed in all 
things, and amply endowed. But of results 
actually reached in this direction, next to 
nothing can be recorded. 

Parochial moneys are expended by the 
Vestry (the Rector, Wardens, and Vestry¬ 
men in many places the legal title is). The 
single exception is the Communion Alms. 


These are wholly at the Rector’s discretion. 
For greater delicacy in dealing with the 
oor, it is customary for a Rector to submit 
is account to only one person, usually a 
Warden. Even this he does only for his 
own protection. 

The title to the church edifice and to the 
parsonage in most Dioceses is vested in the 
corporation of the parish. Need has lately 
been felt of some better guarantee than is 
thus furnished of the permanent keeping to 
its original intent of the parish property, 
that the pious purposes of the donors may 
not be frustrated. And the Dioceses are 
rapidly coming to have each a Central Cor¬ 
poration ( e.g ., the “ Trustees of the Protest¬ 
ant Episcopal Church in New Hampshire”). 
This Corporation is empowered to hold 
Funds for any religious or charitable object 
designated by the donor, and in accordance 
therewith to disburse the income. It also 
holds in trust for that congregation the 
title-deeds of the church or parsonage be¬ 
longing to any parish that may request 
these trustees to do it. The parishes not 
quite certain of the future availing them¬ 
selves of this stronger security are already 
many. The movement sprang mainly from 
the laity. It is warmly favored by the 
Bishops and the other clergy as prudent for 
a large proportion of the parishes, which 
being Religious Societies have a corporate 
existence, and which ask no missionary aid. 

In Missions within a Diocese, that which 
was only useful in the case of a parish be¬ 
comes more nearly a necessity. Parishes 
are not now organized at so early a stage of 
the mission’s existence as once they were. 
Land commonly must be purchased, and the 
church erected perhaps, before there is in 
fact a legally constituted society (parish) to 
hold the Title. The deed, therefore, is very 
likely to run to these trustees of the Diocese, 
in trust for this congregation. Rarely is it 
found that when organized into a parish the 
congregation desires to withdraw the trust. 
This Diocesan Corporation is composed of 
laymen chosen by the Convention, with 
sometimes a Presbyter or two, and has the 
Bishop for President. 

A Corporator-sole consisting of the 
Bishop, a device which has been urged by 
a few writers, to hold and administer the 
permanent Funds, seems to accord well 
neither with American usages and ideas nor 
with the spiritual functions of the Bishop, 
and it meets with scant favor. 

Missions within a Diocese secure that part 
of the missionary’s salary and of the amount 
for other current expenses which they by 
agreement undertake to furnish by the 
methods in vogue in parishes. But Pew-ren¬ 
tals in missions are wellnigh unknown, and 
Sales and special exertions to add to the 
income are in missions of more frequent oc¬ 
currence. This last fact calls for a few words 
touching the Church’s attitude towards 
what are called “ Church Fairs.” 

An honest Sale, at their real value, of 





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301 


FINANCE, CHURCH 


articles that are the handiwork of good peo¬ 
ple, the expression of their skill and the gift 
of love, and that are unduly urged upon 
no one, is wholly free from objection in 
principle, and is in every view to be com¬ 
mended. Without this zeal, akin to what 
was manifested at the making of the Taber¬ 
nacle in Israel, many a mission would have 
fared hardly or come to naught. Of Suppers 
and merry-making Entertainments, inno¬ 
cent and altogether proper at a Parish Fes¬ 
tival, the Church generally does not very 
heartily approve as a means of “ raising 
money.'’ Still less are these well received if 
repeated year after year, and taken up as a 
permanent part of parochial or missionary 
usage. 

Church lotteries, rafflings, and this whole 
brood of unholy doings the Church abhors ; 
and they are coming to be not so much as 
named among us. There are Dioceses in 
which a mission that should persist in re¬ 
sorting to these sinful, vulgar practices 
would speedily find its stipend from the 
Diocesan Board discontinued. For while 
the Church desires to build churches, she 
desires to build only Christian churches; 
and she knows that it is futile for men to 
fear the Lord and serve their own gods. 

The pecuniary assistance given by a Dio¬ 
cese to its missions comes usually through 
a Diocesan Board of Missions, and it is dis¬ 
tributed as to the amounts by the Board. 
This Board consists of the Bishop and a 
number of Presbyters, and an equal number 
of laymen, elected annually by the Conven¬ 
tion. The treasury of the Diocesan Board 
of Missions is, in a few Dioceses, partially 
endowed, but it trusts oftener to contribu¬ 
tions from all the congregations, made quar¬ 
terly or at times fixed by Canon. These are 
sometimes unpledged offerings, presented to 
God in church at the stated days. Some¬ 
times the contributions are individually 
pledged beforehand, and are gathered each 
quarter by persons appointed for the busi¬ 
ness. 

Besides parishes and missions, each Diocese 
has certain more general works and institu¬ 
tions. The Fund for the Support of the Epis¬ 
copate is designed, in some Dioceses, to fur¬ 
nish the entire salary of the Bishop ; in 
others the Fund yields a part of the salary, 
and the rest is made up by assessments on 
the several parishes, laid yearly by the Con¬ 
vention. This Fund, which comes through 
personal gifts, through offerings in churches, 
and through bequests, is usually held and 
invested by the Trustees of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church in the particular Diocese, 
if they be a legal corporation. 

Diocesan Church Hospitals, Homes for the 
Aged, and Homes for Orphans, maintained 
by contributions of individuals and of con¬ 
gregations throughout the Diocese, rest for 
much of their efficiency on permanent funds 
which piety bestows in Christ’s name. 
These institutions are usually corporations, 
holding their own property and administer¬ 


ing their own finances. So, also, are col¬ 
leges and seminaries, and Diocesan schools 
for girls and for boys. 

Of Institutions of Christian learning en¬ 
dowments are the principal support, and 
ought to be, and with precisely the same 
fitness in the incorporated school as in the 
college or university. For the Church 
school, if it demanded from each pupil the 
full cost of residence and of tuition, a thing 
which the college never thinks of demand¬ 
ing, could be the school of only the very 
rich, and the Church would not lay 
hold of the people. But the school cannot, 
like a Home for the Destitute, be always 
suing for alms and seeking offerings in 
churches. If churches, schools, and colleges 
are to be of the best, and within the people’s 
reach, there has been found in this age but 
one provision possible. That provision is 
endowments, varied and abundant endow¬ 
ments. Experience has already made man¬ 
ifest the wisdom of those men who have laid 
foundations of endowments, and of those 
who have built thereupon. 

Outside of the Diocese, General Missions 
among Indians and colored people, and 
in the new settlements of the West, and in 
foreign lands, are conducted, as to their 
finances, by a General Board of Managers 
elected by the General Convention. The 
office of the Treasurer of this General Board 
is in New York City, and the legal title of 
the Corporation is the “ Domestic and For¬ 
eign Missionary Society of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church.” 

All parishes in all Dioceses are expected 
to send regular contributions, received 
through stated offerings in church, or sys¬ 
tematically collected upon pledged subscrip¬ 
tions, to the General Missionary Treasury. 
Small confidence is felt in endowments for 
this purpose, and hope is set chiefly on fresh 
and constant streams of supply. By the 
Managers a sum is yearly voted to each Mis¬ 
sionary Diocese and Jurisdiction, and of the 
amount the Bishop of the jurisdiction is no¬ 
tified. The Bishop then designates to the 
Managers the mission stations to be helped, 
and gives the names of the missionaries and 
the portion of the entire allowance for his 
jurisdiction to be devoted to each mission¬ 
ary. The Board, no weighty reason ap¬ 
pearing to the contrary, then assigns the 
several stipends for the year in accordance 
with the Bishop’s nomination. 

A few remarks may be added here. 

The Tithe is not accepted for the founda¬ 
tion of our financial system. Many sober 
members of the Church believe the princi¬ 
ple of one-Tenth of our income strictly be¬ 
longing to God, and to be employed lawfully 
only for religious uses, to be permanently 
binding, and to be a part of our holy 
religion. This belief is sufficiently preva¬ 
lent to increase very materially the aggre¬ 
gate of contributions. In the more common 
view the Tithe, literally applied, would lay 
unreasonable exactions upon laboring folk, 






FINANCE, CHURCH 


302 


FLAGON 


and, if not carefully distinguished from vol¬ 
untary offerings, would release the rich from 
obligations, upon their payment of a sum 
unfairly small. The teachings in the Church 
most frequently point to the Tithe as an inti¬ 
mation from our heavenly Father of what 
is, with prosperous children of His, ac¬ 
counted right, as the lowest, for them to set 
aside to the ministries of religion ; and that, 
our spiritual blessings being so much richer 
than were those of the Jews, the argument 
is, a fortiori ,—the Tenth at the least from 
all those whose daily business God has 
blessed. 

They who have most carefully observed 
the financial side of things in the Church 
will say, that if the Church in the country 
despises missions to the heathen in foreign 
lands, the Diocese will speedily care not for 
works outside herself, and the parish will 
neglect the general interests of the Diocese, 
and the individual parishioner will concern 
himself little with the parish, and will lock 
up his heart and will lock up his treas¬ 
ures. But invariably those parishes and 
those Dioceses whose hearts are enlarged 
and opened to a practical sympatlij' with 
all earnest works everywhere, take best 
care of their own parish and of their own 
Diocese. They who most gladly contribute 
to missions and general charities of the 
Church are the very parishes and Dioceses 
that in the long course of years best help 
themselves. Love flows out and contribu¬ 
tions flow in. A narrow spirit in things per¬ 
taining to Christ, the Gift and the Giver, 
is the poorest possible financial equipment. 
There is wealth enough, if hearts be opened, 
minds informed, and habits systematized. 

Do Churchmen give to the General Treas¬ 
uries, or to specific works and places ? To 
both. Interest in particular places, works, 
and persons springs from our best nature, 
and is Divine. An intelligent guiding 
principle also which leads the Christian man 
steadily to sustain the general missions and 
works, though he knows personally little of 
each, to sustain them through the General 
Treasury for Christ’s love, with no desig¬ 
nating of particular objects, this, too, is 
most Christian, and is withal necessary if 
we are to have any systematic work. These 
two things, piety and pity, are not to be 
brought in contrast. If the Special has in 
administration at any time been set above 
the General want, or if the General have 
ever been hostile to Specials, the entire work 
has suffered. The Church’s policy is to en¬ 
courage gifts to all worthy objects, and in 
all right ways. In the end and upon the 
whole this policy has vindicated itself. 

Help towards self-help the Church aims 
to give, that the mission may be stimulated, 
not fed in idleness. 

Church institutions of charity and of 
reverent learning receive a large part of 
these endowments, by which they are ena¬ 
bled to bless mankind and to glorify God, 
through bequests. The clergy, while most 


grateful for wise and frequent legacies to 
the setting forward of God’s kingdom 
among men, abstain from much meddling 
with individuals. They trust rather to 
sound principles taught in church and to 
clear information kept before the people 
touching worthy objects and pressing wants. 
The Church always discourages bequests to 
the best of objects if made without due re¬ 
gard to all rights of family and to the needs 
of near kindred. 

In general, the Church, in her Financial 
System, recognizes that varied interests and 
various methods are legitimate. She would 
have contributions cheerful, intelligent, and 
therefore systematic, a grateful response to 
the Divine goodness to us, and a conscien¬ 
tious representation in amount of a man’s 
personal ability ; not a tax, but a privilege ; 
not a piece of worldly business only, but a 
reverent transaction with the Almighty 
Giver ; not less a luxury than a necessity. 
Direct methods the instinct of the Church 
strongly prefers. She knows that financial 
evils will be cured when her sons and daugh¬ 
ters, taught of the Holy Ghost, shall have 
come to such ripeness of knowledge as to 
perceive that the “ Kingdom of God” is 
really the “ first” thing, and to such ripe¬ 
ness of love as shall make real to each the 
sacred word, “It is more blessed to give 
than to receive.” Just three things are 
needed : Love, knowledge, system. Let 
these three things abound, and the spiritual 
motive-power will rapidly fill itself to the 
full, and the machinery will more smoothly 
move. General treasuries will be richly 
stored, and special needs quickly supplied. 
And the Church’s God and God’s Church 
will be held in honor. 

Rt. Rev. W. Woodruff Niles, D.D., 
Bishop of New Hampshire. 

First Fruits. The first fruits offered to 
God (Ex. xxii. 29; xxiii. 19, etc ) and 
given to the Priests suggested to the Papacy 
the claim of the first year’s income of every 
Benefice, Bishopric, and Primacy, from the 
Clerk, Bishop, or Primate-elect, before he 
could be confirmed in his Benefice or See. 
The claim for first fruits was made in John’s 
reign, but it was reduced to a form, and a 
valuation of all livings and Bishoprics was 
made in 1292 a.d., which lasted till Henry 
VIII. ordered a new one to be made. Henry 
VIII. diverted these first fruits into the 
State treasury, but Queen Anne (1712 a.d.) 
restored them to the Church, but not to 
releasing the Sees. They were given by 
charter to form the fund for the augmenta¬ 
tion of small livings. 

Flagon. The vessel or cruet containing 
the wine to be used at the Consecration in 
the Holy Communion. After pouring out 
some into the cup, as it may be convenient 
to consecrate more than the cup can hold, 
the Celebrant is ordered at the proper mo¬ 
ment to “ lay his hand upon every vessel in 
which there is any wine to be consecrated.” 
The Flagon, therefore, may be used for con- 




FLENTES 


303 


FOND DU LAO 


taining wine in the act of consecration, 
after the cup has been consecrated. 

Flentes. The first order of those who 
were under the Church’s strict discipline. 
These flentes were placed either in the Porch 
or in the Vestibule ( Narthex). Here they 
besought the prayers of the Faithful as they 
entered the church. Tertullian (De Pudicit; 
c. 4) urges repentance of monstrous lusts 
not merely on the threshold but in the 
church itself. 

Florida, Diocese of. The Diocese of 
Florida was organized in St. John’s Church, 
Tallahassee, on the 8th day of February, 
1838 a.d. The first Anglican missionaries 
within the limits of the State were sent out 
from England. “ The Society for the Prop¬ 
agation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts,” 
on the 5th of May, 1764 a.d., commissioned 
and sent out, licensed by the Bishop of Lon¬ 
don, as Missionary to St. Augustine, the 
Eev. John Forbes; and on the same date 
the Rev. Samuel Hart, as Missionary to Mo¬ 
bile, West Florida. The Rev. John Fraser 
was licensed March 23, 1769 a.d., the Rev. 
John Leadbetter, November 8, 1773 a.d., 
both for St. Augustine, and the Rev. John 
Kinnedy, for St. Mark’s, December 24, 
1776 a.d. Following Mr. Hart, in West 
Florida, were the Rev. William Gordon, 
licensed August 8, 1767 a.d.; the Rev. Na¬ 
thaniel Colton, March 2, 1768 a.d. ; and the 
Rev. George Chapman, licensed for Pensa¬ 
cola, May 3, 1773 a.d. Of these, the Rev. 
Mr. Forbes is spoken of as residing at St. 
Augustine in 1771 a.d., filling the places of 
“Parson, Judge of Admiralty, and Coun¬ 
sellor,” and Mr. Fraser as “ Parson at Mos¬ 
quito.” 

When the province was ceded to Spain by 
Great Britain, in 1783 a.d., there was an 
immediate cessation of all Protestant wor¬ 
ship. The English church was torn down 
and its material used in the erection of a 
Roman Catholic church. A German church 
at a place called ToJmato shared the same 
fate. But there still remained individuals 
and families who adhered to the Liturgy of 
the English Church, and it is stated on 
good authority that in one instance the 
“ Morning Prayer” of the Church was 
maintained in one family regularly for forty- 
five years. 

In July, 1821 a.d., the province was 
ceded to the United States. In October of 
the same year the Rev. Andrew Fowler, 
of South Carolina, under appointment as 
a Missionary from that Diocese, entered 
on his duties at St. Augustine, and was suc¬ 
ceeded in May, 1823 a.d., by the Rev. M. J. 
Mott. 

“The Domestic and Foreign Missionary 
Society” of the Church in the United States 
soon after its organization took an earnest 
interest in this field, and in 1827 a.d. sent 
out the Rev. Rolf Williston to Tallahassee. 
He organized this year the Parish of Christ 
Church, Pensacola, and the year following 
St. John’s, Tallahassee. In 1830 a.d., un¬ 


der the ministry of the Rev. Alphonse Hen¬ 
derson, Trinity Church, St. Augustine, 
built of stone, and the oldest church edifice 
now standing in the Diocese, was erected, 
and in 1833 a.d. was consecrated by the Rt. 
Rev. Nathaniel Bowen, D.D., Bishop of 
South Carolina, to which Diocese Florida 
gratefully acknowledges her obligation for 
nursing care in her early days. For some 
years the Bishop of South Carolina, and 
afterwards Bishop Stephen Elliott, of 
Georgia, held jurisdiction in Florida. 

October 15, 1851 a.d., the Rev. Francis 
Huger Rutledge, D.D., was consecrated the 
first Bishop of the Diocese. At the time of 
his election he was Rector of Trinity 
Church, St. Augustine. He died November 
6, 1866 a.d. The Rt. Rev. John Freeman 
Young, S.T.D., was consecrated as the second 
Bishop of the Diocese, in Trinity Church, 
New York, on the 25th day of July, 1867 
a.d. At the time of his election he was an 
assistant minister of Trinity Church. 

The statistics of the Diocese as reported 
in 1883 a.d. are as follows: 

Clergy, 31; parishes and missions, 42; 
families, 1076; baptisms, 295; confirmed, 
108; communicants, 1642; contributions, 
$36,212.03. All the churches and chapels 
in the Diocese are free, and depend on the 
Offertory for revenue. Its educational in¬ 
stitutions are The Bradford Institute, for 
girls, at Jacksonville ; Christ Church School, 
Pensacola ; St. James Academy, Lake City ; 
and St. Mark’s School, Palatka. 

Rev. A. B. Weller, D.D. 

Flowers. The Primitive Christians did 
not make use of flowers, since the Heathen 
used them in their sacrifices and at their 
feasts, when heathen rites often polluted the 
garlands (Clem. Alex., Paed. ii. c. 8). But 
when heathenism was on the wane the nat¬ 
ural love for flowers and their fitness for 
adorning the church was admitted and their 
use gradually permitted (St. Jerome to Nepo- 
tian). “ These things were trifling in them¬ 
selves ; but a pious mind devoted to Christ 
is intent upon small things, and neglects 
nothing that pertains even to the meanest 
office of the Church.” The custom, though 
objected to by some, is one against which 
no valid objection can be made, and which 
has become wellnigh universal. The rule 
should be to employ none but natural flow¬ 
ers in the ornamentation. 

Fond du Lac, The Diocese of. At the 
Annual Convention of the Diocese of Wis¬ 
consin, in 1866 a.d., immediately after the 
election of the Rev. William Edmond 
Armitage as Assistant Bishop, on motion 
of Winfield Smith, Esq., the following re¬ 
solution was adopted : 

11 Resolved, That this Convention is unani¬ 
mously in favor of the division of this Dio¬ 
cese, and that, therefore, the Bishop of the 
Diocese be respectfully requested to give his 
consent to the division of the same, and to 
place his consent upon the records of this 
Convention.” 




FOND DU LAC 


304 


FOND DU LAC 


The Bishop promptly gave his assent, as 
follows: 

“ In accordance with the unanimous re¬ 
quest of the Convention of this Diocese, 
and with my own convictions, repeatedly 
expressed, I, Jackson Kemper, D.D., by 
the grace of God Bishop of the Diocese of 
Wisconsin, do hereby declare and place on 
record my assent and consent to the divis¬ 
ion of this Diocese, and the erection of a 
new Episcopal See therein, now, or as soon 
as practicable hereafter. 

'(Signed) “ Jackson Kemper. 

“June 14,1866, a.d.” 

No further steps seem to have been taken 
until 1872 a.d., when Bishop Armitage, in 
his address to the Annual Convention, used 
the following words: 

“ I earnestl} 7 invoke the aid of the 
whole Diocese in bringing about this ne¬ 
cessary division. We shall never do thor¬ 
ough work in Wisconsin until we have at 
least four Dioceses within our bounds, and 
I see not why we may not set off one Convo¬ 
cation after another at successive General 
Conventions, beginning with the North¬ 
eastern in 1874.” 

Bishop Armitage did not live to see 
his desire gratified. The General Conven¬ 
tion of 1874 a.d., however, consented to, 
and ratified the formation of, a new Diocese 
in Wisconsin, to consist of nineteen coun¬ 
ties, to wit: Marathon, Oconto, Shawano, 
Door, Kewaunee, Brown, Outagamie, Wau¬ 
paca, Portage, Wood, Adams, Waushara, 
Winnebago, Calumet, Manitowoc, Sheboy¬ 
gan, Fond du Lac, Green Lake, and Mar¬ 
quette, and also such portion of Dodge 
County as may be necessary to include in 
the limits of the new Diocese the village of 
Wampum, such division to take efifect on the 
first day of December, 1874 a.d. The pro¬ 
vision made for the support of a Bishop was 
the sum of fifteen thousand dollars (of 
which ten thousand dollars were in promis¬ 
sory notes and five thousand dollars in cash 
securities), the interest of which, and an 
annual assessment of one thousand dollars 
and an Episcopal residence, were considered 
a sufficient compliance with the requirement 
of Article 5 of the Constitution. 

The Primary Council of the new Diocese 
was convened at St. Paul’s Church, Fond 
du Lac, January 7, 1875 a.d. The Right 
Reverend E. R. Weller, S.T.D., Bishop of 
the Diocese of Wisconsin, presided. The 
Rev. Martin Y. Averill was elected Secre¬ 
tary, and Mr. James B. Perry was elected 
Treasurer. Sixteen clergymen and the rep- 
presentatives of fourteen parishes were pres¬ 
ent. Fond du Lac was chosen as the name 
of the Diocese. A Constitution of seven¬ 
teen articles was adopted. The Bishop of 
the Diocese of Wisconsin announced that 
he had chosen the Diocese of Wisconsin as 
his See. He was requested by the Council 
to take Episcopal charge of the new Dio¬ 
cese until the election and consecration of its 
Bishop. The Council then proceeded to the 


election of a Bishop. On the thirteenth 
ballot the Rev. Leighton Coleman, of 
Toledo, Ohio, was elected Bishop. The 
whole number of clergymen belonging to 
the Diocese at the time of its organization 
was nineteen ; of communicants, there were 
reported twelve hundred and eighty-four. 
The first Annual Council of the Diocese was 
held June 8, 1875 a.d., at St. Paul’s Church, 
Fond du Lac. Bishop Weller presided. 
Seventeen clergymen and the representa¬ 
tives of twelve parishes were present. A 
body of Canons was adopted. The Rev. 
Leighton Coleman having declined to 
serve as Bishop, the Council proceeded to a 
new election. On the third ballot the Rev. 
Jacob S. Shipman, of Lexington, Kentucky, 
was chosen. The Rev. Mr. Shipman having 
declined the Episcopate, a Special Council 
was assembled at Christ’s Church, Green 
Bay, Wednesday, September 15, 1875 a.d. 
The Rev. William Dafter presided. On the 
third ballot for Bishop the choice fell on the 
Rev. John Henry Hobart Brown, S.T.D., 
rector of St. John’s Church, Cohoes, Dio¬ 
cese of Albany. Dr. Brown accepted the 
election, and was duly consecrated at St. 
John’s Church, Cohoes, Wednesday, Decem¬ 
ber 15, 1875 a.d., by the Right Reverend 
Horatio Potter, D.D., LL.D., Bishop of 
New York, the Right Reverend William 
Crosswell Doane, S.T.D., Bishop of Albany, 
the Right Reverend Benjamin H. Paddock, 
D.D., Bishop of Massachusetts, assisted by 
the Bishops of Vermont, New Hampshire, 
Wisconsin, and New Jersey. 

In 1880 a.d. the limits of the Diocese of 
Fond du Lac were enlarged so as to include 
portions of the counties of Bayfield, Ash¬ 
land, and Chippewa, and the whole of Tay¬ 
lor and Clark. The present area of the Dio¬ 
cese is about that of one-half of the State, 
27,000 square miles. Its population in 1880 
a.d. was 442,221. The summary of Dio¬ 
cesan statistics in 1884 is, clergymen, 28; 
families, 1382 ; individuals, 6306 ; com¬ 
municants, 2390 ; parishes, 20 ; organized 
missions, 30. The Diocese has many ad¬ 
vantages of soil and climate, and at some 
future time will be populous. Its mineral 
deposits are undoubtedly large, but as yet 
little developed. The northern portion of 
the Diocese is heavily wooded. The climate 
is salubrious,'but somewhat cold in winter. 
The soil generally is good, and in the south¬ 
ern part of the Diocese very productive. 
The population is formed of an unusual 
variety of nationalities. 

The American settlers are mostly from 
the New England and Middle States. Ger¬ 
mans are next in number. Then follow 
Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, Poles, Bel¬ 
gians, Bohemians, Hollanders, Welsh, Eng¬ 
lish, French, Canadians, Scotch, Irish, 
Finns, and Icelanders. There are several 
reservations of Indians, chiefly of Chippe- 
was, Menominees, and Oneidas. The Win- 
nebagoes have a little land of their own, 
but some of these and of the Pottawatomies 




FONT 


305 


FORMATS LITERAL 


wander about the country in bands and 
companies. A few of the Stockbridges and 
Brothertown Indians survive. A portion 
of the Oneida tribe is settled in Brown 
County. At Hobart Church, Oneida, about 
nine hundred of them are baptized, and are 
under the pastoral charge of the Rev. E. 
A. Goodnough. About three hundred are 
communicants. In view of the missionary 
character of the work the erection of this 
Diocese was a bold movement, reflecting 
much credit on the faith and courage of the 
clergy and people that sustained it. The 
financial disasters of the country and the 
restlessness of the early settlers have re¬ 
tarded the progress of the Diocese. Yet 
there is steady and healthful growth at pres¬ 
ent and a bright promise for the future. 

Rt. Rev. J. H. H. Brown, D.D., 
Bishop of Fond, du Lac. 

Font. The vessel containing the water 
wherewith the Sacrament of Baptism is ad¬ 
ministered. It was, as we have seen (vide 
Baptistery), placed in earlier churches in a 
separate building, but it was later transferred 
into the church. The Western Church used 
usually a stone Font, but it might be of any 
convenient material, and it was to be used 
for the baptism alone. The Font in the 
Eastern Church is movable, of wood or 
metal, and is seldom or never possessed of 
any beauty. The shape of it in the West 
was generally octagonal, though a fanciful 
mysticism occasionally gave it the form of a 
sepulchre or of a cross. The Font in the 
Baptistery was surrounded with a low wall, 
entered by steps, usually seven, three with¬ 
out, three within, excluding the top step. It 
was placed in the English Church near the 
west door or the southwestern porch,— a 
reminiscence of the Eastern practice of the 
Baptistery. In the act of Baptism the water 
is not to be placed in the Font before the 
Priest comes with the child or person to be 
baptized to the Font. ( Vide rubric to Office 
of Public Baptism.) The invocation over 
the water is one of the most ancient rites in 
this most ancient office. St. Basil (De Sp. 
Sane., c. 27) says that it is one of the Litur¬ 
gical traditions handed down to us before 
the Liturgies were committed to writing. 
But the first direct mention of the benedic¬ 
tion of the water is in Tertullian (De Bap., 
c. 4). Compare the earliest form (of 300 
a.d.) with our own prayer, “Look down 
from heaven and sanctify this water, and 
grant grace and. power that he who is bap¬ 
tized according to the command of Thy 
Christ may with Him be crucified and die 
and be buried and rise again to the adoption 
which is in Him, by dying unto sin but liv¬ 
ing unto righteousness.” (.Ap. Const., vii. 
43.) 

The early English use (and so in the first 
Prayer-Book) was to put water into the 
Font once a month, and blessing that, to 
have it ready for the baptisms ; but this was 
changed and the prayer placed where it now 
stands in the second Prayer-Book of Edward 

20 


VI., 1552 a.d. The benediction of the 
water is not held to be essential, but it is a 
very old and solemn setting apart of the 
outward and visible sign of that Sacrament 
which regenerates us. 

Format® Liter®. There were several 
kinds of Format® Liter®, or Commenda¬ 
tory Letters. The word format® has an ob¬ 
scure origin, but probably means sealed let¬ 
ters. Such we know to have been used in 
the Apostolic times (Acts xvii. 27 ; 2 Cor. iii. 
1). They were both a necessity to the Chris¬ 
tian traveler, that he might receive hospi¬ 
tality and relief from the brethren whom he 
might meet, and a protection and assurance 
to those who should give him the entertain¬ 
ment dpe to a brother. It was, too, a bond 
between the different Churches. It was an 
unanswerable argument against the Dona- 
tists, that their letters were not received 
outside their own Churches, and therefore 
that they were a sect. Later these letters, 
without which a person could not be re¬ 
ceived, formed a check upon the desire to 
rove from Diocese to Diocese, and were some¬ 
thing like Letters Commendatory. It was 
under penalty of excommunication that any 
one received a stranger coming without 
such a letter, and even then he was sub¬ 
jected to scrutiny. For the abuse had 
grown up in the letters of confessors and 
in the letters of peace of not inserting the 
name of the bearer, so that the letter could 
be used by any one who held it at the time. 
This was repressed by refusing such letters 
any credit, and no cleric was allowed to offi¬ 
ciate in a strange city without letters from 
his Bishop. Later on these letters took 
special forms. A special mode of signing 
such letters as were sent by Bishops was 
agreed upon,—letters asking material aid, 
letters recommending to communion, and 
letters dimissory, transferring the bearer to 
the jurisdiction of another Bishop. 

We have retained two forms of these 
letters. The Canon (Tit. ii., c. 12, $2) re¬ 
quires that every layman removing from 
one parish to another should carry with 
him a letter certifying that he is a Com¬ 
municant in good standing, and the rector 
of the parish to which he removes “ shall not 
be required to receive him as a Communi¬ 
cant until such letter be produced.” The 
second form of letter is the Letter Dimis¬ 
sory of the clergyman removing from one 
Diocese to another. In order to gain canon¬ 
ical residence within the second Diocese he 
must present to the Ecclesiastical Authority 
a testimonial from the Ecclesiastical Au¬ 
thority of the Diocese he has left, which 
shall set forth his true standing and charac¬ 
ter. The testimonial may be in the follow¬ 
ing words: “ I hereby certify that A. B., 
who has signified to me his desire to be 
transferred to the Ecclesiastical Authority 

of-, is a Presbyter (or Deacon) of - 

in regular standing, and has not, so far as I 
know or believe, been justly liable to evil 
report for error in religion or viciousness of 







FORMS 


306 


FORMULARIES 


life for three years last past.” The person 
presenting is not transferred till it has been 
accepted by the Ecclesiastical Authority of 
the Diocese to which he removes. He is 
allowed six months in which to present this 
letter. If it is not presented in three months, 
it may be considered void by the Authorit} r 
that gave it; if not in six months, it shall be 
considered void. He must be received, un¬ 
less there are such rumors against him as 
would justify an investigation in the Dio¬ 
cese he has left, in which case the Ecclesi¬ 
astical Authority is not permitted to receive 
him. 

Forms. Forms are necessary, in all im¬ 
portant matters at least. Forms are con¬ 
stantly used in all legal instruments, and in 
very many other matters of business, as 
much for guidance as for the correct execu¬ 
tion of the matter in hand. These forms, 
so necessary elsewhere, are most necessary 
in Public Worship, since as the Congrega¬ 
tion worship as well as the clergyman, there 
must be a form to guide them in their com¬ 
mon acts, and as these acts of Worship are 
of the most important man can engage in, 
forms also furnish the correct conduct and 
wording of these acts. Indeed, there is no 
worship at all without some forms, whether 
bare and insufficient, or full and sufficing. 
This must be admitted. Then that there 
must be matter in these forms is shown by 
our Lord giving us a Prayer with the in¬ 
junction, “After this manner, therefore, 
pray ye.” The fullness and propriety of the 
forms used is another part of the subject of 
forms. Not only outlines of action or suc¬ 
cessions of procedure in the worship, but the 
words of the prayers were given in certain 
cases by God Himself (Deut. xxvi. 5-10; 
xxi. 7, 8; Ps. xc.; Joel ii. 17; Hosea xiv. 
2, 3). With such a warranty for our action, 
the example of our Lord and the use of the 
Apostles (Acts iv. 24-30, “with one ac¬ 
cord” they lifted up their voice to God, 
which could not be unless it were a well- 
known prayer), the Church everywhere has 
ever used forms of prayer. Till the Refor¬ 
mation there was no body of Christians that 
was without a Liturgy. Such a thing was 
not dreamt of as possible; indeed, one of 
the perplexities of those who traveled out 
of their own country was in the variety of 
the Liturgical forms they met with, and the 
customs which were practiced abroad. It 
was in part the result of the ancient au¬ 
thority each Bishop held to alter the Litur- 
gic forms in his own Diocese, which au¬ 
thority, however, was afterwards exercised 
by the Primate of the Archprovince that 
greater unity of Liturgic forms might be 
obtained. In this matter of forms there 
should be a proper flexible mean kept be¬ 
tween laxness and straitness. 

Then the Church in each country has the 
right to arrange its forms of worship on the 
general outline of the ancient Liturgic 
forms, but adapting them to the needs of the 
people with whom she has to deal. It is 


wisdom in adaptation, and judgment in 
using our privileges, and a true valuation of 
the rich heritage of the forms and sanctified 
prayers of the Ancient Churches, that will 
solve the problems of fitting and using our 
Book of Common Prayer for the need of 
the Church in this country. Forms of 
Prayer have been added from time to time, 
and special prayers are issued by our 
Bishops whenever there is need, as in the 
case of war, or of an epidemic, or of a na¬ 
tional fast-day. 

Formularies. These may be of Worship, 
as the Book of Common Prayer, or of Faith, 
as the Creeds, and later, the documents 
like the Confession of Augsburg, containing 
formal statements on controverted points of 
the Faith. A Formulary of worship, as has 
been shown, has always been found in the 
possession of every Church, and incorpo¬ 
rated in its structure there was always the 
recitation of the Creed (generally the 
Nicene). The Formularies of the Creed 
have been touched upon in the article upon 
the Creed, but it may be well to add a word 
upon the formation of the Creed. The 
Apostles’ Creed most probably was a com¬ 
monly received form, built upon the Baptis¬ 
mal Formula, “ In the name of the Father, 
of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” Of 
the Father, we believe that He is God, 
Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, a 
clause which sums up the main articles upon 
the First Person of the Trinity. Of the 
Son, we believe that He is the only Son of 
God, and our Lord, and then we recite the 
outline of His human life, and confess His 
future coming. Of the Holy Ghost, we 
believe that His work abiding in us is the 
Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of 
Saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrec¬ 
tion of the body, and the life everlasting, 
the sum of what Holy Scripture teaches of 
His work, and yet bearing internal evi¬ 
dence that it was also a doctrine in the 
Church concurrent with the Scriptures. 
This Creed was taught orally to the catechu¬ 
mens at first in substance, not in words, and 
finally, just before their baptism was in¬ 
trusted to them in its compact, concise word¬ 
ing. That this formulary should have varied 
slightly in the different parts of the Church, 
extending from India to the Atlantic, is 
not to be wondered at; the wonder is that 
there were not greater variations even with¬ 
in the just limits of the one Faith ; but as a 
matter of fact, the variations were not 
material in any respect except that the 
Article “ He descended into hell” was a 
later addition (about 400 a.d.). The Nicene 
Creed was set forth by the Fathers at the 
Council of Nicaea in 325 a.d. It was the 
result of the comparison of the forms of the 
Creed held throughout the Church, and had 
clauses added to meet the Arian heresy. 
It was structurally the same as the Apostles’ 
Creed, and, as has been well said, it is the 
Creed upon which all of Christendom will 
I unite. The formula called the Athanasian 




FRACTION 


307 


FREE-WILL 


Creed is properly a doctrinal hymn, and is 
called in the English Prayer-Book the 
Psalm Quicunque vult, from the first words, 
“ Whosoever will be saved.” It is not 
formed upon the same lines precisely as the 
two Creeds proper, but is rather a full theo¬ 
logical statement by assertion and negation 
of the Doctrine of the Trinity. It is 
warmly objected to for the so-called anath¬ 
emas it contains, but it may be replied 
with complete force that these damnatory 
clauses are from the Scriptures, and that, 
besides, not to believe on the Persons of the 
Holy Trinity is to believe on some other 
than God. “ To believe of Christ wrongly 
is to substitute a figment more or less nearly 
approaching Him, and therefore to believe 
wrongly is to fail of salvation. Therefore it is 
no want of Christian Charity to say, whoso¬ 
ever will be saved before all things it is 
necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith, 
which Faith, except every one do keep 
whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall 
perish everlastingly. . . . This is the Catho¬ 
lic Faith, which except a man believe faith¬ 
fully he cannot be saved.” These are no 
stronger than what our Lord said, “ He that 
believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but 
he that believeth not shall be damned” (St. 
Mark xvi. 16). 

Fraction,, of the bread in celebrating the 
Holy Communion. The rubric orders that 
the Priest shall take Paten into his hands, 
and at the words “ He brake it, and gave 
it to His disciples, saying, Take, eat,” and 
as he continues, “ this is My Body which 
is given for you,” he is to lay his hands 
upon all the bread. It is this solemn imi¬ 
tation of our Lord’s act that constitutes 
the consecration of the bread to be for us (to 
use Justin Martyr’s words) no longer com¬ 
mon bread but heavenly bread. This “ break¬ 
ing of bread” is the title given to the Eu¬ 
charist in several places in the New Testa¬ 
ment (Acts ii. 42; xx. 7; 1 Cor. x. 16). 
A second fraction is made usually, when the 
ordinary wheaten bread is used, when the 
faithful are communicated. 

Frankfort. A Council was held at Frank¬ 
fort, 794 a. d., under the presidency of the Em¬ 
peror Charlemagne, being in fact both a Diet 
of the Empire and an Ecclesiastical S 3 'nod. 
The most important points touched upon 
by the assembly as a Church Council were 
the doctrine of Adoptionism and the Wor¬ 
ship of Images. The first of these is treated 
in the first Canon ; and the Bishops Felix, 
of Urgel, in Catalonia, and Elipand, of To¬ 
ledo, defenders of the heresy, were con¬ 
demned. 

The second Canon discusses the Worship 
of Images. The Church in the East had 
for many years been disturbed by the vio¬ 
lence of iwo parties, one in favor of images, 
the other, the Iconoclasts, bitterly opposed 
to their use in any way. The Iconoclasts 
had prevailed for some time, and even in 
754 a.d. had procured the condemnation of 
images by a {Synod of Bishops. But when 


Leo IV. died, after a brief reign, his widow 
Irene, who ruled as guardian for her son 
Constantine VI., reversed the policy of the 
government and the decision of the Synod. 
Accordingly, a Council was assembled at Ni- 
cEea (reckoned the Seventh General Council), 
in which it was determined that images, or 
at least paintings or mosaics, “ are to be set 
up for kissing and honorable reverence, but 
not for that real service which belongs to 
the Divine Nature alone.” The acts of this 
Council were sanctioned by Pope Adrian, 
who sent a copy of them to Charlemagne; 
Charlemagne, however, so far from receiving 
them without hesitation, employed Alcuin 
to controvert them; and further gathered as 
many as three hundred Bishops, with two 
Legates from Rome, at Frankfort, where the 
Eastern Synod was condemned, and ‘-both 
adoration and service of all kinds to images” 
was refused. But Adrian, notwithstanding 
this serious difference of opinion, still re¬ 
mained on friendly terms with Charlemagne. 

Free-Will. There are ever apparently 
opposing principles in this visible nature, in 
our human nature, in the Divine nature. In 
nature we accept and act upon them because 
we cannot avoid them, but can combine and 
use them, or else restrain and avert their 
consequences. In the Divine nature we see 
mercy and justice apparently, it may be 
rashly alleged, in opposition, but reverence 
and the acknowledgment of an eternal wis¬ 
dom keep us from misconstruing either, or 
pushing our conceptions of the one to the 
denial of the other. But in dealing with 
our own capacities and GoD-given qualities 
we argue very frequently without due con¬ 
sideration. What are the limits of neces¬ 
sity, and within what limits does freedom of 
will act? If these can be practically deter¬ 
mined we can let subtle disquisitions pass. 
Necessity is, first, in the finite bounds of 
our mortal nature as living only in time, 
bound to earth, able to employ only natural 
material instruments, though enjoying the 
widest range of thought; and again, in the 
sphere of thought, the limitation of being 
able to properly conceive of and systematize 
those facts, spiritual, logical, and material, 
which pertain to our human nature, for we 
cannot conceive of any consistent theory 
upon the nature of angels, and we know 
only so much of God s nature as is revealed 
to us by Him through His Son. The sin- 
taint is another mysterious limitation we 
inherit, and we have a further limit in hav¬ 
ing to use agents, and to combine special 
means in accordance with known laws in 
the short space of each one’s mortal life. 
The resulting forces and influences are com¬ 
plex and varying, being hinder* d, set free, 
or enforced by varying combinations not in 
human power to control, but only to guide 
and use. But within these limitations we 
have a freedom of will which makes us each 
a responsible agent. To be in His image we 
must have something sin-stained, yet some¬ 
thing of His will in whose image we are. 






FREE-WILL 


308 


FUNERALS 


It is this responsibility of being: permitted 
to act for ourselves, to choose what we shall 
do, how we shall use the life, the capacities, 
the time, the education, the position, the 
religion He covers us with, the enjoyments 
as well as the ills, the stern duties as well as 
the softer pleasures; it is how we shall 
choose to use these and their like that makes 
us accountable beings to God, to our fellow- 
men, to our own conscience here in life, and 
at the bar of judgment hereafter, for we are 
all subject to God’s Law, order, and har¬ 
mony ; and liberty and free-will are not 
anarchy and disobedience, though sin has so 
injured them that many men so miscall 
and therefore misuse them. Bishop Butler 
acutely remarks that though men may the¬ 
oretically assert a preordained necessity, 
yet practically they must act as though such 
necessity did not exist. And it must be so, 
or all Law would cease, for no one could be 
justly held accountable if he were not free. 
Choice in human agents implies a moral ob¬ 
ligation. So no action, in itself indifferent, 
but may be made the means of a good or bad 
result. Through our sin-taint all our acts 
are stained with this evil, despite a longing 
to do better. In this we feel our short-com¬ 
ing and our feebleness. The freedom of the 
will may, does in many, become the means 
of the worst slavery, a lawless willfulness. 
To free us from this, first by example, and 
then by His direct help, and by taking us 
into Himself, our Lord came upon earth, 
made His atonement, effected His resurrec¬ 
tion, founded His Church, gave His sacra¬ 
ments. His free human will was subordi¬ 
nated to His Divine will, and made perfectly 
consonant with it. At all times and in all 
points Christ, the Lord of nature, sub¬ 
mitted to the limitations of our nature and 
the action of those laws which constrain us, 
and through this obedience made Himself 
acquainted with our griefs and bore our in¬ 
firmities. And at every point He taught 
that he was submitting His will to His 
Father’s will. “ In the volume of the 
book it is written of me I delight to do Thy 
will, 0 my God ; yea, Thy Law is within my 
heart” (Ps. xl. 7, 8). It was of His own free¬ 
will He suffered, was crucified, dead, and 
buried. Of His own free-will He took up 
our human life, His human life, again and 
made it immortal. He calls for a willing, a 
free obedience, full of love and loyalty to 
Him, for He can make us free indeed, as re¬ 
deeming us from the bondage to sin. A 
consecrated freedom of will, then, in Christ 
is the true liberty wherewith Christ has 
made us free. And this freedom of the will is 
joyous and full of life, taking the ills that 
befall as disciplinary and rising above them, 
using the things of this world and not abus¬ 
ing them, living in the gifts of Christ’s 
Church, the means of grace, the sacraments, 
and the inner meditation and conscious, con¬ 
scientious effort to .subdue the carnal will 
and to bring it into a loving subjection to 
the will of Christ. God the Father created 


us in His own image by His will, and we 
must by this have been at first created as free 
within our finite sphere as He in His bound¬ 
less power. God the Son has redeemed us 
from the slavery of sin, and has made us 
free in Himself, with restored rights and 
privileges. God the Holy Ghost is that 
Spirit of the Lord, that Spirit of Liberty, 
overshadowing, pleading with, and leading 
us, given to us at our Confirmation to abide 
with us, sanctifying us with the perfect law 
of liberty. So St. Paul, in the very Epistle 
quoted often to destroy the Christian lib¬ 
erty, urges as his conclusion from his argu¬ 
ment, “ I beseech you, therefore, brethren, 
by the mercies of God, that ye present your 
bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable 
unto God, which is your reasonable service” 
(Rom. xii. 1, 2). Our truest exercise of free¬ 
will is in using, in this life, the fullness of 
our Christian rights for our eternal life here¬ 
after. (Brown on XXXIX. Articles, Art. 
X.) 

Friday. Good-Friday, the day upon 
which the Atonement for the sins of the 
whole world was made, has left its impress 
upon each Friday of the year as the Resur¬ 
rection has carried the Law of worship on 
the Sabbath to the first day of the week, and 
has made every Sunday a commemoration 
of its glorious victory. Friday has from 
time immemorial been a weekly fast-day for 
this reason. But Good-Friday has been the 
central fast-day of the Christian year. It 
was strictly observed. Lent had its begin¬ 
ning from the fast of forty hours, which 
began on Good-Friday and lasted till mid¬ 
night of Easter-even. The kiss of peace 
was not given; the Holy Communion was 
not celebrated, the penitents were recon¬ 
ciled. At one time there was no sermon 
on that day, but a Council of Toledo (633 
ad.) ordered that there should be a sermon 
on the Passion on that day. The later cere¬ 
monials, added during the mediaeval times, 
were sometimes very significant and solemn. 
Our own Office for Good-Friday, throwing 
aside the “ Office of the Presanctified” ele¬ 
ments of the Holy Communion, has, by as¬ 
signing an Epistle and Gospel for the day, 
given us the right to have a celebration on 
that day. 

Funerals. (Vide Burial.) In all the 
details connected with a funeral, simplicity 
and reverent decency should be considered, 
and all display of any kind suppressed. The 
Jewish law of utter simplicity is an excel¬ 
lent one to follow. Still more so should be 
the feeling impressed upon all who assist in 
showing the last respect due to the mortal 
remains of the hope of a future resurrection, 
the certainty of the promise. The early 
Christians bore their dead to the grave with 
glad hymns and with everything that could 
mark their faith in Christ. This principle 
should rule in all the arrangements which 
the rank and position of the departed de¬ 
mand should be made, and it must be the 
rule for all the preparations at the church. 






GALATIANS 


309 


GEHENNA 


a. 


Galatians. Of all St. Paul’s Episllos, 
except those to the Corinthians, this Epistle 
is the most vivid, direct, and personal. From 
it we learn much of the earlier movements 
of St. Paul after his conversion and before 
he appears as a participant in the active mis¬ 
sionary work of the Church. But beside this 
it has a great doctrinal value, and is in its 
contents connected with the Epistle to the 
Romans, though this last is addressed to 
readers of a widely different character. The 
Galatians, a mixed population of the old 
Phrygian people, dominated by a Celtic con¬ 
quering tribe, and this further mingled with 
the settlers from Rome, and Greece, and 
Judea, who settled there for purposes of trade 
or other business, were eager, rash, fickle, 
and easily persuaded. This will explain the 
astonished exclamations of the Apostle : “ O 
foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched 
you ?” (ch. iii.). “ I marvel that ye are so 
soon removed from Him that called you into 
the grace of Christ unto another Gospel” (i. 
6). Their fickleness brought the gain to the 
Church of this Epistle, which stands forth 
of untold value in New Testament history, 
and in the development of the revelation 
and doctrine of the great Apostle. The 
chapters we must remember are late and 
arbitrary divisions, more for convenience 
than anything else, so that the. argument 
really passes on beyond our present grouping, 
and arranges itself somewhat differently 
from what we would suppose it, were we to 
cling to the chapters only. The Epistle 
naturally subdivides itself into four great 
groups. 

I. The salutation. The Apostle declares his 
independent appointment by our Lord to 
establish his authority and the authenticity 
of the Gospel he preached. After expressing 
his surprise that they should change from 
what he taught, he goes into personal de¬ 
tails, extending to the end of the second chap¬ 
ter, in which he proves his independent call, 
the fullness of the report of the Faith from 
Christ Himself, and the acknowledgment 
of it by the other Apostles, the chiefest of 
whom he withstood and rebuked openly upon 
the very false doctrinal grounds which had 
now misled the Galatians. 

II. But these Galatians were deceived by 
some who claimed to preach the Gospel (but 
it was only a perversion), and who persuaded 
them that they must be circumcised and 
keep Moses’ Law. This was contrary to his 
preaching. They were not Jews, they were 
not bound by the Law. They were heirs of 
Abraham, but not under the covenant of 
circumcision, but were justified through 
the like faith he had before he received this 
covenant, by the promise of the Gospel; they | 


inherited as heirs through the faith of Abra¬ 
ham, yet uncircumcised, under the promise 
of the Christ to come. Their heirship is 
through the baptism into atonement of 
Christ, and they have by it the freedom of 
the Gospel (ch. ii. and iii.). 

III. But this heirship leads him to speak 
of the difference of the two covenants, and 
the bondage of the one contrasted with the 
life of the second under which they inherit. 
They inherit by the righteousness, that is, by 
the Faith of Christ. They are not bound 
by Judaic days, and times, and seasons. 
This freedom of Christ gives them no 
right to do evil, to live after the flesh in its 
lusts, but calls them to the love, joy, and 
glorious sanctifying works of the Spirit. 
If we live in the Spirit—by it we cry Abba, 
Father—let us walk in the Spirit (ch. iv. 
and v.). 

IY. The last part is taken up with advice 
so throughly earnest and full of the Apostle’s 
energy, that the Epistle appears to end ab¬ 
ruptly. He reverts to his warning against 
false teachers, and claims for himself the 
highest authority : “ From henceforth let no 
man trouble me, for I bear in my body the 
marks of the Lord Jesus.” 

Its date may be placed as between 57 and 
58 a.d. It is doctrinally valuable for the 
exposition it gives of the Justification by 
Faith (ch. ii. 16, and iii.). Historically it is 
valuable because of the incidental proof it 
gives of the equality of the Apostles and the 
disproof it furnishes of the Peterian claims of 
the Roman See (ch. ii. 11-21). It is one of 
the most ardent personal and expostulatory 
of the Pauline Epistles, exhibiting the large 
heart of the great Apostle. 

Gehenna. Literally, the valley of Hinnom, 
south of Jerusalem. The valley where all 
filth and carrion of every kind was cast; 
polluted at first by fires to Moloch, and then 
by the carcasses cast there ; and in it were 
continual fires kept up. It became the type 
of the place of everlasting punishment among 
the Jews before our Lord’s coming, and so 
was fitly used by Him and by St. James, iii. 
6, as the name of that dread place. Th§ 
term Hell, equivalent to Gehenna, is used in 
Matt. v. 29, 80 ; x. 28 ; xxiii. 15, 33 ; Mark 
ix. 43, 45 ; Luke xii. 5 ; and Hell-fire or fire 
of Gehenna in Matt. v. 22 ; xviii. 9 ; Mark 
ix. 47; and Jas. iii. 6. It is a narrow and 
trifling mode of escaping the full sense of 
Our Lord’s words now to give the term 
Gehenna the local meaning it may have had 
before the Jews themselves had used it as a 
figure of the dread place of unending woe, 
for no Jew in Jerusalem could then have so 
understood it, when our Lord called the 
future abode of the wicked Gehenna. 






GENERAL CONVENTION 


310 


GENERAL CONVENTION 


General Convention. The name of the 
representative body having supreme legisla¬ 
tive jurisdiction in the system of federated 
Dioceses, known as the Protestant Episcopal 
Church in the United States of America, 
and in the dependencies thereof. 

In giving an account of the General Con¬ 
vention it is proposed to speak,— 

I. Of its origin and nature. 

II. Of its form and method of operation 
as prescribed by the written Constitution 
adopted by the several Dioceses. 

III. Of the nature and limitations of its 
constitutional powers. 

IV. Of changes in its form, jurisdiction, 
and constituency resulting from its own 
action. 

I. Origin and Nature .—At the close of 
the Revolutionary war in this country the 
Church existed in each State as an indepen¬ 
dent body. This body was actually con¬ 
nected with the original Church of Christ 
by virtue of the participation of its members 
in the faith and sacraments of His appoint¬ 
ment and their relation to the Ministry of 
His commission, but it was in each case im¬ 
perfect. It lacked the crown and comple¬ 
tion essential to the perfection of every par¬ 
ticular Church, and to be supplied by Epis¬ 
copal authority. Prior to the Revolution 
the Church, in each colony, had been under 
the jurisdiction of the English Episcopate. 
During the Revolution that jurisdiction was 
incapable of being exercised, and was in 
abeyance. After the Revolution it was still 
incapable of being exercised, and all claim to 
it was abandoned. Practically the Church 
in each State was in the position of a Dio¬ 
cese temporarily deprived of its Diocesan. 
The Church in any State was free to seek its 
own completion in the Episcopate, and to 
continue its existence with or without com¬ 
bination with the Church in other States. 
Supposing that the Church in each State had 
obtained a Bishop of its own, there would 
have been among them all unity and co¬ 
hesion resulting from their common de¬ 
pendence upon Episcopal government. Had 
they chosen to pursue this course their right 
to do so would have been unquestionable. 
And their right to proceed to the formation 
of a common organization and to the adop¬ 
tion of certain principles to which they 
mutually bound themselves—provided that 
they did not thereby cut themselves off 
from that dependence upon Episcopal juris¬ 
diction which was essential to the continu¬ 
ance of their legitimate connection with the 
Church of Christ— must be allowed to be 
equally unquestionable. 

In point of fact the right to move in both 
these directions not only existed, but was 
recognized and exercised. The course pur¬ 
sued by the Church in the several States, al¬ 
though not the same in each, was in all such 
as to establish the conclusion that each one 
was, and regarded itself as, an independent 
body so far as the others were concerned. 
In Connecticut the Church sought first to 


complete itself by procuring a Bishop. In 
some of the other States the Church sought 
first to procure a common organization 
and union, and afterwards to procure 
Bishops for the several members of that 
union. But that union was not effected by 
those who sought it without the consent of 
the representatives of the Church in each 
State represented ; nor was the consent of 
those representatives given without the ex¬ 
press permission of their constituency ; nor, 
again, was either the Constitution which 
was adopted by that consent, or the au¬ 
thority of the General Convention which 
was established by that Constitution, re¬ 
garded as binding upon the Church in such 
States as were not represented, or had not 
consented although they were represented. 

The two great movements for the organ¬ 
ization of the Church in this country, which 
resulted in the establishment of the body 
which we are now considering, may be 
called the Episcopal and the Conventional. 
The success of both stamped upon our Ec¬ 
clesiastical system the complex character 
which is original with and peculiar to it¬ 
self. The combination of Episcopal govern¬ 
ment, recognized as deriving its authority 
from the Divine source of Christ’s com¬ 
mission to His Apostles and their successors, 
with the government of delegates, deriving 
their authority from the commission of the 
people, or of the body of the Church, com¬ 
posed of the laity and of the subordinate or¬ 
ders of the clergy, was the result of these 
two movements which in the course of Di¬ 
vine Providence began to take form about 
the same time. To the Church in Con¬ 
necticut must be attributed the honor of the 
Episcopal—to the Church in Pennsylvania 
that of the Conventional—movement. The 
movement in Connecticut antedates that in 
Pennsylvania by a month or more, if we 
look to the formal beginnings ; but the Con¬ 
necticut movement leads to the possession of 
a complete Church organization in that 
State some four years before the Pennsylva¬ 
nia movement attains the accomplishment 
of its purpose by the complete organization 
of a Convention duly authorized to act for 
the Churches which in that and other States 
had joined in it. 

The election of a Bishop took place in 
Connecticut on the 25th of March, 1783 
a.d. ; the consecration of that Bishop on the 
14th of November, 1784 a.d., and his re¬ 
ception by the Diocese, on his return from 
the place where he had been consecrated, 
on the 3d of August, 1785 a.d. It is im¬ 
portant to bear in mind these dates in com¬ 
parison with those which now follow. 

The first step towards the formation of an 
Ecclesiastical Union in the different States 
was taken at a meeting in May, 1784 a.d., 
at Philadelphia, of several members of the 
Church in that city, which appointed “ a 
Standing Committee of the Episcopal 
Church in this State,” and authorized that 
Committee to “ correspond and confer with 




GENERAL CONVENTION 


311 


GENERAL CONVENTION 


representatives from the Episcopal Church 
in the other States, or any of them, and as¬ 
sist in framing an Ecclesiastical govern¬ 
ment.” (Bishop White’s Memoirs, p. 72.) 

At this meeting, which, of course, was 
purely voluntary, certain propositions were 
agreed upon which were to be regarded in 
the proposed correspondence and conference 
as fundamental principles. In this state¬ 
ment of fundamental principles appears the 
germ afterwards developed into the Gen¬ 
eral Convention,—a representative body of 
clergy and laity which should have the sole 
power to make Canons and laws. The 
Bishops were anticipated as a future acces¬ 
sion to the orders of the ministry then in 
the country, but they were, like the rest of 
the clergy, to be under law, and law was to 
be enacted only by the representative body 
of clergy and laity jointly. The whole 
scheme is unformed, but the idea of a rep¬ 
resentative body of Clergy and laity with 
supreme powers of legislation is plainly 
apparent. 

In the same month of May, 1784 a.d., a 
meeting of clergymen in New Brunswick, 
N. J., discussed the project of Ecclesiastical 
union, but adjourned after receiving infor¬ 
mation from one of their number of the 
action already taken in the Church in Con¬ 
necticut. Another meeting of clergy from 
several States assembled at the call of the 
Standing Committee above mentioned, in 
New York, in October, 1784 a.d. This 
meeting was, like the others, purely volun¬ 
tary, there having been, as Bishop White 
observes, “ no authorities from the Churches 
in the several States even in the appoint¬ 
ments of the members, which were made 
from the congregations to which they re¬ 
spectively belonged, except of Mr. Parker, 
from Massachusetts, of Mr. Marshall, from 
Connecticut, and of those who attended 
from Pennsylvania. Even from these States 
there was no further authority than to de¬ 
liberate and propose; accordingly the acts 
of the body were in the form of recommen¬ 
dation and proposal.” (Bishop White’s Me¬ 
moirs, pp. 80, 81.) 

At this meeting it was proposed that there 
should be a General Convention of the Epis¬ 
copal Church in the United States of Amer¬ 
ica, to which the Episcopal Church in each 
State was to send deputies, although asso¬ 
ciated congregations in two or more States 
might send deputies jointly, and that this 
General Convention should be composed of 
clergy and laity, deliberating in one body, 
but voting separately, the concurrence of 
both being necessary to give validity to every 
measure. The first meeting of this Conven¬ 
tion, it was further proposed, should be at 
Philadelphia, the Tuesday before the next 
feast of St. Michael, “ to which it is hoped and 
earnestly desired that the Episcopal Churches 
in the United States will send their clerical 
and lay deputies, duly instructed and author¬ 
ized to proceed in the necessary business 
herein proposed for their deliberation.” 


On the 27th of September, 1785 a.d., ac¬ 
cording to this recommendation, assembled 
in Philadelphia a Convention of clerical and 
lay deputies from seven of the thirteen States, 
viz., from New York to Virginia, inclusive, 
with the addition of South Carolina. (Bishop 
White’s Memoirs, p. 22.) At this Conven¬ 
tion there was adopted a General Eccle¬ 
siastical Constitution, which may be con¬ 
sidered as the 'first draft of that which 
was finally established in 1789 a.d. At 
the next Convention of delegates from 
the same seven States, held at Phila¬ 
delphia,. in June, 1786 a.d., this draft 
was revised, and the following resolution 
was adopted : u Resolved , That it be recom¬ 
mended to the Conventions of this Church 
in the several States represented in this Con¬ 
vention that they authorize and empower 
their deputies to the next General Conven¬ 
tion, after we shall have obtained a Bishop 
or Bishops in our Church, to confirm and 
ratify a general Constitution respecting 
both the doctrine and discipline of the Prot¬ 
estant Episcopal Church in the United 
States of America.” This Convention ad¬ 
journed, subject to the call of its Committee 
of Correspondence (awaiting a communica¬ 
tion from the English Bishops), pursuant to 
which call it met again at Wilmington, 
Delaware, October 20, 1786 a.d. This Con¬ 
vention at Wilmington, on a question put, 
made the following significant decision, viz.: 
that it had “ no authority to admit as mem¬ 
bers persons deriving their appointment not 
from a State Convention, but from a par¬ 
ticular parish or parishes only.” (Bioren’s 
General Con-vention Journal, p. 39.) 

In view of the foregoing, it appears that 
the General Convention, as projected, was to 
be a representative body of clergy and laity, 
including Bishops among the former, con¬ 
stituted of delegates not from parishes as 
congregations, but from Conventions of 
Churches in the several States, and having 
legislative jurisdiction over the members of 
the Churches which should duly author¬ 
ize deputies to ratify the general Con¬ 
stitution. It further appears that up to 
and including the year 1786 a.d. there was 
in existence no General Convention, prop¬ 
erly so called, understanding by that term a 
body representing and authorized to give 
law to the Church in all the States. The 
want of an entire representation, the absence 
of any claim on the part of such Churches 
as were represented over those which were 
not represented, the limited power of the 
delegates, which prevented their action from 
being of any authority over the Churches 
from which they came,—these facts, taken 
in connection with the fact that the only 
representation required or recognized was 
the representation not of congregations but 
of State Conventions, establish with cer¬ 
tainty the position that the Churches in the 
States were the independent factors of the 
union which was ultimately established, 
and as representative of which the General 






GENERAL CONVENTION 


312 


GENERAL CONVENTION 


Convention came into existence. And the 
evidence shows that prior to 1789 a.d. there 
was no common authority recognized by 
these Churches. Agreeable to this is the 
remark of Bishop White, “ that the few 
general principles recommended by the 
meeting of 1784 a.d., and adopted by that 
of 1785 a.d., became a bond of union, and 
the only one acted under until the year 1789 
a.d. For as to the General Constitution 
framed at the period now before us (1785 
a.d.), it stood on recommendation only, and 
was of no use except in helping to convince 
those who were attached to that mode of 
transacting business that it was very idle to 
bring gentlemen together from different 
States for the purpose of such inconclusive 
proceedings.” (Memoirs, p. 96.) 

On the 28th of July, 1789 a.d., however, 
representatives from the seven States which 
had sent delegates in 1786 a.d. were as¬ 
sembled at Philadelphia. The deputies at 
this Convention were at the beginning of 
the session called upon to declare their pow¬ 
ers relative to the object of the resolution 
which had been adopted in 1786 a.d., rec¬ 
ommending the Conventions of the Church 
in the several States represented to au¬ 
thorize and empower their deputies to con¬ 
firm and ratify a general Constitution re¬ 
specting both doctrine and discipline; and 
in response to this call “ gave information 
that they came fully authorized to ratify a 
Book of Common Prayer, etc., for the 
use of the Church.” (Bioreri, 48.) 

The Constitution which had been proposed 
in 1786 a.d. was at this session considered 
and adopted as amended, and by virtue of 
such adoption became binding upon the 
Churches in the seven States whose repre¬ 
sentatives had been empowered to that end. 
The concluding act of this session was the 
appointment of a committee for the purpose, 
among other things, of forwarding its min¬ 
utes and proceedings “ to the Eastern and 
other Churches not included in this Union , to 
notify to them the time and place to which 
this Convention shall adjourn, and request 
their attendance at the same for the good 
purposes of union and general government.” 
(Bioren, 64.) 

At the adjourned meeting of this Conven¬ 
tion held in Philadelphia, September 29, 
1789 a.d., the Constitution adopted at the 
last session having been amended in respect 
to the distribution of powers to be exercised 
by the General Convention, was adopted as 
amended, not only by the deputies of the 
seven States previously represented, but also 
by the representatives of the Churches in 
Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hamp¬ 
shire, who were present and duly authorized 
for such adoption. Thus the Churches of 
ten of the States, by virtue of the voluntary 
assent of each, declared by representatives 
duly authorized for the purpose, established 
the General Convention and placed them¬ 
selves under its government, vesting it with 
certain powers, and confirming those powers 


by the charter of a written Constitution. 
This Constitution, and by consequence the 
jurisdiction of the General Convention, then 
extended to those Churches only which had 
up to that time acceded to that instrument. 
But provision was made for the extension 
of the jurisdiction of the General Conven¬ 
tion by the constitutional declaration that a 
Protestant Episcopal Church in any of the 
United States not now represented might at 
any time thereafter be admitted on acced¬ 
ing to the Constitution. In pursuance of 
which the Church in every State of the 
Civil Union afterwards became (at greater 
or less intervals respectively) a member of 
the Ecclesiastical Union ; sending its repre¬ 
sentatives to the General Convention, and 
conforming to the laws of its enactment; 
the extension of the jurisdiction of that 
body thus keeping even pace with the ex¬ 
pansion of its constituency. 

Thus the idea conceived, and in substance 
formulated, so far back as 1784 a.d. was 
through progressive steps extending over a 
period of five years, at last brought into 
effect. The supreme legislative authority 
over the members of such Churches in the 
States as consented to the General Consti¬ 
tution was vested in a representative body 
of clergy and laity, and provision was made 
for the extension of that authority through¬ 
out the Civil Union as soon as the Churches 
in all the States should be willing to submit 
themselves to it. 

And it is desirable here to note that the 
Church in each State subsequently acceding 
to the Constitution bore the same relation 
to the Ecclesiastical Union, and to the Gen¬ 
eral Convention, as if it had been one of the 
original seven or ten ; and that the Church 
in each State being the equivalent of the 
Diocese ( i.e ., the field or jurisdiction of the 
single Bishop), the Ecclesiastical Union is a 
union of Dioceses; and that each Diocese, 
though it be (as in some cases it has since 
been) only a part of the Church within a 
State, holds, the Constitution having been 
acceded to, the same relation to the Eccle¬ 
siastical Union and the General Convention 
as if it were one of such, original members. 

That the Ecclesiastical body in each State 
was independent on all the others was the 
result of the independent position of the 
States themselves. That these States were, 
in Confederate Union, working out under 
difficulties the problem of their ultimate 
nationality, made it altogether natural that 
the Churches should be drawn together in 
the effort to unite themselves under a com¬ 
mon Ecclesiastical government. That the 
Churches should move slowly and with diffi¬ 
culty was not surprising in view of the 
varying views of its members in differ¬ 
ent places, some thinking that the original 
Constitution of the Church already provided 
sufficiently for the working together of 
neighboring Churches under a common 
Episcopate, and some thinking that Episco- 
I pal government was only another name for 




GENERAL CONVENTION 


313 


GENERAL CONVENTION 


foreign interference and perhaps domestic 
tyranny, and that a system of popular rep¬ 
resentation was essential to the preserva¬ 
tion of popular liberties. And beside these 
differences there was the difference which 
was obvious in the political contests of the 
day; some standing for the principle of the 
self-government of the States as the preserv¬ 
ative against the dangers of centralization 
of power, and some dwelling more upon the 
idea of the substantial unity of the whole 
country, resulting from the unity of its in¬ 
habitants as being in the main of one blood 
and one inheritance of civil freedom. There 
was, moreover, during the first part of the 
incubation of this scheme of Ecclesiastical 
Union a very serious uncertainty as to two 
points: 1st, whether the application to the 
English Bishops for consecration was to suc¬ 
ceed ; and, 2d, whether the Civil Union was 
to continue to be a mere confederacy or 
was to be established on the basis of a real 
Nationality. Neither of these doubts was set 
at rest until after the Convention of 1786 
a.d. But with the consecration of Bishops 
for New York and Pennsylvania in 1787 
a.d. , and the adoption of the Constitution 
of the United States in the same year, the 
promoters of the Ecclesiastical Union found 
themselves on firmer ground, and neither 
the accomplishment of that Union nor the 
form in which it shaped itself were uninflu¬ 
enced by these events. In the two years 
which followed the minds of men were pre¬ 
pared to receive with greater unanimity the 
ideas that the working system of Church 
government should be co-extensive with 
the operation of the civil system, and that 
legislative authority in the Church should 
not be exercised apart from the official 
sanction of the Episcopal order. Neither 
of these ideas then had its full effect, but 
they were both then put in the way of 
attaining that universal recognition which 
they have since received. 

II. Constitutional Form and Method of 
Operation .—The General Convention, as 
may be inferred from what has been said, 
has passed through several phases. 

In what may be regarded as the incipient 
stages of its growth it appears as an assem¬ 
bly of clergymen and laymen coming from 
the Church in several States, deliberating 
together, and voting by States; each State 
having one vote. This form continues 
from 1785 a.d. to 1789 a.d. It next ap¬ 
pears as an assembly of the same sort, de¬ 
liberating in the same way, but voting by 
clergy and laity, each State having in fact 
two votes, but the preponderance being given 
to a majority of the States represented in 
one order concurring with a majority of the 
States represented in the other order. This 
form and method are incorporated into the 
Constitution of August, 1789 a.d., which 
also provides for a change contingent upon 
the acquisition of three or more Bishops in 
the number of the States represented. The 
contemplated change was the deliberation 


of the General Convention in two separate 
Houses, the one composed, as before, of 
clergy and laity, and voting as before ; the 
other composed of Bishops only, which 
latter was to be a House of Revision, having 
power to revise and reject acts proposed by 
the clergy and laity, who had, however, the 
power to overrule the rejection by a three- 
fifths vote of their House. 

The next phase is that of a body com¬ 
posed of a House of Bishops and a House 
of Clerical and Lay Deputies, each having 
power to originate and propose acts, and 
the concurrence of both being requisite to 
constitute the act of the body, but with the 
provision that the negative of the House of 
Bishops might be overruled by the vote of 
four-fifths of the Lower House. This form 
and method appear •in the Constitution of 
October, 1789 a.d., and continue until 1808 
a.d. , when by an amendment of the Consti¬ 
tution the power of the Lower House to over¬ 
rule the negative of the Upper House disap¬ 
pears and both Houses are recognized as eo- 
ordinate branches of one Supreme Legisla¬ 
ture, the concurrence of both being necessary 
to constitute the act of the body, and each 
having an absolute negative on the acts of the 
other; the House of Bishops being, however, 
required to signify their approbation or dis¬ 
approbation of the acts of the Lower 
House (the latter with their reasons in 
writing) within three days. 

It appears, then, that by the Constitution 
the General Convention is a body composed 
of a House of Bishops and a House of Clerical 
and Lav Deputies, and that the concurrence 
of both these is necessary to constitute an 
act of the body. The method of operation 
contemplated by the Constitution is that an 
act proposed in either House, and adopted 
by it, is to be submitted to the other for its 
concurrence. If the desired concurrence be 
yielded, the act is no longer the act of either 
House, but of the whole body, and without 
such concurrence no act can become a law. 
An act adopted by the Lower House and 
not adopted or rejected by the Upper House 
it is true becomes law, but that is not be¬ 
cause the power of enacting laws belongs, 
under any circumstances, to the Lower 
House alone, but because the Upper House, 
not having signified its disapprobation, as it 
had power to do, is to be presumed to have 
approved the proposed measure. 

It is observable that the Constitution in 
prescribing the form and method of the two 
Houses, is much more explicit in reference 
to the House of Deputies than in reference 
to the House of Bishops. This is to be ex¬ 
plained by the fact that the House of Depu¬ 
ties was in fact organized before the House 
of Bishops, and was in a position in the 
adoption of the Constitution to describe 
precisely the form and method which it was 
intended to have, whereas the House of 
Bishops was yet, in fact, to be established 
after its legal existence had been recognized. 

The clerical and lay delegates from the 






GENERAL CONVENTION 


314 


GENERAL CONVENTION 


States had begun to'regard themselves as a 
General Convention, while they were still a 
voluntary body, before it was decided 
whether the application to England for 
Bishops was to be granted. And when the 
application was granted, and there were 
Bishops among the number of those States 
which were represented, then the represen¬ 
tatives proceeded to provide a place for the 
Bishops as a separate House, by way of ad¬ 
dition to the proposed Constitution. The 
Constitution as proposed in 1786 a.d. pro¬ 
vided that in every State where there should 
be a Bishop duly consecrated and settled, 
who should have acceded to the Constitu¬ 
tion, he should be considered as a member of 
the Convention ex officio , and that a Bishop 
should always preside if any of the Episco¬ 
pal order were present. This was before 
there was a Bishop in the number of the 
States then represented in the Union. 
Bishop Seabury had been consecrated in 
1784 a.d. , but Connecticut was not a mem¬ 
ber of the Union. In 1789 a.d., however, 
Bishop White and Bishop Provoost had 
been consecrated for Pennsylvania and New 
York, and as there was the anticipation of 
including Bishop Seabury in the Union, or 
of having another Bishop consecrated for 
one of the States actually represented, or of 
both, it was thought desirable to provide for 
the session of these, and other Bishops that 
might be obtained, as a separate House ; but 
the provision was made, as before said, by 
way of addition or amendment to the place 
already incorporated into the Constitution. 

In truth, the constitutional provisions 
for the session of General Convention in 
two Houses wore every appearance of hav¬ 
ing been an after-thought; and while ex¬ 
plicit directions are given in regard to the 
Convention which are obviously applicable 
only to the House of Deputies, the House of 
Bishops appears to have been recognized, and 
its organization and arrangement to have 
been left, with whatever motive, to itself. 
The extent of this provision as to this House 
is that the Bishops of this Church, where 
there shall be three or more in the number 
of those States which shall have adopted the 
Constitution, shall form a separate House, 
that they shall have a right to originate and 
propose acts, and shall have a negative upon 
the acts of the House of Deputies as above 
said. What shall constitute a quorum, for 
instance, is not specified, and other omis¬ 
sions might be noted. 

In directions apparently applicable to the 
Lower House, however, the provision is that 
the Church in a majority of the Dioceses 
which shall have adopted the Constitution 
shall be represented before the Convention 
shall proceed to business; that the Church 
in each Diocese shall be entitled to a repre¬ 
sentation both of clergy and laity, and that 
such representation shall consist of not more 
than four clergymen and four laymen (com¬ 
municants) residing in, and chosen in the 
manner prescribed by, the Convention of 


the Diocese which they respectively repre¬ 
sent; and that in all cases, when required by 
the clerical or lay representation from any 
Diocese, the vote shall be of a certain kind. 

It is important to observe that the method 
of voting peculiar to the House of Deputies 
and provided for in Art. ii. of the Consti¬ 
tution is not made obligatory in all cases, 
but only when required by a clerical or a 
lay representation from any Diocese. If no 
such requirement be‘made, the vote of the 
House may be taken by acclamation or by 
division, or even by individual ayes and 
nays, as usual in other deliberative bodies. 
But if any clerical or any lay deputation, 
from any Diocese, require the vote to be 
taken in the constitutional method, the vote 
must be so taken ; and it is presumable that 
where the Canons provide that a measure 
must be adopted by a constitutional majority 
this method of voting must be pursued by 
this House. 

This method is properly called voting by 
Dioceses and Orders. It is not a vote by 
Dioceses alone. It is not a vote by Orders 
alone. It is a vote by Dioceses and Orders. 
The manner of voting prior to the constitu¬ 
tional organization of the General Conven¬ 
tion in 1789 a.d. was by States. The pro¬ 
posed Constitution of 1786 a.d. expresses 
what was the practice of that year and of 
previous years. The vote of the representa¬ 
tives of the Church was taken by States, the 
Church in each State having one vote, and the 
majority of suffrages being conclusive. By 
the Constitution of 1789 a.d. this method of 
voting was changed ; but it was not changed 
by substituting the vote of the body of clergy 
and laity present for the vote of the Dioceses 
which they represented, but by the giving 
to the Church in each State or Diocese the 
privilege of two votes instead of one, and 
requiring that there should be a majority of 
two kinds corresponding to these two kinds 
of votes, clerical and lay. The majority, to 
be conclusive in legislative acts, is not a ma¬ 
jority of States or Dioceses having one vote 
each, but a majority of all Dioceses repre¬ 
sented by clergy, concurring with a majority 
of all Dioceses represented by laity. If a Dio¬ 
cese is represented only in one Order, of course 
it has only the vote of that Order ; but it has 
the right to be represented by two Orders if 
it please, and then to have the two votes. 
If a Diocese be not represented by either 
clerical or lay delegates it has no vote ; but 
it has the constitutional right to representa¬ 
tion, and is therefore concluded by the acts 
of the body the same as if it had actually 
consented to them. But the votes of the 
representatives present are not, in this man¬ 
ner of voting, to be taken in a body. It is 
not a numerical majority that is conclusive, 
nor is it a majority of all the clerical repre¬ 
sentatives present concurring with a major¬ 
ity of all the lay representatives present, 
but a majority of all the Dioceses represented 
by clergy , concurring with a majority of all 
the Dioceses represented by laity. 







GENERAL CONVENTION 


315 


GENERAL CONVENTION 


And it is to be observed that this constitu¬ 
tional majority, as it is, on the one hand, not 
a mere numerical majority, so, on the other 
hand, is not necessarily identical with the 
consent of the Church in a majority of Dio¬ 
ceses. For, in fact, a concurrent major¬ 
ity of clerical and lay delegates may be 
so distributed as to carry a measure when 
there is no majority of Dioceses, consid¬ 
ered as such, and voting in each case as a 
whole. A majority of clerical representa¬ 
tives of Dioceses counting from the north 
downward (supposing the case for the sake 
of example), concurring with a majority of 
lay representatives of Dioceses counted from 
the south upward, will carry a measure as 
well as a majority of Dioceses with solid 
clerical and lay vote counted from the north 
downward, or vice versa , or distributed any¬ 
where throughout the Union. That the 
constitutional majority provided for by Art. 
ii. will generally be equivalent to the ex¬ 
pression of the consent of the Church in a 
majority of Dioceses may be true. Practi¬ 
cally there is, perhaps, little probability of 
the distinction being insisted on. But it is 
necessary that legal instruments should be 
understood as providing for possibilities as 
well as probabilities. And in considering 
the constitutional prescription for the method 
of operation of the General Convention in 
legislative enactments, it is necessary to ap¬ 
prehend exactly what the provision of the 
Constitution is, and to note that the vote 
described in Art. ii. is not necessarily iden¬ 
tical with the vote of the Church by Dio¬ 
ceses. 

III. Nature and Limitations of Constitu¬ 
tional Powers .—It might be supposed that a 
number of independent bodies coming to¬ 
gether for the purpose of establishing a 
common government, and uniting in the 
adoption of a written Constitution, by the 
terms of which a common authority was rec¬ 
ognized, would agree upon certain specific 
objects which they desired to put in charge 
of that common authority, and would be 
very precise in the designation both of the 
powers conferred and the powers reserved 
to themselves. In matters of civil govern¬ 
ment this course would undoubtedly be pur¬ 
sued. But perhaps it would be too much 
to expect such strictness in Ecclesiastical con¬ 
cerns, where, indeed, there may be less need 
for them on some accounts. Under the cir¬ 
cumstances attending the constitutional 
establishment of the General Convention 
much, no doubt, would be taken for granted. 
Some defects of arrangement might be 
overlooked provided that the substantial 
purpose of union was attained. The feel¬ 
ing that those who were combining their 
Ecclesiastical interests were all basing their 
lives upon professed principles of Christian 
love which would be a safeguard against 
jealousies, animosities, and mutual exact¬ 
ions, might justly have weight. And the 
further feeling that, whatever difficulties 
might be in the way of formal union, and 


whatever construction might be put upon 
formal provisions, the members of the 
Church in the several States were united 
already, in the one Church of Christ’s 
foundation, might ,account for some want of 
system. At all events, it is certain that the 
study of the Constitution will be very dis¬ 
appointing to one who expects to find in it 
anything approaching to a general state¬ 
ment of Church principles, or of all princi¬ 
ples of government applicable to the union 
of the Churches. And with regard to the 
powers of the General Convention, remark¬ 
able as the fact is in view of the absolute 
novelty of such an institution, it must be 
said that they cannot be referred to any 
specific enumeration contained in the Con¬ 
stitution. The General Convention exists 
by virtue of the action of the Church in the 
Dioceses. The Constitution adopted by this 
Church is the written evidence of its 
establishment and its authority ; but, being 
in existence, its authority is not specifically 
declared as to every particular, but is of that 
general character which belongs to supreme 
power. Yet, on the other hand, it is not to 
be inferred that the exercise of this power 
is arbitrary, either as to the sphere within 
which it is to operate, or as to the extent of 
its operation in that sphere. 

Those who constituted the General Con¬ 
vention were competent to define and 
specify its powers, or to constitute it for a 
certain class of powers and leave it unlim¬ 
ited in the exercise of them ; or to constitute 
it for a certain class of powers, particularly 
specifying some, and to impose upon it cer¬ 
tain limitations in the exercise of its pow¬ 
ers. The last of these three courses is what 
appears to have been chosen. The Consti¬ 
tution contemplates the General Convention 
as intrusted with the power of legislation. 
The acts which are adopted by both its 
Houses are to have the operation of law. 
But these are limitations imposed by the 
Constitution upon the exercise of this power. 
Apart from these limitations, the General 
Convention appears to possess .power to pass 
laws on any subject as to which a National 
Church is free to legislate for its members. 
It can pass any law which the Dioceses to¬ 
gether might pass for themselves, supposing 
them to be able to act together. They do, 
indeed, act together in all acts which it per¬ 
forms under the Constitution, and not con¬ 
trary to the limitations which that instru¬ 
ment imposes. It acts for them ; they act 
through it. When such action takes place, 
it is of superior obligation to the act of the 
Church in any Diocese. In respect to mat¬ 
ters as to which there has been no such com¬ 
mon action, the individual Diocese is free to 
act for itself in its own concerns. And 
what one Diocese may do for itself, two or 
more Dioceses may do for themselves in re¬ 
gard to matters of joint interest; subject 
always to the paramount authority of the 
General Convention, acting, as before said, 
under the Constitution and within constitu- 




GENERAL CONVENTION 


316 


GENERAL CONVENTION 


tional limitations. The ability to pass laws 
obligatory upon the members of all the Dio¬ 
ceses, and irrespective of the consent of in¬ 
dividual Dioceses, resulting from the assent 
of all the Dioceses to the. Constitution, is a 
check upon the power of individual Dioceses. 
The safety of the individual Diocese from 
overbearing action on the part of the Gen¬ 
eral Convention lies in the principles of lim¬ 
itation embodied in the Constitution, and 
only there. 

To the Constitution, therefore, we look not 
for a complete enumeration of the powers 
and functions of the General Convention, 
nor for the precise statement of rights re¬ 
ferred to the Dioceses, but rather for the 
evidence of a grant to the common authority 
of a supremacy including several specified 
powers, subject to definite limitations by 
which its action is controlled. 

In considering this branch of the subject 
it will be most convenient to follow the 
order of the articles of the Constitution, 
although it is to be remembered that the 
present purpose is not analysis and explana¬ 
tion of the Constitution, but the ascertain¬ 
ment of the powers and limitations of power 
of the General Convention as indicated by 
that instrument. And it would be well for 
the reader also to bear in mind that, for the 
sake of brevity in a paper of this sort, it is 
necessary that, in most cases, conclusions 
should be stated rather than the grounds 
upon which these conclusions are based. 

1. ’Things chiefly to be noted in the first 
article are (a) the establishment of the 
General Convention as a continuously exist¬ 
ing body required to be in session at speci¬ 
fied times of regular recurrence, and also 
authorized to meet at its own discretion in 
accordance with laws of its own adoption, its 
ersonal membership presumably varying, 
ut the body itself not going out of exist¬ 
ence. (See Digest, Tit. iii., Can. i, $ 1.) 

( b ) The representative character of the 
body, and the constituency which* is repre¬ 
sented. The necessary representation before 
the General Convention can proceed to busi¬ 
ness is required to be that of the Church in 
a majority of the Dioceses which have 
acceded to the Constitution. The body 
then is a representative body, and the con¬ 
stituency is the Church in the Dioceses 
which have acceded to the Constitution. 

. (c) The provision that the representation 
from two Dioceses shall be sufficient to 
adjourn precludes the necessity of a stated 
session being omitted for the year appointed 
on account of the delay of the members in 
coming together. Without this provision, 
if there were present anything less than a 
quorum at the day appointed, there would 
be a necessity of going without a stated 
meeting for three years, and possibly of 
resorting to the inconvenient substitute of 
a special meeting. The expedient gives a 
sufficient time (and apparently an indefinite 
time within three years) for the delegates 
to assemble. 


( d ) The provision that in all business of 
the Convention freedom of debate is to be 
allowed; a provision too well understood 
and too constantly complied with to re¬ 
quire any particular comment. 

2. The provisions of Art. ii. of the Con¬ 
stitution have been already considered so 
far as they relate to the form and method 
of operation of the General Convention. 
What is here to be noted is their bearing 
upon the powers of that body. This article 
contains the most general grant of power 
which the representative body has received. 
The power, however, is not conveyed by the 
formal statement that the General Conven¬ 
tion is authorized to dx) certain things, or all 
things of a certain kind ; but it is, with 
equal effect, conferred in a different way; 
that is, by the abandonment on the part of 
the Dioceses of any right of objection to acts 
of the General Convention consummated in 
a specified way. The article reserves the 
right of the Church in each Diocese which 
shall have assented to the Constitution to be 
represented both by clergy and laity, and by 
a certain number ; all Dioceses being en¬ 
titled to equal representation. It provides 
a peculiar method of voting, which makes 
it impossible for a measure to pass the House 
of Deputies without the concurrence of a 
majority of Dioceses represented by clergy 
with a majority of Dioceses represented by 
laity, which, in most cases, though not ne¬ 
cessarily, is equivalent to the expression 
of the will of a majority of Dioceses, and 
leaves it within the power not only of any 
Diocese, but of any delegation of any Dio¬ 
cese, to force this method of voting upon 
the rest; and then it precludes any Diocese 
from refusing to be bound by a measure so 
passed, not only when it may have voted 
against it, but even when it may not, in fact, 
have been represented. If the Church in 
a Diocese has not been represented, it shall 
nevertheless be bound by the acts of the 
Convention. A fuller and more exclusive 
grant of power it would be difficult to give. 
And the only limitation upon it, so far as 
this article is concerned, is that the acts 
shall be adopted in the method prescribed, 
if this method is demanded by any delega¬ 
tion, either clerical or lay. 

There are, however, other limitations, 
which, though not stated in this article, are 
plainly inferable from other articles and 
from the nature of the case. For (A) the 
acts by which the Church in each Diocese 
is to be bound are the acts of the whole body 
of the General Convention, which, by Art. 
iii., involve the consent of the House of 
Bishops, in which each Diocese is repre¬ 
sented by its own Bishop; and (B) the acts 
by which each Diocese is to be bound are 
acts of a legislative character. This, indeed, 
is nowhere expressly stated, but it is matter 
of necessary inference (a) from the expres¬ 
sion of Art. iii., that acts of the Lower House 
proposed to and not acted on in the specified 
way by the House of Bishops shall have the 




GENERAL CONVENTION 317 


GENERAL CONVENTION 


operation of law; ( b ) from the pointed omis¬ 
sion in Art. vi. to confer upon the General 
Convention in matters of trial and disci¬ 
pline any judicial power or anything further 
than the right to provide the mode of try¬ 
ing Bishops ; (c) from the requirement (in 
Art. ix.) of a substantially different method 
of consent to the alteration of the Constitu¬ 
tion from that required for acts of the Gen¬ 
eral Convention. 

3. Another constitutional limitation upon 
the power of the General Convention ap¬ 
pears in the recognition and reservation of 
the right of every Diocese to the choice of 
its own Bishop. Article iv. provides that 
the Bishop or Bishops in every Diocese shall 
be chosen agreeable to such rules as shall be 
fixed by the Convention of that Diocese. 
This puts it beyond the power of the Gen¬ 
eral Convention to impose a Bishop of its 
choice upon any existing Diocese. What 
the General Convention may do in the way 
of Canons prescribing certain qualifications 
and conditions to be complied with before 
the person chosen by a Diocese shall be con¬ 
secrated by the Bishops of the Church is 
another question. The Bishops of the 
Church cannot be forced to consecrate the 
person chosen by a Diocese, and they, act¬ 
ing as a House of the General Convention, 
and concurring with the House of* Depu¬ 
ties, may pass laws requiring a person chosen 
to possess certain qualifications, or to com¬ 
ply with certain conditions, before they will 
consecrate him. But that is a different 
thing from interfering with the choice itself. 

4. In the matter of the formation of new 
Dioceses the Constitution confers upon the 
General Convention certaiq powers, to which 
also limitations are annexed. 

The question how the General Conven¬ 
tion, being created by the Dioceses, could 
possess power to form new Dioceses might 
occur to one who had regard only to the 
origin of the body. But’in view of subse¬ 
quent history the question implies no con¬ 
tradiction. The Dioceses were originally 
conterminous with the States. Increase of 
population made division sometimes desira¬ 
ble. New settlements in the Territories and 
in new States might not be so permanent as 
in the older communities. Dioceses might 
sometimes require readjustment. It was not 
expedient that such changes should be left 
entirely with the Dioceses particularly in¬ 
terested ; but it was desirable, if not neces¬ 
sary, that there should be some common 
authority in the matter. By amendment to 
the Constitution this authority is lodged in 
General Convention. 

It is important to observe the distinction 
between the admission of Dioceses and the 
formation of new Dioceses by the readjust¬ 
ment of Dioceses already admitted. Art. 
v. as it stands relates to two entirely distinct 
classes of cases. (See this distinction elabo¬ 
rately and conclusively maintained by Rev. 
J. H. Hopkins, D.D., in American Church 
Review, April, 1881 a.d., p. 135.) 


The first part of it provides for the ad¬ 
mission of a Protestant Episcopal Church 
in any of the United States or any Terri¬ 
tory thereof on its accession to the Consti¬ 
tution. The second part (by amendment 
first introduced in 1838 a.d., but afterwards 
modified) provides for the formation of new 
Dioceses by the readjustment of those al¬ 
ready admitted. At the time of the first 
introduction of this amendment the words 
“ in any Territory thereof” were introduced 
into the first part of the Article. Under this, 
the Church in any State or Territory has the 
right to admission to the Union upon acces¬ 
sion to the Constitution. That fact being 
certified to the General Convention, it takes 
its place as a matter of course so far as the 
Constitution is concerned. The remainder 
of the article, however, refers to the other 
class of cases ; cases, viz., of Dioceses re¬ 
formed from a part of a Diocese already ad¬ 
mitted, or from parts of two or more such 
Dioceses. 

In such cases the General Convention has 
constitutional power to act, and without 
such action no such readjustment can take 
place. The consent of the General Conven¬ 
tion is necessary in order to such readjust¬ 
ment, and that consent the General Con¬ 
vention is forbidden to give unless certain 
things appear. No new Diocese can be 
formed within the limits of any other Dio¬ 
cese, nor by the junction of two or more Di¬ 
oceses, or parts of Dioceses, without the con¬ 
sent of the Bishop and Convention of each 
of the Dioceses concerned ; nor unless Gen¬ 
eral Convention have satisfactory assurance 
of a suitable provision for the support of 
the Episcopate in a contemplated new Dio¬ 
cese; norunless such new Diocese shall con¬ 
tain six parishes and six Presbyters who 
have been canonically resident and regu¬ 
larly settled for at least a year and qual¬ 
ified to vote for a Bishop; nor if the forma¬ 
tion of a new Diocese on such a basis would 
reduce any existing Diocese to less than 
twelve parishes and twelve Presbyters ; nor 
if a city would be by the change made to 
form more than one Diocese. The action 
contemplated by the Constitution in the case 
of such changes is the action of Dioceses; 
the function of the General Convention is 
that of ratification, the power of ratification 
being limited by the above-named condi¬ 
tional requirements. 

5. The provisions of Art. vi. are worthy 
of careful attention. They distinctly confer 
the power of legislation upon General Con¬ 
vention in respect to matters which involve 
the exercise of judicial power, and pointedly 
refrain from conferring the judicial power 
itself. The power of prescribing the mode 
of exercising judicial power is a high func¬ 
tion of legislation. This power is given to 
the General Convention in a specified class 
of cases, and in that only. “ The mode of 
trying Bishops shall be provided by the Gen¬ 
eral Convention.” This phrase appears to 
have been understood to involve a power to 





GENERAL CONVENTION 


318 


GENERAL CONVENTION 


prescribe all that relates to the trial of a 
Bishop, exclusive of the power to conduct 
the trial itself. Perhaps it does; although 
so to interpret it is to give rather a wide con¬ 
struction to the word mode. Understanding 
the legislative power in this class of cases, 
however, to be conferred upon General Con¬ 
vention, that body has the right, in the ex¬ 
ercise of this power, to determine the grounds 
of trial, or what is or is not an offense for 
which trial may be had; the manner in 
which accusation shall be formulated, noti¬ 
fied to the accused and judicially examined, 
and the sentence appropriate to offenses 
proved to have been committed. The judi¬ 
cial function is the determination of the ques¬ 
tions whether certain alleged actions consti¬ 
tute an offense; whether allegations are 
proved ; to what penalties certain actions, 
being proved, are entitled under the law ; 
and, these questions being determined, the 
actual pronouncement of the sentence. This 
latter power is by the Constitution reserved 
to the Bishops in all cases of ministerial dis¬ 
cipline, and the legislative power of the Gen¬ 
eral Convention which enables it to prescribe 
the composition of a court for the trial of 
Bishops is subject to the constitutional limi¬ 
tation that such court shall be composed of 
Bishops only. The same kind of power is 
denoted by the expression used in this arti¬ 
cle in describing the function of the Diocesan 
Conventions in respect to the trial of subor¬ 
dinate clergy : “ In every Diocese the mode 
of trying Presbyters and Deacons may be 
instituted by the Convention of the Diocese. ” 
This is aconstitutional guaranty of a reserved 
Diocesan right that the trial of the clergy 
of the Diocese, as distinguished from its 
Bishop, shall be according to the laws of the 
Diocese. Or, if that phrase be considered 
objectionable, it is at least a permission em¬ 
bodied in the Constitution that each Diocese 
shall possess that right; and while that per¬ 
mission stands the Constitution forbids to 
the General Convention what it allows to 
the Dioceses. On what ground, therefore, 
the General Convention can, as it has done 
by Canon, determine offenses and penalties 
in the case of Presbyters and Deacons, or 
provide a Court of Appeal having jurisdic¬ 
tion over these cases originating in the Dio¬ 
ceses, as it has been often urged to do, is not 
apparent from the Constitution. That in¬ 
strument empowers and directs the General 
Convention to provide the mode of trying 
Bishops. It limits the power of the General 
Convention by directing that courts for that 
purpose shall be composed of Bishops only, 
and by reserving to the Diocesan Conven¬ 
tions the right to institute the mode of try¬ 
ing Presbyters and Deacons, and by reserv¬ 
ing to the Bishops the right to pronounce 
sentence in every case of ministerial disci¬ 
pline. 

The prescribing of qualifications to be 
possessed, and conditions to be complied 
with by those who are to be ordained, is 
an essential function of the office to which 


the power of ordination belongs. It is 
therefore in its nature a power of the Epis¬ 
copate, and is not by the Constitution ex¬ 
pressly conferred upon the General Conven¬ 
tion. In so far, however, as it is a legisla¬ 
tive power, it may be understood to be 
included in the general grant to that body; 
and in point of fact appears not to have been 
exercised by the Bishops in our system, ex¬ 
cept as composing a part of the General 
Convention and in concurrence with the 
House of Clerical and Lay Deputies. The 
same remark may be made in reference to 
the prescribing of the terms upon which 
ministers ordained by one Bishop may be 
permitted to officiate within the jurisdiction 
of another. It is, like the other, essentially 
an Episcopal power. And the provisions of 
Art. vii. being prohibitions of ordination 
and license, except under certain conditions, 
might be considered as constitutional limi¬ 
tations in the power of the Episcopate 
rather than of the General Convention. 
But inasmuch as the provisions of this ar¬ 
ticle contemplate the passing of Canons as 
to these matters, and Canons are not in our 
system enacted by Bishops alone, but by 
General Convention, they may be properly 
considered as limitations of the power of the 
General Convention. In this view the body 
is by them precluded from enacting any 
Canon which will legalize the ordination of 
any person until he shall have been ex¬ 
amined by the Bishop and by two Presby¬ 
ters, and shall have subscribed the specified 
declaration of belief in the Holy Scriptures 
of the Old and New Testaments as being 
the Word of God and containing all things 
necessary to salvation, and of conformity to 
the doctrines and worship of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church in the United States ; and 
from enacting any Canon permitting a per¬ 
son, ordained by a foreign Bishop, to officiate 
as a minister of this Church without his 
subscription of the same declaration. 

7. The eighth article of the Constitution 
devolves upon the General Convention the 
power of establishing, which involves the 
power of altering, a Book of Common 
Prayer, Administration of Sacraments, and 
other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church, 
Articles of Religion and Ordinal, providing 
that such formularies when established by 
the General Convention shall be used in 
those Dioceses which have adopted the Con¬ 
stitution. This power conferred by the Con¬ 
stitution of 1789 a.d. upon the General 
Convention is, however, by amendment of 
1811 a.d. , subjected to the limitation that 
no alteration or addition shall be made in 
these formularies unless the same be pro¬ 
posed in one General Convention, and by a 
resolve thereof made known to the Con¬ 
vention of every Diocese, and adopted at 
the subsequent General Convention. The 
terms of this limitation are very explicit. 
The alteration which is made in any session 
of the General Convention must "be “ the 
same” as was proposed in the last General 





GENERAL CONVENTION 


319 


GENERAL CONVENTION 


Convention, and by resolve thereof made 
known to the Convention of every Diocese. 
An alteration proposed in one General Con¬ 
vention may, of course, be modified or 
changed in that General Convention. But 
when it is finally adopted by that General 
Convention, and by a resolve thereof made 
known to the Dioceses, it comes up before 
the next General Convention, not for amend¬ 
ment or modification, but either for adop¬ 
tion or rejection. If it is amended it be¬ 
comes a new proposition, and in order to 
adoption must be, by a new resolve, made 
known to the Dioceses, and must come 
before the next General Convention as 
before, either for adoption or rejection. 

This strictness was applicable to the Lec¬ 
tionary, or order of reading Holy Scriptures, 
as to the rest of the Prayer-Book, until 
1877 a.d., when the third clause of Art. viii. 
was added, whereby the General Conven¬ 
tion is permitted to alter the Lectionary at 
any session (“ from time to time" are the 
words used), but on condition that no act 
for the purpose shall be valid which is not 
voted for by a majority of all the Bishops 
entitled to seats in the House of Bishops, 
and by a majority of all the Dioceses enti¬ 
tled to representation in the House of Dep¬ 
uties. The manner of voting under this ar¬ 
ticle in the House of Deputies is not speci¬ 
fied, but the consent required is the consent 
of a majority of the Dioceses entitled to rep¬ 
resentation. That something more is re¬ 
quired in this case than the vote described 
in Art. ii. appears from the facts, (1) that 
the vote by Dioceses and Orders does not of 
necessity signify the consent of a majority 
of the Dioceses, but may only signify the 
consent of the clergy of one set of Dioceses 
concurring with the laity of another set 
of Dioceses; and (2) that the vote de¬ 
scribed in Art. ii. need only express the 
concurrent consent of clergy and laity 
in a majority of a quorum of Dioceses; 
and, the quorum being the representa¬ 
tion of a majority of Dioceses entitled 
to representation, the majority of the quo¬ 
rum is less than a majority of the Dio¬ 
ceses. The manner of voting under this 
amendment to Art. viii. not being pre¬ 
scribed, it seems that the vote may be taken 
in any manner which will express the re¬ 
quired consent. But if the ordinary vote 
by Dioceses and Orders be used, it must be 
ascertained that the majority of Dioceses be 
not merely a majority of the quorum, but a 
majority of the Dioceses entitled to repre¬ 
sentation, and that the vote of the clergy 
and laity be a concurrent vote in each of 
the Dioceses which constitute the majority. 
If, however, a Diocese voting on such a ques¬ 
tion be represented only by clergy or only by 
laity, it is presumed that it will be bound, 
under the general rule of Art. ii., by the vote 
of that delegation by which it is represented. 

8. The comments made upon this recent 
amendment to Art. viii. have prepared the 
way for the better understanding of Art. ix. 


This article relates to the amendment of 
the Constitution itself. It stands precisely 
as it stood when adopted in 1789 a.d., ex¬ 
cepting the substitution of the words “ Dio¬ 
cese’’ and “ Diocesan” for “ States” and 
“ State.” It provides that the Constitu¬ 
tion shall be unalterable, unless in General 
Convention, by the Church, in a majority 
of the Dioceses which may have adopted the 
same; and that all alterations shall be first 
proposed in one General Convention and 
made known to the several Diocesan Con¬ 
ventions before they shall be finally agreed 
to or ratified in the ensuing General Con¬ 
vention. 

In this process two general principles are 
to be observed : (1) The alteration must be 
made in General Convention, and (2) it 
must be by the action of the Church in a 
majority of Dioceses. That is to say, (1) it 
cannot be made by any Diocese for itself, 
nor by any joint action of the majority in 
the whole of the Dioceses other than that 
taken in the General Convention. But (2) 
the power which acts in the alteration is not 
the General Convention as such, but the 
Church in a majority of the Dioceses which 
have adopted that Constitution. The Church 
in a majority of Dioceses is to act, but it is 
to act in the General Convention. The 
Church in a Diocese can act in General 
Convention only* by its representatives. 
Hence the alteration of the Constitution can 
be constitutionally effected only by the con¬ 
sent of the representatives of a majority of the 
Dioceses in General Convention. And as the 
act of alteration is to be the act of the Church 
in a majority of the Dioceses, the vote by 
which that act is performed must be a vote 
which will express the consent of the Church 
in a majority of the Dioceses. If the usual 
vote taken by Dioceses and Orders does in 
fact express that consent, of course there can 
be no objection to it; but, from what has 
already been said, it will be apparent (1) 
that such a vote, when it reveals only the 
consent of a majority of the number of 
Dioceses which constitute a quorum of the 
Lower House, cannot be the vote of a major¬ 
ity of the Dioceses which have adopted the 
Constitution ; and (2) that if such a vote re¬ 
veals only the consent of one set of Dioceses 
represented by clergy, concurring with the 
consent of another set of Dioceses repre¬ 
sented by laity (unless those Dioceses should 
be respectively represented by a delegation of 
only one kind), it cannot be the consent of the 
Church in a majority of the Dioceses which 
have adopted the Constitution ; and, by con¬ 
sequence, cannot be the consent required by 
the Constitution. 

There is, however, no necessary inclusion 
of the vote required by Art. ix. within the 
requirements of Art. ii. The distinction 
between all questions which can come up for 
action in the General Convention under a 
certain fixed Constitution, and a question as 
to the change of that Constitution itself, is 
perfectly plain. The Constitution was es- 





GENERAL CONVENTION 


320 


GENERAL CONVENTION 


tablished by the consent of all the Dioceses, 
and that consent was given with the stipu¬ 
lation that if the Constitution was changed, 
it should not be changed without the con¬ 
sent of a majority of them. Nothing less 
than such consent, ascertain it how we will, 
can satisfy the stipulation. 

And if it be urged that this conclusion 
would require also the consent of the 
Bishops of those Dioceses which constitute 
the majority in the action taken in the Lower 
House, that does not prove the conclusion to 
be wrong. When the Constitution, contain¬ 
ing this article the same as now, was adopted 
in October, 1789 a.d., it was signed not only 
by the representatives of the Dioceses in the 
Lower House, but also by two out of the three 
Bishops then in the country. Whence arose 
the presumption that the Bishops of the 
Dioceses had no voice as such in the consent 
of those Dioceses to the alteration of the 
Constitution? Certainly there is no reason 
why the Bishops should not have a voice in 
the action of their Dioceses in General Con¬ 
vention. That such action was not expressly 
required in concurrence with the action of 
elected representatives is probably due only 
to the fact already referred to, that the 
scheme of the Constitution was completed in 
the conception of a representative body of 
clergy and laity, without strict regard to, or 
full understanding of, the'proper functions 
of Bishops, and that their connection with 
the system of the General Convention was 
left in some respects unprovided for. 

The prevailing impression that the Epis¬ 
copal consent, required by Art. iii., was 
practically the same as the consent of a 
majority of the Bishops of the Dioceses, and 
that the vote by Dioceses and Orders was 
equivalent to the vote of the Dioceses, has 
led to the treatment of questions on constitu¬ 
tional alterations in the same manner as all 
other questions. This of course has its con¬ 
veniences, and produces what perhaps is not 
far from being equivalent to the consent of 
the Church in a majority of the Dioceses, 
but it is open to the serious objection, never¬ 
theless,' of not being necessarily equivalent 
to that consent, and of being, in fact, not 
the action of the Church in a majority of 
the Dioceses in General Convention, but the 
action of the General Convention. 

IV. Of Change in Form , Jurisdiction , and 
Constituency of General Convention , result - 
ing from its own Action .—The view which 
has been taken of the General Convention 
would hardly be complete without the 
notice of certain changes which have taken 
place in the form and order of its adminis¬ 
tration of authority, which are not provided 
for by the Constitution. The changes to 
which reference is here made cannot be 
said to be contrary to the Constitution, but 
they are, in fact, exterior to it, deriving their 
authority not from it, but from acts of the 
General Convention, sustained by the pub¬ 
lic opinion of that body, of which General 
Convention is the representative. 


There can be no just question that in the 
beginning of its existence the General Con¬ 
vention had jurisdiction over the members 
of the Church in those States by whose duly 
authorized representatives the Constitution 
had been adopted, and over those only; and 
that in form it was composed of representa¬ 
tives, Episcopal or elective, of Dioceses only, 
or of Churches in States equivalent to Dio¬ 
ceses. The expansion of its constituency 
and the extension of its jurisdiction kept 
even pace with those accessions to the Con¬ 
stitution which were the precedent condi¬ 
tions of admission to the Union. The 
Churches in the States were the elements of 
the combination, the units of the federative 
system. The Church in any State not ac¬ 
ceding to the Constitution remained in its 
independence, without the privileges or the 
duties of union. The Church in any State 
acceding, took its stand on equal terms with 
those that had already acceded. Churches 
in Eastern States, feeble in numbers, grouped 
themselves together under the name of the 
Eastern Diocese, but the individuality of 
the Church in these States was not obliter¬ 
ated. The Church in two States, or more 
than two, might, from paucity of Bishops, 
or inability to support them, for a time come 
under a common Episcopate; but the idea 
that these were individual Churches, prac¬ 
tically distinct Dioceses, was not ignored, 
and the Church in such States was related 
to the Ecclesiastical Union not as a group, 
but as several distinct bodies, which indi¬ 
vidually acceded to the Constitution, and 
which, ultimately, became actually, as they 
had before been potentially, single Episco¬ 
pal jurisdictions. 

But although the federation of Dioceses 
was from the beginning an essential charac¬ 
teristic of this system of Ecclesiastical gov¬ 
ernment, yet the Church was something 
more than a federation. If the Ecclesiasti¬ 
cal Union were desirable at all, it was de¬ 
sirable that it should be extended. If the 
grouping of Dioceses, existing within the 
limits of the same civil government, was in 
conformity with sound Church principle, it 
was in derogation of sound Church princi¬ 
ple that any Diocese should, without the 
gravest reason touching the very life of the 
Church, hold itself aloof from that union. 
And, more than this, if there were scatter¬ 
ing members of the same Church in outly¬ 
ing districts which were not States, they 
•could not consistently be left uncared for 
by the Church, any more than the districts 
themselves could be regarded as beyond the 
pale of the protection of the civil authority. 
In short, as the single Diocese was, in the 
system, contemplated as the Church in the 
State, so the Ecclesiastical Union was to be 
co-extensive with the Civil Union; and, 
though many a year was to pass before the 
formulation of the canonical maxim (Di¬ 
gest i. 15; vii. 4) that the jurisdiction of this 
Church extends in right, though not always 
in form, to all persons belonging to it within 






GENERAL CONVENTION 


321 


GENERAL CONVENTION 


the United States, yet, no sooner was the 
formal organization complete in the ma¬ 
jority of the States than the effort began to 
he made to reach out beyond the limits of 
those States. In the second regular Gen¬ 
eral Convention (1792 a.d.) it was resolved, 
that a joint Committee of both Houses be 
appointed to report a plan for supporting 
Missionaries to preach the Gospel on the 
frontiers of the United States. And in 1808 
a.d. a committee was appointed to address 
the Church in certain districts, with a view 
(1) to urge Churches represented in Gen¬ 
eral Convention to send regularly a deputa¬ 
tion ; (2) to invite the Church in every 
State in which it is organized and which 
has not acceded to the Constitution to ac¬ 
cede to the same; (3) to invite the clergy 
and some of the most respectable lay mem¬ 
bers of the Church in the States and Terri¬ 
tories, in which the Church has not been 
organized, to organize and accede to the 
Constitution; and this Committee was au¬ 
thorized, moreover, to consider and deter¬ 
mine on the proper mode of sending a 
Bishop into said States and Territories, and 
in case of a reasonable prospect of accom¬ 
plishing this object, to elect a suitable person 
to each Episcopacy, any three Bishops being 
authorized to consecrate such person on the 
proper certificates ; provided , that the juris¬ 
diction assigned to him should not interfere 
with the rights of any State or Diocese 
which should thereafter adopt the Constitu¬ 
tion. (Bioren, p. 252.) 

It is, of course, no part of the present pur¬ 
pose to trace the history of the Missionary 
movement in the Church ; but it is neces¬ 
sary to note that the beginnings of that 
movement, thus early in the working of the 
Ecclesiastical Union, were based upon prin¬ 
ciples entirely harmonious with that system, 
and to call attention to the influence and re¬ 
sult of that movement upon the General 
Convention. 

How solicitous the original movers in this 
direction were, to guide the extension of the 
Church by missions in conformity with the 
principles of the system of the Ecclesiastical 
Union, will appear from Bishop White’s ac¬ 
count, given to the House of Bishops in 1814 
a.d., of his action under a commission of the 
General Convention of 1811 a.d., “ to devise 
means for supplying the congregations of 
this Church west of the Alleghany Mountains 
with the ministrations and worship of the 
same, and for organizing the Church in the 
Western States.” In consequence of this 
appointment he, thePresident, had “ begun 
a correspondence with Bishop Madison ; but 
all further progress was arrested by the 
decease of the said Right Rev. Brother. This 
did not hinder the President from submitting 
to the Convention of this Church in Pennsyl¬ 
vania a proposal, which was complied with, 
designed so far to meet the desires of some 
members of this Church in the Western coun¬ 
try, as that, in the event of a settlement of a 
Bishop therein, the congregations in the west¬ 

21 


ern counties of the State might be under his 
superintendence, on such a plan as would not 
affect the integrity of the Church in the 
State of Pennsylvania as a component mem¬ 
ber of the body of this Church throughout 
our Union, in contrariety to the Constitu¬ 
tion.” (Bioren, pp. 311, 312.) 

The issue of the movement begun on these 
principles has been not only the growth of 
the Church, but also its settlement within 
limits corresponding in the main to the civil 
divisions of the United States; so that, as 
the Church in an outlying district was fitted 
for the position of “ a component member of 
this Church throughout our Union,” it be¬ 
came such by acceding to the Constitution 
according to the provisions of its fifth Article. 

But while under this provision of the Con¬ 
stitution the constituency and the jurisdic¬ 
tion of the General Convention might be en¬ 
larged by the entrance of new Dioceses into 
the Ecclesiastical Union, there has been no 
provision of the Constitution which fixed the 
status of the Church, organized or not or¬ 
ganized, in places where there had been no 
accession to the Constitution. These places 
are exterior to the jurisdiction of the Gen¬ 
eral Convention as that jurisdiction is estab¬ 
lished by the Constitution. That they, or 
the mem bers of the Church within them, are, 
in fact, within the jurisdiction of the General 
Convention, is because the General Conven¬ 
tion has by Canon provided for the care and 
oversight of them, and because they have 
accepted and assented to the authority thus 
exercised over them. That this was a natu¬ 
ral course of events consequent upon the 
going out of members of the Church in set¬ 
tled Dioceses, who were, as such, under the 
authority of the General Convention; and 
their settling, and seeking to establish the 
Church, in districts where that authority 
was unknown, probably no one will dispute. 
Whether the proper method of extending the 
authority of General Convention over such 
districts was not by amendment of the Con¬ 
stitution authorizing the passage of Canons 
necessary to the end in view is, perhaps, a 
speculative question, and, certainly, one 
upon which men may differ. The point of 
importance is, that, as a matter of fact, there 
is a whole system of dependencies in the out¬ 
lying and missionary districts which are 
and ought to be regarded as parts of the 
Church under the jurisdiction of the Gen¬ 
eral Convention, but which, really, are a 
growth or accretion upon the original sys¬ 
tem. 

The dependencies of the Church which 
has, by accession of its component parts to 
the Constitution, placed itself under the 
authority of General Convention, are of 
three classes, and composed respectively (1) 
of the members of the Church in outlying 
districts of the territory of the United States, 
where such organization of the Church as 
there may be has never acceded to the Con¬ 
stitution ; (2) of members of the Church in 
foreign countries, who are engaged in the 








GENERAL CONVENTION 


322 


GENERATION 


conversion of the heathen, or who have 
themselves been there converted from 
heathenism; and (3) of members of this 
Church residing or sojourning in foreign 
countries, where there is an organization of 
some part of the Church of Christ, with 
which this Church has, on account of the 
divisions of Christendom, no intercom¬ 
munion. 

In these three classes of cases there are 
large bodies of members of this Church 
which are not organized into what are tech¬ 
nically called Dioceses, but which are under 
the government of the General Convention, 
and take their law from its action. 

Thus the jurisdiction of the General Con¬ 
vention extends, in fact, not only to the mem¬ 
bers of the Church in the Dioceses which 
have acceded to the Constitution, but also to 
the dependencies of that Church situated in 
the Territories of the United States and in 
foreign countries. In the exercise of such 
jurisdiction the General Convention has, 
by Canon, organized “ The Domestic and 
Foreign Missionary Society” (Digest, Tit. 

111., Can. viii.) has provided for the appoint¬ 
ment of Domestic Missionary Bishops (Tit. 

1., Can. xv., \ 7), and of Foreign Missionary 
Bishops (ib., $ 8), and for the organization 
and regulation of congregations in foreign 
countries other than Great Britain and 
Ireland and the colonies and dependencies 
thereof, and not within the limits of any 
Foreign Missionary Bishop of this Church, 
placing them under the Episcopal govern¬ 
ment and jurisdiction of the Presiding 
Bishop in the Church in the United States 
for the time being. (Tit. iii., Can. iv., $ 3, 
et seq .) 

And as, in fact, there has been thus an 
extension of the jurisdiction of the General 
Convention, so there has been an increase 
of its constituency, and to some extent, as in 
equity there should be, an enlargement of 
its representation. It is true the members 
of the Church in these several classes are 
not, under the terms of the Constitution, 
entitled to send delegates to General Con¬ 
vention ; but then, on the other hand, it is 
also true that these classes are not in any 
way recognized in the Constitution. The 
system which provides for them is an accre¬ 
tion upon the original system provided by 
the Constitution. The new has grown up 
alongside of the old, and, by custom and 
canonical regulation, has been grafted upon 
it, and become part and parcel of it; and 
on the general principles of its construc¬ 
tion, is equitably entitled to some repre¬ 
sentation. Two additions have been made 
to the General Convention which have 
been representative of these classes,—one, 
recently, by the admission, under resolu¬ 
tion of the House of Deputies, of dele¬ 
gates from the Churches in Territories in 
the United States, who are permitted to at¬ 
tend and speak in reference to the interests 
of their constituents, though not to have a 
vote in the body ; the other, by Canon, mak¬ 


ing the Domestic and Foreign Missionary 
Bishops members of the House of Bishops, 
and as such presumptively, as they are ac¬ 
tually, entitled not only to a voice in the 
councils of the Church, but also to a vote. 
And, unless the idea of representation be 
dwarfed to the notion of elected deputa¬ 
tion, these districts are, by this latter con¬ 
nection, a part of the constituency of that 
representative body which exercises juris¬ 
diction over them. According to the popu¬ 
lar, and perhaps it might be said American, 
notion of representation, those only are rep¬ 
resentative who are chosen and sent by 
those whom they represent. But this cer¬ 
tainly is not the measure of the Church idea 
of representation; for representation in a 
true sense may exist independently of the 
choice of the persons represented, if they are 
legitimately under the care and government 
of those who act for them. The Bishops in 
the ancient Councils may justly be said to 
have represented in those Councils the 
Churches over which they presided. And 
these bodies of Churchmen have, in fact, a 
representation of the same kind in General 
Convention. The Domestic and Foreign 
Missionary Bishops sit by virtue of their of¬ 
fice in the House of Bishops, and as such 
are members of the General Convention; 
and the congregations under what are called 
foreign chaplains, for whom no Bishop has 
been especially consecrated, are formally 
placed under the care of a Bishop who is a 
member of the General Convention, and as 
such is able to represent them in that body. 

Rey. Prof. William J. Seabury, D.D. 

Generation, Eternal, of the Word. “ The 
Divinity of Jesus Christ.” Much will be 
found bearing upon this subject in other arti¬ 
cles, but here it is proper to dwell upon it 
in its aspect as setting forth the consubstan- 
tial nature of the Son with the Father. 
The Word of God, begotten of the Father, 
must partake of the nature of His Father. 
He, therefore, must be a Son by an Eternal 
Generation. For infinity of nature belongs 
to God the Father, and must, therefore, 
be shared by the Son, as He partakes, as Son, 
of the majesty and eternal glory and omnis¬ 
cience and omnipotence of His Father. 
“ In the beginning” the Son already was, 
but this beginning is for us in time. For 
us this Eternal Generation is set forth in the 
magnificent description of Wisdom in the 
eighth chapter of Proverbs. Its glories are 
hidden in that vastness of worship and 
adoration paid to Him of which He emptied 
Himself when He became man (Phil. ii. 7, 
where the A. V. renders it made Himself of 
no reputation). Revelation sets Him forth 
as the brightness of the Father’s glory, 
and the express Image of His Person and 
the Upholder of all things by the Word of 
His Power. With these facts of His pre¬ 
existent glory we must rest content. No 
more is- revealed to us save that He is the 
Lamb of God, as it had been slain from 
the foundation of the world. It was this 





GENESIS 


323 


GENESIS 


eternal pre-existence of Christ which was 
the central point of the Arian controversy. 
The Arian claimed that He was the first of 
all created beings, of the highest rank, but 
denied that He was truly begotten. In 
Him the name of God might be placed, but 
the Arian denied that it was inherent. 
The struggle in the Council of Nice was 
upon this consubstantial nature of the Son 
of God, which was bound up in the doctrine 
of His being not only the first, but also the 
only-begotten Son of God in the full sense 
of the word. His sharing of the nature of 
the Father involving essentially an eter¬ 
nal generation, and so the ancient creed of 
Nicaea declared this doctrine with great in¬ 
sistence. It ran thus : “ We believe in one 
God, the Father Almighty, the Maker of 
all things, visible and invisible, and in one 
Lord Jesus Christ, Begotten of His 
Father the only-begotten, that is of the 
substance of the Father, God of God, 
Light of Light, Very God of Very God. 
Begotten, not made, being of one substance 
( omoiousios ) with the Father, by Whom 
all things both in heaven and on earth were 
made; Who for us men and for our salva¬ 
tion came down, and was incarnate, and was 
made man; suffered, and rose the third day : 
ascended into the heavens; shall come to 
judge the quick and the dead. 

“ And in the Holy Spirit. 

“ And those who say that there was a time 
when the Son of God was not, and that 
before He was begotten He was not, and 
that He was born out of the things which 
exist not, or assert that He is of another na¬ 
ture or substance, or that He is mutable or 
subject to change, the Holy Catholic or 
Apostolic Church holdeth accursed.” The 
repetition in several forms of the assertion 
of this Eternal Generation is very marked. 
It was then as now the central Truth in the 
power of the Incarnation and the Atone¬ 
ment. For under no other conclusion can we 
possibly believe that Our Lord is Eternal 
Life. The Word not only was with God 
as the wisdom of God, but the Word was 
God, the only-begotten, co-eternal with His 
Father (St. John i. 1-4, 14; 1 John v. 
11-13, 20). 

Genesis. The first book of the Bible, 
and the oldest surviving book in the world. 
Unproven claims have recently been put 
forth for papyri from Egypt and for some 
alleged Chinese records, but they have neither 
been substantiated, nor do their contents, 
which are merely catalogues, it is said, justify 
their claims to be considered books in any 
real sense of the word. The oldest book 
now in existence is rightly the inspired 
tome which contains the record of the crea¬ 
tion, and much more. It is not merely the 
narrative of the creation of the world for 
man and the placing of man in it, but a his¬ 
tory upon a divine plan, tracing a divine 
purpose, recording a divine mercy towards 
erring man. The contents of the book may 
be divided into five great parts—the Cre¬ 


ation, the Fall, the secular history to the 
time of Abraham, the choice of the He¬ 
brew family to become the Israelitish na¬ 
tion. It is not the place here to decide 
upon the congruity of shifting and constantly 
modified scientific speculations with the rev¬ 
elation of God. So far no scientific fact, 
properly established, has been found to clash 
in any way with the Mosaic outline of the 
order of creation. It has been always in 
accord with whatever science has proven so 
far, and the more deeply the Mosaic record 
is studied, the more scientifically accurate 
the terms used are found to be. But an¬ 
other theory, by a different class of assail¬ 
ants, has been alleged, viz.,— that Moses 
did not write this book from direct revela¬ 
tion, but had used earlier family chronicles 
and memoranda; and the documents which 
he used, it is pretended, can be separated, 
and that, in fact, some editor (whether 
Moses or some one later) has fused the 
whole so that they are interlaced in the very 
structure of the sentences. This may be so 
far a fact, that for some things Moses was 
divinely directed to put on record, with ab¬ 
solute precision, facts which had been dis¬ 
torted by tradition, and remnants of which 
tradition have survived to our day; but 
that he used them and other documents as 
the compilers of the books of Kings and of 
Chronicles did the state records is refuted 
by the very fact that they who assert these 
things cannot agree on the documents. 
These documents are called the Elohistic 
and Jehovistic, but the terms Elohim (God) 
and Jehovah (Lord) are so interchangeably 
used and at times so conjoined as to upset 
any such parceling out of the text, that is, 
if any credit is to be given to the book at 
all. ( Vide Pentateuch.) 

I. The Creation. It is contained in Gen. 
i., ii. 3. 

II. For a distinct purpose,—to set forth 
the position of man in the created world,— 
the second chapter relates with greater full¬ 
ness the preparation made for him, and his 
charge. It is not a repetition, not a dif¬ 
ferent document, but after the general in¬ 
troduction the record now goes on to the 
special purpose of this part of the Book,— 
the place and relation of man under God 
to the visible creation. Lordship is given 
to him, and a companion created for him 
(Gen. ii. 4 to end). 

III. The Fall, the sentence, the expul¬ 
sion, and the placing of the sentinel Cheru¬ 
bim are recited in the third chapter. 

IV. The secular history to the time of 
Abraham (oh. iv.-xi. 27). This period is 
divided into two portions by the great cata- 
ctysm of the Deluge (which in the usual 
grouping, in fact, forms the close of one of 
the great sections). The first portion (ch. iv. 
-vi.) contains names and ages of the antedi¬ 
luvian Patriarchs from Adam to Noah, with 
short incidental notices of one or two of them, 
and then the account of the building of the 
Ark and the preparation for the preserva- 




GENESIS 


324 


GEOKGIA 


tion of Noah and his family and of such 
living things as God had appointed (ch. vii.- 
viii.). In the ninth chapter the blessing and 
covenant with all flesh through Noah, and 
the curse of Ham and the blessing of Shem 
and Japhet, are recorded. The tenth chapter 
is probably of the greatest ethnological value. 
Only to it and no farther back have ethnolo¬ 
gists been able to trace the history of nations. 
The eleventh chapter narrates the confu¬ 
sion of languages at the tower in the land 
of Shinar, where, with remarkable accuracy, 
Moses speaks of the confusion as of lip, and 
therefore of language (vide marginal read¬ 
ing). From this point the history changes, 
and narrows down from the peopling of the 
earth to the record of a single family,—that 
of Shem, whose descendants are briefly 
named,—till we reach Terah, the father of 
Abram. So far the slight connecting links 
of the general history Moses has given have 
in no way been successfully impugned. 

V. The call of Abram and the history of 
his descendants till they were placed in the 
land of Egypt, and then increased till the 
land was ready for them to take possession 
of. The history has been hitherto rather 
secular than distinctly religious, though 
throughout God’s dealings with men are 
narrated to us, especially in the history of 
Noah. But now Abram is chosen, and 
responds to the choice by his faith, and by 
wondrous interpositions he is made the 
father of a son who was to be the type of the 
greater joy of the whole world. Isaac’s son, 
Jacob, is chosen, and from him come the 
twelve patriarchs, the heads of large 
families who grew into tribes, which Moses 
was commissioned to mould into a nation. 

Under the several names Abraham, Isaac, 
Jacob, and Joseph will be found some 
accounts of each, and of their history as typi¬ 
cal of Christ. The Book of Genesis closes 
with the migration of the Israel and his 
family of seventy souls into Egypt. The 
Chronology of Genesis is a difficult subject, 
and of which many schemes have been made. 
It would seem that a longer time than that 
usually placed on the margin of our Bibles 
is necessary, and while not pretending to 
decide so perplexing a subject, the table 
subjoined gives the most satisfactory solu¬ 
tion to it: 


Creation. 0 

Flood.2262 

Birth of Peleg. 401 

Departure of Abram from Haran. 616 

From Abram’s departure to Jacob’s 
going down to Egypt. 215 


3494 

This is a longer computation than the 
one usually given. It is that of the Sep- 
tuagint. ( Vide Smith’s Diet., Chronology.) 
But it best accords with what we know of 
external history and the need of allowing 
more time for contemporary secular history. 
(The subject is, however, too intricate to 
be discussed here, and the student is referred 
to the larger Commentaries, the Speaker’s, 


Lange, Smith’s Dictionary of Chronology, 
and similar works. Browne’s Ordo Sseclum.) 

Georgia, Diocese of. Georgia was the 
child of philanthropy. It is the only colony 
planted by disinterested trustees, who re¬ 
ceived neither fee nor reward for their un¬ 
dertaking. It was the only colony where 
broad principles of Christian benevolence 
gathered within its sheltering arms the in¬ 
digent, the forsaken, the persecuted of va¬ 
rious nations and creeds, and gave them a 
common home and protection. The Church 
of England entered warmly into the scheme 
of the twenty-one noblemen and gentlemen 
who constituted its first Board of Trustees. 
Nearly a fourth of its trustees were clergy¬ 
men, and over a hundred ministers received, 
at their own request, commissions to take up 
collections in behalf of the colony of Georgia, 
while the Archbishop of Canterbury, Bish¬ 
ops, Archdeacons, Deans, Chapters, Col¬ 
legiate and Parochial Clergy contributed to 
its treasury. General Oglethorpe and Rev. 
Dr. Herbert sailed with the first emigrants. 
This clergyman offered his services gra¬ 
tuitously. 

The trustees sent a petition to the Society 
for the Propagation of the Gospel, stating 
that they had appropriated a site for a 
church, and a sufficient glebe for the min¬ 
ister, and asking for the usual allowance for 
a missionary. The Kev. Samuel Quincy 
was appointed, and reached there four 
months after the sailing of the first emi¬ 
grants. In December, 1735 a.d., John and 
Charles Wesley and Benjamin Ingham 
came out, full of zeal for the conversion of 
the Indians. Through no intentional error 
of the Wesleys they only remained a short 
time, and left under charges, of which all 
we can say is they are very remarkable, 
considering the views with which they are 
usually identified. 

As John Wesley entered the Downs on 
his return, he passed the ship in which 
Whitefield sailed for Georgia. After re¬ 
maining in Savannah a short time he re¬ 
turned to England to be ordained Priest, 
and raise money for an orphan asylum. He 
was received with especial favor by the 
trustees, who appointed him rector of Christ 
Church, Savannah, and gave him five hun¬ 
dred acres of land for his orphan asylum. 
In six months he had raised five thousand 
dollars, and on the 25th of March the first 
brick of the asjdum was laid at a spot nine 
miles from Savannah, called Bethesda, 
where he began his asylum. It was burned 
by lightning, and the property sold. In 
the good providence of God the property 
was again purchased for the purpose, and 
to-day a flourishing orphan asylum is lib¬ 
erally supported by the people of Savannah. 

The Church was maintained in Savannah 
sometimes by ministers worthy to follow 
Wesley and Whitefield, and, again, by others 
of whom the less we say the better. 

The church in Savannah was ordered to 
be built in 1740 a.d., and a few loads of stone 











GEORGIA 


325 


GEORGIA 


were brought and laid down upon the spot. 
But little or no progress was made towards 
its completion. 

The governor, in 1746 a.d., wrote, “The 
roof of it is covered with shingles, but the 
sides and ends remain a skeleton.” In 1750 
a.d. the church was completed, and is de¬ 
scribed as large, beautiful, and commodious. 
It was burnt in 1796 a.d. It was burnt 
again, and the present church was rebuilt 
on the same spot. 

Fifty years before Robert Raikes origi¬ 
nated his scheme of a Sunday-school in Eng¬ 
land, Mr. Wesley established a Sunday- 
school in Christ Church. 

In 1748 a.d. the inhabitants of Savannah 
numbered six hundred and thirteen, of whom 
three hundred and eighty-eight were dis¬ 
senters. The number of communicants of 
Christ Church was sixty-three. The only 
minister of the Church of England in the 
colony, though its population was over three 
thousand, was Rev. Bartholomew Zouber- 
bubler, rector of Christ Church, under whose 
faithful ministry, and principally by his 
pastoral work, the Church increased in num¬ 
bers and influence. 

The inhabitants of Augusta, in 1750 a.d., 
memorialized the Society for the Propaga¬ 
tion of the Gospel for a missionary, stating 
that a handsome and convenient church had 
been built under the guns of the fort. A 
minister was sent them, who arrived in 
December, 1750 a.d., but could find neither 
glebe nor parsonage promised. He labored 
on alone, amidst constant alarms of Indian 
incursions, separated one hundred and thirty 
miles from his nearest clerical neighbor 
with but little to cheer him, till 1756 a.d. 

In 1758 a.d. the Assembly divided 
Georgia into parishes, and appropriated 
twenty-five pounds to the clergyman offici¬ 
ating in each parish. Yet clergymen were 
not to be had. 

Of two of the clergymen sent to Augusta, 
it is stated that one was grossly immoral, 
drunk, profane. Of the other, that he be¬ 
haved in an unchristian and ungentlemanly 
way, and doing all he could to bring dis¬ 
credit on the Church and religion. It is 
painful to add no cause did more to keep 
down the Church in colonial times than the 
unworthy conduct of many sent here as 
missionaries. There were noble exceptions, 
but there were many who were the very off¬ 
scourings of the Church ; men who were a 
disgrace not to religion only, but to their 
country. These men, virtually banished 
from England, pressed hither, drifted from 
parish to parish, ravening as hungry wolves 
upon the unprotected sheep, while there 
was no authority to bring them to discipline, 
or purge the Church of such unworthy min¬ 
isters. The wonder is the Church survived 
such an influx of wickedness in those who 
were sent as teachers. 

In 1767 a.d., Rev. Edward Ellington was 
appointed to St. Paul’s, Augusta, and from 
the records of his travels and his labors, he 


seems to have deserved the title given by 
the historian of the colonial Church, as be¬ 
ing “the most distinguished of Georgia 
Missionaries.” 

Missionaries were, for a time, located in 
Burke and Sunbury, Liberty County. Owing 
to the troubles growing out of the Revolu¬ 
tion, but little could be done by the mission¬ 
aries. One was barred out of his Church, 
another driven from his parish and forced 
to support his family by teaching. 

The effect of the Revolutionary war upon 
the Church in Georgia, as well as elsewhere, 
was very distressing. The clergy had, at their 
ordination, taken the oath of allegiance to 
the Crown, and were mobbed and ill-treated 
because they could not break their ordination 
vows. The only wonder is the Church sur¬ 
vived. (Bishop Stevens’s Semi-Centennial 
Sermon before the Convention of Georgia 
is authority for the above.) 

In 1811 a.d., we learn from the Journal 
of the General Convention of that year that 
Rev. Mr. Barton presented a certificate of 
his appointment to attend the Convention, 
signed by the Wardens and Vestry of the 
Episcopal Church in the city of Savannah, 
State of Georgia, whereupon, “ Resolved , 
That the Protestant Episcopal Church in 
the State of Georgia not being organized, 
and not having, in Conventions, acceded 
to the Constitution of the Protestant Epis¬ 
copal Church in the United States, Rev. 
Mr. Barton cannot be admitted a member 
of this House, but that he be allowed the 
privilege of an honorary seat.” 

It was not till 1815 a.d. that a Bishop of 
the Church visited the State. In the spring 
of that year Bishop Dehon, of South Caro¬ 
lina, came to Savannah to consecrate the 
new building and hold the first confirmation, 
and confirmed sixty persons presented by 
the rector, Rev. Mr. Cranston. 

On the 24th of February, 1823 a.d., three 
clergymen, Rev. Abiel Carter, rector of 
Christ Church, Savannah, Rev. Hugh 
Smith, rector of St. Paul’s, Augusta, and 
Rev. Edward Matthews, rector of Christ 
Church, St. Simon’s Island, and three lay¬ 
men from Christ Church, Savannah, and 
three from St. Paul’s, Augusta, met in 
St. Paul’s, Augusta, to organize the Dio¬ 
cese of Georgia. They adopted a Constitu¬ 
tion and Canons and acceded to the Consti¬ 
tution of the Church in the United States, 
and requested the Bishop of South Carolina, 
Rt. Rev. Nathaniel Bowen, to take the over¬ 
sight of the Diocese. They adopted an ad¬ 
dress to the people in the State, and elected 
deputies to the General Convention. Two 
of these deputies took their seats in the Gen¬ 
eral Convention which met the following 
May. Thus the Diocese of Georgia became 
an integral part of the Church in the United 
States. 

Of the strength of the parishes at that time 
we have no information. From the report 
to the following Convention, May, 1824 
a.d., we learn that there were in Christ 




GEORGIA 


326 


GEORGIA 


Church, Savannah, 26 baptisms, 3 of them 
colored, 84 confirmations, 80 communicants, 
and Sunday-school very flourishing. St. 
Paul’s, Augusta, baptisms, 27, of which 3 
were colored ; confirmations, 18 ; communi¬ 
cants, 51. 

Christ Church, Macon, was admitted at 
the next Convention, and its rector, Rev. 
Lot Jones, reported a number of points at 
which he found encouragement to commence 
services. 

At the fourth Annual Convention Bishop 
Bowen presided, and made an address, in 
which he said he would give them a state¬ 
ment of all Episcopal transactions affecting 
Georgia of which he had knowledge, and 
which were nowhere recorded. Bishop 
Smith, of South Carolina, from 1798 a.d. 
till his death in 1802 a.d. had endeavored 
by correspondence to cherish and preserve 
the Church in Georgia in a sound state. 
Through the Rev. Mr. Strong, of Oglethorpe 
County, he became acquainted with the 
merits of James Hamilton Ray as candidate 
for holy orders. In 1801 a.d., Mr. Ray was 
ordained Deacon and Priest. He lived an 
honored minister in Greene County, and 
died in 1805 a.d., greatly lamented as a 
faithful and able pastor of a numerous flock.* 

No one can fail, in reading the journals 
of the Convention, to be impressed that the 
great defect in the organization of the Church 
was the want of a Bishop. Had the change 
made in 1835 a.d. been in operation at any 
period from the time of the Wesleys, who 
can even conceive of the growth of the 
Church ? But from that time till the close 
of the Revolution the colonies could not ob¬ 
tain Episcopal Orders. Erom that time till 
1835 a.d. no Bishop could be elected, except 
there were in the Diocese so many clergymen 
and so many parishes. Georgia fully recog¬ 
nized the fact, and was constantly laying 
plans to procure a Bishop. In 1836 a.d. the 
Diocese asked that the House of Bishops 
would appoint a Bishop, and named the Rev. 
Edward Neufville as a suitable person. He 
at once peremptorily declined. 

At the following Convention a resolution 
was adopted, “ that as the Diocese would soon 
be in a condition to elect its own Bishop, no 
action under it was expected.” 

At the following Convention a memorial 
was adopted asking the appointment of a 
Missionary Bishop, who might take charge 
of Dioceses without Bishops. 

The following year the proposition of the 
Diocese of Florida, that Florida, Alabama, 
and Georgia should unite and elect a Bishop 
was made. This Diocese gladly assented to 
the plan. 

The following year, May, 1840 a.d , the 
Annual Convention met in Clarksville, and 


* When the writer was candidate for orders the late 
Rev. Mr. Okeson came across a pamphlet copy of the life 
and services of this gentleman. It was a wonderful 
story of a life of labor and self-sacrifice and success. 
From that day to this the writer has tried in vain to 
get a copy of the pamphlet. 


having now reached the point where she was 
entitled to choose her own Bishop, unani¬ 
mously elected Rev. Stephen Elliott, Pro¬ 
fessor of Sacred Literature in the College of 
South Carolina. 

Of the President of that Convention and 
of the Bishop they elected I can only quote 
Bishop Stevens. Of the first (Dr. Neufville, 
he says, “Never have I heard our Liturgy 
read with more unction and effectiveness 
than by him, while his reading of the Bible 
was like an illuminated exposition of it, so 
exquisite were his modulations, so sweet and 
musical was his voice, and so just and well 
rendered his emphasis.” 

“ To him the Church in Georgia owes a 
great debt. He was President of the Stand¬ 
ing Committee for many years before his 
death, and he it was who brought forward 
the name of Stephen Elliott as a fit person 
to be the first Bishop \>f Georgia, thus 
modestly waiving his own personal claims 
of no ordinary character in favor of one 
whom he believed to be better fitted than 
himself for the high office.” So said Bishop 
Elliott in the sermon preached at Dr. Neuf- 
ville’s funeral in Christ Church. It is 
known to persons now living that on the 
occasion of the first sermon preached by 
Bishop Elliott, in Savannah, when as yet 
Bishop Elliott was only a Deacon, Dr. 
Neufville said at it's close, “ There is the man 
for the first Bishop of Georgia,” and he 
never altered that opinion. 

Of Bishop Elliott, Bishop Stevens said, 
“ But how shall I speak of the first Bishop 
of Georgia, Stephen Elliott? His character, 
like his body, was majestic and symmetrical, 
with manly strength and glory ; it was the 
noble temple of a noble soul. His mind was 
of large calibre and cultivated with sedulous 
care. His eloquence was the outburst of a 
well-stored, well-trained intellect, pouring 
itself through lips not wet merely with 
Castalia’s dew, but touched as by angel 
hands with coals from off the altar.” 

On the 28th of February, 1841 a.d., the 
Rt. Rev. Stephen Elliott, D. D., was con¬ 
secrated the first Bishop of Georgia, in 
Christ Church, Savannah, by the Rt. Rev. 
William Meade, D.D., Bishop of Virginia, 
Rt. Rev. Silliman Ives, D.D., Bishop of 
North Carolina, and Rt. Rev. Christopher 
Gadsden, D.D., Bishop of South Carolina. 

At the time of the election of Bishop 
Elliott there were in the Diocese 8 clergy¬ 
men, 7 parishes, and 323 communicants, of 
which number 150 were communicants of 
Christ Church, Savannah. 

The immediate effect of the consecration 
of Bishop Elliott, as we look back upon it, 
seems wonderful. In two years parishes 
were relieved from debt, seven new parishes 
admitted to the Convention, the number of 
communicants nearly doubled, four Deacons 
ordained, and a Church school endowed by 
a gentleman not of our communion. Of 
the four ordained, two are men of such 
l high character and commanding talents that 







GHOST 


327 


GLORIA 


the Church called them to the office of 
Bishop in the Church of God.* 

To give some idea of the state of things, I 
will mention that the Bishop arrived in 
Marietta, and first one and then another 
called on him, and stated that he was the 
only Churchman in the place. At the close 
of the services, the Bishop invited those who 
were friendly to the organization of an Epis¬ 
copal Church in the place to remain. The 
amazement at the discovery of so many 
Churchmen may be imagined, it cannot be 
described. A Church was organized, and 
under the admirable management of Colonel 
C. F. M. Garnett, Chief Engineer of the 
State Road, a neat stone church (until re¬ 
cently the only one in the Diocese) was 
erected, for an amount not exceeding the 
cost of a wooden church. 

All the bright hopes of that day have not 
been realized, notably in the Church school. 
But the Church learned to know the self-de¬ 
nying devotion of her Bishop, and if the peo¬ 
ple had realized the fact, what a blessing it 
might have been to the Diocese; as it is, 
every year of the Bishop’s life gave new 
proof of the good it had done. 

He lived to bury the four leading clergy¬ 
men that he found in the Diocese. Each 
died rector of the parish in which he found 
him,—Dr. Neufville, of Savannah, Dr. Ford, 
of Augusta, Mr. Caanes, of Columbus, and 
Mr. Bragg, of Macon. He has left on r.ecord 
his tribute of love to their memories, and 
then, on the 21st of December, 1866 a.d., he 
was snatched away by death. 

In 1861 a.d. the number of the clergy 
was 29; parishes, 23; number of communi¬ 
cants, 2184. 

In 1867 a.d. : Clergy, 31 ; parishes, 28; 
communicants, 2141. 

Let it be borne in mind that between 
these two dates Georgia had been desolated 
by war, churches burned or desecrated, con¬ 
gregations scattered, then recall the con¬ 
dition in which Bishop Elliott found the 
Diocese,—surely it shows how faithfully he 
had labored. 

On the 9th of May following the Con¬ 
vention met in Macon, and elected Rev. 
John H. Beckwith, D.D., rector of Trinity 
Church, New Orleans, his successor. On 
the 2d day of April, 1868 a.d., in St. John’s 
Church, Savannah, he was consecrated. 

It now has 1 Bishop, 36 clergymen, 44 
parishes, 4768 communicants, and 8 mis¬ 
sions. Rev. W. C. Williams, D.D. 

Ghost. The old English word for spirit, 
retained chiefly now in the title of the third 
person of the Holy Trinity, —the Holy 
Ghost ; the adverb “ ghostly” occurs in the 
prayer for those to be confirmed,—“ the 
spirit of counsel and ghostly strength.” 
(Vide Holy Ghost.) 

Girdle. This convenient part of the East¬ 
ern dress was also a part of the Jewish 


* One Bishop Scott, of Oregon, the other Bishop 
Stevens, of Pennsylvania. 


priestly dress. The High-Priest was girded 
with a “curious girdle,” while the Priests 
wore a simple linen girdle, edged with wool. 
The Prophets also wore a girdle of leather, 
as that of Elijah (2 Kings i. 8) and St. 
John Baptist (Matt. iii. 4), or linen (Jer. 
xiii. 1). The girdle for the ordinary dress 
was not in the same style as these, which 
were badges of office. The girdle was not 
used distinctively as a badge of office in the 
Church till somewhat late, and long after 
monachism became common. Then it was 
part of the monkish dress. It became a 
part of the vestments for the minister about 
the eighth century. It was used by the 
Bishop as part of his dress about 1202 a.d. 
In the Eastern Church the girdle is worn by 
the Priest and Bishop over the sticharion or 
alb, and the orarium or stole, and confines 
them both. 

Glebe. Land given to the Church for a 
parson’s use and for the use of the Church. 
According to the old English law every 
Church of common right is entitled to house 
and glebe, and the assigning of these at the 
first was of such absolute necessity that 
without them no church could be regularly 
consecrated. (Burn’s Eccl. Law, sub voc.) 
After he is inducted, the freehold of the 
glebe is in the parson, but with these limi¬ 
tations: (1) He may not alienate nor ex¬ 
change but upon the conditions set forth in 
the statutes. (2) He may not commit waste 
by selling wood. If the glebe has a mine on 
it, it may be opened, and also a true and full 
terrier (map) of all the glebe lands in the 
Diocese must be laid up in the Bishop’s reg¬ 
istry. When this country was settled, the 
Church, wherever it was established (as in 
New York and the Provinces south of it), 
obtained its glebes, but after the Revolution 
they were confiscated by the State, as in 
Virginia, or were lost through the weakness 
or carelessness of the Church, so that com¬ 
paratively few parishes now retain their old 
glebes. But since then, to quite a number 
of churches have been given glebes and par¬ 
sonages. It would be well that the Church 
should see to it in every Diocese that each 
parish had a parsonage, and. if possible, 
land attached, as a condition precedent to 
consecrating the church, and, too, that these 
glebes and parsonages were properly secured 
to the Church, and by Canon protected from 
all wastage or loss. In this matter the laity 
are as much interested as the clergy, since 
if properly and generously done it will 
eventually lighten the burden of support and 
will secure the comfort of the rector. 

Gloria. The first word of two of the as¬ 
criptions used in the Prayer-Book, the Gloria 
Patri and the Gloria in Excelsis. 

The Gloria Patri emerges first in the 
Arian controversy (325-384 a.d.). It was 
common in the East, but not in the West, 
and did not at first have the concluding 
clause, “As it was,” etc. It also varied in 
the preposition. St. Basil used the form 
Glory be to the Father and to the Son 







GLORIA 


328 


GOD 


with the Holy Ghost. It ran also “ in the 
Son” and “by the Son.” Basil claims 
Clement of Rome, Irenseus, the Dionysii 
of Rome and of Alexandria, Eusebius of 
Caesarea, Origen, Africanus, Gregory Thau- 
maturgus, Firmilian, and Melito as using 
it in an orthodox sense. This array of 
names proves its Eastern origin and use. 
It usually ran “ Glory be,” but also “ Glory 
and might” was a current form. The West 
received it slowly. The Council of Yaison 
(529 a.d.) urges the use of “As it was in 
the beginning,” not only because the Apos¬ 
tolic See used it, but because the East, Af¬ 
rica, and Italy so used it, and, too, to meet 
Arian blasphemy. Practically, this Gloria 
was from Apostolic times. St. Polycarp’s 
last words were, “With Whom, to Thee 
and the Holy Ghost be glory now and for¬ 
ever. Amen” (169 a.d.). It was a most 
natural doxology, but its theologic bearing 
was not dreamt of till Arianism brought 
it forth to bolster up its specious reasoning, 
and so brought it into prominence. 

The second part dates, probably, from the 
middle of the fifth century. When it was 
used first as the Rubric now permits, after 
each Psalm, cannot be certainly determined, 
but it was at least urged upon the Gallican 
Church as early as 847 a.d., for about that 
date the false decretals contain a forged let¬ 
ter from Jerome to Pope Damasus, saying 
that the Gloria Patri in the East was sung 
at the end of every Psalm. However late 
this use might be, it soon after became the 
rule, and so passed into the English Prayer- 
Book. In the American Prayer-Book the 
rubric orders it only for the end of the 
Psalter for the day, but permits it at the end 
of each Psalm, and of the Venite , the Bene- 
dicite , and the other anthems of the Morn¬ 
ing and Evening Prayer. Use has probably 
made it imperative at the end of the an¬ 
thems. It is an antiphon which marks as 
it were the teaching, that however Jewish 
the history of each Psalm may be, yet its 
contents are spiritually for the whole Church 
throughout all time. 

The Gloria in Excelsis has a similar his¬ 
tory. Springing from the angelic hymn (St. 
Luke ii. 14), it gfew into general use, and 
received additions and variation. In St. 
James’ Liturgy only the angelic versicale 
is used. In nearly our present form it is 
found in the Alexandrine Codex of the 
Scripture after the Psalms, and is entitled 
the Morning Hymn. The only variation is 
in the last clause, which runs thus in the 
Cod. Alex.: “ Thou only art holy, Thou only 
art the Lord Jesus Christ, to the glory of 
God the Father. Amen.” A much more 
variant form is found at the end of the sev¬ 
enth Book of the Apostolic Constitutions, 
which may well have been current about the 
year 300 a.d. This has these words : “ We 
worship Thee through the Great High-Priest, 
Thee who art one God, unbegotten, alone, 
unapproachable,” and also, “ O Lord, only- 
begotten Son Jesus Christ and Ho£y 


Spirit.” It closes as does the Alexandrine 
Version. It is not necessary here to trace 
the later Latin Versions. They all vary 
slightly. The Mozarabic Version omits the 
second, “ Thou that takest away the sins of 
the world, have mercy upon us.” When it 
was used first in the Eucharistic services it 
would be difficult to determine precisely, but 
it was before the fourth Council of Toledo 
(633 a.d.), which in its twelfth Canon re¬ 
plies to objectors. 

The Gloria in Excelsis is not used in the 
Morning or Evening Prayer, but only in 
the Eucharistic service. In the American 
Prayer-Book it is allowed as an alternate 
for the Gloria Patri. 

God. The Being and attributes of God 
is a subject that lies at the foundation of all 
religion, of all effective morality, and of all 
social order and prosperity among mankind. 
We may study this Being and His attri¬ 
butes in these displays or modes of manifes¬ 
tation which He has been pleased to make 
of Himself for our instruction and benefit, 

1, in the Revelation in the Holy Scriptures ; 

2, in the Person of His Son our Lord 
Jesus Christ; and, 3, in Nature. This is 
the order in which we will pursue these 
topics, although in many respects the order 
should be somewhat different. For all per¬ 
sons the works of God are manifest in na¬ 
ture (Rom. i. 19, 20), even to those to whom 
Christ has not been preached and to whom 
no revelation has been given ; and to many 
the Person of Christ and the knowledge of 
God in Him is first made known by such 
human agency as parents and sponsors and 
the ministry of the Church, and for those 
who cannot read this is, and must be, their 
main dependence. But for those who can 
read, the Bible itself is a source and means 
of knowledge which nothing else can replace, 
and whose place nothing else as a substitute 
can fill. 

Turning to the Bible, and taking up its 
disclosures in the chronological or historical 
order, we find God first presented to us as 
the “ Creator of all things.” The narrative 
represents God as existing without begin- 
ningof days, and as having created all things 
out of nothing. The narrative was inci¬ 
dentally intended for a moral and religious 
rather than for any merely scientific pur¬ 
pose. And yet its coincidence with the re¬ 
sults of modern, even the latest scientific, 
researches into the primitive condition of 
this material universe and its progressive 
development or “ evolution,” as some persons 
prefer to call it, is such as to constitute one 
of the most satisfactory proofs of the in¬ 
spiration of its author. And very much the 
same remark should be made with regard to 
all the subsequent history in the Old Testa¬ 
ment. It w 7 as designed rather to illustrate 
the nature of man and the character of God 
and “ God’s dealings with man,” than to 
give such a history of man and of the world 
as men who study history from merely a 
human and scientific point of view would 





GOD 


329 


GOD 


desire. And yet the recent discoveries in 
the valley of the Nile, in Mesopotamia, and 
elsewhere, wherever old monuments have 
been found and all old languages and in¬ 
scriptions deciphered, not only confirm and 
illustrate the Bible statements, but derive 
from these statements such light and illus¬ 
tration as that without the Bible they would 
hardly be intelligible at all. And here again 
we have another wonderful confirmation of 
the facts that the Bible statements were not 
only written at the time they claim to have 
been written, but also that they were writ¬ 
ten by men who were guided in the selection 
of their facts and in the way of presenting 
them by a wisdom that was higher than 
their own. 

But besides the fact of the oneness of God, 
—which excludes all idea of a polytheism,— 
and the representation of God as the Creator 
of all things, the Bible of the Old Testa¬ 
ment seems to have been written with 
special reference to an exhibition of the 
presence of God in the world as the 
chief Cause and Agent of its physical 
affairs,—the course of nature,—and as a 
Moral Governor having regard always to 
the acts and to the moral character of 
men. The Jews knew but very little of 
what is taught in these days as “science;” 
they had not learned to ascribe phenomena 
to the agency of “ laws” and “ nature,” 
“force” and “evolution,” that can work 
without a God. They believed, on the other 
hand, and their Scriptures seemed designed 
to encourage the belief, that God is the chief 
agent, the ever-present cause in them all. 
He “ makes the sun to rise,” He “ sends the 
rain,” and He it is that causes “ the fruitful 
seasons, filling the hearts of His people with 
joy and gladness.” And hence the Scrip¬ 
tures, while precluding any worship of na¬ 
ture and natural phenomena, taught the 
people to see God in all the phenomena of 
nature, and to be grateful to Him for what¬ 
ever should come in the way of the products 
of the earth, of wealth, and of worldly 
prosperity. Nor was God represented as 
only a personal agent, ever at work produc¬ 
ing these results which we now ascribe to 
nature, but He was represented as directing 
them, to some extent, with reference to the 
character of the people who lived in the 
land. It is indeed true that it is said “ He 
maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on 
the good, and sendeth His rain on the just 
and on the unjust.” There is some law and 
uniformity with disregard of character to 
some extent, but yet He is often spoken of 
as sending the caterpillar and the locust, as 
shutting up the windows of heaven so that 
there should be no rain, of sending the frost 
or of withholding the dew, of giving health 
or sending pestilence ; so that there could be 
no occasion or excuse for men’s forgetting 
that God is the One “ from whom cometh 
every good and perfect gift,” all the bless¬ 
ings we enjoy or can hope for. The passage 
just cited from the Sermon on the Mount 


was, of course, of a later date than the 
teachings of the Old Testament. It was after 
men had observed something of the uni¬ 
formity of nature, and seems to have been 
said by way of meeting objections to the 
teaching of the Bible, which may have even 
then grown up out of such observations, and 
of too hasty generalizations from what had 
been observed. We shall recur to this topic 
farther on in this article. 

But the higher object in treating of the 
subject was doubtless the character of God 
as the Moral Governor of the world. Here 
we find impressed upon the Jewish mind the 
idea of sin as something wrong in itself, 
and something offensive to God ; not merely 
as displeasing to Him on personal grounds,— 
if we may so speak of it,—but as offensive 
because it is wrong, unjust, and inconsistent 
with the character of men and the nature of 
things. The Old Testament represents God 
as holy and righteous in all His ways, so 
that if men had offended or displeased Him 
it was because they had done wrong,—had 
done something that was intrinsically wrong, 
something that He had forbidden because it 
was wrong ; and, as a consequence, they felt, 
when they suffered remorse, the loss of hap¬ 
piness and of prosperity, not only that they 
had lost His favor, but that the fault was 
wholly their own. He was, in their estima¬ 
tion, none the less, but rather the more, 
righteous because He was angry at their 
sins and punished them, if not as their de¬ 
merits deserved, yet so as to impress them 
with a sense of the awful and all-destroying 
nature of sin and transgression. So far did 
this go that it seemed to them that there 
could be no extreme of folly and of wicked¬ 
ness beyond that of the “condemnation” of 
God which was implied in any attempt to 
justify themselves, or to proclaim that they 
were innocent while they were suffering from 
what was apparently a chastisement from 
Him (Job xl. 8-10). 

If, therefore, there is any one thing which 
is set forward in the Old Testament with 
more emphasis and variety of iteration than 
any other as exhibiting the attributes of 
God, after representing Him as Creator, it 
would seem to be the presentation of His 
character as Moral Governor. Even in na¬ 
ture, the inanimate world, He is represented 
as “ordering all things for good to them 
that love Him,” so far as it is possible with¬ 
out destroying all sense of uniformity and 
ground of dependence on the constitution of 
nature; without, in short, taking away all 
ground and basis for scientific knowledge. 
But in the moral world there is no such limit 
or necessity for limitation. In the heart 
and consciousness of each, one God can deal 
with justice and in accordance with the ends 
of the individual himself. He can send re¬ 
morse or can give relief,—a sense and as¬ 
surance of forgiveness and favor as to Him 
shall seem best for the spiritual good of 
His creatures. And if we are shown that 
God can and does guide His faithful servants 


i 




GOD 


330 


GOD 


with special inward manifestations of His 
will, guiding them to the thing they should 
do if they would do His will, we see, also, 
that He can overrule the acts and purposes 
of the wicked to accomplish His designs. 
We see many examples of this in the Old 
Testament. The envy of Joseph’s brethren 
was made by the overruling providence of 
God the means of providing for the posterity 
of Jacob in Egypt. The obstinacy and cru¬ 
elty of Pharaoh were used as a means of 
uniting the chosen people and making so 
strong their determination to go where alone 
they could be settled, as a means of accom¬ 
plishing the far-off purpose of the birth in 
Bethlehem. But we have in the words of 
the Prophet Isaiah the fullest disclosure of 
this attribute of God. The Jews had greatly 
departed from God, and He warns them, 
“ What will ye do in the day of visitation, 
and in the desolation that shall come upon 
you?” Then He refers to the King of As¬ 
syria, and says, “ I will send him against a 
hypocritical nation, and against the people 
of My wrath. . . . Howbeit he meaneth 
not so, neither doth his heart think so ; but 
it is in his heart to destroy and cut off na¬ 
tions not a few” (Is. x. 3-8). 

In all the Old Testament the justice of 
God is made more conspicuous than His 
love and compassion, though these latter 
attributes are by no means overlooked and 
concealed. It was necessary for man to feel 
first and to learn first to regard God as just— 
a Being who would by no means allow the 
guilty to go unpunished—before they would 
appreciate His mercy and forbearance, when 
in the exercise of this love He should show 
these favors to men. 

Another view of God’s character is dis¬ 
closed in the Old Testament. Although 
represented as perfectly holy, He is repre¬ 
sented as exercising forbearance towards 
some of the evil institutions of man, so that 
the deeper principles of his moral govern¬ 
ment might take a deeper root and work a 
more complete renovation of human nature. 
Of this we see illustrations in His dealings 
with two of the institutions that have 
prevailed so extensively in human history, 
as to show their deep seat in the passions 
and propensities of the human heart. Hu¬ 
man slavery had existed in some form in 
nearly, if not quite every, branch of the 
human family before history began, or 
historic records and monuments were left 
to show what transpires in the earliest 
ages of man’s existence. Another great 
evil had an early origin, and has shown 
great tenacity in its grasp upon society,— 
polygamy. It is usually attended with easy 
divorce, on the part of the husband at least. 
The whole tenor of the Jewish Dispensation 
and legislation is such as to show that in 
God’s esteem these institutions are both 
wrong and of evil tendency. But while 
prohibiting peremptorily idolatry and the 
unbelief in other gods than the one eternal 
Jehovah, and such gross sins as intemper¬ 


ance and adultery, God did tolerate and 
allow slavery and easy divorce among His 
ancient covenant people. He had taught 
principles and instituted a spiritual disci¬ 
pline that would inevitably outroot them in 
the course of time,—principles and a disci¬ 
pline that would lead the people to see and 
realize that they were evil and wrong, and 
abandon or abolish them voluntarily. Easy 
divorce and potygamy were peremptorily 
prohibited in the Christian Dispensation; 
and we have seen only in these latter days 
the sentiment of a Christian world making 
its last struggles against the other. 

In all this God seems to have acted upon L 
the policy which we often express in the 
words “ we must take men as we find them,” 
adding thereto the other principle without 
which the one just stated becomes a means 
of demoralization and may be used as a 
justification of anything however bad,— 
namely, that while we must take them as 
we find them, we must also adopt our policy 
and method of dealing with them so as to 
make them, in due time, what we would 
have them to be. This policy adopted and 
persisted in as the dealings of God with 
man as manifested in both Testaments, 
shows what was so explicitly affirmed of 
our Lord in the New Testament, “ He knew 
what was in man.” Man cannot be made 
holy off-hand, nor by miracle, nor by God’s 
working alone in his nature; only by man’s 
own efforts, each one for himself co-operat¬ 
ing with the Divine influences. To this end 
God has revealed truths and doctrines for 
them. He has commanded duties and He 
has instituted ordinances, in the observance 
of which they would grow in grace and in 
conformity to the will of God. 

But in the New Testament we have a 
fuller exhibition of the attributes of God, 
and more especially of His love. St. John 
says, “ The Law came by Moses,—grace and 
truth came by Jesus Christ” (ch. i. 17), 
and, more fully, “ God so loved the world, 
that He gave His only-begotten Son, that 
whosoever believeth in Him should not per¬ 
ish, but have everlasting life” (iii. 16). 

The mystery of the Incarnation no finite 
mind may expect to fully understand. But 
this is a declaration of our Lord to His dis¬ 
ciples that is so fully to our present pur¬ 
pose, that it must form the basis for the 
teaching upon this part of our subject. In 
the fourteenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel 
our Lord saith, “ Let not your heart be 
troubled ; ye believe in God, believe also in 
Me.” These words were uttered in view of 
His departure from them by His crucifixion, 
and when their faith would be subjected 
thereby to the severest test. Our Lord 
assumes their abiding and unquenchable 
faith in God the Father, and encourages 
them to continue to have faith in Him, not¬ 
withstanding the adverse events about to 
occur. But Philip seems to have had some 
doubt about the Father as well, and said to 
the Lord, “ Show us the Father and it 





GOD 


331 


GOD 


sufficeth us.” If we could only see God it 
would all be well. We could feel sure that 
however adverse the indications for the fu¬ 
ture, all would come out right in the end. 
Our Lord’s reply is worthy of special notice. 
“Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so 
long time with you, and yet hast thou not 
known Me, Philip ? He that hath seen Me 
hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou 
then, Show us the Father ? Believest thou 
not that I am in the Father and the Father 
in me ? The words that I speak unto you, 
I speak not of Myself: but the Father that 
dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works. Be¬ 
lieve Me that I am in the Father, and the 
Father in Me.” 

As we have said, the mystery of the In¬ 
carnation no one can pretend to understand 
and comprehend so as to say how these 
things maybe; but still we have the full¬ 
est and most emphatic assurance that we 
may take our Lord, His words, and His 
works, as the fullest exhibition of the attri¬ 
butes of God that we can possibly have. 
God we cannot see. He is like the wind; it 
bloweth where it listeth and we hear the sound 
thereof, but the wind itself we cannot see. 
We look at the trees and the grain bowing, 
and we know that the wind is blowing. And 
so in nature, the more closely we scan its 
phenomena and study into its secret pro¬ 
cesses, the more surely we see that God is 
there, although Him we see not nor can see. 
Philip, therefore, while asking a perfectly 
natural question, must be regarded as hav¬ 
ing asked a privilege that cannot be granted 
in the sense in which he hoped it might be, 
and in which the skeptic and unbelieving 
mind is always asking to have God’s exist¬ 
ence and presence made manifest to him. 
But for all practical purposes of faith, of 
holy living, he that hath seen the Son hath 
seen the Father also. For the Father 
was in the Son, spake by Him, acted in Him, 
and was in Him reconciling the world unto 
Himself (2 Cor. v. 19). 

For all the purposes of faith, of obedience, 
of love, of trust, it sufficeth us, therefore, to 
know and study the words of Christ, the 
Son of God. We have, then, several groups 
of works and words that may be considered 
as each teaching something of the attributes 
of God. We may take the miracles of (1) 
turning the water into wine (St. John ii. 6 
sq.), (2) that of feeding the multitudes by a 
miraculous increase of the loaves and fishes 
(St. Matt. xiv. 17; xv. 34; xvi. 9, 10; St. 
Mark vi. 52; St. John vi. 9 s$\); (3) that of 
stilling the waves (St. Matt. viii. 23-27 ; St. 
Mark iv. 39), as showing His presence in 
and power over the phenomena of nature as 
taught in the Old Testament. These miracles 
are enough to show that He can and does, in 
fact, so control the elements and tbe phenom¬ 
ena of nature that He can give fruitful sea¬ 
sons and avert the pestilence when it pleases 
Him so to do; enough to show that we can 
place the most implicit confidence in Him in 
regard to all our worldly affairs, and go on in 


the way of duty which He has laid down,— 
not in the way we may have chosen as that 
of duty regardless of His commands,—and 
leave results to Him. If we turn to con¬ 
sider another group of the miracles, we find 
another truth equally assuring to our faith. 
We refer to the miracles of healing. Disease 
and infirmity were then, as they are now, 
when rightly considered, regarded as results 
of the fall of man and the transgressions of 
God’s laws; although, as our Lord has 
taught us, we must not in all cases consider 
disease or misfortune as a result of some 
transgression by the sufferer. We inherit 
the consequences of the sins of our ancestors, 
and often the child is sickly, blind, dumb, 
or idiotic because of inherited disease from 
some ancestral sin. Now, our Lord came 
especially to be a Divine deliverer from sin 
and its consequences. Hence in these mira¬ 
cles of healing He showed His power to do 
what He claimed to have come into the world 
to do. Not only could He forgive sins and 
restore peace to the troubled conscience, but 
He wrought miracles expressly, as He Him¬ 
self assures us, that we might know that the 
Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive 
sins (St. Matt. ix. 6; St. Mark ii. 10; St. 
Luke v. 24), and we read, “the multitudes 
saw it and glorified God that He had given 
such power unto men,” or perhaps we might 
render it, “ such power to be exercised among 
men.” 

Another group of miracles, “ the casting 
out of devils,” raises a question which we 
need not discuss. There is a tendency in 
modern times to regard these “ possessions” 
as only forms of epilepsy or insanity. But 
in any view, their cure was a manifestation 
of God’s power over all the influences of 
evil to which man may be subjected, of what¬ 
ever nature they may be. And, finally, in 
the raising of the dead, of which we have 
several examples, we have a manifestation 
of His power to deliver us from all the evil 
that men can do to our bodies, even from 
the embrace and sleep of death. And His 
own resurrection, after His crucifixion and 
sleep of three days in the grave, carries this 
exhibition of His powers and purpose to the 
very highest point,—a manifestation of self- 
inherent powers of the highest kind, of a 
power that makes all things else powerless 
in the comparison. 

As a manifestation of God’s love for 
man, though a most conspicuous and im¬ 
portant part of our Lord’s acts, we shall 
say but little. The whole is summed up in 
the words of St. John (iii. 16), “ God so 
loved the world that He gave His only- 
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in 
Him should not perish, but have everlasting 
life.” And the intensity of this love and 
what it cost to exercise it and make it ef¬ 
fectual for man is shown in the history of 
the betrayal, the agony of Gethsemane, the 
shame of the Judgment Hall, and the ig¬ 
nominy and suffering of Calvary. These 
are enough to show that there is nothing 





GOD 


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that Wisdom can invent, Love suggest, or 
Power execute that God will not do for the 
welfare and salvation of man. They show, 
indeed, as does also the whole tenor of Scrip¬ 
ture, that there is something that man must 
do himself and for himself, or God can do 
nothing for him ; but they show that there 
is nothing that can be done that God will 
not do (1) to guide us in the right way if 
we will consent to be guided by Him ; (2) 
to save us from pain if we will do what we 
can to avoid the sin that brings pain and 
woe to men ; (3) to deliver us from the pun¬ 
ishment which we deserve, if we will only 
repent of the evil ways and deeds that have 
made us deserving of punishment; and (4) 
to raise us to a higher life in this world and 
to eternal life in the next if we will only 
accept the guidance which He has provided 
for us in His Church,—guidance by the 
Holy Spirit within and guidance by His 
Word in our hands; guidance by His min¬ 
istry, with whom He has promised to be 
always, even unto the end of the world, and 
the helps of sacraments, holy meditations, 
prayer and worship, fellowship and co¬ 
operating sympathy which come from mem¬ 
bership in His Church, which is His Body 
and organized means of regenerating the 
world, when we become co-workers and 
fellow-helpers with Him in bringing men to 
see the truth and to be transformed and con¬ 
formed to His glorious image and spotless 
character. 

But there is a disposition in these latter 
days to doubt or deny the miracles. With¬ 
out the miracles Christ could be no mani¬ 
festation of God. A wise teacher and a 
good, earnest friend He might indeed be, 
but without the miracles He could be no 
manifestation of the presence and attributes 
of God. We have the Gospels written at 
the time and by the men who saw Him in 
person, heard His words, words which He 
spake as never man spake (St. John vii. 46), 
—this was the admission of His enemies,— 
and did works no man could do except God 
were with him (St. John iii. 2), which was 
the admission of a doubter. It was indeed 
a credulous and an uncritical age, in which 
the belief in miracles and impostures of all 
kinds was prevalent, but there was some¬ 
thing about our Lord’s miracles that took 
them out of the common run of extraordi¬ 
nary and unexplainable acts. Not all the 
persons who saw or knew of His miracles 
were inclined to believe in Him or in them. 
His miracles were peculiar and had a mean¬ 
ing that would not allow them to pass un¬ 
noticed or unchallenged. If they were true, 
He was God, the very Lord of heaven and 
of earth, and all must obey Him or perish 
beneath His displeasure. There was no 
middle ground and no possibility of com¬ 
promise in the case. All persons saw and 
felt the emergency and the necessity of 
giving heed to what was being done. They 
saw that if what He said was true, and if 
the works He performed were really per¬ 


formed, there could be no doubting that His 
words were true. They saw that not only 
were they great sinners and in danger of 
God’s wrath, but they feared that if they 
let Him alone and allowed Him to go on in 
the performance of such works, He would 
draw all the people after Him, and “ the 
Romans would come and take away their 
place and nation” (St. John ix. 48). They saw 
the full import of His miracles,—they fore¬ 
saw all that they portended,—and they jeal¬ 
ously scrutinized them. When our Lord 
had given sight to one born blind, “ the 
neighbors and they which had known him 
that had been healed” came together to in¬ 
quire into the miracle. They could not 
deny it, nor could they explain it. The 
Pharisees accused Him of breaking the Sab¬ 
bath, and the Jews regarded Him as a 
“sinner,” and threatened to cast both Jesus 
and the man out of the synagogue. But 
after the closest scrutiny they could not 
deny the miracle, and the young man, 
though he could not tell how it was done, 
insisted that “since the world began it was 
not heard that any mere man opened the 
eyes of one that had been born blind.” 
Miracles and wonders doubtless had been 
wrought in great profusion, but the opening 
of the eyes of one that had been born blind, 
by a mere man, had never been heard of,— 
“therefore, if this man were not of God, 
He could do no such thing” (St. John ix. 33). 
They could not answer Him on this point, 
except by saying, “ Thou was altogether 
born in sins, and dost thou presume to dic¬ 
tate to us ? and they cast him out.” 

We have another notable and very instruc¬ 
tive instance in the Acts of the Apostles (ch. 
iii.). SS. Peter and John had healed a man 
that was lame from his birth ; the matter 
came before the great Council—the Sanhe¬ 
drin—for investigation. After all that could 
be done by way of scrutiny and with the most 
earnest desire to deny the miracle if they 
could, they were at a loss what to do; but 
they admitted “ that indeed a notable mir¬ 
acle had been wrought is manifest to all 
them that dwelt in Jerusalem, and we can¬ 
not deny it” (Acts iv. 16). But they clearly 
foresaw the consequences of these miracles, 
in the influence they would exert on the 
opinions and actions of the people. 

We have proof, however, that the mir¬ 
acles were wrought by our Lord and His 
Apostles outside of, and totally independent 
of, the Holy Scriptures. We have in the 
remains of the first century of Christianity 
fragments of the works that were written 
by the enemies of Christianity. The Chris¬ 
tian writers claimed miracles, and therefore 
did not deny that miracles had been 
wrought. Their line of argument was to 
deny that they were proof of the Divine 
presence and powers of Christ. 

Let us examine for a moment the one 
great miracle,—the Resurrection of our 
Lord. That the Apostles and the hundreds 
of others who had seen him after His resur- 







GOD 


333 


GOD 


rection believed in its occurrence admits of 
no doubt. But did the unbelievers deny the 
fact ? Let us look into the Scriptures them¬ 
selves and see how they treated the matter. 
First we have them betraying their fear 
that He would rise. As soon as they were 
sure that He was dead they went unto 
Pilate and said, “ Sir, we remember that 
that deceiver said while He was yet alive, 
After three days I will arise again” (St. Matt, 
xxvii. 63). And they secured a guard to 
protect the tomb “ lest His disciples come by 
night and steal Him away and say that He 
is risen.” But after the resurrection we do 
not find them denying or attempting to deny 
the fact. But they do persuade the soldiers 
to lie about it; they gave them large money 
to say “that His disciples had come by night 
and stole Him away” (St. Matt, xxviii. 12, 
13). Again, after the great forty days, the 
matter came up once more for investigation 
and scrutiny. Our Lord had appeared on 
several occasions after His resurrection. 
He had even ascended into heaven in the 
presence of a great multitude ; the lie of the 
soldiers had proved ineffectual; the Apostles 
and other believers proclaimed the fact, and 
“ the authorities,” who saw that for them 
everything for this world and for the next 
was at stake, if the Gospel were true and 
should be believed, were stimulated to their 
utmost. Denial did not occur to them as 
possible, that was out of the question. And 
so that it should spread no farther among 
the people they straitly threatened the 
Apostles. They called the Apostles Peter 
and John, and commanded them not to speak 
or teach at all in the name of Jesus or 
about His doctrine and resurrection (Acts 
iv. 17 sq.). But the Apostles still continued 
with great power to give witness to the 
resurrection. But there was no denial or 
attempt, so far as we are informed, at denial, 
and there and then, the very best thing possi¬ 
ble, if possible at all,—the denial of the fact 
of the miracles, and of the greatest of them 
all—the Resurrection—the enemies of the 
Gospel did not venture to do. The miracles 
were, indeed, “ notable,” known to all men, 
and they as they confessed could not deny it. 

What occurred in the Apostolic age, and 
is recorded for us in Holy Scripture, was con¬ 
tinued for several centuries, until unbe¬ 
lievers outside the Church had ceased to 
exist. We have many fragments—no whole 
treatise—of these deniers and unbelievers ; 
fragments preserved in the writings of the 
Christians who wrote to answer the objec¬ 
tions and vindicate Christianity from their 
attacks and objections. But nowhere and 
never does there appear a denial of the fact 
that the miracles were wrought as repre¬ 
sented and claimed in the Gospels. We cite 
but one example out of many and show how 
the apologists treated this branch of their 
subject. We cite what is known as “The 
Recognitions of Clement.” It is a work of 
an early date, but of unknown authorship. It 
was written in Greek, but soon was trans¬ 


lated into Latin, and was, perhaps, more 
extensively read and more widely influential 
in the earliest centuries than any other 
book. It purports to give an account of St. 
Peter as preaching the Gospel and meeting 
the objections of unbelievers and adver¬ 
saries. The account purports to have been 
given by the Clement who is spoken of by 
St. Paul (Phil. iv. 3), and who afterwards 
became the first Bishop of Rome. Of course 
it is a picture, and nobody supposes it to have 
been intended to be anything else. It was 
intended to represent St. Peter as he was 
then understood to have been as a preacher 
of the Gospel,—as a modern novelist writes 
his work of fiction to illustrate parts of his¬ 
tory,—and the way and the extent to which 
it was received and the estimation in which 
it was held at that early period is a sure 
proof of its trustworthiness in the matter for 
which we cite it; that is, we do not suppose 
that any such scene occurred or that the 
very words were actually used by St. Peter, 
but only that such was the way in which it 
was understood at the time that he would 
have treated the subject. And it was on 
the whole the way in which the apologists 
of that day did treat it. 

One Nicetas asks St. Peter how he was to 
discriminate the true miracle from the false ; 
how to distinguish between those wrought 
by our Lord and His Apostles and those 
that were wrought by such persons as Simon 
Magus ; and why he should believe Chris¬ 
tianity on account of the miracles and not 
accede to the claims of the impostors. St. 
Peter says, as his starting-point, that this is 
an instinct or insight in all good men, who 
want to distinguish between truth and false¬ 
hood, right or wrong, which enables them 
to do so, and that this applies to the true and 
the false miracles as well as to anything 
else (ch. iii.). But often, he says, the false 
miracles are senseless and do no good to 
anybody, such as “showing statues walking, 
dogs of brass or stone barking, mountains 
dancing, of flying through the air, and such 
like things.” But “ those miracles which 
were wrought by the good One are directed 
to the benefit of men, such as those performed 
by our dear Lord, who gave sight to the 
blind and hearing to the deaf, raised up the 
feeble and the lame, and drove away sickness, 
cast out demons and raised the dead, and 
did such others like things as you see we do” 
(ch. ix.). Here is no intimation of a doubt 
that the miracles were performed, but only 
a question as to the proper view or explana¬ 
tion of them, which were claimed to have 
been performed by persons who had no 
divine mission and were laboring to no good 
end. But it is claimed that the miracles 
if they were indeed wrought as claimed are 
no proof of the truth of Christianity. Says 
Matthew Arnold, “ I do not see how the 
fact that I could perform the miracle of con¬ 
verting the pen with which I am writing 
into paper would prove the truth of what I 
am writing.” But we may answer, it de- 




GOD 


334 


GOD 


ends very much on what you are writing, 
f you are saying that pens can be converted 
into paper, and claiming that you can per¬ 
form the miracle of so transforming them, 
the act of so transforming your pen into 
paper would be the best proof you could give 
of the truth of what you are teaching, and 
of your power to do what you claim to be 
able to do. So precisely with our Lord and 
His miracjes. He claimed to be the Saviour 
of the world and the Deliverer of men. He 
wrought miracles of deliverance and salva¬ 
tion. He promised to raise men from death 
and the grave, and He not only raised others 
but He raised Himself. His miracles might 
not prove a truth of Mathematics or of Nat¬ 
ural Science. But they did prove Him to 
be what He claimed to be, a Saviour, the 
Saviour of men ; “ mighty” and able to 
save. They showed Him to be God, as doing 
that which God alone can do, thus giving 
us our highest ideal of perfect or infinite wis¬ 
dom and power, and of infinite goodness as 
well. Considering, then, our Lord as an 
incarnation of God, the infinite and Eternal 
Being, who is without being, or days, or 
end of years, to whom all things are pres¬ 
ent and all thoughts are known, the eternal 
and One who because of His very nature as 
infinite and eternal can speak in the pres¬ 
ent tense of whatever was, is, or is to come, 
in relation to men and the events of time, 
we have a manifestation of God, one in 
whom dwelt “all the fullness of God,” a 
complete manifestation of His character and 
attributes. 

But in these latter days there are those 
who doubt whether the miracles were per¬ 
formed, and who in consequence would re¬ 
duce our Lord to be a mere man. For 
without the miracles, and especially the 
greatest,—the Incarnation and the Insur¬ 
rection,—we have in Him no such manifes¬ 
tation of the Divine nature and attributes as 
will enable us to accept them without ques¬ 
tion and verification by comparison with 
something else. If God was in Him, spake 
in His words and acted in His acts, then we 
have God by these words and acts as we 
know any one of our fellow-men by what he 
says and does. Words and acts manifest 
the mind, the man that is in the body. The 
attitude of men towards the miracles in these 
latter days is, however, reversed from what 
it was at first. Our Lord could say, “ believe 
Me for the very work’s sake.” He made mir¬ 
acles the ground of faith and of belief, and on 
this ground the Apostles and first preachers 
of Christianity challenged the belief of those 
whom they addressed, and by so doing they 
converted the world to Christ and Chris¬ 
tianity. But in these days men doubt the 
miracles, and there is an important sense in 
which they believe not Christianity for the 
sake of the miracles, but the miracles (if 
they believe them at all) for the sake of 
Christianity. That is, Christianity so com¬ 
mends itself to our judgments, and has 
wrought such good in the world, that we 


are ready to regard it as having had an ori¬ 
gin that is above anything that is merely 
human, and as worthy of a Divine origin 
and the interposition of God by miracles. 
Nothing but the worthiness of the occasion 
can induce us to believe in any such extraor¬ 
dinary occurrences. 

Nor can it be doubted that the great 
amount of attention that has been given to 
the natural sciences has done much to render 
men skeptical in regard to the reality and 
the possibility of miracles, and to make them 
disinclined to believe that any have been 
wrought. A deeper view of nature will be 
sure to dispel this illusion. There is no com¬ 
prehending nature without the recognition 
of God as a miracle-worker. This world 
and all the material universe, so far as we 
know it, is undergoing a change,—is in pro¬ 
cess of evolution or development, which 
must have begun in time, and which, there¬ 
fore, points to a time when it was not. If 
even matter existed then, it was in a diffused 
gaseous state, without chemical combina¬ 
tions or organizations, and the masses that 
now constitute the sun and stars, our earth 
and its moon included, sustained no such 
relation to each other as they do now, and 
have sustained for a few millions of years 
past. Who or what was before this? It 
may, indeed, be a piece of mechanism, like 
a watch which now runs of itself. But there 
was a time when the brass, steel, and gold of 
the watch did not exist in their present rela¬ 
tion, and even now it is no example of per¬ 
petual motion. The watch runs and keeps 
time only as it is wound up by a power that 
is not a mere piece of mechanism,—some¬ 
thing totally unlike mechanism,—by some 
intelligent person. Evolution—a theory that 
is now in great favor—is but a process. It 
is no adequate explanation of anything. It 
had a beginning; it must come to an end. 
It has a subject-matter to work upon that 
it did not create and cannot destroy. It had 
a beginning which it did not originate, and 
it is under a law which it did not ordain, and 
it will come to an end, when whatever is eter¬ 
nal in its nature will continue on as though 
evolution had never begun ; to an end when 
all that is in its course or compass must 
either be wound up again like a watch or 
stand still in an endless condemnation of 
matter forever. But with God as its Author 
and Creator of its subject-matter, with His 
will as its limit and its law, and His purpose 
as the explanation of whatever has been, 
now is, or shall be in the course of mundane 
affairs, all is intelligible. But God as the 
Beginner was a miracle-worker, and every 
interposition of His power to produce a new 
order of things or to originate a new era is a 
miracle. Of such interventions we can men¬ 
tion several that no scientific man can doubt. 
There was a beginning of chemical action, 
of condensation, and of motion. At a time 
not far in the past, comparatively, there was 
another interposition, when some of the ele¬ 
ments became living matter,—plants and ani- 




GOD 


335 


GOD 


mals,—with the hitherto unknown phenom¬ 
ena of growth and reproduction of decay and 
death. And so, too, all researches have thus 
far failed to find any way to account for the 
introduction of the new species of plants and 
animals which have followed each other in 
the successions of geological time, until at 
last, and quite recently, man made his ap¬ 
pearance, without special Divine interposi¬ 
tion in each case. In the present state of our 
scientific knowledge they are as undeniable as 
they are unexplainable without a recognition 
of Divine interposition,—which is as mirac¬ 
ulous in its nature as the introduction of 
Christianity, including the Incarnation and 
the Resurrection with all the miracles that 
are ascribed to our Lord. Science justifies 
our belief in the miracles of Revelation. This 
clear justification must be urged, since great 
efforts are made to find a theory of evolution 
or development that shall explain all with¬ 
out a recognition of Divine power. And 
thus nature and its interpreted science justi¬ 
fies and vindicates our acceptance of the 
Bible as the Word of God, —as a manifesta¬ 
tion of His nature and attributes. 

Having once proved from mere inanimate 
nature, from the nature of matter that there 
must have been, and must still be, something 
that is above nature, something that is 
spiritual in its nature, nay, something that 
is a Personal Agent and Creator, the phe¬ 
nomena of the material universe become a 
manifestation of the attributes and will of 
God. Not only does nature, considered as 
the work of His hands, show His wisdom 
in planning it and His power and omni¬ 
presence in executing His plans and 
in carrying on its course of events, its 
evolutions, but its phenomena everywhere 
show His purpose as well as by the prin¬ 
ciple of what we call final causes. Thus 
a watch or any other piece of mechanism 
shows not only the skill and physical 
strength of the maker, but it shows also that 
he had a purpose, a design, a final cause in 
planning and making the mechanism. As 
we consider the movements of the hands 
and study its internal structure, we cannot 
doubt that the maker of a watch designed 
that by the continuance and regularity of 
its movements it should indicate the pas¬ 
sage of time as truly as the sun and the 
stars indicate the same fact by their mo¬ 
tions, and far more conveniently for our 
use. In this view, any fact or phenomena 
of nature, every law or truth of science, is 
an expression of God’s will and purpose in 
nature, as truly as any fact of sacred history 
and any command of duty is an indication 
of His will and purpose in history and in 
the affairs of man. Whatever occurs in 
nature or in history, in the phenomena of 
the natural world or in the life of man, is 
indicative of the way in w T hich He would 
have things done by man, and those crea¬ 
tures of His hand who can understand His 
laws and choose for themselves what they 
will do, and whether they will do right or 


wrong. Even whatever is painful and ad¬ 
verse to our wishes must be regarded as a 
proof of those remedial measures by which 
He would either prevent wrong-doing or 
obviate its evil consequences. Hence not 
only the more striking and remarkable indi¬ 
cations of design and adaptation of means 
to ends, but the more uniform and regular 
of natural phenomena are indications of,the 
way in which He would have things done, 
and proofs of His wisdom and power. And 
the more perfectly regular and uniform 
they are, the better do they indicate His 
wisdom and power, just as in human works 
the perfection of the machinery and the 
completeness and the certainty with which 
it accomplishes what it was designed for, 
the greater skill does it show in the designer 
and maker of the machine. The law of 
gravity explains God’s will in the uni¬ 
verse of matter as truly as the law of love 
expresses that will in the world of social 
being, and the fact that they fall—atoms 
and masses—proves His presence and agency 
as truly, though not as strikingly, as the 
miracles that are recorded in the New Tes¬ 
tament. It is worthy of note that in na¬ 
ture the two attributes of wisdom and power 
are more conspicuously manifested. Love, 
benevolence, or goodness, are indeed the 
predominance of happiness over misery and 
suffering. But the extent and amount of 
suffering has led some persons to doubt 
whether nature alone, and by itself, shows 
that His goodness or love is infinite, or with¬ 
out limit, or admixture of some feeling of a 
different nature. “ We cannot,” say the 
objectors, “ see why there should be suffer¬ 
ing at all, or if any, why there should be so 
much, or why it should be seen so often when 
there can be no offense in the sufferer to oc¬ 
casion it, nor any apparent benefit to make 
it a means of greater happiness.” But we 
must remember that we can at best under¬ 
stand the matter only imperfectly; and 
especially that, to judge of God’s dealings 
and of His works as indicative of His attri¬ 
butes, we must not neglect to take into ac¬ 
count what He has done by way of Revela¬ 
tion, and especially by sending His Son to 
be a way and a means of salvation. This is 
a. part of His work, and is necessary to a 
full manifestation of His attributes of good¬ 
ness, love, and mercy, and they do manifest 
them as no other acts of His have done or 
can do. 

The “New Philosophy,” as it is some¬ 
times called, has helped our natural theology 
in several ways. While there are, indeed, 
some men of peculiarly constituted minds 
who have taken extreme views and thought 
that nature was comprehensible without 
God, the general tendency has been—and 
the final result will be—to give greater dis¬ 
tinction and sharper outlines to the facts and 
principles of scenes which make the presence 
and agency of God more manifest and in¬ 
capable of doubt or denial than it was before. 
We know now more precisely what we can 






GOD 


336 


GOD 


ascribe to matter and the forces of nature, 
and just where the agency of God comes in, 
than we did a few years ago. He must have 
begun the present “ evolution,” and He must 
have interposed specially and by way of 
miracle many times since ; and even the 
“forces of nature,” to which as to second 
causes we are accustomed to ascribe the phe¬ 
nomena of nature, are seen to be nothing 
without Him. We have seen that “evolu¬ 
tion” cannot be eternal, and a world of mere 
matter without God could no more go on 
forever through a series of successive evolu¬ 
tions than a watch could run forever with¬ 
out being repeatedly wound up. 

We have alluded to the flood of light the 
recent attainments in science have thrown 
upon the concise and rather obscure state¬ 
ments in the first chapter of Genesis. But 
there are many other statements and pro¬ 
found principles in the Bible which these 
illustrate, and to which they give a new 
meaning or a fullness of meaning which had 
not before been recognized. We have been 
accustomed to regard God’s action in nature 
as ending on the “ sixth day.” But our 
Lord said, “ My Father worketh hitherto, 
and I work (St. John v. 17). Hitherto, “ until 
now,” God worked in creating, until the 
appearance of man. He worked in history 
and in providence from this creation until the 
birth of Christ, and He in Christ works 
now, and has wrought ever since the Incar¬ 
nation, “ in the regeneration” (St. Matt. xix. 
18). In this stage of His work, and to ac¬ 
complish it, the Word became incarnate, 
suffered on the Cross, instituted His Church, 
with its Worship and Sacraments, its Min¬ 
istry and Discipline, and for this He sent the 
Holy Ghost to lead His disciples and His 
people “unto all truth,”and for this and by 
way of carrying it on, He from that day to 
this has called and sent holy men as min¬ 
isters, evangelists, and missionaries of His 
word. (Eph. iv. 12, 13.) Again, the stu¬ 
dents of nature and natural science claim to 
have found as one of God’s Laws what they 
call “the struggle for life, with survival 
of the fittest.” In view of this Law, any¬ 
thing in nature is considered as having a 
desire to prolong its existence, and laboring 
under the necessity, in order to do so, of 
continued exertion and of avoiding the ene¬ 
mies which otherwise would terminate its 
existence. And if we suppose any change 
in circumstances or environment, the one 
that has the greatest capacity or willingness 
to adapt itself to the new conditions is most 
likely to live, is “fittest to survive” under 
the circumstances. And in both these ways, 
it is held, the natural species are undergoing 
changes which are, on the whole, with few 
exceptions, in the direction of improvement 
and advance towards a higher type or a 
higher mode of life. In this way it is held 
that one branch of the human family, by 
migrations from the original centres and en¬ 
countering on its way new environments and 
new climates, has become red like the Mon¬ 


golians, another-black like the negroes, while 
in Europe the race has advanced in stature, 
size of brain, and other physical conditions 
which give opportunity for a higher civili¬ 
zation. Now our Lord in the Sermon on 
the Mount announced this law as pertaining 
to nations, religions, and institutions, of so¬ 
ciety and of civilization, under the symbol of 
trees : good trees bringing forth good fruit, 
and bad trees that cannot bring forth good 
fruit, but are hewn down and cast into the fire 
(St. Matt. vii.). This is but history. What¬ 
ever is doing the will of God and is accom¬ 
plishing His purposes is spared, and is a suc¬ 
cess so long as it is needed and does His work. 
But success does not always imply godliness. 
The worst of men and the most ferocious of 
tyrants have sometimes been successful. 
But they were executing the will of God 
upon those who were not doing His will or 
regardful of His laws. They are made to 
clear away the obstacles to the accomplish¬ 
ment of His plans, to bury the dead, remove 
the offal, and consign to oblivion the insti¬ 
tutions of evil. Our Lord could not have 
been betrayed and crucified—as it was fore¬ 
told He should be, and as it was needful 
for the shedding of His most precious blood 
that taketh away the sin of the world—if 
there had not been a heartless traitor and a 
still more heartless rabble to execute the 
purpose. It is doubtful whether the early 
converts to Christianity would have been 
sufficiently impressed with the nature and 
value of Christianity if it had not been for 
the violence of its persecutors, giving occa¬ 
sion for confession and for martyrdom. 
Judaism and the Jewish nation lasted as 
long as it and they were preparing for the 
coming of Christ. But when they failed 
to do God’s work they became an evil tree, 
—and the Komans, who certainly were no 
better in most respects than the Jews, did 
God’s work, drove them from their homes 
and destroyed their city. They live, al¬ 
though scattered, despised, and persecuted, 
because they are doing one part of God’s 
work as no other people or agency could do 
it. 

But the other people of that age who did 
not accept the Gospel have passed away, and 
all their religious and their political institu¬ 
tions, their philosophies, and whatever else 
was a means of influencing the lives of men. 
Within a few centuries after the introduc¬ 
tion of Christianity there were no heathen 
or unconverted peoples or families within the 
domain of what was then the civilized world. 
Fix your attention upon any family, village, 
or neighborhood of people as it was then, and 
ask yourself what has become of their pos¬ 
terity, and you will find that many were con¬ 
verted and brought into the Church, and the 
rest of them, if indeed any were not con¬ 
verted, became extinct, leaving neither name 
nor descendants. So with doctrines, usages, 
and institutions within the Church, whether 
good or bad, they come in when there is oc¬ 
casion for them or work for them to do, 







GOD 


337 


GOSPELS 


stay as long as they are needed for their 
work, and thkt is forever if they are intrin¬ 
sically good, but if they are or become bad, 
they are like the evil tree that no longer 
bringing forth good fruit, is cut down and 
cast into the fire. The matter is sometimes 
treated as though our Lord in these words 
was giving a test for the characters of men. 
But this can hardly have been His purpose. 
The context clearly shows-that He had some¬ 
thing else in mind, and the view we have 
taken of it points to history as a manifesta¬ 
tion of God’s purposes and attributes, no 
less than the phenomena of nature. And in 
fact history exhibits some of His attributes— 
His benevolence, His love, His personality— 
better than mere inanimate nature or even 
the animal creation can do. In mere nature 
there is nothing to resist or to counteract 
His will; hence with infinite wisdom and 
power there may be, as we see that there is, 
perfect uniformity, and this observed uni¬ 
formity has been urged by objectors and 
skeptics as a reason for denying the person¬ 
ality of God. But in history we have human 
beings with a power of choice of their own. 
And here it is that we find God apparently 
changing His purposes,—changing at any 
rate His means,—His more immediate pur¬ 
poses to suit man’s wants and condition. 
When man repents God relents. Under the 
Old Dispensation He allowed many things on 
account of the hardness of their hearts which 
He absolutely prohibited in the New. Thus 
animal sacrifices and bloody offerings were 
not merely accepted, they were commanded ; 
they served a transient purpose ; when the 
atonement was “once made for the sins of 
the whole world,” all forms of bloody offer¬ 
ings passed away and gave place to some¬ 
thing far more spiritual,—something adapted 
to a higher state of civilization, a more ele¬ 
vated phase of life and habit of thought. 
For the same reason many things that seem 
cruel, harsh, even unjust, appear to have 
been allowed and approved by God in the 
earlier days of humanity, which are now 
seen to be inconsistent with Christianity, if 
they are not expressly forbidden in the New 
Testament Scriptures. In all this we see 
how it is that God may be a being of perfect 
holiness and yet tolerate, and for a while 
appear to approve what we can now see to 
be wrong. His holiness will appear in the 
end to all men. 

It is indeed quite true that we find in the 
Bible many statements with regard to God 
which we cannot take literally or regard as 
adapted to the higher views which the more 
cultivated minds of modern times are able 
to accept. But we must remember that God 
deals with men as they are and according to 
their needs He takes them as they are in 
order to secure the acceptance of the means 
that are necessary to make them what He 
would have them to be. We must remem¬ 
ber that He is a Person incomprehensible in 
His nature and modes of existence, but yet 
we are so made in His image that we can in 

22 


a measure understand Him although we do 
not and cannot conceive of Him under 
forms and modes that are, more or less, in¬ 
adequate, because they are too much like 
those of men. But in this respect all men 
are essentially alike, we differ in degree 
only. From the feeblest infancy of the lisp¬ 
ing child up to the broadest powers of com¬ 
prehension ever attained by saint or scien¬ 
tist we think of Him to some extent as act¬ 
ing under limitations of time and space, of 
human weakness and infirmity which we 
can readily show can have no place in the 
Divine Nature. Something of this kind is 
necessary in God’s dealings with man in 
order to give a sense of reality to our ideas 
of Him and to make His name a power upon 
our thoughts and feelings. Abstractly, the 
Personality of God is incomprehensible to 
us, and practically it is a different thing for 
each individual because of our infirmity, so 
that no one can understand or comprehend 
Him perfectly. Let us begin by regarding 
Him as wise and good and holy, and as we 
progress in wisdom and holiness our ideas 
of Him and His attributes will advance to¬ 
wards that fullercomprehension of His Being 
which we may always approach but never 
fully reach unto. But in all stages of our 
culture we may know that He is not only 
God and Creator, but Father and Friend 
as well. A Father and a Friend who never 
slumbers, nor sleeps, who faints not and is 
never weary, and whose mercies never fail. 

Rev. Prof. W. D. Wilson, D.D. 

God-Father. Vide Sponsors. 

Good-Friday. Vide Friday. 

Gospels. The word itself means good 
tidings, “godspell,” and in its comprehen¬ 
siveness includes the several parts of the 
Redemptive Acts of our Lord. “ Behold, I 
bring you good tidings of great joy, which 
shall be to all people,” was the Gospel of the 
Incarnation of Christ. Again, St. Paul 
(Rom. x. 9-15) connects the good tidings 
with the belief in and confession of the 
Resurrection. The Lord Himself makes 
the Gospel to lie in a belief in the Kingdom 
of God (St. Mark i. 15). Each of the main 
facts of the Gospel in its fullness can become 
the central point which may bear the title 
belonging to the whole. The Gospel, then, 
is the message of the Church, the teaching 
of Christianity, the redemption in and by 
Christ Jesus, the only-begotten Son of 
God, offered to all mankind. But it is the 
title of the four biographies of the Lord 
Jesus by four separate writers, two of whom 
were Apostles, two others companions and 
fellow-workers with other Apostles of the 
Lord. But the title is again suggestive. It 
is the “Gospel—the glad tidings of salva¬ 
tion according to” St. Matthew, St. Mark, 
St. Luke, or St. John. And as the Gospel 
is bound up in the very life of Christ, His 
biography and the record of His acts, and 
the proclamation of what He has to offer the 
soul, are all gathered into the single word, 
“ The Gospel.” 





GOSPELS 


338 


GOSPELS 


Again, the word is used to mean that 
part of the record of His life, teaching, and 
actions which is selected to he read on each 
Sunday, holiday, or fast-day. There are, 
then, three uses made of the one word,—the 
Gospel for the whole doctrine of Christianity 
in the salvation offered by the Son of God ; 
the four several accounts of His life ; the 
short passages read in the Eucharistic Scrip¬ 
tures. 

The accounts of the several Gospels will 
he given under the names of the several 
writers (Vide St. Matthew, St. Mark, 
St. Luke, St. John), but here it will be 
well to consider them as grouped together 
in a common work,— i.e., to set forth the 
glorious Gospel of the Son of God. The first 
three are generally spoken of as the Synop- 
tists,—i.e., those who give an abbreviated 
account, a synopsis of the Lord’s Life. The 
Gospel of St. John has received', in recent 
discussions, the title of the Fourth Gospel. 
Indeed, the three Synoptists have much 
more in common with each other than they 
have with the Gospel of St. John. The 
dates of the composition of their Gospels are 
closer together. St. John’s Gospel is nearly 
half a century apart from them. They' 
wrote before heresies and internal dissen¬ 
sions had to any extent disturbed the Church, 
which was girded up to meet her early foes. 
St. John’s Gospel was written when heresies 
had begun; when they who were once 
within, but not of, the Church had gone 
out. Theirs was an intensely practical 
realization of His work. A man among 
men as well as the Son of God. The 
anointed Jesus who was King of Israel. 
The great High-Priest, and the Sacrifice for 
the sins of the whole world. His was as in¬ 
tense a realization of the work of Christ, 
but it was from its doctrinal aspects that the 
disciple whom Jesus loved grasped it. The 
Gospel in its divine side, in its theology, 
not in its anthropology, or its soteriology, so 
prominently as in the others, is dwelt upon. 
Nor must it be for a moment admitted that 
the view that either one of the four makes 
the prominent characteristic is ignored by 
the others. Only that each dwells upon that 
characteristic of the Lord’s life and Person 
which he had grasped more completely. 

The three Synoptists have certain points 
of agreement, certain points of independ¬ 
ence, and a certain order of chronology 
peculiar to each. They bear witness in 
their own way as independent eye-witnesses, 
with variations even in those cases where 
all four agree, which show them to be 
thoroughly truthful. The apparent contra¬ 
dictions are real confirmations of their 
truth. Without wasting space to demon¬ 
strate this, we will indicate those passages 
in which'the tlir^e agree, premising that they 
all agree together in recounting only nine¬ 
teen facts which St. John records also, which 
could be reduced in part by avoiding a sub¬ 
division of leading events. The four agree 
in, I. St. John Baptist’s Ministry. II. Bap¬ 


tism of Jesus Christ. III. John Baptist 
in Prison. IY. Christ’s return to Galilee. 
Y. Feeding of the Five Thousand. YI. 
Peter’s Profession of Faith. So far, the 
leading events ; but from hence onward the 
Passion of our Lord must of course pre¬ 
sent many points of coincidence, and yet 
the accounts are thoroughly independent. 
VII. Anointing by Mary. VIII. Christ 
enters Jerusalem. IX. Paschal Supper. 
X. Peter’s fall foretold. XI. Gethsemane. 
XII. The Betrayal. XIII. Before Caia- 
phas, Peter’s denial. XIY. Before Pilate. 
XY. Accusation. XVI. Crucifixion. XVII. 
The Heath. XVIII. The Burial. XIX. 
The Resurrection. The three Synoptists 
agree in forty-four facts besides those in 
which they agree with St. John : I. The 
Temptation. II. The four Apostles called. 
III. Simon’s wife’s mother healed. IY. 
Circuit round Galilee. Y. Healing a leper. 
YI. Stilling the Storm. VII. Demoniacsat 
Gadara. VIII. Jairus’s daughter, and the 
woman healed. IX. Healing the paralytic. 
X. Matthew the Publican. XI. “Thy Disci¬ 
ples fast not.” XII. Plucking ears of corn 
on the Sabbath. XIII. The withered Hand, 
Miracles. XIY. The Twelve. XY. Par¬ 
able of the Sower. XYI. Grain of mustard- 
seed. XVII. His Mother and His breth¬ 
ren. XVIII. Sending forth the Twelve. 
XIX. Herod’s opinion of Jesus. XX. 
Passion foretold. XXI. Transfiguration. 
XXII. Lunatic healed. XXIII. Passion 
again foretold. XXIY. The little child. 
XXV. Offenses. XXVI. The grain of 
mustard-seed. XXVII. Infants brought 
to Jesus. XXVIII. The rich young man. 
XXIX. Promises to the Disciples. XXX. 
Death foretold. XXXI. Blind men at Jer¬ 
icho. XXXII. “ By what authority doest 
thou ?” XXXIII. Parable of the Wicked 
Husbandman. XXXIV. The tribute money. 
XXXV. The state of the risen. XXXVI. 
David’s Son and David’s Lord. XXXVII. 
Against the Pharisees. XXXVIII. 
Christ’s second coming. XXXIX. Last 
Passover. XL. Judas Iscariot. XLI. Be¬ 
fore the Sanhedrim. XLII. The mockings 
and railings. XLIII. Darkness and other 
Portents. XLIV. The Bystanders. The 
Synoptists agree in testifying to forty-four 
separate events, acts, or teachings of Christ 
where St. John has no parallel fact recorded. 
We have four witnesses to maintain main 
facts ; three to forty-four other facts. These 
facts include the central facts of His Bap¬ 
tism, A specially important Miracle, The 
Confession that He is the Son of God, The 
Paschal Supper, Gethsemane, Betrayal, 
Trial, Crucifixion, Resurrection. The more 
important facts to which the three Synop¬ 
tists only testify are The choice of the 
Twelve and their Mission, The Passion 
foretold thrice, The Transfiguration, Judas, 
Mocking, Darkness, and Bystanders. As 
our object is one of general comparison, and 
to show the amount of concurrent testimony 
the Gospels contain, we will add a list of the 





GOSPELS 


339 


GOSPELS 


facts in which two of the Evangelists agree, 
without pausing to distinguish which two, 
since we are only trying to illustrate the 
truth of the rule “that in the mouth of 
two or three witnesses every word may be 
established.” I. The birth of our Lord. 
II. The two Genealogies. III. Flight into 
Egypt. IY. The Centurion’s Servant. V. 
Messengers of John. VI. Parable of Can¬ 
dle under a bushel. VII. Of the Leaven. 
VIII. On teaching by Parables. IX. Re¬ 
ception at Nazareth. X. Third circuit 
around Galilee. XI. Death of John Bap¬ 
tist. XII. The washen hands. XIII. The 
Syrophoenician Woman. XIV. Miracles 
of healing. XV. Feeding the Four Thou¬ 
sand. XVI. The sign from heaven. XVII. 
The Leaven of the Pharisees. XVIII. 
Elijah. XIX. One casting out Devils. 
XX. The lost sheep. XXI. Journey to 
Jerusalem. XXII. Answers to Disciples. 
XXIII. The Lord’s Prayer. XXIV. 
Prayer effectual. XXV. The unclean 
spirit. XXVI. The sign of Jonah. XXVII. 
The light of the body. XXVIII. The 
Pharisees. XXIX. What to fear. XXX. 
Covetousness. XXXI. The Leaven. XXXII. 
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! XXXIII. Par¬ 
able of the Great Supper. XXXIV. Fol¬ 
lowing Christ with the Cross. XXXV. 
Offenses. XXXVI. Faith and Merit. 
XXXVII. Divorce. XXXVIII. Request 
of James and John. XXXIX. Parable of 
the Ten Talents. XL. The barren Fig-tree. 
XLI. Pray and forgive. XLII. The Par¬ 
able of the Wedding Garment. XLIII. 
The great Commandment. XLIV. The 
Widow’s mite. XLV. Parable of the Tal¬ 
ents. XLVI. Disciples going to Emmaus. 
XL VII. Appearances in Jerusalem. 
XLVIII. Ascension. The central points 
of great importance are, the human birth, 
the mysterious law of teaching by parables, 
the disciples going to Emmaus, the appear¬ 
ances in Jerusalem, and the Ascension. 

We have one hundred and eight acts 
or teachings out of two hundred and sev¬ 
enteen different topics, and the larger num¬ 
ber of the remaining one hundred and 
nine (except St. Luke’s circumstantial ac¬ 
count of the birth of our Lord), is made 
up of discourses reported by one or other of 
the Evangelists alone,—discourses most val¬ 
uable, but not needing the concurrent testi¬ 
mony the other facts have received. We 
have, then, the evidence of the legal num¬ 
ber of witnesses to His Birth, His Baptism, 
His Temptation, His Preaching, His Mira¬ 
cles, His Transfiguration, His prophecy of 
His own death, His prophecy concerning 
Jerusalem, His institution of the Last Sup¬ 
per, His Passion, Betrayal, Trial, Cruci¬ 
fixion, Death, Burial, and Ascension. These 
are the outlines of His Gospel. The de¬ 
tails that have filled up this outline were 
the original matter which each could fur¬ 
nish. under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, 
out of the abundant stores of his own mem¬ 
ory. But there is a theory which has been 


broached, and has found much favor. It is 
that there was a document already in circu¬ 
lation, from which the three Synoptists 
drew such material as they deemed best for 
their purposes; that St. Mark adhered most 
closely to this document, and that the other 
two departed from it at will ; and an effort 
has been made to restore out of the three a 
supposed text which would represent the 
contents of this imaginary fourth and earlier 
authority. Apart from the absurdity of 
supposing such a document to have utterly 
disappeared without leaving even a tradition 
behind it, and of im^ining that the Evan¬ 
gelists—if this document were of any worth—- 
would have superseded it by their own nar¬ 
ratives without any acknowledgment in 
some way ; apart, too, from the indirect de¬ 
nial of the inspiration of our Gospels which 
such a theory involves, the whole is base¬ 
less, because wherever we find the Evan¬ 
gelists departing from each other we must 
imagine an altered copy. Therefore this 
supposed original document has to be sup¬ 
plemented by four other documents altered 
from the first,—two St. Matthew, one St. 
Luke, one St. Mark, used in Eichhorn’s 
theory, while Bishop Marsh has to conjec¬ 
ture the use of eight. This, as will be seen, 
is fatal to the whole conjecture. One good 
result is that this minute study of the verbal 
differences existing between their accounts 
has established the complete independence 
of the three Evangelists, and has purged 
the text of interpolations. Another conjec¬ 
ture has been made, that as the Apostles 
taught the same things, there was an 
oral narrative from which the Evangelists 
drew. The Apostles would, in their preach¬ 
ing, proclaim the same facts, and, it is very 
natural to suppose, in as nearly as possible the 
very same words. There, then, would grow 
up a skeleton outline on which the three 
Evangelists could most naturally place their 
own separate accounts. 

This theory would account for the use of 
the same language and for many coinci¬ 
dences; but it would break down upon the 
independent order of events on which each 
Evangelist arranged his narrative. St. 
Luke is on the whole more nearly chrono¬ 
logically accurate, but all three follow no 
fixed plan of dates, but group certain classes 
of teachings or certain series of miracles to¬ 
gether, which most probably were taught or 
performed on very different occasions. This 
they did to place in one view the leading 
conception each had formed of the Master, 
His work and His purpose, and this fits best 
with the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, 
leading them to set forth the many-sidedness, 
the perfect human sympathies, the loving 
condescensions of the Lord Jesus in far 
better way, giving room for a better show¬ 
ing of His Divine nature and wondrous 
power than any other form could supply. 
A close study of the Gospels will show from 
their very structure that they in this way 
only, humanly speaking, could set before us 







GOSPELS 


340 


GOSPELS 


the two natures in the one perfect sinless 
Person of Christ the Lord ; that in this way 
they link their contents to the contents, and 
their form to the form of the Inspired Scrip¬ 
tures of the Old Covenant. The Gospel of 
St. Matthew begins with the genealogy of 
Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of 
Abraham, narrating Ilis miraculous birth, 
and appeals to the prophecy of Isaiah for a 
proof that He who was according to the 
flesh the son of Abraham, was also because 
of this birth the Emmanuel as well as the 
Joshua of the people. The whole Gospel 
rests upon the foundafton of prophecy. So 
St. Mark opens with startling abruptness, 
“ The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus 
Christ the Son of God as it is written in 
the prophets. Behold, I send my messenger 
before Thy face, which shall prepare Thy 
way before Thee ; the voice of one crying in 
the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the 
Lord, make His paths straight,” and at 
once points to this messenger St. John 
Baptist, who by his fulfillment of the proph¬ 
ecy proved that Jesus Christ was the 
Messiah of prophecy. St. Luke’s Gospel is 
much more elaborate, and details more at 
length the birth of the messenger, and then 
that of the Christ. Yet not only the visions 
and messages of the angels are in strict par¬ 
allelism to the visions and promises of the 
Old Covenant, but the Hymns of thanks¬ 
giving are thoroughly Hebrew in every way, 
and as soon as the events require it appeal is 
at once made to the prophets. St John’s 
Gospel seems (as at first did St. Luke’s) to 
break this law of conjoining to the old proph¬ 
ecies, but it really does so in a far more 
wondrous way. “ In the beginning God 
made the heavens and the earth,” but also, 
“ In the beginning was the Word, and the 
Word was with God and the Word was 
God. The same was in the beginning with 
God ” Upon this basis is built the whole 
superstructure of that glorious Gospel. 
With less direct quotation from the older 
Scriptures there is framed into the texture 
of his Gospel as profound an application of 
the prophets as in the other three. 

Each writer has his method. Each 
writer has his own individuality, and is en¬ 
thused by his own characteristic devotion or 
love, or self-negation, yet is as completely 
inspired by the Holy Ghost, kept from 
error in recording what he knew by the or¬ 
dinary means of obtaining information, 
given insight to record accurately the true 
worth, in just wording of each event or dis¬ 
course, had revealed to him those doctrines 
which human wit could not fathom, but 
which were necessary for our salvation. So 
St. John (to take but one) recorded with 
absolute accuracy all he knew, from his own 
first interview with our Lord, and the many 
facts of which he was an eye-witness, till he 
saw the water and the blood flow from the 
spear-pierced side, saw the risen Lord in 
that upper chamber, and again upon the 
6hore of Galilee, and heard His triple res¬ 


toration of the recreant Apostle. It was 
with greater fullness of the same Spirit, who 
had given him inerrancy, in fact, that he 
could divine the true meaning of the High- 
Priest’s unwilling prophecy, or recorded 
our Lord’s discourses. And the same Holy 
Ghost gave to him the revelation of the 
Jesus Christ, the Word of God, who was 
with God, and was God. 

It was not in mortal man to dare to make 
that statement, which yet is the corner-stone 
of our salvation. And this in a less promi¬ 
nent way, but not the less truly is the fact 
with each of the others. It is only their 
own characteristic temperament making 
them what they were that gives its form to 
their record. The fire burns as hotly, but 
the crust of character is different. The 
Publican naturally would not feel precisely 
as, though not less deeply than, the more 
polished Physician, who was the constant 
companion of the fervid Apostle Paul. 
Here we may remark upon the persons who 
were divinely chosen. St. Matthew, the 
sober, earnest, devout man, the business man, 
who, without hesitation, gave up his earthly 
business for a heavenly traffic, looking at his 
Master as the man of men, the Son of David, 
and believing with a daily growing, devel¬ 
oping power, that He was the Christ, the 
Son of the Living God, in his very quiet 
shows as intense an enthusiasm as did St. 
John after sixty-six years of toil for the same 
Master. Two only of the Apostles were 
directed to write a narrative of what they 
knew of that Word of life whom they had 
seen, handled, followed, loved, ate with, 
watched with, and for whom they were ready 
to lay down their lives. It was directed that 
two others, whose narrative shows them to 
have been eye-witnesses to some things, and 
to have received ample, accurate, and un¬ 
deniable information upon other facts, 
should write the other two biographies. It is 
the unbroken tradition that St. Mark wrote 
his Gospel for the converts of St. Peter, and 
that St. Luke wrote his for the Churches 
that St. Paul established ; that each wrote 
under the directions and with the oversight 
of his Apostolic leader. Here, again, is an¬ 
other proof that the same Spirit who selected 
the prophets of old from the husbandmen, 
the shepherds, the plowmen, as well as 
from the priests and learned families, 
selected men whom man’s judgment would 
have passed over. 

(The contents of each Gospel and the 
characteristics of each Evangelist will be 
discussed under the several names Mat¬ 
thew, Mark, Luke, John.) 

There was another use made of the Gos¬ 
pels which brought in a third sense. The 
portion of Scripture from the life of our 
Lord, appointed for the lessons in connec¬ 
tion with the Holy Communion, was called 
the Gospel. It was a carrying out in the 
Scriptures of the New Testament the older 
parallel usage in the synagogue worship. 
The Law and the Prophets were divided 





GOSPELS 


341 


GRACE 


into fifty-four portions each, and appointed 
to be read through the year. Since these 
would certainly not be neglected in Chris¬ 
tian assemblies, we can well see that at 
the earliest possible moment the acknowl¬ 
edged Christian Scriptures would be so 
used. We have a record of the point before 
which these Scriptures were not so read. 
The ancient Liturgy of St. James contains 
this Rubric: “ Then are read at large the 
Sacred Scriptures of the Old Covenant, and 
of the Prophets, and the Incarnation of the 
Son of God is set forth, His sufferings and 
His Resurrection, the Ascension into heaven, 
and His second coming again with glory. 
And this takes place daily in the sacred and 
divine ministration.” Here the Law and the 
Prophets are read and the Gospel is set forth, 
i.e ., recited orally. But this, then, shows the 
Liturgy to be in its frame-work older than 
140 a.d., for Justin Martyr tells us that the 
memorials (i.e., Gospels) of the Apostles 
and the writings of the Prophets are read. 
It is inferred that the Gospel for the day 
was read as early. It is rather a hasty in¬ 
ference to push it to a conclusion that there 
was a series of Gospels selected and set forth 
as ours are. But it is fair to conclude that 
the Gospel lections were then customarily 
introduced. The evidence between that date 
and that of St. Ambrose is too slight to be 
adduced to prove more than Justin’s words 
do. But by that time Gospels and Epistles 
were in regular use. The Council of Lao- 
dicea (365 a.d.) ordered the Gospels to be 
read with the other Scriptures on the Satur¬ 
day also. To omit other details the Comes 
of St. Jerome, from which it is prob¬ 
able our Epistles and Gospels come, 
gives the Gospels for over two hundred 
days. The use was probably determined by 
the Bishop of the Diocese, and so we may 
account for the many variations remarked 
as occurring at different times. The Comes 
gives the number cited above, the Mozara- 
bic adds an Epistle and Gospel for the Wed¬ 
nesdays and Fridays in Lent, but there was 
no such use in Gaul. The Irish Sacrament¬ 
ary provides but one Epistle and Gospel for 
the whole year; the Epistle is 1 Cor. xi., the 
Gospel St. John vi. The Eastern Church 
reads them in order. Again, the use varied 
as to who should read the Gospel. St. 
Cyprian had the lector or reader do this, 
but elsewhere the Deacon, and this became 
universal. But in some places the Bishop 
only read it, in other places it was the Priest’s 
office; but this was local. In the American 
Church the Deacon, if he be alone, reads it, 
the Priest if he be present, and the Bishop 
if he choose to do so, when he is present, 
though there is no rule about it. The rule 
should be to read the Gospel from the north 
front of the Holy Table. If there is an 
Epistoler, he should read from the south 
front of the Holy Table. But more impor¬ 
tant is the rule to listen to the Gospel rever¬ 
ently standing. This was very ancient, 
being directed by the Apostolic Constitu¬ 


tions, and historians who note the infringe¬ 
ment of this rule do so with surprise. The 
Doxology, Glory be to Thee, O Lord, 
was likewise very old. It was an Eastern 
custom, and spread thence over to Gaul. 

Grace. The word originally meant the 
free gift, favor, or benefit. Then it received 
the technical meaning it has now in the semi- 
theologic language of the pulpit. It is one 
of the most important of all the terms used, 
for the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
the free gift He bestows of everlasting life, 
the free gift of the Holy Ghost and all the 
blessings that attend His presence, the 
favors and benefits that the practice of the 
Christian virtues procures in our daily life, 
are all comprehended under that one all- 
embracing word. The Sacraments are 
called the means of grace, and not these 
only, but every outward act, as prayer, alms¬ 
giving, fasting, self-denial, are such means. 
We may truly say that the work of the 
Second and Third Persons of the Holy 
Trinity is summed up in that single word. 
Let us, then, keep clearly in mind that the 
great source of all spiritual graces is the free 
gift of Christ from the Father. He gave 
His only-begotten Son. The basis of Grace 
is love. The love of God to us procured 
the Atonement, the Absolution, the Gift of 
Everlasting Life, the hope of Glory. These 
are of the Grace of Christ. When He as¬ 
cended upon high He led captivity captive, 
and gave gifts to men, yea, even to His ene¬ 
mies, that the Lord God might dwell 
among them. All spiritual gifts are accom¬ 
panied with some outward pledge of the 
reality of the gift. Therefore the gift of the 
Spirit in Confirmation, the gift of Absolu¬ 
tion in Baptism and the Holy Communion, 
the blessings which crown a true repentance, 
a living faith, a hearty and loving zeal in 
the Christian life, the reply to prayer, to 
alms, to all acts of Christian self-control, all 
of which are so beautifully summed up in 
the general thanksgiving : “ We, Thine un¬ 
worthy servants, do give Thee most humble 
and hearty thanks for all Thy goodness and 
loving kindness to us and to all men. We bless 
Thee for our creation, preservation, and all 
the 1 blessings of this life; but, above all, for 
Thine inestimable love in the redemption of 
the world by our Lord Jesus Christ, for 
the means of Grace and for the hope of 
Glory.” But there is another side of the 
subject, upon which we must bestow a few 
words. The whole Gospel is filled with the 
Grace of our Lord ; but how about our¬ 
selves ? It must be laid down as an axiom 
that God gives us no gift that is not in 
sympathy with and in the full reach of our 
true nature. In fact, so far as we can see, 
each gift is only a restoration in such part 
of the original holiness in Paradise. There 
is in us capacity to hold whatever His Grace 
bestows. The first part of His work must 
have been that the Cross of Christ put all 
men into a condition of capacity for salvation, 
but there is also, more or less strongly, in us 






GRACE 


342 


GRACE 


each an ability to lay hold of this Grace, 
otherwise the gift of salvation were beyond 
our nature, and a new creation of faculties, 
to enable us to receive His mercy, would 
have to be made. This .ability is, indeed, of 
the weakest and faintest, and therefore we 
need help and strength. This He supplies ; 
but as God gives us no gift that is not apt to 
our nature, so He asks us to receive nothing 
which we are not able to perceive ourselves 
when once it is put rightly before us. (Hence 
the lament of Christ over Jerusalem : “ If 
thou hadst known, even thou at least in this 
thy day, the things which belong unto thy 
peace, but now they are hid from thine 
eyes.”) But our weakness paralyzes all our 
efforts. The X. Article puts this clearly. 
“The condition of man after the fall of 
Adam is such that he cannot turn and pre¬ 
pare himself by his own natural strength 
and good works to faith and calling upon 
God. Wherefore we have no power to do 
good works, pleasant and acceptable to God, 
without the Grace of God, by Christ pre¬ 
venting us, that we may have a good will, 
and working with us when we have that 
good will.” 

The miracle of the paralytic man is a 
type of our capacity, aptness, disability by 
sin and weakness, and of God’s prevenient 
grace. He was borne of four into Christ’s 
presence. He was disabled and could do 
nothing, yet he was a man in body and 
mind, capable of, fit for, that natural health 
which lawfully should be his. He was 
healed,—“thy sins be forgiven thee,” which 
was the free prevenient grace of the Lord, 
and he took up his bed and departed to his 
own house. So St. Paul declares, “ work out 
your own salvation with fear and trembling, 
for it is God which worketh in you both to 
will , and to do , of His good pleasure.” So 
our Lord, “ no man can come unto Me ex¬ 
cept the Father, which hath sent Me, draw 
him.” But we are to beware of what is called 
irresistible grace. An irresistible grace sup¬ 
plants the responsibility of the will. We 
can well believe in the urgings and plead¬ 
ings of the Spirit, the quickening of the con¬ 
science, the persuasions of a lively love, and 
desire for holiness, but all Scriptures point 
to the Law that the will must choose finally. 
Grace is all-sufficient for whatever we 
can do or can desire, but it does not re¬ 
move our true self and take its place. Co¬ 
operating grace may so work in us as to 
help us, possibly insensibly, to yield ourselves 
and our members servants to righteous¬ 
ness unto holiness. His Grace is sufficient 
for us all, in the moments of our greatest 
weakness, to give those who yield to His 
gifts all-sufficient strength. And while 
our state continues probationary, and there¬ 
fore involves trial from God and tempta¬ 
tion from Satan, God is faithful, and by His 
grace in His own wisdom will make a way 
to escape before the pressure is too great for 
our faith or our strength,— i.e., beyond the 
limit which the flesh can attain of obedi¬ 


ence. But our obedience is demanded up 
to that point. Therefore St. Paul blames 
the Hebrew Christians for that with the 
grace given them “ they had not yet resisted 
unto blood.” Co-operating grace is the 
sanctifying work of the Holy Ghost in the 
willing and ready heart. But the heart must 
be ready and self-sacrificing, “For let the 
Spirit be never so prompt, if labor and ex¬ 
ercise slacken we fail. The fruits of the 
Spirit do-not follow men, as the shadows 
doth the body, of their own accord. If the 
grace of sanctification did so work, what 
should the grace of exhortation need? It 
were even as superfluous and vain to stir men 
up into good, as to request them when they 
walk abroad not to lose their shadows. 
Grace is not given us to abandon labor, 
but labor required lest our sluggishness 
should make the grace of God improbable.” 
(Hooker, vol. ii., Ap. to Book v., p. 697.) 
But there are certain means of grace also,— 
the Sacraments; of these Hooker thus speaks: 
“ Touching Sacraments whether many or 
few in number, their doctrine is that ours 
both signify and cause grace; but what 
grace and in what manner ? By grace we 
always understand, as the "Word of God 
teacheth, first, His favor and undeserved 
mercy towards us ; secondly, the bestowing 
of His Holy Spirit, which inwardly work¬ 
eth ; thirdly, the effects of that Spirit what¬ 
soever, but especially saving virtues, such as 
are faith , charity , and hope ; lastly, the free 
and full remission of all our sins. This is 
the grace which sacraments yield, and 
whereby we are all justified. To be justi¬ 
fied is to be made righteous. Because, 
therefore, righteousness doth imply, first, re¬ 
mission of sins ; and, secondly, a sanctified 
life; the name is sometimes applied sever¬ 
ally to the former, sometimes jointly it com- 
prehendeth both. . . . For sacraments with 
us are signs effectual; they are the instru¬ 
ments of God whereby to bestow grace; 
howbeit grace not proceeding from the vis¬ 
ible sign, but from His invisible power. 

. . . Were they not as good, to say briefly, 
that God’s omnipotence, will, causeth grace, 
that the outward sign doth show His will, 
and that sacraments implying both are there¬ 
by tjermed both signs and causes, which is 
theself-samethat we say ?” (Ib.,pp. 700, 703, 
705.) The XXV. Article teaches this : “Sac¬ 
raments ordained of Christ be not only 
badges or tokens of Christian men’s Profes¬ 
sion ; but rather they be certain sure wit¬ 
nesses and effectual signs of grace and God’s 
good will towards us, by the which He doth 
work invisibly in us, and doth not only 
quicken, but also strengthen and confirm 
our faith in him. . . . And in such only as 
worthily receive the same they have a 
wholesome effect or operation; but they 
that receive them unworthily purchase to 
themselves damnation as St. Paul saith.” 
To sum up, Grace is God’s free gift to us. 
It is in the Life, Death, Resurrection of 
Jesus Christ, of which we obtain the bene- 





GRADUAL 


343 GROWTH OF THE CHURCH 


fits and in which we share. Herein Sacra¬ 
ments become the conveying and the visi¬ 
ble signs of such sharing. The Lord receiv- 
eth and giveth to us the Gift of the Holy 
Ghost, pervading our life and sanctifying it, 
and using every action and habit as a chan¬ 
nel by which to convey to us more grace. 
But we must yield ourselves heart, soul, 
and body to His influence, and work with 
Him lovingly, obediently, unfiaggingly. 
Grace is the atmosphere of the Church by 
which we walk in the Light of the Gospel 
of Christ. It pervades all, it is the proof 
of the presence of the blessed Trinity. 

A Thanksgiving at Meals .—The Jew used 
it. Our Lord sanctioned and sanctified it by 
using it as an element in His working the 
miracles of feeding the multitudes, and 
crowned its power by using it at the insti¬ 
tution of the Holy Communion. The Apos¬ 
tles taught it. Meats “ were created to be 
received with thanksgiving of them which 
believe and know the truth” (1 Tim. iv. 
3-5). The Fathers are full of references to 
it. The directories and sacramentaries 
contain forms of Grace before and after 
meals. This is probably the oldest form now 
surviving : “ Blessed art thou, O Lord, 

who feedest me from my youth up, who 
givest food to all flesh. Fill our hearts with 
joy and gladness; that always having a 
sufficiency, we may abound unto every good 
work in Christ Jesus our Lord, through 
whom be glory and honor and power unto 
the world without end. Amen.” (Apost. 
Const., 1. vii. c. 49.) 

Gradual. Often in Old English Grayl or 
Grail. An anthem sung after the Epistle. 
In Africa it was a whole Psalm. It was 
early sung from the step (gradus) or place 
where the Epistle was read. The music was 
often very florid. The service-book which 
contained the anthem or Psalm, was called 
the Gradual or Grayl. 

Grave. The pit properly prepared in 
which the coffin containing the corpse is 
placed. In the early Church, certain per¬ 
sons often associated into a guild, and 
called Fossores, had charge of the graves 
and their details. The cemeteries were 
carefully cared for, and the graves of the 
dead were looked after with a great deal of 
loving care. 

Greek Church. Vide Eastern Church. 

Gregorian Chant. Vide Music. 

Growth of the Church. Many and val¬ 
uable statistics have been yearly published 
to exhibit the rapid growth of the Church, 
which has been at an average yearty rate 
of seven per cent., or of twenty per cent, 
from one triennial report to the General 
Convention to another. They all tend to 
6how that she is gradually gaining that 
position which, with her notes of Unity, 
Apostolicity, and Catholicity, will win men 
to her holy ways. Wherever the full, plain 
Doctrines, Constitution, and Liturgy of the 
Church are set forth as the Canon directs 
(Tit. i., Can. xxi.), these men will be drawn 


to her. It must be so, for, aside from the 
mere changes involved in an altered civil¬ 
ization, she reproduces for the present day 
the doctrine and the polity of the Church 
as the New Testament exhibits it, and in 
her Liturgy she goes back to originals 
which sprang from the Church at Ephe¬ 
sus. But this growth from seven dioceses 
and one hundred and ninety clergy in 1790 
a.d. to forty-eight confederated Dioceses 
and fifteen missionary jurisdictions, with 
sixty-seven Bishops and three thousand 
five hundred and twenty-six clergy, from 
twelve thousand communicants in 1800 
a.d. to three hundred and seventy-two 
thousand five hundred in 1883 a.d., and 
devoting nine millions of dollars annually 
to religious work, is full proof that God is 
prospering us, that we are under the guid¬ 
ance of the Captain of our salvation. But 
if the number of communicants form two- 
thirds of our congregations, and this is 
an overestimate, as statistics show, the 
Church reaches a total of five hundred 
and sixty thousand adults. She draws 
into her Sunday-schools three hundred and 
fourteen thousand children. In other 
words, she is directly in contact with more 
than sixty-five per cent, of the population, 
teaching, training, influencing them. In 
the year 1800 she reached but one in four 
hundred and twenty. These statistics show 
a most wonderful blessing resting upon us. 
It is just to record here the report of the 
Committee on the State of the Church to 
the General Convention of 1883 a.d. : 

“ An hundred years ago the English 
branch of the historic Church of Christ in 
this land was wrenched from the mother- 
country, and the mother-Church was left in 
fragments on these shores. On the 11th of 
May, 1784 a.d., ten clergymen and six 
laymen sitting in New Brunswick, N. J., 
as the ‘ Corporation for the Relief of the 
W T idows and Orphans of Deceased Clergy¬ 
men, 7 resolved themselves into a ‘Volun¬ 
tary Convention, 7 and took preliminary 
steps, which resulted in the October fol¬ 
lowing in a representative assemblage of 
some eight States in the city of New York, 
which agreed as a ‘first principle 7 that 
‘ there shall be a General Convention of 
the Episcopal Church in the United States 
of America. 7 

“ The next October that General Con¬ 
vention met in this city of Philadelphia. 
‘ A general ecclesiastical constitution 7 was 
agreed to; the Book of Common Prayer of 
the Church of England was revised, to make 
it consistent with the American Revolution; 
and a plan, was reported for obtaining the 
consecration of Bishops in England. It was 
the season of Michaelmas when these great 
things were done, and the collect for ‘ All 
Angels 7 was signally answered. Here was a 
branch of the Apostolic Church, united and 
free, occupying a position unprecedented 
since the Christian era,—neither patronized 
nor persecuted by the civil powers. We 





GROWTH OF THE CHURCH 344 GROWTH OF THE CHURCH 


have but to contrast that initial convention, 
less in number than many of the convoca¬ 
tions of our rural deaneries, with the great 
legislative assembly here present,—one of 
the largest representative religious bodies in 
the world,—to exclaim, ‘What hath God 
wrought!’ We have now, in this year of 
grace 1883 a.d., 48 confederated Dioceses 
and 15 Missionary Jurisdictions, with 67 
Bishops, more than 3500 other clergy, 3000 
organized Parishes (not including mission¬ 
ary stations), and nearly 375,000 communi¬ 
cants, using the same Liturgy, and yielding 
obedience to the Canons enacted by the Gen¬ 
eral Convention. One of the most noteworthy 
and gratifying facts connected with this 
council was the presence, at its opening serv¬ 
ice to give the absolution, and later in tbe 
session to pronounce the benediction, of 
that patriarchal man of God, the Right Rev. 
Benjamin B. Smith, D.D., LL.D., our Pre¬ 
siding Bishop, now in the ninetieth year of 
his age and the fifty-first of his Episcopate, 
whose seniority in both respects antedates 
every Bishop of the Anglican Communion 
throughout the world. The year of our 
Lord 1832 a.d., when, with three others,— 
long since gone to their reward,—he was 
consecrated to his high office, will forever 
mark an epoch in the American Church. 
Perhaps the most touching incident in the 
sessions of this body was the appearance in 
the House of Deputies on the fifteenth day 
of its deliberations of the Right Rev. Dr. 
William Mercer Green, the venerable Bishop 
of Mississippi, ‘ whose praise is in all the 
churches,’ who came to say ‘farewell,’ and 
to tell us, with deep emotion, that he was 
the sole survivor, Clerical or Lay, of the 
General Convention of 1823 a.d., just sixty 
years ago, and that when he took Holy 
Orders there were but nine Bishops in the 
United States of America. The reports from 
the various Dioceses and Missionary Juris¬ 
dictions show a vast amount of labor, coupled 
with great self-denial and a quenchless zeal. 
In some Dioceses the results thus shown are 
remarkable ; in the least favored, as statistics 
compute favor, the reports are hopeful. What 
must thus be here stated in general may be 
seen in detail in the tabulated reports here¬ 
with appended. It is the conviction of your 
Committee that, in these reports, Church- 
membership should be computed on the basis 
of the baptized rather than on that of com¬ 
municants. This basis would be more 
churchly and less misleading. Our greatest 
deficiency, as in many years past, is the in¬ 
adequate number of candidates for Holy 
Orders. This is a deficiency not confined to 
us, but is common to all religious bodies in 
this country who require an educated min¬ 
istry. 

“ The same causes, we believe, obtain in 
all alike. God’s inward call to the office 
and work of the ministry, we are persuaded, 
is at a far earlier period in life than most 
suppose. The child Samuel is a type of the 
character and age to which the Lord speaks ; 


but in too many American homes the in¬ 
dication of such a call on the part of a child 
is considered unfortunate and to be depre¬ 
cated. Add to this, without alluding to 
any other obstruction, the vastly increased 
expense of securing a proper education for 
the ministry as contrasted with that expense 
a generation ago, and we have two leading 
causes for the scarcity of postulants. The 
unfavorable conditions of the ministry, which 
obtain in this country such an inadequate 
support, frequent parochial changes and lack 
of provision for old age we purposely pass 
by, with the single remark that the ‘ Clergy¬ 
men’s Retiring Fund Society’ will, if ex¬ 
panded as it ought to be, amply supply the 
wants of the clergy when they deserve, if 
indeed they do not need, to be placed on the 
retired list. The introduction of the busi¬ 
ness of the Board of Missions into the day¬ 
light sessions of this body, begun three years 
ago, has enlarged among the representative 
laity of the Church the interest in missions 
and given new impulse to that work. The 
crowded assemblages on those days, when 
both Houses sat together in such delibera¬ 
tions, amply demonstrates this ; but it is to 
be regretted that so striking a feature as 
having all the Bishops on the platform at 
once on the first day of such business, rather 
than scattered on the floor of this house, 
was not continued this year, to the wide¬ 
spread disappointment and lessened interest 
of some who cannot look upon our Right 
Reverend fathers in a body more than once or 
twice in a lifetime. It may seem to some a 
small thing, but your Committee think it 
should not be omitted. 

“ The Committee would call particular 
attention to the Church Temperance So¬ 
ciety, an agency modeled after the Church 
of England Temperance Society, and in¬ 
augurated in this country since our last 
Triennial Council, which, it is believed, 
will command the indorsement of those 
who cannot accept the methods commonly 
employed for checking the ravages of that 
sin which, while not so general in Amer¬ 
ica as in some localities abroad, has, it 
can be averred without extravagance of 
speech, consigned more to premature graves 
than war, pestilence, and famine combined. 
Descending to particulars, as illustrating 
the present spirit of the Church, we can 
only allude to the fact that cathedrals, 
church schools, and colleges, hospitals, and 
homes, have grown apace in number and 
efficiency. Dioceses have been subdivided 
into districts for more effective missionary 
work in tbeir own borders, bringing clergy 
and laity of common centres into more fre¬ 
quent council as fellow-helpers. Deacon¬ 
esses and sisterhoods have been multiplied 
to do what only holy women with a distinc¬ 
tive dress and under Diocesan direction can 
do. Guilds, in many leading parishes, have 
set all their membership to active parochial 
work. Church-music has made progress, so 
that what was ostentatious and unseemly in 





GROWTH OF THE CHURCH 345 


GUILDS, CHURCH 


the house of God has given place to that 
which is classical, dignified, and churchly. 
And whereas, only forty years ago, there was 
but a single parish in all the land that had 
the Eucharist weekly, there are now some 
three hundred parishes where it is celebrated 
as the central act of Divine worship at least 
on every Lord’s day. The enriched Book 
of Common Prayer, with the new Lection¬ 
ary, is hailed with general delight, as not 
the least among the increased instrumen¬ 
talities for pulling down the strongholds of 
sin, Satan, and death, and as commending 
our branch of the Kingdom of our Blessed 
Lord as pre-eminently adapted to the com¬ 
posite character of the American people. 
With all these advances has come, more 
and more, the gift of charity, the very bond 
of peace and of all virtues ; a broader, more 
tolerant, and catholic spirit, which has per¬ 
vaded the whole length and breadth of the 
Church to a degree never before known in 
her national life. The day seems upon us 
of which it may be said, ‘ Thy watchmen 
shall lift up the voice; with the voice to¬ 
gether shall they sing, for they shall see eye 
to eye, when the Lord shall bring again 
Zion.’ ” 

Summary of Statistics reported to the Gen¬ 
eral Convention of 1883. (From the Jour¬ 

nal of the General Convention.) 


Number of Dioceses. 48 

Number of Missionary Jurisdictions. 15 

Lay Readers in 39 Dioceses and 10 Missionary 

Jurisdictions. 1,143 

Candidates for Holy Orders in 45 Dioceses and 

10 Missionary Jurisdictions. 401 

Deacons Ordained in 45 Dioceses and 8 Mission¬ 
ary Jurisdictions. 409 

Deacons in 45 Dioceses and 11 Missionary Juris¬ 
dictions. 322 

Priests Ordained in 45 Dioceses and 7 Mission¬ 
ary Jurisdictions. 359 

Priests in 47 Dioceses and 15 Missionary Juris¬ 
dictions. 3,240 

Whole number of Clergy in 47 Dioceses and 15 

Missionary Jurisdictions. 3,627 

Parishes in 46 Dioceses and 8 Missionary Juris¬ 
dictions. 2,749 

Missions in 42 Dioceses and 11 Missionary Juris¬ 
dictions..-. 1,307 

Corner-stones laid in 32 Dioceses and 5 Mission¬ 
ary Jurisdictions. 140 

Churches Consecrated in 43 Dioceses and 7 Mis¬ 
sionary Jurisdictions. 311 

Churches and Chapels in 45 Dioceses and 15 

Missionary Jurisdictions. 3,732 

Free Churches and Chapels in 27 Dioceses and 

11 Missionary Jurisdictions. . 1,337 

Rectories in 43 Dioceses and 11 Missionary 

Jurisdictions. 1,159 

Families in 34 Dioceses and 6 Missionary Juris¬ 
dictions. 129,961 

Number of souls in 27 Dioceses and 5 Mission¬ 
ary Jurisdictions. 375,832 

Infants in 43 Dioceses and 15 Mis¬ 
sionary Jurisdictions. 109,040 

Baptisms ,-j Adults in 43 Dioceses and 15 Mis¬ 
sionary Jurisdictions. 21,243 

Unspecified in 4 Dioceses. 3,797 


Total. 134,080 

Confirmations in 47 Dioceses and 15 Missionary 

Jurisdictions. 75,560 

Marriages in 47 Dioceses and 13 Missionary Jur¬ 
isdictions. 39,263 

Burials in 47 Dioceses and 13 Missionary Juris¬ 
dictions. 77,585 

Communicants added in 29 Dioceses and 9 Mis¬ 
sionary Jurisdictions....^,. 62,692 


Communicants died in 24 Dioceses and 7 Mission¬ 
ary Jurisdictions. 6,613 

Communicants in 47 Dioceses and 15 Missionary 

Jurisdictions. 364,125 

Sunday-School Teachers in 47 Dioceses and 11 

Missionary Jurisdictions. 33,900 

Sunday-School Scholars in 47 Dioceses and 13 

Missionary Jurisdictions. 314,910 

Parish-School Teachers in 30 Dioceses and 6 

Missionary Jurisdictions. 804 

Parish-School Scholars in 29 Dioceses and 6 

Missionary Jurisdictions. 10,499 

Church Hospitals in 22 Dioceses and 6 Mission¬ 
ary Jurisdictions. 45 

Church Orphan Asylums in 24 Dioceses and 2 

Missionary Jurisdictions. 48 

Church Homes in 17 Dioceses. 32 

"Academic Institutions in 29 Dioceses and 10 

Missionary Jurisdictions. 99 

Collegiate Institutions in 13 Dioceses and 4 

Missionary Jurisdictions. 17 

Theological Institutions in 13 Dioceses and 3 

Missionary Jurisdictions. 16 

Other Institutions in 11 Dioceses and 2 Mission¬ 
ary Jurisdictions. 66 

Communion Alms in 34 Dioceses and 7 

Missionary Jurisdictions. $515,485.84 

Episcopal Fund, Total Income in 38 Dio¬ 
ceses and 1 Missionary Jurisdiction. 453,951.64 

Diocesan Expenditures, Convention, etc., 
in 39 Dioceses and 5 Missionary Jurisdic¬ 
tions. 239,843.08 

Offerings for Diocesan Missions in 44 Dio¬ 
ceses and 7 Missionary Jurisdictions.. 533,672.82 

Offerings for Domestic Missions (of which, 
in 19 Dioceses and 1 Missionary Juris¬ 
diction, $32,757.63 were specified for 
Missions for the Colored People; and in 
16 Dioceses and 1 Missionary Jurisdic¬ 
tion $49,791.89 were specified for Indian 
Missions) in 42 Dioceses and 8 Mission¬ 
ary Jurisdictions. 649,468.04 

Offerings for Foreign Missions in 41 Dio¬ 
ceses and 8 Missionary Jurisdictions. 357,778.46 

Offerings for Education for the Ministry in 

30 Dioceses. 87,499.42 

Offerings for Aged and Infirm Clergy (in¬ 
cluding, in 11 Dioceses and 3 Missionary 
Jurisdictions, offerings for Widows and 
Orphans of Clergy) in 40 Dioceses and 4 

Missionary Jurisdictions. 161,624.13 

Offerings for Widows and Orphans of Clergy 
in 11 Dioceses and 3 Missionary Juris¬ 
dictions. 64,758.66 

Offerings for other and Miscellaneous 
Charities in 23 Dioceses and 2 Mission¬ 
ary Jurisdictions. 2,690,913.39 

Total of Charitable Offerings and Income in 
26 Dioceses and 3 Missionary Jurisdic¬ 
tions.*.. 9,487,480.04 

Total of Salaries and Parochial Expenses 
in 41 Dioceses and 6 Missionary Jurisdic¬ 
tions. 12,680,102.48 

Total Offerings for Religious Purposes in 47 
Dioceses and 13 Missionary Jurisdictions. 28,912,731.08 
Parishes not reporting in 21 Dioceses and 
1 Missionary Jurisdiction. 180 


Guilds, Church. A Guild is a society or¬ 
ganized for some common object. The name 
is said to be derived from the Old English 
“gild,” the payment which each one was 
bound to make, or as others say, from the 
Welsh “ gouil,” a holiday. Guilds have a 
secular as well as a religious history, extend¬ 
ing, it is claimed, far back into heathen times 
and countries. 

I. Theory .—Guilds seem to arise out of the 
associative instinct in man. In the Church, 
they are an instance of the power of the In¬ 
carnation applying itself to the natural prin¬ 
ciples and tendencies of men to complete and 
exalt them. The taking of the manhood 
into God magnifies and ennobles men in gen¬ 
eral, gives each one a new value in the eyes 
of all the rest, and then laying hold of the 


























































GUILDS, CHURCH 


346 


GUILDS, CHURCH 


spirit of association presents to us-the Com¬ 
munion of Saints as the highest form of as¬ 
sociate life. Baptism, therefore, being the 
impartation of the incarnate life, and the 
admission in consequence into the fellowship 
of that life, creates a new fraternity. The 
baptized, as members one of another, with 
lives knitted together and interests inter¬ 
woven, engaged in mutual labor and devo¬ 
tion, reciprocating services, interchanging 
gifts, sharing in the benefits of each other’s 
good works, suffering together, rejoicing 
together, constitute an organism in which 
each has his own place, his own office, and 
in his own degree acts on all the others. 

A Guild is an endeavor to realize more 
intensely and practically this organic rela¬ 
tion of the members of Christ one to an¬ 
other, and to bring it to bear on specific ob¬ 
jects. It is an emphatic avowal and ex¬ 
pression of the fact of the Communion of 
{Saints. Its motive being, therefore, a super¬ 
natural one, it looks for its sustaining force 
to the Grace of God bestowed through sacra¬ 
ments and prayer. As a Guild has a com¬ 
mon aim, so is it distinguished by a common 
devotional life, being mindful of the promise 
that “ if two shall agree on earth as touching 
anything that they shall ask, it shall be done 
for them of My Rather, which is in 
Heaven.” 

II. Organization and Management .—The 
Guild method will answer a variety of pur¬ 
poses. Any class of works capable of con¬ 
certed and differentiated activity, pertaining 
either to the outward, visible, and more 
material side of religion, or to the spiritual 
life more directly,—works of mercy, charity, 
and benevolence, works of sacred art, no less 
than efforts to strengthen personal holiness,— 
may be promoted in this way. It is said 
that immediate neighborhood is an element 
of the Guild idea. This renders Guilds most 
meet and apt for parochial use. 

The fundamental qualification for admis¬ 
sion to all Guild organizations should be 
baptism. When this is taken to constitute 
eligibility for Guild work, Christian work 
is dignified greatly. It appears then in its 
true light as a privilege and a right inherent 
in that brotherhood in Christ, which results 
from baptism. The responsibility of the 
members of Christ of sharing in the labor 
of the body is brought home by the Guild 
system. It affords a plan for securing effi¬ 
cient and disciplined Lay co-operation. 
The due prosperity of a parish demands the 
action of every head and heart and hand. 
Without general occupation our common 
life stagnates. Without order, and the con¬ 
sideration of fitness in the allotment of work, 
confusion ensues. Things left to be the busi¬ 
ness of everybody at once become the busi¬ 
ness of nobody. The Guild, after calling at¬ 
tention to responsibility, defines, distributes, 
and fixes it according to aptitude. It in¬ 
creases labor,—not so as to make heavier 
burdens for some, but, by increasing the 
laborers, that results may be multiplied and 


obtained from all. To do this, the various 
talents and capacities, which form the com¬ 
mon store of a band of people, diverse in 
character and taste, with different degrees of 
inclination and leisure to devote themselves 
to church work, must be called out, and 
made to contribute each in its own way to 
the one purpose. A system is called for 
which shall allow the fullest and the freest 
play of the peculiar gifts and abilities of 
each. The Parish Guild may operate as such 
an agency. Its natural and proper head is 
the parish priest, styled, according to the 
traditional nomenclature, Master, Warden, 
Superior, or Provost. It should be entirely t 
under his control and oversight. 

Members should require his approbation, 
and the assignment to work should be his. 
In this kind of Guild, designed to unify, 
employ, and interest parishioners in general 
in the combined work of the parish, mem¬ 
bership should be within the spiritual limi¬ 
tation mentioned above, as comprehensive 
as possible of both sexes, and of all ages. It 
can then be subdivided into wards, chapters, 
or committees, each with its own head. The 
care of the altar and vestments, the poor, 
the sick, strangers, missions, teaching, spon¬ 
sorship, church literature, music, decoration, 
are phases of activity, some or all of which 
present the opportunity for useful thought¬ 
ful care in every congregation. These sub¬ 
ordinate departments may have their own 
ordering of their own work, and at some ap¬ 
pointed time, once a month or less often, a 
meeting of the whole Guild may be held, at 
which the different wards can report to the 
Master the condition and progress of the 
particular work intrusted to their charge. 
Meanwhile, there goes up from every mem¬ 
ber the special prayer which has been set 
forth as the daily intercession for the Guild 
and its intentions. The united offering of 
the same supplication should be accounted 
an indispensable means of attaining success. 

Experience has widely shown how largely 
parochial earnestness may be augmented, 
and new lines of good discovered, by thus 
judiciously arranging and disposing of the 
time and abilities of those of the Faithful 
who have a mind to work. 

Another very desirable and beneficial form 
of Guild organization is that which has spir¬ 
itual improvement in view. Guilds of this 
kind are best composed of the same sex, and 
restricted to certain specified ages. The ob¬ 
ject proposed in these Guilds is the mainte¬ 
nance of the spiritual life, fidelity to relig¬ 
ious obligations, and deepening of devotion. 
Boys and girls, young men and young 
women, are most simply and easily influ¬ 
enced and retained in attachment to the 
Church through instrumentalities of this 
sort. When the period of adolescence is 
reached, it is often found difficult, especially 
in the case of boj^s, to keep them true to 
their religious duties. Here the spiritual 
Guild comes in, and through the sanctified 
power of association supplies a very timely 





GUILDS, CHURCH 


347 


GUILDS, CHURCH 


agency to fortify young persons against 
worldly and evil companionships, and to in¬ 
vigorate their constancy to God and Holy 
Church. It reinforces moral courage at 
that uncertain age when it is most prone to 
falter. It facilitates and expedites the work 
of a pastor, because it organizes. Without 
at all dispensing him from the necessity of 
direct personal intercourse with individuals, 
it places him in a position to reach indi¬ 
viduals more effectually. Instead of his 
attempting to look after a large number of 
scattered individuals, one by one, it brings 
them under his eye and hand, partaking of, 
and supported by, the enthusiasm of their 
numbers, so that he can collectively sway 
and guide, while at the same time it puts him 
in the way of becoming more intimately and 
personally acquainted with the needs and 
circumstances of each one, and of winning 
their confidence to counsel, advise, and help 
them. In these Guilds, the framing of a 
Rule of Life is one of the first things to be 
considered. Members are either all com¬ 
municants, or they include the unconfirmed 
as well. In case there are these two grades 
of members in the same Guild, it will be 
necessary to adapt the Rule to each. In the 
construction of a Rule, pains should be taken 
to make it as concise and brief as possible. 
It should cover the chief obligations of wor¬ 
ship and holy living, and guard against the 
temptations which are most likely to assail 
and beset the lives of those who are to keep 
it. Private prayer, attendance at Church, 
grace before and after meals, observance of 
the prescribed Days of Fasting and Absti¬ 
nence, self-examination, the avoidance of 
evil company, and refraining from bad and 
impure language, are among the points 
which may be usuall} r incorporated. An¬ 
other feature, which has been found to be 
exceedingly profitable and salutary, is for 
the Guild to receive the Holy Communion 
in a body once during the month. This 
will secure at least one communion a month, 
where, in many cases, it might be otherwise 
neglected or forgotten. More thorough and 
reverent preparation for communion may 
be thus cultivated. The pious pastor may 
lead his youth to approach the altar with 
regularity, with contrition, with fervor, and 
with fruit. A generous and right-minded 
emulation will be roused among them, and 
they will naturally vie with each other in 
the exercise of self-sacrifice, and in solicitude 
to perform their sacred duties well. It will 
be found easy, by the adoption of this Com¬ 
mon Rule, to lead them to communicate at 
an early hour, fasting, and with searched 
and purified consciences. And if, after the 
celebration, the Guild remain for a few min¬ 
utes to say together an office of Thanks¬ 
giving, it will be found most conducive to 
the advancement of their spiritual character. 

Meetings may be held twice a month, or 
oftener. These afford the priest in charge 
opportunity for instructions in religion, and 
should be marked by the seemly recitation 


of some stated office of Devotion. The office 
of Compline is well suited for a Guild which 
meets in the evening. For Guild-meetings 
held in the daytime, some one of the earlier 
Day-Hour Offices might be selected. In 
the conduct and management of Spiritual 
Guilds, the idea should be firmly adhered 
to of forming habits by the performance of 
distinct acts of devotion, and by the regular 
exercise of the devotional faculties. 

These Guilds, if properly and wisely ad¬ 
ministered, may be developed in such a 
manner as to be a substantial strength to the 
Church. They may be made to do a more 
positive and pronounced work than can 
possibly be expected from the miscellaneous 
and fragmentary constitution of Sunday- 
schools. The Guild will put nerve and 
sinew into Sunday-school work, and stand¬ 
ing ready, will take boys and girls and mould 
and shape them as the Sunday-school from 
its nature can hardly do. It will impress 
boys and girls of any age, and especially at 
that restless period when young persons 
begin to feel that they have outgrown the 
ordinary Sunday class, and when they need 
something more bracing and definite, some¬ 
thing that will be more felt in their daily 
life than the Sunday-school can give them. 
Guilds will supply in many cases the lack 
of home influence. They may be made to 
afford sympathy, elevating companionship, 
instruction, and wholesome recreation. The 
esprit du corps which they awaken is most 
valuable if directed aright. Guilds may be 
the means of raising up in Parishes a band 
of persons, trained and devout, burning with 
zeal and energy, foremost in good works for 
the souls and bodies of men,—powerful as 
an influence and example, a body-guard to 
pastors, and a glory to the Church. 

Church Guilds, in the ages of their fullest 
development, always seemed to flourish, es¬ 
pecially in England. They are, therefore, 
a part of the traditional life of the Angli¬ 
can Communion. And the atmosphere of 
American society and institutions would 
seem to be wonderfully adapted to perpetuate 
this tradition. 

Subjoined is a specimen of the Constitu¬ 
tion and Rule of Life of a Spiritual Guild. 

GUILD OF ST. STEPHEN THE 
MARTYR. 

Object.—To help and encourage young 
men and boys to lead a Godly and a Chris¬ 
tian Life, and to unite them in the fellow¬ 
ship of the Church. 

CONSTITUTION. 

I. 

The Guild shall be called the Guild of St. 
Stephen the Martyr. 

II. 

The Guild shall consist, first, of compan¬ 
ions, who shall be communicants. Second, 
of probationers, who shall be baptized boys, 
twelve years old and upwards. 





GUILDS, CHURCH 


348 


GUILDS, CHURCH 


hi. 


YI. 


The Rector of the Parish shall be, ex 
officio , Supervisor of the Guild, and either 
he or some Priest appointed by him shall be 
its Director. A Warden, or Wardens, shall 
be appointed by the Rector. The Secretary 
and Treasurer shall be elected at the Annual 
Chapter of the Guild on St. Stephen’s day 
of each year. 

IY. 

Any person wishing to join the Guild 
must be proposed at one meeting, elected at 
a following one, and receive the approbation 
of the superior. 

Y. 

Members shall contribute monthly such 
specified sum as shall from time to time be 
fixed by the Guild. 

VI. 

On general questions, probationers shall 
be 'entitled to one-half a full vote. On ad¬ 
mission of members, companions shall be 
elected by their own order, probationers by 
the entire Guild. 

RULE OF LIFE FOR COMPANIONS. 

» 

I. 

To pray regularly every morning and 
evening, devoutly kneeling. 


ii. 

To be present, if possible, at a celebration 
of the Holy Communion, on all Sundays, 
and greater festivals of the Church. 

in. 

To communicate with the other members 
of the Guild on the fourth Sunday of every 
month, always fasting, and to make a care¬ 
ful preparation before, and thanksgiving 
after, Communion. 


To observe the fast-days of the Church, 
by one act of self-denial at least. 


YII. 

To say daily the prayer for the Guild. 

VIII. 

To say prayers before and after each ser¬ 
vice in Church. 

IX. 

Never to talk lightly of holy things, nor 
to quote Scripture irreverently. 

x. 

To avoid the company of bad boys and 
men, and all places likely to be the means 
of tempting to sin. 

XI. 

Not, except for some good reason, to at¬ 
tend any place of worship or Sunday-school 
not belonging to the Anglican Church. 


XII. 

To try to do some special work for God 
and His Church, under the direction of the 
Parish Priest. 

RULE OF LIFE FOR PROBATIONERS. 

I. 

To say one’s private prayers morning and 
evening daily, devoutly kneeling. 

II. 

To attend, every Sunday, a service of the 
Church. 

in. 

To abstain from swearing, bad and im¬ 
pure language, and all bad company. 


IY. 

To behave reverently at all times in God’s 
house. 


v. 

To say the prayer for the Guild daily. 


IY. 

To practice daily self-examination. 

Y. 

To say grace before and after meals. 


YI. 

Never, except for some good reason, to at¬ 
tend any place of worship or Sunday-school 
not belonging to the Anglican Church. 

Rev. Geo. McClellan Piske. 




HABAKKUK 


349 


HAGGAI 


II 


Habakkuk. The eighth of the minor 
Prophets, of whom we have no accurate in¬ 
formation. Arguments which are rather 
ingenious than fully convincing place him 
in the first year’s reign of Josiah (630 b.c.). 
It is well to read the prophecy through as a 
single connected composition, and not as 
several disconnected ones. The bitter wars 
the Chaldeans would bring upon Judah are 
the great burden of his prophecy, and the 
need of a purging of the nation before Him 
who cannot look upon iniquity. That 
Judah should survive the scourge he does 
not doubt, but the woes and calamities that 
shall fall upon his people because of their 
sins is not lessened by the knowledge that 
the instruments of purging, the Chaldeans, 
shall suffer still more fearfully. He closes 
with a prayer which is one of the sublimest 
of all the noble poems that the Hebrew 
Prophets have given us by the grace of the 
Holy Spirit. The leading thought of the 
Prophet is the trust in God despite all dis¬ 
couragements. His “ the just shall live by 
faith” is quoted thrice by St. Paul. The 
seventeenth verse of the third chapter was 
the text that furnished Hooker the subject 
for his sermon on Justification bv Faith. 
(Vide Smith’s Bible Dictionary, Pusey on 
the Minor Prophets.) 

Hades. The place where the souls freed 
from the body remain till the Resurrection. 
It was confused in the translation of 1611 
a.d. by the use of the word Hell with the 
lace of torment. The term Hades is used 
y our Lord in St. Matt. xi. 23 ; xvi. 18 ; 
St. Luke x. 15; xvi. 23. St. Peter uses it 
in Acts ii. 27, 31. In one reading of 1 Cor. 
xv. 55, it is used (if the reading be the true 
one) by St. Paul. St. John uses it in Rev. 
i. 18 ; vi. 8 ; xx. 13, 14 (St. Peter uses a par¬ 
ticipial form, tartarosas , from the noun tar- 
tarus , in his second Epistle, ch. ii. 4, “ thrust 
down to tartarus,” which was a part of 
Hades in the pagan teaching). The equiva¬ 
lent in the Old Testament was Sheol, usu¬ 
ally translated the grave, but sometimes 
Hell, and with the same evil results as befell 
the confusion in translating Hades by Hell. 
Jacob will go down to Sheol, the place of 
departed spirits (A. V. down to the grave), 
mourning for Joseph. David saith God 
will redeem my soul from the power of Sheol 
(A. V. grave) for He shall receive me, and 
just before, “Like sheep are they laid in 
Sheol( A. Y. grave), death shall feed on them, 
and the upright shall have dominion over 
them in the morning, their beauty shall con¬ 
sume away in Sheol (A.Y. grave) from their 
dwelling.” Isaiah, in one of the most mag¬ 
nificent of his descriptions, “ When the King 
of Babylon dieth (xiv. 9) Sheol from be¬ 


neath is moved to meet thee. It stirreth up 
the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of 
the earth ; it hath raised up from their 
thrones all the kings of the nations. . . . 
Thy pomp is brought down to Sheol 
(A. Y. grave), and the noise of thy viols.” 
Enough is given to show that the Hebrew 
knowledge of Sheol was identical with the 
New Testament teaching upon Hades. 
Many speculations have been made about 
the condition of the dead. In the parable 
(or, as many Fathers hold, the history) of 
the rich man and Lazarus, there is the dec¬ 
laration that a great gulf is fixed between 
those in “ Abraham’s bosom” and those “in 
torments.” It teaches us that we retain 
feeling, memory, reason, and that then we 
have a foretaste of the state after judgment. 
That this would follow from the liberated 
state of the soul is a natural conclusion 
which even the heathen held, and which is 
confirmed by the translation given by some 
of St. Peter’s declaration that our Lord 
was quickened in His soul, by His death, a 
translation the Greek will naturally bear, 
and therefore that the act of death here is an 
added power of existence, whether for joy, 
as in the case of Lazarus, or of pain and 
agony, as in the case of the rich man. 

Haggai. A name meaning festive or fes¬ 
tival. He was the first to prophesy after the 
captivity of Judah, being called to speak in 
the Name of the Lord in the year 520 b.c. 
(Haggai i. 1). It does not appear that he 
had any claim to the title of prophet before 
this time, either by call or by family de¬ 
scent ; for concerning his parentage nothing 
is certainly known, though tradition relates 
that he was born in Babylon. Yet some 
conjecture that he may have witnessed the 
destruction of the first Temple (Haggai ii. 
3), and so have been contemporary with 
Jeremiah and Ezekiel. However this may 
be, it is very’probable that he was among 
the exiles who returned to Jerusalem under 
the edict of Cyrus (536 b.c.) and witnessed 
the setting up of the altar of God in Jeru¬ 
salem (Ezra iii. 2). Besides being the au¬ 
thor of the book which goes by his name, 
he is thought to have composed a consider¬ 
able portion of the Book of Ezra (Ezra iii. 
2, to the end of chapter vi., with some omis¬ 
sions), and tradition assigns not a few 
Psalms to him, with Zachariah, but whether 
as authors or editors cannot be determined 
(Ps. cxi., cxxv., cxxvi., cxxxvii., cxlv.- 
cxlviii.). 

The events referred to in the prophecy of 
Haggai are recorded in the portion of Ezra 
just mentioned, the prophecy being a mes¬ 
sage from God, to ruler, priest, and people 
relative to the rebuilding of the Temple. 







HAGIOGRAPHA 


350 HARMONY OF THE GOSPELS 


An examination of the book shows that it 
may be analyzed into four parts, nearly cor¬ 
responding to the times when they were 
spoken. The first division, spoken in the 
second year of Darius, the sixth month and 
first day (Haggai i.), is a message to Zerub- 
babel, Governor of Judah, and Joshua, the 
High-Priest, reproaching rulers and people 
for apathy in the work of rebuilding the 
Temple, and threatening a drought and 
famine, followed by a word of encourage¬ 
ment upon their rousing up to renewed 
energy in that work. 

The second division, spoken in the sev¬ 
enth month and twentieth day (Haggai ii. 
1-9), was designed to encourage those who 
felt the contrast between the former Temple 
and that then building, and ends with the 
well-known prophecy of the glory of the 
latter house being greater than that of the 
former, fulfilled in due time by the visible 
presence of our Lord in it. The third di¬ 
vision, spoken in the ninth month and 
twenty-fourth day (Haggai ii. 10-19), is a 
warning to the priests and people on the 
folly of offering a divided service to God, 
and the promise of a blessing upon the pros¬ 
ecution of the work on the Temple (see ch. 
ii. 18). 

The fourth and last division, spoken the 
same day (Haggai ii. 20-23), while a special 
prophecy to Zerubbabel of the overthrow 
of the power of his enemies, is also a declara¬ 
tion to him, as the Prince of Judah, the 
lineal ancestor of our Lord, of the break¬ 
ing down of the kingdom of sin, Satan, 
and death, and the establishment of the 
power of God and the kingdom of His 
Christ. 

Hagiographa. I. A division of the Old 
Testament, which included the Psalms, the 
Proverbs, Job, the Song of Solomon, Ruth, 
Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, 
Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles. This division 
our Lord Himself recognized after His resur¬ 
rection: “These are the words which I 
spake unto you, while I was yet with you, 
that all things must be fulfilled, which were 
written in the Law of Moses, and in the 
Prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning 
me” (St. Luke xxiv. 44). In these holy 
writings the Jews included the historical 
books of Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah, and the 
two books of the Chronicles and the Prophet 
Daniel, whose book is so largely historical. 
The reference there made by our Lord was 
not solely to the Psalms alone, but to all 
Messianic references in the collections of 
these holy writings. 

Hallel. The Psalms so called are the six, 
cxiii.-cxviii., and are so called from the 
first word of the first Psalm of the series, 
Hallelujah. They were used at the three 
solemn Feasts of the Passover, Pentecost, 
and Tabernacles, and on the Feast of the 
New Moon. They were used on these three 
feasts in the Temple service. The series was 
divided into two parts, the first part ending 
at the close of Psalm cxiv., the other ending 


with the cxviii. It was the festal hymn 
of the Passover feast, and was so used by our 
Lord. The hymn that was sung by Him 
and by His Apostles was doubtless the cxviii. 
This last Psalm was used antiphonally, as 
will be seen by noting its construction. It 
was probably used processionally. It was 
to this Psalm that our Lord made two 
formal allusions during the last six days pre¬ 
ceding His crucifixion: “ Did ye never 

read in the Scripture, The stone which the 
builders rejected the same is become the 
head of the corner; this is the Lord’s doing, 
and it is marvelous in our eyes?” And 
again, “ I say unto you ye shall not see me 
henceforth until ye shall say, Blessed is He 
that cometh in the name of the Lord.” 
The six Psalms form the Hallel; another 
series of Psalms from the cxviii. (or cxx. 
or cxxxv. 4), and ending with the cxxxvi. 
Psalm, was called the great Hallel. But the 
Hallel of the Feasts was composed of the 
above six Psalms. 

Harmony of the Gospels. (Vide Dia- 
tessaron.) The effort to place the events 
and incidents of our Lord’s life in a chrono¬ 
logical order was made at an early date after 
the Gospels were in circulation. It was 
very natural that this attempt should be 
made. The attempt has always had its 
peculiar difficulties, arising both from the 
Person and the reverence due to Him and 
from the scantiness of material. The gaps 
in the narratives, the lack of any chronolo¬ 
gical order continuously observed, the possi¬ 
bility, nay, probability, that the same dis¬ 
courses and parables were repeated at dif¬ 
ferent times before different audiences, the 
possible likeness in incident in really different 
miraculous cures, are against the complete 
success of any attempt to make such a har¬ 
mony as shall be of proof against any objec¬ 
tions. The main incidents of our Lord’s life, 
the greater stepping-stones from one phase of 
His ministry to another, can be put beyond 
an honest objection. Again, it is not every 
one who will make the trial who has the true 
reverent tone of mind. And the same is 
true of those who study the labors of others 
in this department of New Testament in¬ 
vestigations. To some it is a most vivid 
picture of the marvelous life, and gives to 
them an insight they could not otherwise 
obtain. In others there is an irreverence and 
failure to appreciate these gains, a caviling, 
questioning spirit, which wastes itself upon 
petty questions. Tatian, whose work is 
lost, was the first who made the attempt, 
and apparently without any judgment and 
with some daring changes of the text. It 
was therefore suppressed. Ammonius took 
St. Matthew’s Gospel as the basis, and com¬ 
paring the others with it, made up a scheme 
of parallel places which he placed by its side. 
These Ammonian sections are often found in 
the cursive manuscripts of the Gospels. Euse¬ 
bius of Caesarea (340 a.d.) arranged these 
into ten sections, showing where all four 
agreed, when three agreed, then wherein 






HEAD 


351 


HEAVEN 


St. Matthew and St. Mark agreed, where St. 
Matthew and St. Luke, where St. Luke and 
St. Mark,and wherein each had some separate 
event not recorded by the others. The system 
was an intricate one, but it has been digested 
into order by Bishop Wordsworth in his 
Greek Testament. In recent times many 
valuable Harmonies have been issued,such as 
that which accompanies Williams’s “Devo¬ 
tional Commentary on the Gospels,” in which 
the arrangement enables us to determine when 
the Evangelists used the same words and 
phrases. These are so readily accessible that 
it is needless to place here a synopsis of Har¬ 
mony. As has been said above, no arrange¬ 
ment can be made which will not be open to 
some objection, and probably it is best that it 
is so. The research thus stimulated and the 
minute study of the details of usage and allu¬ 
sion has proved to be of immense service in 
establishing the credibility of the Gospels, 
in bringing out the inner meaning of many 
passages, in showing the impossibility that 
the Gospels could be forgeries, for they are 
bound by many slight and delicate ties to 
the time, the place, and the surroundings 
of the date claimed for them, ties which no 
forger, no matter how skillful, could have 
formed with the history and complex social 
relations which he would necessarily intro¬ 
duce into his work. In this way vast ser¬ 
vice has been done, despite the difficulties 
and disappointments which must surround 
every Harmony. 

Head. The head, as the seat of thought 
and reason, was the type of Lordship. So our 
Lord is the Head of the Body, His Church. 
So the husband is the head of the wife, the 
chief, the responsible person of the household. 
So covering the head was a token of subjec¬ 
tion. Anointing the head a ceremony (a) 
of conferring kingship, ( b ) of consecrating 
to the High-Priesthood, ( d ) to the Propheti¬ 
cal office, ( e ) as a joyful festal act, (/) for 
recovery from sickness (Jas. v. 14). The 
Lord was anointed for His burial. But 
there was and is the spiritual anointing 
which we share with our Lord, the unction 
of the Holy Ghost (1 John ii. 20, 27). 

Heart. In Scripture the ideal seat of 
emotions and affections, as of joy and sor¬ 
row, of longingand satisfaction, of envy and 
of hatred, of love and peace ; of the intel¬ 
lectual operations, as of thought and of rea¬ 
son, of understanding and of meditation; 
of will and desire, as of lust and evil imagi¬ 
nations, of duplicity and folly, of honesty 
and goodness ; of the internal state, “ as he 
thinketh in his heart so is he; eat and 
drink saith he to thee, but his heart is not 
with thee.” A heart so constituted is indeed 
the battle-ground for opposing forces, and 
needs every aid. Keep thine heart with 
diligence, for out of it are the issues of life. 
Many images are used to express the Divine 
desire to control man’s heart: “My son, 
give me thine heart.” “ With the heart man 
believeth unto righteousness.” Love is 
poured into our hearts, “ He trieth the heart 


and the reins, He soweth His seed in man’s 
heart.” Scripture is full of both the work¬ 
ings of th« natural emotions and of the Di¬ 
vine influence upon the heart of man. 

Heathen. All tribes who were not either 
by descent, or by admission into the Cove¬ 
nant by circumcision, into the family of the 
Chosen People. The word Ooim is trans¬ 
lated as heathen, Gentiles, nations, and re¬ 
fers to nations with whom the Israelites 
were surrounded, as the seven nations of 
Canaan, and the more distant people with 
whom they came into contact later. They 
were separated from them b 3 r strict enact¬ 
ments. They could buy or sell of the Gen¬ 
tiles man-servants and maid-servants. The 
Moabite was excluded to the tenth genera¬ 
tion. The Edomite could be admitted into 
the nation in the third generation. A deep 
demarcation was established by the Law, 
and after repeated scourgings and punish¬ 
ments was at last accepted by the people, 
between themselves and the heathen. But 
they were to be the missionaries and teach¬ 
ers of these heathen. Jonah was sent on 
such a work. The Jews were scattered as 
dew upon the grass among the nations, to 
spread the doctrine of the oneness of God 
preparatory for Christianity. The Gentiles 
were to have the good tidings preached to 
them also, and at last when Israel turned 
away from its Messiah, the heathen were to 
become the chosen people, and to be grafted 
into the stock of the olive. It is our own 
glory and responsibility that as Gentiles no 
longer heathen in faith, but of the nations 
that are afar off, we have been gathered in¬ 
to the spiritual Israel. In us is fulfilled the 
prophecy of Noah: “ God shall enlarge 

Japhet, and he shall dwell in the tents of 
Shem.” 

Heaven. As a material part, so to speak, 
of the universe, the Mosaic record gives very 
distinct and definite description. The fir¬ 
mament dividing the waters from # the 
waters. The expanse, with its part in the 
economy of the world, is apparently spoken 
of in such hard, definite language, that it 
has been one of the objections made by 
modern science to his description, and yet it 
has been shown (Dawson, Science and the 
Bible) that the words do really describe ap¬ 
pearances accurately, and that they bear a 
perfectly fair scientific interpretation. But 
it is not necessary here to speak of the hea¬ 
vens in their natural aspect, nor of the clas¬ 
sification into the seven heavens of the 
Rabbins. The language of St. Paul, of his 
being caught up into the third heaven, has 
far more weight than we can attach to any 
other enumeration, but even this tells 
us nothing beyond the bare fact. Origen 
says, with eminent good sense, the Christian 
Scriptures tell us nothing of these subdi¬ 
visions. But we use this term in a theologic 
and mystic manner. Heaven, then, the 
Scriptures tell us, is the abode of God. The 
heavens are His throne, the earth is His 
footstool. To localize the presence of an 





HEBREWS 


352 


HEBREWS 


omnipresent God is difficult, but the Scrip¬ 
tures are certainly full and explicit. Isaiah 
saw Him on His throne, high and lifted up. 
Ezekiel saw His glory round His throne, 
which throne was as the appearance of a 
sapphire stone. St. Stephen saw the heavens 
open and the Lord Jesus standing on the 
right hand of God. St. John had a vision 
of the throne set in heaven. However these 
and innumerable other texts might he singly 
interpreted, in their general consent they 
point to the heavens as the presence cham¬ 
ber of God. Perhaps Coleridge’s saying, 
that it is not so much “ that God is every¬ 
where present, hut that everything every¬ 
where is present to God,” transferring the 
centre of observation from ourselves to the 
presence of God, has the germ of the truth 
in it. We cannot comprehend the laws of 
a self-existent Spirit, so that it is useless to 
speculate, and we can only receive and be¬ 
lieve. It is not contrary to what nature and 
our own powers tell us, though it is far above 
all our ability to understand, to hold that 
the Creator of the universe hath all things 
laid open in His presence and yet hath His 
throne whereon He sitteth evermore, and 
yet to hold that the heavens and the heaven 
of heavens cannot contain Heaven. This 
Heaven and Presence Chamber of God is 
the abode of the ministrant spirits, the 
Archangels Cherubim and Seraphim, the 
angels and living creatures, the thousand 
thousands and the ten thousand times ten 
thousand which stand before Him and who 
are made messengers and ministers to the 
heirs of salvation. From this presence 
Michael was sent to Daniel; from this pres¬ 
ence Gabriel was sent to the Blessed Virgin 
Mary. In this abode of glory and unap¬ 
proachable splendor of light is the future 
happy home of the Christian. The Scrip¬ 
tures bid us look up to heaven. The Son of 
God came down from heaven, and up into 
heaven He was received when He ascended 
to His Father and our Father to His God 
and our God. 

Hebrews. It has been earnestly debated 
whether the Epistle to the Hebrews is or is 
not from the pen of St. Paul, and Apollos, 
St. Luke, and St. Clement have each been 
suggested with more or less of plausibility as 
being the author of the Epistle, which the 
instinct of the Church has ever ascribed to 
St. Paul. It is not intended to enter into 
this discussion, which cannot be settled, but 
it is well to abide by the general voice or 
silent assent of the Church. And surely 
the weighty doctrines and the spiritual in¬ 
sight displayed in the Epistle are fully con¬ 
sonant with the noble genius of the Apos¬ 
tle to the Gentiles. It opens with no un¬ 
certain blast of the Apostolic trumpet. 
“God, who at sundry times and in divers 
manners spake in time past unto the 
fathers by the prophets, hath in these last 
days spoken unto us by His Son,” can well 
take its place beside the sublime opening of 
St. John’s Gospel,—“In the beginning was 


the Word, and the Word was with God, 
and the Word was God,”— and is the con¬ 
tinuation of it in a manner. The date of 
the Epistle must be placed some time soon 
after the Apostle’s first imprisonment, 
while he was in Italy, and most probably 
about 64 a.d. It has hardly an equal in 
the whole range of the Pauline Epistles 
for sustained loftiness of tone. There is a 
sweep of rhetoric in some passages, be- 
gining with the first chapter and culmina¬ 
ting in the grand roll-call of the heroes of 
Faith, which are unmistakably the out¬ 
pouring of St. Paul’s mind. Who but he 
could have penned the argument of the 
chapters vii.-x. ? Who but St. Paul of all 
the known writers of the Apostolic age could 
have written the tender, devout passages 
descriptive of our Lord as the sympathetic 
High-Priest (ch. ii. 14-18; iv. 12-16; vi. 
17-20), or could have composed the twelfth 
chapter ? A careful comparison of the 
marginal references will show how St. 
Paul, though writing to a wholly different 
audience, the Christian Jew of Palestine, 
yet wove into his argument so much that 
he had written to the mingled congrega¬ 
tions or to the purely Gentile Churches of 
his own founding. It is but the outpouring 
of that zeal and love which filled his heart. 
“ Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to 
God for Israel is, that they might be saved” 
(Rom. x. 1). 

The argument of this Epistle can be best 
understood if the Apostle’s doctrine of Justi¬ 
fication be presupposed, and faith, practical 
living faith in the Atonement, be taken as 
the proper subject, and that it is an expan¬ 
sion of the doctrine contained in the 24th, 
25th, and 26th verses of the third chapter of 
Romans, and that this expansion is made 
purposely for the Hebrew Christians, and 
so that the Priesthood of our Lord is 
brought out most prominently. 

This is shown by rapid analysis some¬ 
what as follows: 

Ch. i. and ii. God’s Son (a) by nature 
above Angels. ( b ) Passed by the Angels, 
became man, submitted to humiliation and 
death that He might become the captain of 
our salvation, sanctify us, and be our merci¬ 
ful and faithful High-Priest. 

Ch. iii. and iv. As captain— i.e., leader— 
He is compared with Moses, and ourselves 
are warned by the example of the Israel¬ 
ites in the wilderness. And He is again 
set forth as our High-Priest. 

Ch. v. But a Priest must make an 
Atonement. So Jesus is a Priest forever. 
(a) As God’s only-begotten Son. (5) By 
Consecration of the Father. 

Ch. vi. The Apostle characteristically 
pauses to set forth Christian doctrine, and 
our steadfastness upon the foundation of 
God’s oath. 

Ch. vii. Christ is an Eternal Priest, 
for a provision for the transference of the 
Priesthood according to the Gospel was 
made in Abraham. And the Levitical 







HEBREWS 


353 


HELLENIST 


Priesthood was only bound up with the 
Law, and was repealed by the Oath, “ Thou 
art a Priest forever after the order of Mel- 
chisedec.” Therefore the Covenant and 
Priesthood in Christ Jesus is of the Gos¬ 
pel to Abraham, and the Law was an in¬ 
tercalation, and so this statement of facts 
also brings us to Jesus as our High-Priest. 

Ch. viii. The Apostle develops these 
correlated facts of the Covenant and Priest¬ 
hood as better than the shadows of the 
Levitical Covenant and Sacrifices and 
Priesthood, and adds the mediatorial conse¬ 
quence of this better Covenant. 

Ch. ix. Still pursues the types of the Le¬ 
vitical service, and carries on the thoughts 
of the continuous intercession of our Lord. 

Ch. x. Sums up as it were in ditferent 
phrases the vanishing imperfect nature of 
the Levitical sacrifices, the perfect offering 
of one in His own Body, in which, raised 
from the dead, He is King as well as 
Priest and Mediator. Then the short pre¬ 
ceding appeals to Faith and the access 
through Him to the Father are resumed, 
with a repetition of the substance of the 
solemn warning given in the sixth chapter, 
but now from a new position ; and a refer¬ 
ence to the past courageous martyrdom of 
the Hebrew Christians. 

Ch. xi. Is wholly after the Apostolic 
manner, and is a glorious roll-call of the 
victorious heroes of the Faith, closing with 
the revelation that they wkhout us will not 
receive the reward of faith, but are kept 
waiting that we should be perfected to¬ 
gether. 

Ch. xii. Makes a practical application 
of the need of Faith in the dangers of that 
day, and contains an appeal of wondrous 
force and beauty, which has so liturgical a 
tone that it has been claimed as quoted 
from the Liturgy of St. James, in which it 
also occurs. 

Ch. xiii. Carries on the application of 
this Faith unto our daily life, and closes 
with one of those Pauline benedictions 
which are a peculiar feature of St. Paul’s 
Epistles. Imperfect as the outline is, we 
can see clearly the doctrine of the Incarna¬ 
tion stated as leading up to this Priesthood, 
the fullness of the Atonement and its ap- 
lication to us through His eternal Priest- 
ood, and the necessity of Faith in us by 
which we may lay hold of the hope an¬ 
chored with Jesus the High-Priest for¬ 
ever after the order of Melchisedec. The 
Apostle “ has provided in this Epistle an 
exhaustless supply of hope, comfort, peace, 
and joy for every Christian soul looking to 
the Cross of Christ, and then raising its 
eyes to Heaven and beholding Him seated 
as our King at God’s right hand, ever liv¬ 
ing as our Priest to make intercession for 
us, and coming hereafter in His glorious 
majesty to judge the quick and the dead and 
to put all enemies under His feet, and to 
reward all true Israelites who believe in 
Him, obey Him, and suffer for Him, and 

23 


who regard Him with the eye of Faith as 
no other than God of God, Light of Light, 
Very God of Very God, of one substance 
with the Father, existing before the world, 
creating and sustaining all things with His 
Power, and to welcome them to the ever¬ 
lasting mansion of the only continuing city, 
the Heavenly Jerusalem, whose builder and 
maker is God.” (Wordsworth’s Introduc¬ 
tion to Epistle to the Hebrews.) 

Hell. (Vide Gehenna.) It was by a sad 
confusion that the translation of 1611 A.D., 
following earlier ones, used the same word 
Hell for Hades and Gehenna. It obscured 
two of the most important doctrines upon 
eschatology,—the doctrine of the intermedi¬ 
ate state ail'd the doctrine of future punish¬ 
ment. (In the sense of the abode of the soul 
before the Resurrection, the reader should 
consult the articles on Eschatology, 
Hades ; also Gehenna.) As a place of pun¬ 
ishment it is under other terms spoken of by 
the Prophet Isaiah (lxvi. 24): “ for their 
worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be 
quenched,” a phrase which our Lord uses 
thrice in St. Mark ix. 44, 46, 48. So, too, in 
Daniel it is written that some shall rise to 
everlasting life and some to everlasting 
shame; a contrast our Lord also uses in His 
parable of the sheep and the goats, “ and 
these shall go away into everlasting punish¬ 
ment, but the righteous into life eternal,” 
where “aeonian” is the descriptive adjective 
in both clauses, as it is in the LXX. trans¬ 
lation of Daniel. Where it is we know not, 
but a terrible hint is given in Isaiah (lxvi. 
24): “And they shall go forth, and look upon 
the carcasses of the men that have trans¬ 
gressed against Me: for their worm shall not 
die, neither shall their fire be quenched,” 
which will compare with Revelation (xiv. 
10): “and he shall be tormented with fire 
and brimstone in the presence of the holy 
angels, and in the presence of the Lamb.” 
The sorrows of that dread abode are de¬ 
scribed in phrases which may bear a meta¬ 
phorical sense, but literally seem very ma¬ 
terial. It is not profitable to speculate upon 
these things, and it is far better to receive 
what is told us with sorrow that sin has 
made it so certain. 

Hellenist. A Jew who was brought up 
in a foreign country, and had imbibed more 
or less of the foreign influence and the cur¬ 
rent language of his place of residence. 
The word occurs thrice in the New Testa¬ 
ment (Acts vi. 1; ix. 29; xi. 20). The term 
was applied also to the proselytes of Greek 
or other Gentile parentage. But since the 
Hellenic dialect of the Greek was the most 
widely spread and best understood, the term 
was applied to all proselytes, of whatever de¬ 
scent. These Hellenists were of the greatest 
service to the spread of the Gospel, both in¬ 
directly and directly. Indirectly, because 
they already prepared the way by holding 
and more or less boldly teaching the unity 
of God among the Gentiles, and because by 
the translation of the Hebrew Scripture into 





HERESIARCH 


354 


HERESY 


the Hellenic Greek they placed a most ser¬ 
viceable instrument in the hands of Chris¬ 
tian teachers. Directly, because many of 
them, already affected by the Gentile influ¬ 
ences, or being proselytes, were ready to ac¬ 
cept the Gospel when it was presented to 
them. It was to these the Dispersion, the 
strangers scattered in the provinces of Asia 
Minor, that St. Peter addressed his first 
Epistle. Among these St. Paul often found 
the most cordial reception. 

Their most lasting service to the Gospel 
was the preparation, by the translation of 
the Old Testament into the Hellenic Greek, 
of a language of the Gospel. (Vide Septua- 
GiNT.j The work done among them was 
individual, and often, so far as we can trace, 
but temporary ; the work done through them 
had most important and permanent results 
for the Gentile Christians. 

Heresiarch. The founder of a heresy, an 
arch-heretic. As heresy is very largely at 
first an intellectual error, sometimes a re¬ 
volt from an overstraining of orthodox doc¬ 
trine, its moral results are not at once very 
evident. And a leader in a heresy may be 
apparently a most estimable man in every 
relation of life, and by that very goodness 
of character commend doctrines which with¬ 
out his personal influence would be rejected. 
Arius was said to be a very devout man. 
Nestorius practiced great asceticism. St. 
Augustine spoke of Faustus, his Mani- 
chaean teacher, as one who by his life com¬ 
mended his heretical doctrines. So at the 
present day, since moral sequences stand at 
some distance adown the line of cause and 
effect, from intellectual and perverted re¬ 
ligious teaching many strange and absurd 
notions are disseminated by men of pure 
lives. The term heresiarch cannot be ap¬ 
plied to them as Founders, but in tbe sense 
of Leadership it can be applied to them as 
Leaders in false doctrine. 

Heresy. The word had at first a good 
meaning,—a choice, a profession, a business ; 
then a party, or school, or thought, as Jose¬ 
phus says he was brought up in the Phara- 
saic heresy. But soon in ecclesiastical lan¬ 
guage in the New Testament it meant the 
holding of a doctrine persistently contrary 
to the authoritative statements of it, a choice 
in error, and that a persistent choice. It is 
not an infidelity which denies the Faith, but 
a perversion, more or less extensive, of the 
Faith. It is overthrowing the foundation 
by the consequences. It is this which makes 
it so dangerous. Nestorius, apparently, was 
most reverent, and in the minds of very 
many now was much misused; but had his 
doctrine been allowed to stand, it would have 
overthrown Christianity as surely as would 
Arianism have done it. Heresy involves 
perverse doctrine; schism is separation on 
points of Episcopal government. St. Paul 
lays down the rule with regard to the treat¬ 
ment of a heretic. “ A man that is an heretic 
after the first and second admonition, reject.” 
And he excommunicated Hymenaeus and 


Alexander for their false teaching. Heresy 
is exceedingly subtle in its disguises, though 
it is thoroughly Antichristian. It professes 
an insight and a wisdom which speaketh 
great things. Yet the Church has ever 
been very careful not to charge heresy but 
upon sure grounds. This will explain why 
so many men were apparently dealt with 
very gently at first and harshly afterwards, 
for she must, as a net cast into the sea, in¬ 
clude all and afterwards select. The earliest 
heresies, so far as we can now judge of them, 
were in some degree Gnostic in matter and 
in form, and became glaring at an early 
point of their growth, and so were easily 
dealt with. But it was much more diffi¬ 
cult to deal with men like Paul of Samosata, 
or Beryllus, or Praxeas, since theirs were 
errors much more logical in form and their 
defenders often able to hold a catholic doc¬ 
trine in words, but in a very heretical sense. 
It was for this reason that the very word 
over which the Nicene battle was fought 
and won had been a century before rejected 
by the Church as capable of an unsound 
signification—the Homdousion. The here¬ 
sies of the Cerinthians, Yalentinians, and 
Montanists, of Paul of Samosata, and of 
Sabellius were mere skirmishes to the gi¬ 
gantic struggles into which Arianism and 
the secondary heresies which were derived 
from it plunged the Church. But out of it 
there came a series of definitions of the 
Faith which by their affirmation brands 
every counter-statement as heretical. The 
Nicene Creed really contains them by de¬ 
duction. But the special definitions on 
Nestorianism, Eutychianism, Monothelitism 
buttress its articles against every wind of 
doctrine. 

These, then, we must accept, and must 
test every new presented doctrine by them. 
Upon the definitions of the six (Ecumenical 
Councils the Church must plant herself and 
defend the one Faith. There is another part, 
however, of this subject which it is well to 
speak of. These doctrines we have spoken 
of above are “ of the Faith.” But it may be 
asked, Is there not another series of dogmas 
which you stamp as heretical ? You reject 
Mariolatry, Transubstantiation, the Immac¬ 
ulate Conception, and Infallibility as clearly 
as you reject the Pelagianism that is revived 
in a modern fashion. It is true, and herein, 
until there is an (Ecumenical Council to 
pronounce them heretical, we only deny 
that they can endure the test of Holy Scrip¬ 
ture and the harmony with the undoubted 
definitions of the Faith, and use the right be¬ 
longing to the Church in each country to 
protect itself by forbidding them to be 
taught, till they are judged and passed upon 
by the whole Church in Council assembled. 
As we have never anathematized either the 
Eastern or the Latin Churches, we simply 
hold our accredited teachers to those doc¬ 
trines taught in the first six centuries, and 
to none else. English Parliamentary Acts 
are not binding upon us, but these sentences 




HERESY 


355 


HERMENEUTICS 


from an act in the first year of Queen Eliz¬ 
abeth state concisely our position: “but 
only such as heretofore have been adjudged 
to be heresy by the authority of the Canon¬ 
ical Scriptures, or by some of the first four 
General Councils, or by any other Council 
wherein the same was declared heresy by the 
express and plain words of the said Canon¬ 
ical Scriptures.” 

The separate bodies of those who profess 
and call themselves Christians and show a 
zealous love towards our Lord are in schism, 
or in opposition to the external government 
of the Church, but may practically hold the 
Faith in all essentials. Still, an examina¬ 
tion of many of their writings shows a lax¬ 
ity and that want of accuracy which is per¬ 
ilous. A person may hold heretical doctrine 
unwittingly, or through excess of zeal may 
be misled into it, but he is not to be ac¬ 
counted heretical unless so pronounced by 
the Church. Hooker’s note on the title-leaf 
of the “ Christian Letter” expresses the tem¬ 
per of every one who has authority to teach : 
“ All things written in the books I humbly 
and meekly submit to the censure of the 
grave and reverend Prelates within this 
land, and to the judgment of learned men 
and the sober consideration of all others, 
wherein I may happely err as others before 
me have done, but an heretike, by the help 
of Almighty God, I will never be.” The 
“ Christian Letter” was an attack upon his 
Ecclesiastical Polity, and his (unpublished) 
replies were scribbled on the margins. 

Apart from the earlier heresies of the 
Ebionites, Gnostics, Manichaeans, Priseil- 
lians, which were offshoots of the same tend¬ 
ency to revolt, we must note the false doc¬ 
trines of Sabellius (240 a.d.), who taught 
that the Trinity was but the manifestation 
in three forms at different times of one and 
the same Divine Being, and the similar 
ones of Paul of Samosata; those of Arius, 
who denied the eternal sonship of Christ, 
and of the modifications in the Semiarian 
and Eusebian forms of it. Those of Pela- 
gius, who held that man had the capacity still 
left in him to earn immortal life without 
grace. Nestorius was led by his zeal 
against subordinate errors to assert that the 
Blessed Virgin Mary had given birth only 
to Christ, but not to God, meaning thereby 
that there was not continuously a perfect 
union of the two natures in the one Person of 
our Lord. He did not deny the indwelling 
of the Divine in the human nature, but he 
would not hold to the perfect union of the 
two, as the body and soul together subsisting 
in perfect union make the one man. This 
heresy brought out its opposites, the Mono- 
physite and the Monothelite heresies. Eu- 
tyches, in his fervor against Nestorius, main¬ 
tained the single nature in Christ, —the 
Divine nature was so united to the human 
as to form but one nature, as silver fused 
with gold forms but one alloy. To escape 
this error (condemned by the Council of 
Chalcedon, 451 a.d.), Sergius, the Patriarch 


of Constantinople (630 a.d.), put forth the 
Monothelite error, in which, acknowledging 
the two natures, yet the Divine will ab¬ 
sorbed the human will, and there was but 
one will and one energy in the Person of 
our Lord. These heresies appear to have 
exhausted all forms of false teaching against 
the Person of our Lord from within ; of 
course the denial of His Divinity is an as¬ 
sault from without. 

Hermeneutics signify the principles of 
Biblical interpretation, as Exegesis refers 
to the practical use of these principles. The 
early writers on Scripture tried to classify 
these principles and to lay down some fixed 
rules upon which to apply them. Though 
they accomplished much, their many subdi¬ 
visions have in this later age been rejected 
with perhaps too much scorn. For a guide 
in researches into the hidden senses of Scrip¬ 
ture, a thorough and devout study of the 
text is itself imperatively necessary. It was 
this study, in which he spent three years of 
unrelaxed labor, which gave Chrysostom his 
almost unrivaled power of exposition, and 
his great common sense kept him from mis¬ 
applying his knowledge. Hermeneutics 
means really, the principles of common 
sense used in the Exegesis of the Bible,— i.e., 
every department of human investigation 
must be governed by its own laws, as the 
physiologist investigates the deeper mys¬ 
teries of our human system by the facts he 
has already gained, and his sagacity, com¬ 
mon sense, and power to combine these 
facts skillfully lead to still greater results, 
but his sagacity and common sense would 
fail him if he were to apply them without 
previous special training to some other sci¬ 
ence, as, for instance, the Law. The Patris¬ 
tic expositors divided the science into from 
three to twelve or fourteen subdivisions, 
thereby defeating the establishment of any 
true system. It is perfectly defensible to 
lay down these three divisions: (a) The 
Principle that a book (or a text) should be 
studied in itself,— i.e., the connected form of 
its contents and their purpose, the surround¬ 
ings because of which the book was written, 
and their bearing upon the contents. This 
may be called the Grammatical method. 
(6) Since each book has claimed for it the 
authority of Inspiration, it follows that its 
contents, which historically are local, can 
also have wider and later applications. This 
is specially true of special sections in the 
book, — e g., our Lord’s Parables had usually 
a historical application at the time they 
were uttered, but He intended that they 
should have an application to us in each 
successive age, and their wonderful word¬ 
ing gives them such a truth for each genera¬ 
tion. (c) Then within the limits of that 
common sense spoken of above there is also 
what is, for want of a more accurate term, 
called the Principle of allegorizing, of inter¬ 
preting passages so as to give them their true 
sense, yet one not on the surface. Such was 
our Lord’s use of the words which He as the 





HERMITS 


356 


HIERARCHY 


Eternal Word had used to Moses : “ I am 
the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, 
and the God of Jacob.” The perfectly legiti¬ 
mate conclusion our Lord drew from it, that 
He was not the God of the dead but of the 
living, was not upon the surface nor appar¬ 
ently within the purpose of the words when 
first uttered. So St. Paul compares Hagar 
to the Jerusalem that now is, and Sarah to 
the New Jerusalem, the mother of us all. 
It was this principle misused and pushed 
to extremes that brought the whole study 
of Hermeneutics into disrepute, but it was 
a very sound one in itself, and gave to the 
Patristic Exegesis very much of that power 
which it will never lose. 

Hermits. ( Vide Ascetics.) The hermit 
life seems to have originated in the Eastern 
idea that matter was evil, and that by de¬ 
spising the body the soul might.be elevated. 
The celibate Therapeutic, clad in white gar¬ 
ments, praying at sunrise with their faces to 
the sun, and with their allegorical rendering 
of Scripture, were hermits. They lived a 
life of contemplation, while the Essenes 
practiced agriculture and the arts, and lived 
together, and assisted others. The Thera¬ 
peutic gave their property to relatives before 
entering the brotherhood, while the Essenes 
had a “common treasure.” The Therapeutae 
lived separately in cells and were ignorant 
of the outer world, recruiting their ranks 
from boys brought up by themselves, while 
the Essenes only accepted adults as mem¬ 
bers. Banus the Pharisee, . with whom 
Josephus lived, led a life of stern self-mor¬ 
tification, clothed in woven leaves and feed¬ 
ing on roots. 

In the first two centuries of the Christian 
Church, while persecution raged, it was in¬ 
deed a “church militant,” and the great 
Decian persecution may have driven Chris¬ 
tian men into the desert away from heathen 
cities, and excited a martyr spirit, as in 
New Testament times (Heb. xi. 38), when 
Christians “ wandered in deserts.” When 
Christianity grew worldly, those who desired 
to observe a very strict life naturally fell 
into the ascetic idea. Paul was the author, 
and Antony the encourager, of hermit life 
among Christians, and Hilarion and St. 
Jerome in his Bethlehem community were 
famed as promoters of it. At first scattered 
individuals practiced a life of asceticism in 
the Egyptian deserts, where Paul and An¬ 
tony had performed their austerities in the 
third and fourth centuries. Pachomius, in 
the peaceable reign of Constantine, caused 
monasteries to be built in Thebais in Egypt, 
and thence monastic life has spread through¬ 
out the world. 

While the Church uttered its protest 
against anything unholy in matter, condemn¬ 
ing the abhorrence of things innocent, she 
approved asceticism in the so-called “ Apos¬ 
tolical Canons” as a useful discipline. (Euseb. 
H. E., v. 3.) 

In ancient times the pillar-saint, Simeon 
Stylites, who for years exposed himself to 


the weather, standing on pillars of various 
heights, is pre-eminent as a specimen of 
ascetic life. He would not leave his post 
even to embrace his mother, w r ho visited him, 
although she died at his place of mortification. 

St. Patrick in Ireland, St. Columba in 
Scotland, and St. Martin, Bishop of Tours, 
in France, have left illustrious names behind 
them. 

In modern times the Russian monks have 
been remarkable hermits. In Dean Stanley’s 
“ Eastern Church” (Lect. x. pp. 393-94) we 
find the following extract from Fletcher’s 
“ Russian Commonwealth” : “In the dark 
forest of Muscovy, in the frozen waters of 
Archangel, is carried out the same rigid sys¬ 
tem, at least in outward form, that was born 
and nurtured in the burning desert of the 
Thebaid.” These Russian monks are very 
influential. They are called “ The Black 
Clergy.” In the sixteenth century they 
used to go nearly naked, with flowing hair. 
Many had an iron collar or chain about their 
necks even in the extremity of winter. 

In some rare cases they are considered as 
prophets, and can rebuke whom they will. 
One of them checked and rebuked an em¬ 
peror when he was intent on massacring 
the town of Plescon. (Stanley, pp. 390-97.) 

Some conception of the vast numbers of 
early monks may be formed from the fact 
that Cassian speaks of a monastery with five 
thousand monks in it. The monasteries in 
deserts had their churches and officiating 
clergy. St. Jerome describes the effect of 
the daily sermon of the Abbot at evening 
prayer as seen in the tears of the brethren, 
and when the kingdom of Christ and heaven 
were the topics, “ then one may observe 
how each of them, with a moderate sigh and 
eyes lift up to heaven, says within himself, 
‘ Oh that I had wings like a dove, for then 
would I flee away and be at rest!’ ” He also 
commends the life of the monks of his be¬ 
loved Bethlehem, where “ one could not go 
into the field but he should hear the plow¬ 
man singing his hallelujahs, and the vine¬ 
dresser tuning David’s Psalms.” It is of such 
a life that Geikie speaks, in the “lawless 
Middle Ages, when the cloister was like a 
speck of blue in a heaven of storm.” Still, 
extreme asceticism sometimes produces a re¬ 
action of excessive laxity, and fleeing from 
the world to challenge Satan in the wilder¬ 
ness is not as heroic as the struggle with the 
world, and perhaps the life among others 
rightly lived may be less dangerous than soli¬ 
tary life. 

Authorities : T. Gregory Smith in Smith 
& Cheetham’s Dictionary of Christian An¬ 
tiquities, Chambers’s Library of Universal 
Knowledge, Schaff-Herzog, Encyclopaedia 
of Religious Knowledge, Bingham’s Antiq¬ 
uities, Farrar’s and Geikie’s Lives of Christ, 
Prideaux’s Connections, Kingsley’s Hermits, 
Euseb. H. E., ii. 17, Sozomen, H. E., i. 13. 

Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Hierarchy. The divinely instituted gov¬ 
erning order in the Church. It really, both 




HIERARCHY 


357 


HIGH-PRIEST 


by New Testament evidence and by the tes¬ 
timony of history, comprises three orders,— 
the Bishop, the Presbyter (contracted into 
Priest), and the Deacon. By this Hierarchy 
every historical Church has been and is gov¬ 
erned. Since the Reformation the disastrous 
attempt has been made and is now continued 
of deriving the government of the Church 
from the will of the congregation, not from 
the Divine commission. But the three 
orders have each been enlarged by a separa¬ 
tion of details of government in each order. 
Thus the development of the Church work 
and multiplication of Dioceses required at an 
early date the arrangement of some rule of 
recedence, and the Episcopal authority 
eld “ in solidum” as a common right and 
power by all Bishops was subdivided by 
arranging the precedency, with presiding 
and appellate rights of the Bishop in the 
chief See of a Province with the title of 
Metropolitan. As the work grew and the 
difficulty of meeting all cases, both of gov¬ 
ernment, of discipline, and of faith, which 
came up, the offices of Patriarch for the 
whole Province, which was usually coter¬ 
minous with the civil province, of Metro¬ 
politan, and of Archbishop, for the subdi¬ 
visions of the Province, were created, and 
under them the small Dioceses, whose terri¬ 
tory was arbitrarily determined by the con¬ 
ditions of the Church there and of the work 
to be done, though it could not be enlarged 
or diminished at pleasure. But the Bishop 
of the smallest, poorest Diocese was invested 
by his office with all the spiritual authority 
the Patriarch could wield. This gradation 
of rank within the limits of the order was 
made gradually, for the sake of order, gov¬ 
ernment, and decent conduct of the work. 
So too the office of the Priest was enlarged 
by appointing Archpresbyters and Deans, 
both which, however, changed their names; 
the Archpresbyter later took the title 
Archdeacon, and the Dean became at¬ 
tached to a Cathedral, while his place was 
taken by a Rural Dean. This was done that 
the interests of the clergy might be attended 
to while the Bishop, whose representatives 
they were, was busied about other impor¬ 
tant duties. So too the Deacons had an 
Archdeacon, usually the senior Deacon, set 
over them, who, when he received Priest’s 
orders, ceased to be Archdeacon, but later 
the Archpriest took his title and exercised 
jurisdiction over both orders. It was to 
meet necessities as they arose, to fulfill the 
demands the growth of the Church made 
upon the clergy, to prevent clashing of in¬ 
terests, that these subdivisions of jurisdic¬ 
tion and of rank took place in the three 
orders of the ministry. Whether they 
continued to fulfill the needs which gave 
them existence is another thing. Whether 
they are needed at present b} r the extension 
of our work, and whether the machinery 
they involve is suited to our state here, is a 
problem now engaging the attention of the 
most active minds in the Church. Without 


intending to assert that they, as they existed 
in the early Church or are now with their 
functions defined by the growth of cen¬ 
turies in the English Church, should be 
transferred to our usages and interpolated 
into our methods, it is proper to insist that 
there is a need for some such reorganization 
of our Diocesan work. There is a shrink¬ 
ing in many minds from the introduction 
of titles and of such subdivisions of work 
and of appointing supervisors of it, but the 
necessity for it is shown by the attempts 
to meet it in the discussions of the Provin¬ 
cial system in the General Convention; 
the organizations of the local clergy into 
Convocations; the use of Church Con¬ 
gresses to discuss such subjects among 
many others. There is a real difficulty 
in selecting the names. The offices could 
be well discharged and are sometimes un¬ 
consciously filled by clergy who have a 
natural talent for leadership and for organ¬ 
ization. But in this country we shrink 
from creating officers to whom we must ap¬ 
parently give the titles of Archdeacon, and 
Dean, and Provost. This is being met by 
the common, but usually unofficial, use of 
the title Dean for the presiding officer of 
the Convocation. It lies a good deal in the 
good sense of the clergy and their readiness 
to organize into a working body, having a 
system of missionary work which shall be 
faithfully carried out under such officers, 
whether titled or not, whom the Bishop 
may choose to recognize. In a few Dioceses 
these officers are already recognized and 
provided by Canon, but in by far the greater 
part of the Church there is only a semi¬ 
official recognition by the Bishop. 

In the Hierarchy, then, upon the unal¬ 
terable foundations of Bishop, Priest, and 
Deacon, there were developed as need de¬ 
manded within, these ranks which grew out 
of the Episcopate. (I.) The Patriarch, 
who was at first called Archbishop, and the 
Archbishop, who was at one time called 
the Metropolitan. The Patriarch exercising 
supreme executive jurisdiction over the 
Archbishops, and the Archbishops under 
him exercising such authority over the 
Bishops of their Provinces. ( Vide also Ex¬ 
archs and Primates.) Within the Presby- 
terial office were developed (II.) the Arch¬ 
deacons and the Deans. The so-called minor 
orders did not give any spiritual power, but 
were the systematized lay co-operation 
formally recognized by a public setting the 
person apart for his work by the laying on 
of hands. 

High-Priest. The officer holding the high¬ 
est office in the Jewish worship. He was to 
be only of the House of Aaron, to which the 
Priesthood was confined. It was to belong 
to the Aaronic family by a perpetual statute. 
The High-Priest had peculiar functions given 
him, which were typical of the eternal Priest¬ 
hood of Christ. To him alone once a year 
it appertained to go into the Holy of Holies, 
to sprinkle the blood of the sin-offering upon 






HOLY-DAY 


358 


HOLY GHOST 


the mercy-seat, and to burn incense within 
the veil. He could do this only in the proper 
robes of his office. A type of the robe of 
our Humanity our Lord wears, entering 
with it with His own blood of atonement and 
offering the incense of our Prayers. During 
his lifetime the homicide who had taken 
sanctuary in one of the cities of refuge could 
not leave it. Again, a type of the protection 
given to the soul by the very life of our High- 
Priest. Other functions of a judicial and an 
organizing character which he exercised 
were rather temporary, and depended more 
upon the ability and influence than the eccle¬ 
siastical office of the High-Priest. As did 
Eli, he might permit abuses to grow up 
around him unchecked if not without pro¬ 
test, or he might as Azariah oppose the ro} r al 
power, or as Jehoiada institute large repairs. 
In these things the energy or the diffidence 
of his character was shown. In the service 
of the office, if the High-Priest were incapa¬ 
citated by sickness or some defilement, the 
next of kin could discharge it for him. It 
must have been for some such reason that 
Zecharias, the father of St. John Baptist, 
was in the Holy of Holies offering incense 
when the Angel appeared to him with his 
message. Again, in the later political 
troubles under the Seleucidse, and under the 
Homans, one High-Priest was often removed 
and another put in his place, and as this 
was done from policy, without the slightest 
regard to Jewish Law, the people while they 
submitted to the High-Priest in office paid 
great reverence to the legal High-Priest. 
Therefore St. Luke (ch. iii. 2) wrote, 
“ Annas and Caiaphas being High-Priests 
noting the two, Annas the true High-Priest, 
and Caiaphas his son-in-law, being the one 
thrust in. Here we can see why Caiaphas, 
being High-Priest that year, should prophesy 
“ that it is expedient for us that one man 
should die for the people, and that the whole 
nation perish not,” and why our Lord 
should be carried first before Annas, and 
then before Caiaphas. 

Holy-day. Vide Festivals. 

Holy Ghost. The Third Person of the 
blessed Trinity, to whom the third implo- 
ration of the Litany is addressed. “ 0 God 
the Holy Ghost, proceeding from the 
Father and the Son, have mercy upon us 
miserable sinners.” And of whom is set 
forth in the Y. Article the true faith we 
must hold. The Holy Ghost, proceeding 
from the Father and the Son, is of one 
substance, majesty, and glory with the 
Father and the Son, very and eternal God, 
and is so confessed in the Creeds. In the 
Apostles' Creed, “ I believe in the Holy 
Ghost,” and then the remainder of the 
Creed is a declaration of His work (as much 
as the preceding parts are each a declaration 
of the nature and the work of the Father and 
of the Son): “The Holy Catholic Church, 
The Communion of Saints, The Forgiveness 
of Sins, The Resurrection of the body, And 
the Life everlasting.” More fully is His 


Person shown in theNicene Creed : “ I be¬ 
lieve in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and 
Giver of Life, Who proceedetli from the 
Father [and the Son], Who with the 
Father and the Son together is worshiped 
and glorified, Who spake by the Prophets.” 
In this Creed also is His work set forth, but 
the circumstances under which this part of 
the Nicene Creed was enlarged at the Coun¬ 
cil of Constantinople (381 a.d.) did not lead 
the Fathers there to give it the form which 
shows it, but the answer in our Catechism 
does this: “Thirdly, in the Holy Ghost, 
who sanctifieth me and all the people of 
God.” The true, faith, then, of the Chris¬ 
tian concerning the Holy Ghost is that He 
is a Person of the Substance, Power, and 
Majesty of the Godhead, proceeding from 
the Father and the Son. Sent by the 
Father and the Son and received by us, 
He is a Person, since He is sent by the 
Father. “ And I will pray the Father, 
and He shall give 3 r ou another Comforter, 
that He may abide with you forever” (St. 
John xiv. 16). “ But the Comforter, which 

is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will 
send in My name. He shall teach you all 
things and bring all things to your remem¬ 
brance whatsoever I have said unto you” 
(id. 26). He is sent by the Son also. “ It 
is expedient for you that I go away, for if I 
go not away the Comforter will not come 
unto you, but if I depart I will send Him 
unto you” (xvi. 7 ; cf. xiv. 17 ; xv. 26; xvi. 
13-15; Acts i. 5, 8). With this proof of 
His being a Person, we can understand the 
sentence, “And the Spirit of God moved 
upon the face of the waters” (Gen. i. 2). 
“ My Spirit shall not always strive with 
man” (vi. 3). And, to pass by many other 
passages, Ps. li., “Take not Thy Holy 
Spirit from me.” St. Peter declared that 
He was the promise of the Father to the 
Son, and quoted the Prophet Joel (ii. 28-32). 
But He hath notes and marks as becometh 
a Person. He is Holy. It must be Hre by 
nature, and it is an inseparable part of His 
Name—the Holy Ghost. He is the Lord. 
“ Now the Lord is that Spirit, and where 
the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty” 
(2 Cor. iii. 17). He is the Giver of Life,— 
“The Spirit of Life.” . . . “But if the 
Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from 
the dead dwell in you, He that raised up 
Jesus from the dead shall also quicken your 
mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in 
you” (Horn. viii. 2-11). He proceedetli 
from the Father and is sent by the Son. 
( Vide Procession of the Holy Ghost and 
Filioque.) He, with the Father and the 
Son together, is worshiped and glorified. 
“ God is a Spirit, and they that worship 
Him must worship Him in Spirit and in 
Truth” (St. John iv. 24). He spake by the 
Prophets. “ For the prophecy came notin 
old time by the will of man, but holy men 
of God spake as they were moved by the 
Holy Ghost” (1 Pet. i. 21). 

He is sent to abide forever in the Church j 







HOLY TABLE 


359 


HOMOOUSION 


and therefore He is the informing, guiding 
Spirit in the Visible Church, which is Holy 
and Catholic. He is the Instrument of the 
Forgiveness of sins. “ He breathed on 
them and saith unto them, Receive ye the 
Holy Ghost. Whose soever sins ye remit, 
they are remitted unto them, and whose 
soever sins ye retain, they are retained” (St. 
John xx. 22, 23). He is the Instrument, 
too, of our Resurrection. “Not that we 
would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that 
mortality might bo swallowed up of life. 
Now He that wrought us for the self-same 
thing is God, who also hath given unto us 
the earnest of the Spirit” (2 Cor. v. 4, 5). 
“ And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, 
whereby ye are sealed unto the day of re¬ 
demption” (Eph. iv. 30). “ But if the 

Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from 
the dead dwell in you, He that raised up 
Christ from the dead shall also quicken 
your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwell- 
eth in you” (Rom. viii. 11). In Baptism He 
is the regenerating Spirit. “ Except a man 
be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot 
enter into the Kingdom of Heaven” (St. 
John iii. 5). In Confirmation He giveth 
His sevenfold gilts. “ And the Spirit of the 
Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of 
wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of 
counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge 
and of the fear of the Lord, and shall make 
him of quick understanding in the fear of 
the Lord” (Is. xi. 2, 3; cf. Collect in Con¬ 
firmation Office); and makes us Temples 
of God (1 Cor. iii. 16; vi. 19). We are 
renewed by Him (Tit. iii. 5 ; cf. Rom. xiv. 2). 
In Him we bear fruit (Gal. v. 22, 23; cf. 
St. John xv. 16); and we have all joy and 
peace in believing (Rom. xv. 13). 

“ By the Holy Ghost is given the res¬ 
toration of Paradise, the return into the 
kingdom of heaven, the restoration of the 
adoption of sons, the confidence of calling 
God our Father, the communion of the 
grace of Christ, the appellation of sons of 
light, the participation of eternal glory; in 
a word, the plenitude of benediction, both 
in the present time and in the future, of 
good things prepared for us.” (St. Basil 
on the Holy Spirit, ch. xv. ; Browne on 
XXXIX. Articles; Bishop Forbes on the 
Nicene Creed ; Hare’s Mission of the Com¬ 
forter.) 

Holy Table. The name used generally 
in the Prayer-Book for the synonymous 
titles, Altar and Lord’s Table. In this the 
English Church follows the practice of the 
Eastern Church, where the word “ Altar” is 
seldom used, while the word “ Holy Table” 
is far more usual. But the term Commun¬ 
ion-Table is used twice in the Prayer-Book 
in the Form of Consecration of a Church or 
Chapel. It seems to be an inadvertence, 
since the Lord’s Table, the Holy Table, to 
which we are invited to feast, is not our 
table,—not the Communicant’s Table. ( Vide 
Altar.) 

Holy Week. The eight days from Palm- 


Sunday to Easter-Sunday have, in all ages 
of the Church, been observed with great 
solemnity and devotion. Palm-Sunday, the 
commemoration of the Lord’s triumphal 
entry into Jerusalem; Holy-Thursday, the 
Institution of the Lord’s Supper; and 
Good-Friday, His Passion. The observance 
of this week as of universal obligation is 
spoken of in a Festal Letter in 260 a.d. 
Tertullian, who lived seventy-five years be¬ 
fore, speaks of the continuous fasts during 
this week. The Gospel narrative of the 
Passion was read during this week from day 
to day in the Gospels, the book of Jonah be¬ 
ing also read at this time. The fast was as 
strictly observed as possible. Many privi¬ 
leges were claimed and used during this 
week. Debtors were released from prison, 
actions at law were suspended for the week 
preceding and the week following, slaves 
were often freed in this week, and a cessa¬ 
tion from all business and from unnecessary 
labor marked it. The several days had 
each their special name,—Palm-Sunday(also 
called earlier Indulgence Sunday), Monday 
in Holy Week, Tuesday in Holy Week, 
Wednesday in Holy Week, Maunday-Thurs- 
day, or “ Dies Mandati,” the day on which 
the New Commandment was given, “ that 
ye love one another,” Good-Friday, and 
Easter-Even. The services in the Prayer- 
Book are only marked by the special Epistle 
and Gospel, the Palm-Sunday Collect serv¬ 
ing till Good-Friday. In this as in sev¬ 
eral other places the services lose something 
of that marked character which they should 
bear, but doubtless the difficulties which be¬ 
set the steps of the Reformers did not per¬ 
mit them to retain all that they would have 
wished. However we may regret this, yet 
by extraordinary acts of devotion and of ab¬ 
stinence and an observance of all the ser¬ 
vices given with conscientious fidelity and 
with earnest self-examination, the layman 
has it in his power to make Holy Week as 
truly a week of devout penitence as if it 
were overlaid with rubrical ordinances. 

Homiousion. “ Of a like or similar sub¬ 
stance” with the Father, a term devised 
after the rise of the Arian heresy as a mid¬ 
dle term between the Homoousion of the 
Catholic doctrine and the extreme position 
of Arius, who taught that the Word was not 
of the same substance as the Father, but a 
mere created being, before all other created 
beings, and above them, but still created. 

Homoousion. Of the same substance with 
the Father. The word was previously re¬ 
jected in the controversy with Sabellius, as 
implying a trinity incompatible with the 
true Personality of each of the Three Per¬ 
sons of the Trinity, but in the controver¬ 
sies with Arius its proper force was deter¬ 
mined, and it was made the test word in the 
Council of Nice and was incorporated into 
the Creed. It was to express the reality of 
our Lord’s sonship as being of the same 
eternal incomprehensible nature as His 
Father, which Arius denied. 






HOOD 


360 


HOSEA 


Hood. A cap or cowl fastened to the cloak 
or outer garment and drawn at will over the 
head to protect it from sun or rain. It be¬ 
came the covering for the head the monks 
wore. It was afterwards worn in the Church 
service. As now used in England and in 
Ireland, it is simply an ornamental fold 
hanging down the back of a graduate to 
mark his degree. Therefore it varies con¬ 
siderably both in the universities the one 
from the other, and, too, as marking the 
wearer’s academical degree, except that in 
all three universities the Doctor’s hood is of 
scarlet. The English graduate is ordered to 
wear his hood upon his surplice. 

Hosanna. “ Save now.” It was the pro¬ 
cessional refrain when our Lord made His 
entry into Jerusalem. “ Hosanna to the Son 
of David !” It was chiefly used in the ser¬ 
vices of the Feast of the Tabernacle ; on the 
last day specially, with branches waving and 
with Psalms, the Jews went seven times 
around the Altar, saying u Hosanna.” The 
children were expected to take part in these 
services. Hence “ the children crying in 
the Temple, Hosanna to the Son of David.” 
Compare the Hallel Psalm cxviii. 24, with 
Ps. xx. 9 (Hebrew 10 verse). 

Hosea, the first of the Minor Prophets 
according to the order of books in the 
Bible, prophesied in the days of Uzziah, 
Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, Kings of Ju¬ 
dah, and of Jeroboam II., King of Israel 
(Hosea i.), and his date must accordingly be 
between 810 and 698 b.c. His name is the 
same as that of Hoshea, King of Israel, and in 
meaning is equivalent to Joshua, or Jesus,— 
i.e ., Salvation. Of the prophet personally 
there is nothing to say besides that he was the 
son of Beeri, whom some, without reason, 
would identify with Beerah of the tribe of 
lleuben (1 Chron. v. 6). There is, however, a 
late tradition that he was of th*e tribe of Issa- 
char, which is not improbable ; for it is in 
some measure confirmed by expressions and 
allusions in his prophecy, which warrant the 
conclusion that he was a native of the 
Northern Kingdom. 

The period during which Hosea prophe¬ 
sied has been the subject of much dispute ; 
and objections have been raised on the 
ground of its great length. For if we reckon 
from the first of Uzziah to the last of Heze¬ 
kiah (810 to 698 b.c.), we have an interval 
of one hundred and twelve years ; or even 
if we stop at the sixth year of Hezekiah (and 
it seems unlikely that Hosea prophesied 
later than that, otherwise he would have 
appealed to the fulfillment of his own 
prophecy (Hosea xiii. 16) in that year), we 
still have ninety years (the Hebrew reckon¬ 
ing), which is an unusually long ministry. 
But it is not necessary to begin to reckon 
Hosea’s- ministry earlier than the last year 
of Jeroboam II., King of Israel, and con¬ 
temporary of Uzziah, nor to continue it 
later than the first of Hezekiah ; a reckon¬ 
ing which gives a period of fifty-eight years 
(784 to 726 b.c.), which is not improbably 


long. Hence objections to Hosea on chron¬ 
ological grounds may be disregarded, be¬ 
cause the first verse of the prophecy does 
not require for its truth an interval of more 
than fifty-eight years, and there are abundant 
instances of men whose public life has been 
much longer than that. 

It is believed that Hosea himself compiled 
his prophecies as now arranged after they 
were all delivered ; yet there is no date nor 
connection by which their chronological 
order can be determined with certainty. 
But it is easy to divide the book into two 
chief portions : the first part consisting of 
the first three chapters; the second part of 
the rest of the book; when, however, the 
analysis and subdivision of these parts are 
attempted great ditficulties arise, so that to 
give any account of the work of different 
critics would require much time and space, 
and it must suffice to say that the first part 
has been divided into three poems, corre¬ 
sponding nearly to the chapters (ch. iii. is 
the first poem); and the second part into 
five sections, with reference to the five con¬ 
temporary kings; or by some into thirteen 
sections, according to the subject-matter. 
But the analysis and arrangement of this 
prophecy, both from obscure brevity and 
apparent confusion of* order, is so full of 
difficulty, that Bishop Lowth has not inaptly 
compared it with the scattered leaves of the 
Sibyl. Not less difficult, also, has proved 
the interpretation of the first three chap¬ 
ters of Hosea and the prophet’s relation with 
Gomer. Many have understood them liter¬ 
ally, but in modern times the tendency of 
opinion seems to be towards an allegorical 
interpretation. The design, however, of 
this part of Hosea, whether taken literally 
or figuratively, as well as that of the second 
part, is sufficiently clear. The prophet de¬ 
claims against the sins of Israel, exposes in 
the strongest terms the spiritual adultery of 
the idolatrous worship at Bethel, and de¬ 
nounces God’s righteous judgment upon it, 
in prophecies, some of which were fulfilled 
in the near future; at the same time there 
is an accompanying strain of Messianic pre¬ 
diction of future blessings and redemption 
calculated to animate and encourage those 
who should heed the rebukes and turn to 
the cultivation of righteousness. It is on 
this account that Hosea has been so often 
quoted in the New Testament. 

The importance of Hosea as a witness to 
the rest of Scripture is very marked; for 
the book furnishes abundant references and 
allusions to the Pentateuch, and the histori¬ 
cal books of Joshua, Judges, and Samuel; 
and shows that that portion of the Bible as 
we read it now was the same before the de¬ 
struction of the Temple and the captivity of 
Israel and Judah, in the ninth century be¬ 
fore Christ. Still further, the state of 
affairs implied in Hosea is in strict accord 
with the contemporary history in the books 
of Kings ; and many points of resemblance, 
allusions, and even quotations are traced 




HOSPITAL 


361 


HOSPITAL 


between Hosea and contemporary or later 
prophets. ( Vide Smith’s Bible Dictionary, 
Bible Commentary, and Gray’s Introduc¬ 
tion.) 

Hospital. The word is derived from the 
Latin hospes , a guest, through hospiiium a 
guest-house, then hospitalis (domus), hospi- 
iale (cubiculum). The other word, hospi- 
tium, retained its meaning, but hospitale was 
used in later French and then in English to 
mean the apartments or the buildings set 
apart for the sick. We have no traces of any 
such establishments till after the Church 
began her Lord’s work. It was His charge to 
heal the sick,to visit and relieve the poor, sick, 
needy, and imprisoned. In many places one- 
third, in others one-fourth, of the income of 
the Diocese was set apart for the poor and 
sick and needy. Since there was a careful 
supervision and no waste was allowed, the 
moiety, at least, of this sum went to the sick. 
At what date buildings were set apart for this 
work we do not certainly know, but we find 
them as soon as property could be securely 
held by Christian corporations; as, for in¬ 
stance, Basil the Great (about 350 and 390 
a.d.) founded a hospital which lasted for 
some time. A century before this the brave 
conduct of the Christians in the epidemic in 
Carthage and in the* plague in Alexandria 
won for the Church a great influence. To 
care for the sick, and to see that hospitals 
were erected for them in his See, was one of 
the duties of the Bishop. Chrysostom used 
all the surplus of the income of his Patri¬ 
archate in these works. Dwelling only on 
salient facts, we find when the monasteries 
were organized not only a large hospitality, 
but a special care of the sick was also organ¬ 
ized, and from the portion of the monastic 
buildings set apart for this purpose we get 
the name Hospital. But the work was not 
necessarily monastic. Lanfranc founded a 
hospital for lepers and one for ordinary dis¬ 
eases in 1081 a.d. These are the earliest 
foundations recorded in England. 

The Monastic Rule was eminently fitted 
for such work, and it responded nobly to the 
demand. Many of the arrangements of the 
infirmary are worthy of study yet, and have 
not been improved on since. 

At the dissolution of the monasteries, the 
Monastery of St. Bartholomew was handed 
over to the citizens of London in 1547 a.d. 
for a hospital; that of St. Thomas was 
bought by the mayor and citizens in 1551 
a.d. for this use ; Henry VIII., in 1547 a.d., 
gave the Bethlehem (Bedlam) for an asylum 
for lunatics ; Bridewell was first used as a 
hospital, but became a house of correction ; 
and Christ’s Hospital became a school. 
About 1719 a.d. the work of founding hos¬ 
pitals received a great impulse, and in sev¬ 
enty-eight years no less than fifty were 
founded in England and Ireland. Many 
more have since been erected in Great Brit¬ 
ain. In this country very much has yet to 
be done. The last statistics give 45 Church 
Hospitals in 22 Dioceses and 6 Missionary 


Jurisdictions for 1883 a.d. The increase 
is large and direct, but it is by no means 
the exhibit of such charity work as it 
should be. No Diocese should be with¬ 
out one or more such institutions, and there 
should be one in each town of sufficient size 
in the Diocese, and an Infirmary and Dis¬ 
pensary in lesser towns. It is not merely 
the Bishop’s care that such hospitals are es¬ 
tablished. It pertains to the Laity also to 
look to it that they aid in establishing and 
securing endowments for such institutions. 
They are the stewards of the ministry of the 
silver and the gold. Their business training 
enables them to attend to this financial work, 
and to see to it that it is based on common- 
sense business principles. Their secular 
habits give them a knowledge of men which 
is invaluable in selecting the proper officers 
for it. From them the many grateful gifts of 
necessaries must come. From them the aid, 
sympathy, and encouragement which the 
workers need must largely come. In lesser 
towns, in feebler institutions, when the 
trained nurses are suddenly occupied with 
some special cases, or an epidemic breaks out, 
the Guild and Brotherhoods which should 
belong to every Parish would relieve much 
by taking the watching and care of the less 
dangerously ill patients as their special work. 

Spiritual oversight and aid belong to the 
clergy. They minister to the sin-sick soul, 
to the diseased mind. But the physician to 
the body, the tender nurse, the gentle night 
watcher, the sympathetic assistant, are 
also doing Christ’s characteristic work of 
love and sympathy. They exercise a part 
of their royal Priesthood. A hospital has a 
just demand upon the means of each mem¬ 
ber of Christ, and upon the treasury of 
the wealthy, second only to the claim which 
the support of the Priesthood makes upon 
them. Though the care and oversight of 
the hospital should be most largely under 
lay care, yet it must be, remembered it is 
possible only because our Lord instituted 
His Apostolic Ministry. It is perhaps fairly 
a matter of regret, which time will doubt¬ 
less remedy, that there exists in this coun¬ 
try no Church Hospital vigorous enough to 
establish a Church Nursing School, and this 
for two reasons: I. The nurse approaches 
more nearly the individuality of any given 
sick person than others, save it may be the 
priest of God and the physician, ever can; 
to the nurse most frequently will come the 
opportunity for a gentle word of comfort or 
suggestion, while each act done in the body’s 
service is one more invitation to pray for 
the soul which it hides from view. II. 
Wherever and whenever a Church Hospital 
is founded, experienced and trained nurses 
are needed, but can seldom be obtained ; over 
and over we read the same depressing, ever- 
pathetic history. In prayerful spirit and 
earnest zeal some priest, or layman, secures 
a house or a few rooms, gives thereto tho 
name of some saint of old, secures the ser¬ 
vices of physician and surgeon, appeals to 






HOSPITAL 


362 


HOSPITAL 


the Church’s children for substantial aid, 
throws open the doors to the wounded and 
sick of any creed and nation, and puts in 
charge of the daily life such workers as can 
be found; these, in most instances, are 
incompetent, though devoted. They strug¬ 
gle on, some for a few months only, when 
one by one they fall, discouraged, out of 
line; others, with stronger brain and more 
enduring purpose, labor for years, and at 
last come out into the clear light shed by 
knowledge. But they reach their goal, in 
most cases, with broken health and mental 
vigor scarcely sufficient to enable them to 
transmit to others any part of the fruit of 
their dear-bought experience, while these 
in turn go over the same rough ground with 
practically the same results. That this state 
of affairs has so long continued unremedied, 
wellnigh unnoticed, argues a weak spot 
somewhere in the Church’s plan of work. 
It cannot be denied that each generation of 
workers in Church Hospitals leaves some 
sort of inheritance to its successor. But how 
small and meagre does it seem when com¬ 
pared with the investments made of devo¬ 
tion, health, talent, culture, money! And 
how rarely does aught of gain fall to one 
institution from another ! The need is sore 
of a centre whence may be sent out women 
who have been taught, with that steadiness 
and slowness which are the sole guarantee 
of safe and good issues, how to serve the 
sick. When the day comes for its establish¬ 
ment,—and come it will,—it is to be hoped 
that special care will be given to teaching 
how to teach. In England and elsewhere 
some work has long been done in this de¬ 
partment, but here it is wholly neglected in 
most secular nursing schools, and is but 
superficially and ill done in those which give 
any attention to it. 

The popular idea that any one can impart 
to another that which he himself knows is 
wholly erroneous.. The teaching power is 
as clearly a special gift as is an aptitude for 
languages, etc. Occasionally a person is 
met with who entirely lacks it; but most 
people possess it in some degree, and in all 
these it may be developed by judicious and 
quiet manipulation. The waste of phj r sical 
strength and of time in Church Hospitals 
would startle Church folk outside, and even 
the workers within, could it be lucidly and 
fully set forth. The one great principle, 
economic yet wise use of material, which 
should underlie the system and work of a 
Church (or any) Hospital, has rare recogni¬ 
tion even among Sisters. 

For in planning work or in grappling with 
one and another of its petty details, few re¬ 
member that effort should primarily be di¬ 
rected to the solution of this problem : How 
can be done the largest possible amount of 
work in the best possible manner with the 
least possible expenditure of time and 
strength ? The charge is sometimes made 
against Church Hospitals that their size is 
in inverse ratio to the trouble of running 


them and the expense per capita . This is 
perfectly true. It is also true that there are 
two other facts which may counterbalance 
this one. 

All Church Hospitals may grow, and 
some doubtless will grow; further, in a 
country so sparsely settled over the greater 
part of its area as this country is, the need 
of many small hospitals is obvious. But he 
who would start a hospital, as the saying 
runs, should be sure it is needed in the spot 
where he would put it. Often it would be 
far better merely to open some avenue, to 
feed some institution already existing, bring¬ 
ing all his influence to bear to this end. This 
is specially applicable in and near cities 
where, even when amalgamation is inex¬ 
pedient, different hospitals might so affiliate 
themselves and their interests as to be mu¬ 
tually enlarged and strengthened. For ex¬ 
ample, a hospital for convalescents or one 
for chronic cases might connect itself with 
an ordinary general hospital, or a nursery 
or a children’s hospital with one for child¬ 
birth cases. In a few instances such a plan 
has been tried here, meeting fair success, 
but it has obtained abroad to a far larger 
extent. Church Hospitals are at once too 
exclusive and too introspective. That is to 
say, those who do their work know too little, 
andofttimes care not to know more, of sister 
institutions to win the help which compari¬ 
sons afford, while absorption in details 
makes them forget the advantages to be de¬ 
rived from a “ bird’s-eye view.” And the 
hospital walls are allowed to press upon them 
until shortened vision and stiffened muscles 
supervene. Perhaps a Church Hospital As¬ 
sociation, by promoting discussion of prin¬ 
ciples and methods of work and by the free 
use of the interrogation point, would be the 
most effective antidote to this. In point of 
fact, the whole great question of Hospitals 
needs study, and it would seem that Church 
people as such have given slender attention 
to it. A valuable factor in its adjustment 
would probably be the deputing an intelli¬ 
gent Churchman with some knowledge of 
interior hospital life to study the whole 
system here and abroad, and then to publish 
a paper which should be at once philosophi¬ 
cal and practical. The inventive instinct of 
man’s nature ever runs a neck and neck race 
with his tendency to slide along in a groove. 
In art, in mechanics, in music, in business, 
in science, and in other forms of human in¬ 
terest it wins. Why should it not so do 
when the matter in hand is the prolongation 
of earthly life? since these words only con¬ 
stitute a synonym for a little longer space 
wherein the threefold forces of men may be 
developed for the life eternal. 

When, after patient study, and after a 
just appreciation, both of the difficulties to 
be encountered and the discouragements to 
be overcome, and the imperfect instruments 
to be employed, it is resolved to open a hos¬ 
pital, still very much has to be done. A 
building, otherwise suitable, may not be 





HOSPITAL 


363 


HOSPITAL 


properly located. In a city, to be of real 
use, it should be where the class it is to min¬ 
ister to should find it most accessible. Again, 
so many details have to be arranged in a 
house already constructed for other pur¬ 
poses,—for it usually happens that these 
ventures of faith have to prove their right 
to the attempt, not by a first outlay in 
erecting a proper building, but in running 
the risk of utter failure by hiring a house 
which was never intended nor is now fitted 
for such use. In all such instances remod¬ 
eling has to be made to a large extent, and 
even then many inconveniences, especially 
in drainage and in easy access to the several 
suites of apartments,—wards they can hardly 
be called. It is not till success in its mis¬ 
sion of mercy has won for it regard and con¬ 
fidence that a Hospital can really command 
the means to have a suitable building. But 
when a munificent layman is willing, or a 
number who can will contribute to conse¬ 
crate of their abundance to such a work, 
then a building can be erected upon some 
such plan as will be now described. 

The buildings should be arranged in ac¬ 
cordance with the strictest requirements of 
sanitary science. It is now generally ad¬ 
mitted that it is not well to gather a num¬ 
ber of invalids under one roof, when several 
are in one room. The least cubic space for 
each patient should be about four thousand 
feet, or a floor space of ten feet each way 
for the bed, and twelve feet to the ceiling, 
and thorough ventilation should be secured, 
so as to remove all foul air as rapidly as can 
be done without creating a draught. The 
most approved form for hospitals is that of 
pavilion wards; that is, entirely distinct 
structures connected by corridors. Every 
hospital, however small, should have two 
wards, one for medical and one for surgical 
cases, and, if possible, a third should be 
added for infectious diseases. If this is im¬ 
possible, one end of the medical pavilion 
should be cut off by a wall and provided 
with a separate entrance as the best substi¬ 
tute for a totally isolated building. A good 
model is the shape of the letter H ; the 
wards on each side the offices for the staff, 
kitchen and domestic apartments in the 
middle. The chapelry should be so arranged 
that it can open into the wards on either 
side, that the patients may, if proper, enjoy 
the soothing influences of the Church ser¬ 
vices and prayers. But of equal importance 
with the building itself is the proper organi¬ 
zation of the Board of Managers , the Super¬ 
intendent (or Matron) , the Medical Staff, 
and the corps of Nurses. They should all, 
from the chief to the lowest subordinate, be 
wholly unselfish. For in a hospital the first 
consideration (indeed, it is the reason for the 
existence of the hospital) should be, What 
will most benefit the patients ? and all rules, 
etc., should be made with this end in view. 
Therefore everything that is self-seeking on 
the part of managers, doctors, superinten¬ 
dent, or nurses must be put aside in any 


well-managed hospital. Many of the trou¬ 
bles that have arisen from time to time in 
institutions have come from losing sight of 
this end. 

ltules and regulations, or constitutions for 
the board, would vary for different institu¬ 
tions, of course, but the fundamental rule 
should always be that the Board of Managers 
should have entire control of the Hospital, 
and be responsible for its well-being. 

The Medical Staff should have profes¬ 
sional care of the patients. They elect fresh 
members at the meetings (subject to the 
Board of Managers), arrange their visits 
and work, and order what is necessary for 
the care of the patients. 

The Superintendent (or Matron) of the 
Hospital should have the entire care of it, 
and be responsible for such care to the Board 
of Managers. Hevoutness, tact, knowledge 
of men are necessary. The duties of the 
Superintendent are: 

(a) Engaging and discharging nurses and 
servants. 

(b) Controlling expenses. 

(c) Providing stores, etc. 

(d) Overseeing the proper care of each 
department. 

In fact, he is responsible for the order and 
economy of the Hospital. In matters that 
refer directly to the professional care of the 
patients, he (or she) is subject to the Medi¬ 
cal Staff. Matters that affect the order of 
the Hospital, and are of sufficient impor¬ 
tance, should be at once taken to the Super¬ 
intendent,—this does not refer to petty 
matters that are easily settled by the head of 
each department. Should the matter be of 
such importance, the Superintendent should 
bring it to the notice of the Board, or to 
such of them as may be appointed as Execu¬ 
tive Committee. But on all occasions the 
Superintendent should, before acting, in¬ 
quire into the matter from the person in 
charge of whatever Department in which 
the disorder may have arisen. Of course 
tact and discretion are necessary in a person 
holding the position of Superintendent; and 
it is equally necessary that he or she must 
have the confidence and support of the 
Managers. 

The Nurses. —In training-schools for 
nurses, experience has proved that women 
between the ages of twenty-three and thirty 
are most fitted for nursing. This does not 
so much matter when the Hospital work is 
among children, but as a rule, women who 
enter under twenty-three years of age are 
apt to break down in health after a few years 
of nursing. 

Some very necessary qualifications for a 
nurse are good health, good spirits, good 
temper, neatness, quietness, and self-posses¬ 
sion. A nurse should be fairly well edu¬ 
cated, and as intelligent and observant as 
possible. Care should be taken that the 
food provided for the nurse should be simple , 
good, and well cooked. The sleeping-rooms 
should not be near the wards, and should be 







HOSPITAL 


364 


HOST 


light and well aired. These things are ab¬ 
solutely necessary if a nurse is to do her 
duty and keep her health. It cannot be 
too earnestly insisted upon that each nurse 
should be provided with a room to herself. 
Her spiritual well-being depends upon it 
almost as much as her physical comfort. 
Solitude at times is absolutely essential to 
every one, and more particularly to those 
who live under a great strain of mind and 
body. Any extra expense that may be in¬ 
curred in this will be more than repaid by 
the increased service she will be able to 
render. 

A nurse should pay strict attention to per¬ 
sonal neatness. Her dress should be as 
simple as possible, and of washing material. 
A nurse should never repeat any story or 
gossip about the Hospital patients or 
Doctors. "While care should be taken to 
instruct her in every detail, she must re¬ 
member that she is not to supply the Doc¬ 
tor’s place, but faithfully to obey his orders. 
After a nurse has been instructed a few 
times in the sweeping and cleaning of a room, 
it is quite unnecessary for her to spend her 
strength upon this work. All she needs to 
know is how this work should be done 
when her time may come to give like in¬ 
struction. Anything more than this is, as 
a rule, a waste of her powers. The airing 
of beds, bedding, patients’ rooms, wards, 
and cleanliness of everything about her 
patients is very necessary and quite the duty 
of a nurse, but sweeping and scrubbing un¬ 
fits her for the time for waiting on her 
patients, as no nurse can, while doing 
this kind of work, be ready to wait upon 
them. But there is yet another qualifica¬ 
tion. The nurse should be a woman who 
comes to the work, if not from a love to it, 
yet from a love for her Lord and a desire 
to step in His footsteps. She should be pre¬ 
pared to bear, with unfailing patience and 
gentleness, the trying exactions of sick per¬ 
sons. She is with the patient always, and 
can speak many a word of comfort or 
warning, if once confidence is established 
between them. She can give practical 
lessons in forbearance, and long-suffering, 
and love unfeigned which will bear fruit 
when she least expects it. She can wisely 
find many opportunities of giving religious 
comfort, and often a short prayer or a verse 
of a psalm may be most soothing to a 
patient who may feel shy or be too sick to 
ask even for these. Even when this is not 
the case, much can be quietly done that 
will not cause excitement or alarm to the 
patient. Of course, in the case of a dj r - 
ing person, the course of every Christian 
woman is quite clear. In training-schools 
rules differ slightly, but these things are 
quite essential in all,—wise, strict discipline, 
prompt obedience to orders, and punctuality 
in being at her post. 

The Chaplain should, if possible, in 
every Hospital, and certainly in every one 
of size, reside in the Hospital. He is then 


at hand to seize upon a favorable change in 
the condition of a patient. A short prayer, 
a few words from the Bible, can sometimes 
be listened to in an interval of ease, when 
an hour earlier or later it would be impos¬ 
sible to gain the attention. For in illness 
the thoughts turn instinctively to spiritual 
matters, and if the sufferer be within reach 
of his ministration he can be touched and 
influenced far more easily than in health. 
In all cases of doubt the Chaplain should be 
guided (a) by the Physician’s judgment; ( b ) 
by the desire of the patient himself. Only 
in the case of the dying can the Chaplain 
act on his own authority. 

A few additional words may be permitted 
upon details. 

The Furniture may be as simple or as 
elaborate as the means of the Institution 
permit; but whatever economy be practiced 
in a room or ward, good air, plenty of sun¬ 
light, soft coloring upon the walls and on 
window-shades, quiet and cheerfulness in 
the apartment are absolutely necessary. 
The beds should be comfortable, on wire- 
woven mattresses, and an ample supply of 
linen and blankets should be on hand. 

The Food should be prepared by an ex¬ 
perienced cook, and no food should be taken 
to a patient that is not tempting as well as 
nourishing.. Everything provided should 
be on the dietary arranged by the Medical 
Staff, and should always be the best of its 
kind. There should be a dining-room for 
convalescents at the end of each ward, and 
it is desirable to have a cheerful sitting-room 
as well. 

The Laundry. The washing should, if 
possible, be done outside the limits of the 
establishment, and every article well aired 
before it is returned. 

One word more. Larger extension of 
her hospital work is fast becoming essential 
for the Church. The Missionary Jurisdic¬ 
tions and the Foreign Missions have, under 
theirBishops, nobly led the way. But the true 
success is equally in the hands of the Laity, 
who should see that sufficient incomes be 
provided for such Institutions, whether by 
endowments or by connecting them with 
regular parochial Institutions. To under¬ 
take the establishment of a Home or Hos¬ 
pital for the sick is a venture of faith,—to 
carry it on a great burden,—but it is Christ- 
like; and if, after a careful weighing of all 
the surroundings,—the obstacles, the neces¬ 
sary conditions for success, and the favor¬ 
able circumstances that ought to justify it,— 
for ordinary human foresight must be used 
as well as prayer, and faith, and vows,—the 
work be resolved on in Christ’s name, those 
who so resolve should never falter. 

Rev. A. C. A. Hall. 

Host, from hostia , a victim. The term 
applied in the Roman Church to the con¬ 
secrated Bread in the Holy Communion. 
Originally both the Bread and the Wino 
when consecrated were offered as one Host, 
and correctly, for both Bread and Wine 





HOURS OF PRAYER 


365 


HYMN 


together are the Sacrament. At the same 
date the thanksgivings, prayers, and obla¬ 
tions are called a Host. But when the 
error of Transubstantiation came into prac¬ 
tice, the Bread was called the Host, and 
worship is addressed to it. “ Therefore there 
is no room left for doubting that all the 
faithful of Christ .... do in their wor¬ 
ship render to this most holy Sacrament 
the cultus of Latvia , which is due to the 
true God.” (Council of Trent, Session xiii., 
He Euch. cap. v.) 

Hours of Prayer. The older Church of 
the Jews had stated times of Prayer. Thrice 
a day, seven times a day, are spoken of in 
the Psalms. Daniel observed the hour of 
Prayer. So too St. Peter and St. John 
“ went up together unto the temple at the 
Hour of Prayer, being the ninth hour.” As 
the day, no matter what its real length was, 
.was divided into twelve hours, the early 
use of the devout was to set apart a certain 
hour for these devotions. The first three 
hours were called together the third hour, 
the next three ended at noon, were called 
sexts, or the sixth hour, then the interval 
ending at three o’clock was called the ninth, 
or nones, and then at sunset came the duo- 
decima. These intervals of three hours 
each had special services assigned, which 
were generally of Prayers and Psalms and 
Lessons. Archdeacon Freeman’s conclusion 
that these Hours and services, though neither 
of Apostolic nor early post-Apostolic date as 
Church services, had nevertheless probably 
existed in a rudimentary form, as private 
or household devotions, from a very early 
eriod, and had been received into the num- 
er of reorganized public formularies pre¬ 
vious to the reorganization of the Western 
ritual after the Eastern model. (Principles 
of Divine Service, p. 219.) It was from 
the services of these Hours, which were 
probably of Gallican introduction into Eng¬ 
land, that the Reformers compiled the 
Morning and Evening Prayer, with valu¬ 
able additions and some marked emenda¬ 
tions. The Seven Canonical Services (be¬ 
ginning with a service before dawn and 
ending with a compline service at nine at 
night) bad been reduced to three practically 
by aggregating the services,— i.e ., reciting 
two or three Hours at once,—but the Re¬ 
formers condensed them instead. The ser¬ 
vices for the antelucan, the fast, and the 
third hours were thrown into one for the 
Morning Prayer. The earlier Prayer-Books 
of 1549 a.d. began with “Our Father”; 
but in 1552 a.d. the sentences, confession, 
and absolution were prefixed. The Psalms 
were read in course,—which was a change 
for the better from the arbitrary selections 
before in use,—and the service compressed 
into the form we now use it. The same 
process was used to construct the Evening 
Prayer. So that in a separate and modified 
form we use daily the services which came 
over from Gaul into England and were in 
use before the Norman Conquest. 


Housel. The Holy Communion. A Saxon 
term, chiefly used to mean the administra¬ 
tion of the Communion. So as late as 
Shakespeare we read “ Unhouseled, disap¬ 
pointed, unaneled” (Ham., act i., sc. 5). 

Hymn. A hymn, according to St. Au¬ 
gustine, must be praise to God in the form of 
song. Properly, this definition should be 
extended to lyrical -prayers . In popular ac¬ 
ceptance the term includes “spiritual songs” 
not directly addressed to the Deity, as 
“ God moves in a mysterious way,” “ From 
Greenland’s icy mountains,” and large por¬ 
tions of the Psalms in any version. Ground 
has been taken for the exclusion of this 
class from manuals of worship, but neither 
past usage nor present opinion justify so 
sweeping a measure, though the form of 
praise and praj’er is to be preferred. 

The word hymn occurs four times in the 
NewTestament. In St. Matt. xxvi. 30, and St. 
Mark xiv. 26, it refers to Psalms cxv.-cxviii., 
the latter part of the Great Hallel, chanted 
by the Jews during and after the Paschal 
Supper. Eph. v. 19, and Col. iii. 16, men¬ 
tion the three apparent classes of “ psalms, 
hymns, and spiritual songs” to be used for 
instruction and admonition as well as wor¬ 
ship. By that time probably devout verses 
other than those of Scripture were com¬ 
posed and sung among the early Christians, 
and their use rapidly increased. Pliny, 
when governor of Bitliynia, in his famous 
letter to Trajan, 106 or 107 a.d., says that 
the believers of that province, on the testi¬ 
mony of some who had left them, “were ac¬ 
customed on a stated day to meet before day¬ 
light and to repeat among themselves a 
hymn to Christ as to a god.” Three cen¬ 
turies later St. Jerome says hymns were 
sung everywhere, by the plowman in the 
field and by the workman at his bench. Ter- 
tullian, in his “ Apology” (c. 200 A.D.), says, 
“ As every one is able he is invited to sing 
in public to God out of the Scriptures, or 
from his own composition,” and it was not 
till the Council of Laodicea, about 370 a.d., 
that these private productions were forbid¬ 
den to be used in public worship. 

The Gloria in Excelsis and the Te Deum 
are merely the most illustrious of many 
early hymns which were produced in Greek, 
Latin, Syriac, and probably in every lan¬ 
guage wherein Christian worship was con¬ 
ducted. (See Mrs. Charles’s The Voice of 
Christian Life in Song, 1858 a.d.) In Latin 
St. Ambrose (397 a.d.) founded a memorable 
school, whose productions are marked by 
severe simplicity. He was followed by Pru- 
dentius (d. about 413 a.d.), St. Gregory (d. 
604 a.d.), Venantius Fortunatus, and oth¬ 
ers. The mediaeval hymns are of richer and 
freer type. The great names here are St. 
Bernard (d. 1153 a.d.), Peter Damiani (d. 
1072 a.d. ), Hildebert (d. 1133 a.d.), Adam 
of St. Victor (d. 1192 a.d.), and Thomas 
Aquinas (d. 1274 a.d.). Several single 
poems by other writers of this age are of 
great fame and merit, as “ Dies Irae,” 





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“ Stabat Mater,” “ Yeni Creator Spiritus,” 
“ Yeni Sanctc Spiritus,” and the “ De Con- 
temptu Mundi” of Bernard of Cluny. A 
few modern writers, as the brothers Santeuil 
(d. 1684-1697 a.d.) and Charles Coffin (d. 
1749 a.d.), have done good work of this 
kind. (For the Latin hymns in general see 
the Breviaries, Daniel’s Thesaurus Hymno- 
logicus, and Mone’s Hymni Latini Medii 
JEvi; and in translations, Newman’s Poems, 
Chandler’s Hymns of the Primitive Church, 
1837 a.d. ; Bishop Mant’s Ancient Hymns, 
1837 a.d. ; Isaac Williams’s Hymns of the 
Parisian Breviary, 1839 a.d. ; Copeland’s 
Hymns for the Week and Seasons, 1847 a.d. ; 
Caswall’s Lyra Catholica, 1849 a.d., and 
Hymns and Poems, 1873 a.d. ; Chambers's 
Lauda Syon, 1857-66 a.d. ; Dr. J. M. Neale’s 
Mediaeval Hymns, 1851-63 a.d. ; Hymnal 
Noted, 1851 a.d.; Rhythm of St. Bernard, 
1858 a.d. , etc.) There were also sundry 
Greek writers of merit, 400-1000 a.d., some 
of whose tyrics were rendered with wonder¬ 
ful success in Dr. Neale’s “ Hymns of the 
Eastern Church,” 1862 a.d. (See also Mrs. 
Browning’s Greek Christian Poets, 1842- 
63 A.D.) 

At the Reformation hymns began to be 
written in the vernacular in the lands most 
affected by that movement, and chiefly in 
Germany, where, under Luther’s leader¬ 
ship, an immense and valuable body of 
hymns began to be produced. Yery many 
writers, from that day to this, have taken 
part in the work, the greatest of them be¬ 
ing Paul Gerhardt (1606-76 a.d.). (See 
Knapp’s Liederschatz, a collection of 3000 
lyrics; Koch’s Geschichte des Deutschen 
Kirchenlieds, 7 vols. ; and in English, Kub- 
ler’s Historical Notes to the Lyra German- 
ica, 1865 a.d. ; and Miss Winkworth’s 
Christian Singers of Germany, 1869 a.d.) 
Many of the German hymns have been 
translated by John Wesley, 1737—40 a.d.; 
Jacobi and Haberkorn, 1722-60 a.d. ; the 
Moravians, 1754 a.d., etc. ; Francis E. Cox, 
1841-64 a.d. ; A. T. Russell, 1851 ad.; R. 
Massie, 1854-60-64 a.d.; Jane Borthwick 
(Hymns from the Land of Luther), 1854-62 
a.d. ; and others, but especially by Catherine 
Winkworth, whose Lyra Germanica, 1855- 
58 a.d., and Chorale Book for England, 
1862 a.d. , are of great merit and value. 
Sweden, Denmark, France, and even Italy 
have hymns of their own, but in less quan¬ 
tity, and have contributed little to our 
stock, though Cowper’s renderings (1782 
a.d.) from Madame Guion (d. 1717 a.d.) 
have been valued, and sometimes used. 

In England psalmody, rather than hym- 
nody, was the use for two centuries. Myles 
Coverdale, who was Bishop of Exeter under 
Edward VI., issued in 153- a.d. forty 
Ghostly Psalmes and Spirituall Songes , partly 
from the German ; but it is not known that 
they were ever used. Sternhold’s Psalms , 
1549 a.d., completed 1562 a.d. by Hopkins 
and others, were as popular as Clement 
Marot’s for a time in France ; and though 


their style was soon antiquated, were used 
in some churches well into the present cen¬ 
tury, long contesting the ground with Tate 
and Brady’s New Version, 1696 a.d. These 
two were the only versions authorized or used 
entire in the Church of England ; and the 
often quoted passage from Queen Elizabeth’s 
Injunctions to the Clergy, “ that in the be¬ 
ginning or in the end of Common Prayer, 
either at morning or evening, there may be 
sung a Hymn, or such like Song , to the 
praise of Almighty God,” seems to have 
been applied to them alone or chiefly for 
one hundred and fifty years or more. James 
I. did indeed confer special privileges on 
Wither’s Hymns and Songs of the Church, 
1623 a.d. , as “esteemed worthy and profit¬ 
able to be inserted in convenient manner 
and due place into every English Psalm-Book 
in metre,” but nothing came of it. England 
in that century had no lack of noble sacred 
poets,—Herbert, Quarles, Milton, Yaughan, 
Crashaw, etc.,—and a few of their lyrics 
have since been used as hymns, as have been 
some professedly such by Jeremy Taylor, 
1655 a.d. ; John Austin, 1668 a.d. ; R. Bax¬ 
ter, 1681 a.d. ; John Mason, 1683 a.d. But 
it was then supposed on all hands that onty 
versions from Scripture, and as literal as 
might be, were fit for public worship. Mean¬ 
time, the Scotch Kirk and some English 
Puritans used Francis Rous’s version of the 
Psalms, 1645 a.d., as revised and allowed 
1649 a.d. 

The making and using of hymns on a large 
scale began with Dr. Isaac Watts, whose 
Horae Lyricse appeared 1705-9 A.D., his 
Hymns 1707 a.d., and his Psalms 1719 a.d. 
His fame and success were at first among 
his fellow-dissenters ; indeed, the Established 
Church, for a century after these dates, 
rarely admitted anything metrical, except 
the Old and New Versions, into her worship. 
But indirectly and by degrees his in¬ 
fluence, and that of the school which he 
established, were felt by Churchmen, and 
when they came to make hymn-books of 
their own, most of the material was neces¬ 
sarily drawn either from Nonconformists or 
from Methodists (Arminian or Calvinistic), 
who were within the Church, but had re¬ 
ceived their ruling principles and spiritual 
impulse chiefly from other sources. The 
state of things which prevailed through 
the eighteenth century was widely different 
from that which exists now: Churchmen of 
the sober average type neither wrote hymns 
nor cared to use them, and with a few excep¬ 
tions, as Ken, Addison, Pope, Byrom, and 
Merrick, the tide of lyric devotion flowed 
from the two great sources supplied by 
Watts and Wesley. Every one else fol¬ 
lowed one or other of these, or wrote under 
their joint influence; so that all but a few 
dozen of the many thousand English hymns 
produced between 1700 a.d. and 1800 a.d. 
belong in matter, style, and spirit to one or 
other of these three schools, the last being 
composite. 





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367 


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Dr. Watts (1674-1748 a. d.), who is still 
considered by many, and probably by a 
majority, as the greatest of English hymn- 
ists, was a good man, who had read much, 
but (like all his followers) lacked the culture 
of the great universities. His claim to 
poetic talent, sometimes denied of late, was 
valid, though the talent was of no very high 
order; but his taste was the worst that ever 
afflicted a poet. With some grand lines and 
many vigorous lyrics he mingled much 
wretched bathos and a vast deal of common¬ 
place verse, easy but ignoble. The descent 
from Vaughan, or even from Mason, to him 
is “ from the mountain to the plain.” His 
theology is average Calvinism ; though soft¬ 
ened by his amiability, it is sometimes 
rudely and offensively put. Such as he was, 
he suited his time completely; their very 
plainness and frequent vulgarity com¬ 
mended his Psalms and Hymns to most 
Britons who desired such provision; they 
were “ laid level to the meanest comprehen¬ 
sion,” yet had a directness and occasional 
force unknown in previous compositions of 
the kind; finer work could not have at¬ 
tained the same success. For over a cen¬ 
tury “Watts entire” was used by many 
Dissenting congregations; as late as 1836 
a.d. a “Supplement” to him was put forth 
by the Congregational Union of England 
and Wales. He is still the largest con¬ 
tributor to every Calvinistic hymnal, and 
was till lately one of the largest to Church 
collections. Thus he has done an incalcu¬ 
lable amount of good, and of harm, for it is 
doing harm to keep a low standard when a 
higher one is obtainable. The gain in re¬ 
finement and of feeling, in propriety of 
thought and expression, has been great 
since his day, and not more than a very 
small proportion of his verses is now fitted 
to guide the devotions of Churchmen. 

His followers in this field were, like him¬ 
self, devout and estimable persons, and 
mostly Dissenting ministers. Their work is 
usually neither so good nor so bad as his ; 
and their many volumes show a somewhat 
tame uniformity of views and feelings, 
broken by little originality of thought or 
vehemence of temper ; they are solid, sober, 
and often dull. Dr. Doddridge, the greatest 
of them, is (through a few favorite and indis¬ 
pensable pieces) almost as well known to 
Churchmen as Dr. Watts: his three hundred 
and seventy-four hymns, published after his 
death in 1755 a.d., have a “ mild and human 
tone,” and “ shine in the beauty of holiness.” 
Anne Steele (1760 a.d.), whose somewhat 
“feeble elegance” was more valued fifty 
years ago than now, ranked next to Watts 
and Doddridge in the Prayer-Book Collec¬ 
tion of 1827 a.d., but from seventeen hymns 
is reduced to eleven in the present Hymnal. 
Beddome, Fawcett, and S. Stennett were 
Baptists. Simon Browne Dr. Gibbons, Need¬ 
ham, T. and E. Scott, Mrs. Barbauld, and 
ihe Scotch Paraphrasers have each given 
lyrics to general use. 


A new school and era opened with Charles 
Wesley (1708-88 a.d.), the most fertile, 
fluent, and highly gifted of sacred lyric poets. 
With his brother John he began m 1738 
a.d. the brilliant series of publications which 
continued till his death, including with what 
he left in manuscript some six thousand 
pieces. Their Poetical Works , collected in 
thirteen volumes, 1868-72 a.d., cover near 
six thousand pages ; of this vast quantity 
John probably wrote but some forty or fifty, 
nearly all free versions from the German. 
C. Wesley had the best culture of his time, 
and a style of unsurpassed elegance; the 
grace, fire, and fervency of his muse made 
imitation hopeless. But he could neither 
condense, nor always control, his torrent of 
eloquent song; and his intense emotionalism, 
which often transcends all bounds, has little 
in common with that “ sober standard of 
feeling” which Churchmen have generally 
maintained, and which Keble placed “ next 
to a sound rule of faith.” Though a genuine 
poet, he is pre-eminently “ the poet of Meth¬ 
odism,” and in proportion as his strains are 
invaluable to that sect, they are invalidated 
for Christians of quieter views and habits. 
It is from excess, and not from defect of qual¬ 
ities that these splendid lyrics so largely fail 
of general usefulness ; their vehemence of 
feeling and expression is such that we can¬ 
not repeat them without insincerity. Thus 
no poet needs to be so carefully gleaned from 
as he ; and inadvertent compilers have often 
forced his verses celebrating “ sinless perfec¬ 
tion” and the like on flocks which heard no 
such doctrine from the pulpit. Yet some of 
his best hymns, comparatively free from 
these excesses, have usually adorned our 
hymnals, and will long be prized in those of 
every communion. 

C. Wesley could not be closely followed 
like Dr. Watts, and few have attempted it. 
Cennick, a man of some talent, little taste or 
judgment, and great enthusiasm, issued three 
remarkable volumes, 1741-45 a.d. Ham¬ 
mond (1745 a.d.) and Seagrave (1742 a.d.) 
were of better education but similar spirit. 
Toplady (1759-76 a.d.) had original force; 
an earnest devotee and a fierce bigot, he 
wrote the greatest hymn (Rock of Ages) 
and several of the most beautiful of that age, 
and some of the worst of controversial tracts; 
one with the Wesleys in everything but the 
Divine Decrees, their difference from him 
on that point seemed to him the unpardon- 
ablesin. W. Williams, R. Robinson, Olivers, 
and Bakewell produced each one or two good 
hymns in the trochaic measures never em¬ 
ployed by Watts. 

Of those who wrote under the joint influ¬ 
ence of Watts and Wesley, the most impor¬ 
tant are Newton and Cowper, whose tender, 
faithful friendship gave birth to the famous 
“Olney Hymns,” 1779 a.d. This book was 
almost a manual for the Evangelical party 
within and without the English Church ; 
and never were the tenets of that school pre¬ 
sented in a more attractive light. The ro- 





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mantic and tragic story of John Newton’s 
earlier life, the mellow sincerity of his 
after piety, his modest and manly character, 
all had their due effect; the man is seen on 
every page, lending a charm to what is often 
little more than doggerel. His hymns are 
full of personal experience and wholly void 
of pretense, while of Cowper’s, hardly distin¬ 
guishable from Newton’s, some are utterly 
unworthy of his then unproved powers, and 
others fully equal to any of his later poems. 
Minor but not unimportant writers were 
Medley and Ryland (Baptists), and Haweis, 
rector of Aldwinkle: the distinction be¬ 
tween Churchmen (of this school) and Dis¬ 
senters was at that time mainly nominal. 
Joseph Hart (1759-62 a.d.) may almost be 
said to have founded a school of his own. 
A blunt Briton and vehement dogmatist, 
his rude but vigorous lyrics have become 
especially dear to advanced Calvinistic sects, 
and have impressed themselves quite suffici¬ 
ently upon English-speaking Christendom 
at large. 

Such were the materials which supplied 
the hymnals of the eighteenth century. 
These collections were comparatively few, 
and almost wholly by and for Dissenters, or 
by Churchmen of the Methodistic, evangel¬ 
izing type, for the use of their “societies.” 
Of the former class, though later in time, 
the most important book is Dr. Rippon’s 
Appendix to Watts, 1787 a.d. ; this gathered 
up much of the best work of writers of the 
old school and of some others, and long ex¬ 
erted an immense influence far beyond 
Baptist bounds. Of the other class, whose 
ecclesiasticism is so unobtrusive as often to 
be invisible, the leading representatives are 
Whitefield’s, about 1755 a.d. ; Madan’s, 1760 
a.d. ; Lady Huntingdon’s, 1764 a.d. ; and 
John Wesley’s, 1779-80 a.d. The last, a 
production then and long after incomparable 
for literary excellence, is still the manual 
of the English Wesleyans, and has been the 
basis of every other Methodist collection. 

Towards the end of the last century 
Churchmen, probably of the moderate Evan¬ 
gelical type, began to issue selections of 
metrical psalms, chiefly or wholly from 
Tate and Sternhold, with slight additions 
of familiar hymns. This practice grew 
apace, the number of hymns increased, and 
B. Woodd and others ventured on psalm 
renderings of their own. But the legality 
of all this was doubted, and in 1820 a.d. "a 
suit was brought in the Consistory Court at 
York against Thomas Cotterill for having 
introduced a Selection of his own (1819 a.d.) 
into his parish at Sheffield : “ its declared 
object was to prevent the use of any other 
metrical compositions than the Old or New 
Version of the Psalms.” After a long 
hearing, the matter was referred to the 
Archbishop of York, who compromised it 
by preparing a selection of his own, and 
presenting copies in quantity to the ag¬ 
grieved parishes,which seems to have quieted 
the malcontents. Thereafter collections 


were freely made, with or without the Bish¬ 
op’s sanction. None of them to this day 
have had in England more than Diocesan 
authority, and the voluntary principle was 
long since established, whereby each parish 
priest practically uses whatever hymnal he 
prefers, or makes and brings in one of his 
own. 

Meantime the Church of England, or 
some of her members, were awaking to the 
fact that she ought to have hymns suited to 
her own spirit and services. A few by 
Heber and Sir Robert Grant, of an elegance 
anticipated by the Wesleys and Toplady 
alone, appeared in the Christian Observer , 
1806, 1811 a.d. , etc. Some others, as Gis¬ 
borne, Cawood, and G. T. Noel, wrote with 
equal intention if less talent. Cotterill filled 
his short-lived book with originals that were 
eagerly copied into others : of modest lit¬ 
erary merit, they took a place unfilled be¬ 
fore, and held it worthily till most of them 
gave way to others of higher quality but in 
the same vein. By these aids Anglican 
hymnals became in some degree (though as 
yet very imperfectly) recognizable as such, 
apart from their title-pages. When, in 1827, 
appeared Bishop Heber's Hymns written and 
adapted to the Weekly Church Service of the 
Year , and Keble’s Christian Year , the Eng¬ 
lish Church had proved her claim to the 
possession of some lyric life. 

Two eminent writers had meantime arisen 
outside her pale, though one of them was 
on the boundary line. James Montgomery 
was a Moravian and a poet, and produced 
many hymns which were fit to be used any¬ 
where. His main landmarks were Cotter- 
ill’s Selection (1819 a.d.), in which he 
helped largely, and his own Songs of Zion 
(1822 a.d.) and Christian Psalmist (1825 
a.d.). Living to collect his three hundred 
and fifty-five Original Hymns in 1853 a.d., 
he left a saintly and venerable name, to 
which Churchmen are as much indebted as 
any others. Thomas Ivelly was an Irish¬ 
man of humble capacity and of singularly 
naive and childlike style, from which his 
considerable learning would never be sus¬ 
pected. He was fond of missionary themes 
and of trochaic measures. Beginning to 
publish in 1804 a.d., his Hymns reached an 
eighth edition (miscalled on the title-page 
the seventh) in 1853 a.d., then numbering 
seven hundred and sixty-five. The best of 
these are among the earlier: many of them 
have had an immense currency and a wide 
popularity, and a few of them are likely to 
live. Covering the same period of time, 
Josiah Conder, a Congregational layman of 
literary culture and churchly spirit, wrote 
with some force and much grace, giving us, 
among others, one of our best Communion 
hymns, which was objected to in the Gen¬ 
eral Convention of 1870 a.d. for its too lofty 
doctrine. Edmeston, Collyer, Raffles, and 
A. Reed produced some good hymns; and 
Sir John Bowring, a devout Unitarian, 
eminent in various fields of labor, wrote 




HYMN 


369 


HYMN 


many, of which we might well use more than 
one. Of very recent Dissenters the most emi¬ 
nent is Dr. Bonar, without some of whose 
lyrics no collection is complete. After him 
came G. Rawson and Mrs. S. F. Adams. 

But for the last half-century the hymnic 
life of England has been chiefly in the Eng¬ 
lish Church. The way was prepared, as has 
been shown, by Cotterill, Keble, and Heber, 
the last of whom had the accomplished and 
successful co-operation of Dean Milman. 
Harriet Auber’s Spirit of the Psalms (1829 
a.d.) anticipated both in character and title 
the work of Lyte (1834 a.d.), whose exqui¬ 
site “Abide with me” is much later. Ba¬ 
thurst, Mant, Osier, Charlotte Elliott, J. H. 
Gurney, Dean Alford, and others have made 
important additions to our stock. The 
Oxford movement of 1833 a.d. gave a 
mighty impulse to the development of metri¬ 
cal provision for the Church’s wants, and 
resulted in a genuine revival of sacred song. 
Newman, Caswall, Bridges, and Faber did 
their work mainly or wholly after their per¬ 
version to Rome ; but many loyal adherents 
of the Anglican Establishment have been 
as busy on similar lines. Original hymns 
suited to her teachings and usages have been 
produced in abundance by Bishop Words¬ 
worth, Dr. Monsell, Sir H. W. Baker, Mrs. 
C. F. Alexander, Bishop How, J. Ellerton, 
W. C. Dix, and translations from the Latin, 
Greek, and German, as mentioned above. 
The clarum et venerabile nomen of this period 
is that of a great scholar and saint, Dr. 
John Mason Neale. The leading Hymnals 
of to-day differ widely from those of forty 
years ago. In some respects and cases the 
change has no doubt been overdone, but in 
the main the improvement in taste and fit¬ 
ness is obvious and great. “ Hymns Ancient 
and Modern” (1861; Appendix, 1868; Re¬ 
vised and Enlarged Edition, 1874 a.d.) was 
prepared with unusual care and skill, and as 
estimated by the sale of copies, long ago 
counted by millions, has attained a success 
probably unrivaled by any collection in any 
language. 

In America comparatively little has been 
done or needed, the supplies of England 
being at command. Above two hundred 
writers have furnished more than one thou¬ 
sand hymns, which are or recently have been 
used in home collections ; some of these are 
well known across the ocean, and a few of 
them are of high rank. The chief names 
outside our own communion are Thomas 
Hastings, Dr. Ray Palmer, and Dr. S. F. 
Smith. Native writers, apart from those 
admitted to the Prayer-Book collection of 
1827 a.d., are little represented in our pres¬ 
ent Hymnal. 

The"history of our Episcopal hymnody is 
brief and simple. In 1789 a.d. the “New 
Version” of Psalms by Tate and Brady was 
adopted, with twenty-seven hymns, to which 
thirty were added in 1808 a.d. Of these 
fifty-seven, seventeen were from Watts, ten 
from Steele, and nine from Doddridge; not 

24 


more than twenty were by Churchmen. In 
1827 a.d. the two hundred and twelve hymns 
appeared, Watts, Doddridge, Steele, C. 
Wesley, Montgomery, and the Scotch Para- 
phrasers being the chief contributors; but 
seventeen new lyrics, some of them of great 
value, were furnished by Drs. Onderdonk, 
Muhlenberg, and Doane. In 1833 a.d. the 
one hundred and twenty-four selected psalms, 
all but fourteen being from Tate and Brady, 
displaced their entire version. This meagre 
provision served exclusively for our public 
worship for near half a century, though sev¬ 
eral collections by Dr. Andrews and others 
were prepared for week-night services and 
the like. In 1866 a.d. sixty-five Additional 
Hymns were sent forth by the House of 
Bishops, and from that time the English 
“ Hymns Ancient and Modern” were al¬ 
lowed in several Dioceses. The present 
Hymnal appeared in 1871 a.d., and was 
slightly revised and enlarged 1874 a.d. 
Little attention had been given to hymnol- 
ogy among our clergy or people, and the Com¬ 
mittee could hardjy command adequate facil¬ 
ities for such a task ; but the result, though 
not to be compared with the best English col¬ 
lections, is a great improvement on what we 
had before. It contains an abundant, if 
not an excessive, supply of psalm versions ; 
some sixty—or half the precious assortment, 
in number if not in length—being taken 
from Tate and Brady. Where the use of 
metrical psalms, standing by themselves as 
such, is abandoned (as is the nearly universal 
practice now), there seems no adequate rea¬ 
son for retaining more of them among other 
hymns than may deserve that rank by in¬ 
trinsic merit. Then come Dr. Watts with 
thirty-seven lyrics, C. Wesley with twenty- 
eight, Montgomery with twenty-six, Dodd¬ 
ridge with nineteen, and Newton, Heber, 
and Steele with eleven each. If the origin 
of all the five hundred and thirty-two hymns 
bo noted, Dissent appears at length to be 
somewhat in the minority. Of translations 
from the Latin there are thirty-seven, from 
the German sixteen, from the Greek seven; 
of these together Dr. Neale supplies twenty- 
one, his originals being somewhat slighted. 

Our Church people have cared less for 
hymns than other Protestants, and been less 
dependent on them, having the service. To 
non-liturgical bodies the hymn-book is the 
only ritual, and its contents take the place 
of chants, glorias, psalter, and largely of 
common prayer. But even with us metrical 
hymns are not to be despised, especially 
since the growing taste for music causes 
them to be sung in many parishes at the 
opening of service, as well as in the old time- 
honored places in its course. Their possible, 
and doubtless in many cases their actual, in¬ 
fluence is incalculable for good or ill. They 
reach multitudes who know little of canons, 
rubrics, or articles. “ A verse may find him 
who a sermon flies,” and songs have a power 
long recognized as beyond that of laws or 
learning. They sink into the mind in youth, 





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and color its ideas of doctrine, devotion, and 
duty. They have been repeatedly the solace 
of poverty and age, the support of the sick 
and dying. Backed by the subtle charm of 
melody, they appeal to our emotional even 
more than to our intellectual nature. As 
authorized and employed by the Church, 
they bear an essential part in that constant 
education which her members are uncon¬ 
sciously receiving at every service. Their 
place in divine worship is as high as any; 
for, whether metrical'or not, they afford the 
most fit and natural means of praising God. 
In singing them, as St. Paul has it, we are 
“speaking to ourselves” and to the Lord. 
Lack of care and skill in selecting and using 
them is therefore irreverent and injurious. 
They carry a double message, and both the 
human and the divine direction they take 
deserve and demand our best. 

The qualities needed in hymns, individu¬ 
ally or collectively, are obvious. They 
should harmonize with the beliefs and prin¬ 
ciples of those who use them, or else they 
promote insincerity. They should not, for 
common occasions, go beyond the range of 
ordinary Christian experience, or, at most, 
imagination. There is a large and varied 
class of unreal hymns, the utterance of 
which involves falsehood, as “ I want to be 
an angel,” which is impossible and against 
nature. They should not tend to excited 
and strained feeling. On this account, as 
has been shown, many of Charles Wesley’s 
most beautiful lyrics, besides many of in¬ 
ferior quality but equal currency by other 
writers, are not available. They should 
voice, adequately and genuinely, human 
penitence, need, and aspiration. They 
should represent us at our best, holding 
up a standard which we may follow, so that 
the worshiper be raised, and not (as may 
too easily be the case) lowered, by their 
means. They should, in most cases, be di¬ 
rect addresses to the object of worship. Ver¬ 
sified moralities, arguments, and exhorta¬ 
tions are out of place and out of date here. 
We are supposed to sing, not at each other, 
but to the Lord. Effusions like Hymns 
384 and 381 should be relegated to Gospel 
meetings. 

So much for the substance. As to the form, 
a hymn should be poetical and lyrical, and 
not merely “prose tagged with rhyme;” 
however excellent the sentiment, it fails of 
any real value for its purpose if wooden or 
mechanical It must be smooth and sing¬ 
able, and it should, like any other literary 
product, have unity, compactness, and com¬ 
pleteness. Abrupt beginnings, as in 111, 
and endings, as in 110, mar the effect, though 
the latter may in part be mended by affixing 
a “ Gloria Patri.” But when a piece has the 
true lyric inspiration and hymnic fire, grave 
faults in its structure may be condoned. No 
one questions that “ Rock of Ages” is a 
genuine hymn, though some of its lines have 
always needed and received emendation. 

Textual changes have sometimes been 


sweepingly condemned, and the ground 
taken that a - hymn should be used as its 
author left it, or not at all : but probably no 
collection was ever made for public use, or 
could have been, upon this principle. The 
practice of “tinkering,” i.e., taking need¬ 
less and wanton liberties with the text (of 
which there are too many examples), is 
scandalous, but in many cases some altera¬ 
tion either is necessary, or will produce ob¬ 
vious improvement. To know when these 
changes are requisite or desirable, and to 
make or adopt them with a sparing and ju¬ 
dicious hand, is part of a compiler’s busi¬ 
ness,—for which, indeed, many of them were 
not well qualified. Abridgment is a simple 
matter. Often a hymn is too long, or un¬ 
equal in the merit of its stanzas, and may be 
improved by omitting some of them. 
“ Abide with me,” and “ Sun of my soul,” 
as now everywhere used, are faultless hymns, 
full of tender and noble life, though only 
parts of the original poems. 

The value of hymns cannot in every case 
be precisely determined by universal canons, 
for much depends on position and associa¬ 
tion. Some that are precious to us may be 
useless to our brethren of other names, and 
vice versa. Still, the rules of criticism ap¬ 
ply here ; a hymn has a literary character, 
though not that alone. In proportion to 
the culture of those wlio use them, stress 
must be laid upon this point. It should be re¬ 
membered that the end does not sanction 
the means, and that charitable intent cannot 
cover intellectual or literary sin. All hymns, 
we may suppose, were piously meant, yet 
multitudes of them are worthless except as 
curiosities. Many are dull and lifeless; 
many more have an unhealthy life in them, 
being coarse, ignorant, narrow, or heretical. 
The more accurate taste of our time con¬ 
demns as gross or ranting not a few that 
were useful to former generations. The ser¬ 
vices and methods of the Church, as hap¬ 
pily fixed long since, are no less admirable 
for their aesthetic than for their spiritual 
character. “ The beauty of holiness” shines 
in her course of Festivals, Fasts, and Sea¬ 
sons, and in her order for public worship. 
The Prayer-Book is a study in English 
style, as well as in grave devotion. With 
its tenor should agree our rendering of the 
whole, and those musical appurtenances 
which were so long dreaded or undervalued, 
but are now firmly established and vastly 
enjoyed. There is nothing in rhyme and 
metre to excuse their contradicting, or fall¬ 
ing far below, the tone of Morning Prayer, 
Litany, and Communion office. The spirit 
which forbids all “ light and unseemly mu¬ 
sic” should exclude unworthiness of what¬ 
ever sort in hymns as well. In this partic¬ 
ular we have been too easy, too negligent. 
Yet any sound and cultivated judgment, ap¬ 
plied here with the same fidelity it bestows 
on other important subjects, should be able 
to see what sacred songs are best fitted to 
edify Christians, and to be offered as incense 





HYPERDULIA 


371 


IDIOTS 


to the All-Wise. There is no lack of mod¬ 
els ; our most approved and blameless 
hymns might serve as tests of others. 
“ God,” says Toplady, in the preface to his 
Collection of 1776 a.d., “ is the God of Truth, 
of Holiness, and of Elegance. Whoever, 
therefore, has the honor to compose, or to 
compile (we may add, or to employ) any¬ 
thing that may constitute a part of His wor¬ 
ship, should keep those three particulars 
constantly in view.” 

Rev. Prof. Frederic M. Bird. 

Hyperdulia. The second of the three 
imaginary grades of worship which the Ro¬ 
manist is taught to consider allowable. The 
first is Dulia, which may b« paid to a saint; 
a worship implying service. (Vide Dulia.) 
The second is Hyperdulia ; and the third 
and highest, the Latria, due to the Holy 
Trinity. Hyperdulia is paid to the Blessed 
Virgin because of Her privilege in being 
the Mother of our Lord, but it is claimed 
that this hyperdulia is as distant from Latria 
as the creature is from the Uncreated. But 
it is a feat of imagination to place any dif¬ 
ference so vast between these two prayers : 
“ We fly to thy patronage, O holy Mother of 
God 1 Despise not our petitions in our neces¬ 
sities, but deliver us from all our dangers, 
O thou ever-glorious and blessed Virgin” 
(Catholic Piety, p. 35), and these words of 
the Collect: “O Lord, we beseech Thee 
mercifully to hear us, and grant that we to 
whom Thou hast given a hearty desire to 
pray, may by Thy mighty aid be defended 
and comforted in all dangers and adversi¬ 
ties through Jesus Christ our Lord.” 
In fact, the words of the Hyperdulic prayer 
to the Virgin are stronger than the words 
of the Collect, which dates as far back as 
the sacramentary of Gregory, 600 a.d. 


Hypostasis. A term used very frequently 
in theology, in discussions upon the Holy 
Trinity , but one which is not always clearly 
apprehended by those who use it so freely. 
It expresses, primarily, “reality,” and from 
this the real identity of nature in the Three 
Persons, thus showing that the oneness of 
nature proves that there is but One God, 
but the sharing of this reality of nature in 
the Son from the Father, and in the Holy 
Ghost proceeding from the Father, there is 
a separation of the persons. This union is 
called the Hypostatical Union. Probably 
Hooker expresses it as tersely and plainly 
as any one can: “The substance of God, 
with this property to be of none , doth make 
the Person of the Father; the very self¬ 
same substance in number, with this prop¬ 
erty to be of the Father, maketh the Person 
of the Son ; the same substance having added 
to it the property of proceeding from the 
other tw.o , maketh the Holy Ghost. So 
that in every Person there is implied both 
the substance of God, which is one, and also 
that property which causeth the same Person 
to be really, and truly to differ from the 
other two. Every Person hath His own 
subsistence, which no other besides hath, 
although there be others which have the 
same substance.” (Ecel., v. 51.) The last 
two sentences contain especially the true no¬ 
tion of the word Hypostasis,—the unity of 
substance in the reality of each Person, by 
which in One Godhead there is yet the 
subsistence of the Persons. With such a 
poor language as we have for expressing 
the delicate shades of thought and the dis¬ 
tinctions necessary in theology, we natu¬ 
rally are unable to express it by a single 
word. 

Hypothetical. Vide Baptism. 




I. 


Ichthus (IX0Y2). The initial letters of 
the Greek words I rjoovg Xpioroc Oeov Yioc 
2 uttjp — Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the 
Saviour —made the word IX0T2, which 
means “ fish.” The mystical enthusiasm of 
the early Christians caught at this in con¬ 
nection with the Parable of the Net and 
with the Miracles of the Fishes, and to St. 
Paul’s allusion, “I have caught you with 
guile.” The image of a fish appears very often 
in Christian Art. Tertullian (180 a.d.) refers 
to it. Clement of Alexandria allows the 
fish as a device on a seal or ring proper 
for Christians to wear and use, as itself fit¬ 
ting, and as, too, the heathen would not 
perceive its mystical connection with the 
Christian doctrine, as they would if a cross 
were worn. 


Idaho, Missionary Jurisdiction of. Vide 
Utah. 

Ides. In the English Calendar the 
month retains the triple division—the Cal¬ 
ends, Nones, and Ides—of the old Roman 
use. The Ides begin in March, May, July, 
and October on the eighth day, and in all 
other months on the sixth day, and run on 
for eight days. 

Idiotae. Private persons; laymen. It 
is the word used by St. Paul (1 Cor. xiv. 16) 
when speaking of the Eucharistic Service, 
and the responses of the congregation. The 
translation in the A. V. “ unlearned,” is still 
worse translated in the margin of the re¬ 
vised translation, “ him that is without 
gifts,” since the Greek commentators, as 
Chrysostom, make it to mean the Laity ( cf . 







IDOLATRY 


372 


ILLINOIS 


Wordsworth’s Greek Testament, l. c .) It 
means “ unprofessional” in 2 Cor. vi. 11, 
and so too in Acts iv. 13, where the Apostles 
are said to be “ unlearned.” 

Idolatry. The worship of idols. It is 
not necessary that the idol should be an image 
of man or of beast. Idolatry can also be 
rendered to relics. It is rendered often to 
any passion or pursuit that overshadows 
the spiritual life and leads the soul away 
from the love and worship due to God be¬ 
fore &11 else. It is giving to another the 
glory that is due to God (Is. xlviii. 11), 
and is directly in opposition to the Second 
Commandment. 

It was most sternly repressed by the early 
Christians in every one received from 
paganism, since every Christian made a 
special renunciation. It crept in when 
men were received more freely after Chris¬ 
tianity became dominant. The old super¬ 
stitions were not so readily thrown off, and 
the edicts of Emperors and Penitentials 
of Bishops are filled with penalties inflicted 
upon those who practiced strange and re¬ 
volting rites and sacrifices to demons. 
These Canons begin from the time of the 
Spanish Council of Elivira, go on to tbe close 
of missionary eflorts in Europe, a space of 
over six hundred years. The tendency to 
superstition and idolatrous practices took a 
more dangerous form when, under the spe¬ 
cious form of reverence for relics, it entered 
into the Church and tainted her worship, 
under the cloak of a pretended but uncalled 
for reverence. The open idolatry of the 
pagan is harshly reprobated though he knows 
no better; but the idolatry that is defended 
under the specious names of dulia and of 
hyperdulia—words that are barbarously 
twisted out of their true sense—deserves 
deeper condemnation; the idolatry that 
offers the Latria, due, as even the iconola- 
trous Council of Niczea asserted, to the 
Divine nature only, to the Elements of the 
sacrament. 

Illinois, Diocese of. The Diocese of 
Illinois was organized at Peoria, on the 8th 
day of March, 1835 a.d. There were pres¬ 
ent, three Presbyters and laymen repre¬ 
senting three parishes. The Rt. Rev. Phi¬ 
lander Chase, D.D., was chosen Bishop.' Dr. 
Chase, being one of the first to introduce the 
Church west of the Alleghany Mountains, 
was elected Bishop of Ohio in the year 1818 
a.d. He had founded Kenyon College and 
was its president. Because of misunder¬ 
standings and complications growing out of 
the administration of the institution he had 
resigned not only the presidency of the col¬ 
lege, but also the Bishopric of Ohio. On 
his retirement he had removed with his 
family to Michigan, and was residing on a 
farm when the call to “ come over and help” 
the new Diocese of Illinois reached him. 
He accepted the election in the following 
words: “ As I had no agency direct or in¬ 
direct in producing this important event, I* 
cannot but regard it as entirely providential, 


and as such implying a command from the 
great Head of the Church to enter anew in 
the discharge of my Episcopal duties, so 
solemnly enjoined in my consecration, and 
lately so painfully, for conscience 7 sake, re¬ 
mitted. ... In accepting the appointment 
to the Episcopate of Illinois I cannot refrain 
from mingling with a deep sense I have 
of the honor they have done me the 
melancholy reflection that the days of my 
strength and ability to bear the fatigues of 
planting churches in the new and pathless 
sections of our country, widely spread and 
illy provided with temporal comforts, are 
forever past.” 

The resignation of the Diocese of Ohio by 
Bishop Chase and his election to the Diocese 
of Illinois, and his acceptance of the same, 
were without the sanction of Canonical law 
and without precedent. But the General 
Convention, recognizing the emergency, ad¬ 
mitted the Diocese of Illinois into union 
with Bishop Chase at its head. Tbe Com¬ 
mittee of the House of Bishops to whom 
were referred the documents from the Con¬ 
vention of Illinois, made the following re¬ 
port : 

“ The Committee have examined the 
Constitution and Canons adopted by the 
Convention and find them not to be incon¬ 
sistent with those of the General Conven¬ 
tion. The Church of Illinois presents her¬ 
self for admission into union with the Gen¬ 
eral Convention with a Bishop at its head. 
By recurring to the journal, there appear 
to be some circumstances in regard to this 
appointment which may be thought not en¬ 
tirely in consonance with the regulations of 
the Church, yet the Committee do not deem 
them of such vital importance as to in¬ 
validate his election, and the Committee 
feel disposed to regard them with the more 
indulgence, as the case was unprovided for 
by the Canons of the Church. . •. . The 
Committee therefore recommend the adop¬ 
tion of the following resolution : 

“Resolved , That the Church of Illinois, 
under the Episcopal superintendence of the 
Rt. Rev. Philander Chase, D.D., be, and 
hereby is, received and acknowledged as a 
Diocese in union with the General Conven¬ 
tion of the Protestant Episcopal Church of 
the United States. 

“All of which is respectfully submitted. 
“ Thomas C. Brownell, 

“ Benjamin 1l. Onderdonk, 
“William Meade.” 

Bishop Chase at once conceived the plan 
of founding a collegiate institution and a 
Theological Seminary in his Diocese ; and 
with the intention of securing funds for this 
purpose went to England. On his return he 
bought land in Peoria County, and on the 
3d day of April, 1839 a.d., laid the corner¬ 
stone of Jubilee College. Near the college he 
made his home, living for years in a com¬ 
fortable log house, which he called “ Robin’s 
Nest,” filled in with mud and sticks, and 
within which was a family of children. In 




ILLINOIS 


373 


ILLINOIS 


time the college grew in usefulness, and be¬ 
came one of the best known and most suc¬ 
cessful institutions in the West. But many 
adverse circumstances have arisen to thwart 
the well-laid plans of the noble founder. 

Bishop Chase was far advanced in years 
when he came to Illinois ; still, notwith¬ 
standing the difficulties of traveling in that 
early day, he visited with promptness and 
regularity his great Diocese,—great in the 
extent of its territory, in its trials and its 
hardships. New towns were springing up; 
new parishes were formed; new missionary 
stations were appointed. The Bishop felt 
that the Diocese required more Episcopal 
oversight than he was able to give it, and 
he therefore asked the Convention, which 
met at Alton in 1847 a.d., to elect an Assist¬ 
ant Bishop. In response to this request the 
Convention elected the Rev. James Brittain, 
a Presbyter of the Diocese of Ohio. But the 
General Convention, which met soon after, 
refused to confirm the choice. It is due to 
the memory of the gentleman thus rejected 
to say that this action of the General Con¬ 
vention was not personal to himself. The 
opposition to him and his final rejection was 
due to the heated temper of the times,—to 
the party spirit that was so violent in the 
Church. 

But the great increase in the growth of the 
Church, and the physical infirmities of the 
Bishop, made it necessary that another effort 
should be made to secure the aid of an As¬ 
sistant Bishop. Accordingly a special Con¬ 
vention was held at Pekin in September, 
1851 a.d., which elected the Rev. Henry 
JolmWhitehouse, D.D., rector of St. Thomas’ 
Church, New York. Bishop Chase died 
September 20, 1852 a.d. Few men in the 
Church have been more laborious and self- 
sacrificing than Bishop Chase. He was the 
ioneer Bishop of the great West. Ohio and 
llinois bear evidence of his faithfulness and 
devotion to the Church and its Divine Head. 

To Bishop Whitehouse is due the credit 
of courage and wisdom in adopting a Cathe¬ 
dral system adapted to the condition of the 
Church in this country. Like all new pro¬ 
jects, it at first met with great opposition ; 
and this opposition retarded for ten years 
the beginning of the undertaking. The 
Bishop though discouraged was not cast 
down, and in time he saw some of his cher¬ 
ished purposes put to practical use. The 
Bishop’s plans for a commencement were 
very modest. He intended that the Bishop 
should have a church of which he should 
have control, and whose sittings should be 
forever free. Connected with this church 
there should be a staff of clergy to conduct 
daily and other services, to educate the young, 
to prepare candidates for the ministry, and 
to do a certain kind of missionary work in 
Chicago and its suburbs. He never sup¬ 
posed that all this could or would be accom¬ 
plished in his lifetime. He wished to lay 
the foundation as a wise, far-seeing master- 
builder, and let others as years passed build 


thereon. He selected the chief city of his 
Diocese in which to build this Bishop’s 
church, and hoped that coming genera¬ 
tions would recognize its power and help to 
enhance its usefulness. 

His Episcopate convinced him of the im¬ 
possibility of any man administering with 
satisfaction to himself or as the Church ex¬ 
pected a Diocese so great as the State of 
Illinois. He had, therefore, recommended 
a division of the Diocese, and some prelimi¬ 
nary steps had been taken to that end ; but 
no definite plans had been adopted at the 
time of his death, which occurred on the 10th 
day of August, 1875 a.d. Twenty-two years 
of active work had brought with them cares, 
then troubles, and then disappointments; 
and when clouds were lifting and a clearer 
sky was appearing, the aged Bishop, though 
strong in body and intellect, was suddenly 
called from his labors. 

The regular Convention, which met in the 
Cathedral, Chicago, in September, 1874 a.d., 
elected the Rev. George T. Seymour, Dean 
of the General Theological Seminary, 
Bishop. But the General Convention fail¬ 
ing to confirm the election, a special Con¬ 
vention was called, which chose the Rev. 
James DeKoven, Warden of Racine Col¬ 
lege, Bishop. Dr. DeKoven not .receiving 
the consent of a majority of the Standing 
Committees, the Annual Convention, which 
met September, 1875 a.d., elected the Rev. 
William Edward McLaren, rector of Trin¬ 
ity Church, Cleveland, Bishop, who was 
consecrated in the Cathedral, Chicago, De¬ 
cember 8, 1875 a.d. 

Bishop McLaren brought to the Diocese a 
large knowledge of men and of affairs, a 
strong intellect, a sound judgment, a warm 
heart, and a catholic spirit. At once all the 
elements of discord, and dissensions and 
variances, the election to the Episcopate of 
•two most worthy gentlemen and their re¬ 
jection had engendered, were allayed. The 
Diocese united with its new Bishop in the 
hearty desire to forget the past, to strengthen 
and develop the things that remained, and 
to plan wisely and hopefully for the future. 

Bishop McLaren recommended to his first 
Convention a division of the Diocese. This 
was followed in 1877 a d. by the organiza¬ 
tion of the Dioceses of Quincy and Spring- 
field. Bishop McLaren selected the Diocese 
of Illinois in which to exercise the duties of 
his office, as the Canon permitted him to do. 
The Diocese has now 63 clergymen, 46 
parishes, and 32 organized and unorganized 
missions. Communicants, 7467 ; amount of 
contributions for the Conventional year end¬ 
ing Easter, 1883 a.d., $309,102.79. 

In 1877 a.d., Bishop McLaren, when rec¬ 
ommending, suggested the propriety of form¬ 
ing a Federate Council, under Canon viii., 
Title iii., of the General Convention. In 1880 
a.d. the three Dioceses within the limits of 
the State of Illinois met and organized, un¬ 
der the name of “ The Federate Council of 
the Province of Illinois.” This Council 






ILLUMINATION 


374 


IMAGE OF GOD 


meets annually, and is composed of the 
Bishops and four clergymen and four laymen 
from each of the three Dioceses. Its objects 
are: 

“ The organization and administering 
an Appellate Court for adjudicating cases 
brought before it by appeal from the courts 
of the Dioceses within the limits of the State 
of Illinois, etc. 

“ The charge and care of such educational 
and charitable institutions as it may canon¬ 
ically establish, or as may be established un¬ 
der its jurisdiction. 

“ The charge and conduct of matters per¬ 
taining to the extension of the Church, so 
far as these matters may be intrusted to it. 

“ The acceptance and administration of all 
funds and donations of any kind which may 
be given or intrusted to it. 

“ Legislation upon subjects of common 
interest to the several Dioceses, the passing 
of statutes and rules for the government of 
the Federate Council, and the enacting laws 
for the due exercise of its powers.” 

Rev. T. N. Morrison. 

Illumination. The spiritual enlargement 
of the understanding and the conscience 
that cometh from the gift of the Holy 
Ghost and of the indwelling of Christ, “ the 
Light of the World.” Baptism bore the 
name of the Enlightenment. When received, 
the adults, the newly baptized walked in the 
new light they had received. Traces of 
this application of the term illumination 
appear in St. Paul, as to the Hebrews (x. 
32), he writes bidding them remember how 
“ after they were enlightened” they endured 
a great fight of afflictions; and in vi. 4, 
occurs that terrible passage which begins, 
“ For it is impossible for those who were once 
enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly 
gift.” Not so clearly applicable to baptism, 
but to its effects as making us new creat¬ 
ures in Christ Jesus, are the several pas¬ 
sages wherein he speaks of Christians as the 
children of the light (Eph. v. 8; 1 Thess. 
v. 5); also St. Peter uses the same language 
to the Christian Jews whom Christ had 
called “into His marvelous light” (1 Pet. ii. 
9), and St. John saith that “ he that loveth 
his brother (a new commandment I give 
unto you, That ye love one another. . . . By 
this shall all men know that ye are My dis¬ 
ciples) abideth in the light.” So, from sub- 
apostolic times, those who had just received 
baptism were called the Illuminated. But 
this gift of light flowing from Christ the 
true Light which lighteth every man, is 
also by the grace of the Holy Ghost, who 
lightens the reason, quickens the conscience, 
fills out the ability, and gives the several 
gifts fitted for our capacities. By His light 
in our hearts we can confess Christ (I 
Cor. xii. 3), and by His light as by a candle 
(Prob. xx. 27) are our inward parts searched 
out and known, and from His presence we 
cannot escape. So by the gift of the Com¬ 
forter, which includes all other gifts, for 
from Him is every grace and gift, we receive 


that illumination that is for our spiritual 
growth (cf. 1 Cor. xii. 1-16). The prayer 
in the Confirmation office shows this His 
office when the Bishop pleads that we may 
receive His sevenfold gifts, all of which are 
for spiritual insight and ghostly strength to 
walk upon the path of light. “ In His 
Light we shall see light.” By humble and 
lowly use of His illumination can we see 
both to use aright the graces He bestows, to 
use the opportunities for growth in holiness, 
and to use the spiritual knowledge that 
comes by study of the Word of God and of 
strict self-examination. These as instru¬ 
ments touch the inmost life. These as 
habits stir up the moral perceptions. These 
as dwelt in quicken the spiritual insight, 
that it can rejoice in the knowledge of God’s 
overshadowing Presence and guidance. He 
that by prayer and meditation, and by ac¬ 
tive use of what he has thus learned, will 
try to draw day by day nearer to God, has 
received and lives in that light which 
Christ hath shed from Himself into the 
world to lighten every soul. 

Image of God. No subject has exercised 
the devout speculation of the greatest theo¬ 
logians with as little tangible result as this 
question, Whereirrdoth the Image of God 
in us consist? It is positively taught in 
Holy Scripture; we are told of the ruin 
of this Image, the redemption in Christ, 
and its restoration to us is the Gospel. 
The Resurrection-day shall see us re¬ 
deemed, reclothed with it. It shall be the 
complete satisfaction of the soul, yet no¬ 
where is it explicitly taught us wherein this 
Image lies. If in the Body, strictly, then, 
we are led to anthropomorphic conclusions 
about the Divine Nature. If in the soul, 
it is in the spiritual life, yet the soul of man 
is the breath of God, and it cannot be said 
that this Image is concluded in that only. 
If in gifts that were conferred, and which 
we sum up in the phrase “ Original right¬ 
eousness,” then it was not strictly in the 
creation, but in the gifts crowning that cre¬ 
ation, that our likeness to God lieth. We 
cannot certainly know here, but we shall 
know hereafter; this is the sum of all our 
speculations, which involve the conceptions 
we form of the functions of the Church as 
His restoring Body for us, and of the work 
of the Holy Ghost in us, and of the Resur¬ 
rection Body hereafter. Yet it is not wasted 
time, since whatever the outcome of our in¬ 
vestigations, if we remember that He has 
chosen to conceal these things, and yet to 
tell us that they exist, we will be drawn 
nearer to Him, for we will have something 
surer from our own research than blind re¬ 
liance on others’ thoughts. There are 
collected below the chief tests which apply 
to the main questions raised in the inquiry, 
subdivided into, I. The creation of man in 
God’s likeness. II. The wearing by the 
Son of God of the Image of God in man. 
III. The restoration of the Image of God 
in man by all the means offered. 




IMAGE OF GOD 


375 


IMAGES 


I. And God said, “ Let us make man in 

our Image, after our Likeness: and let them 
have dominion over the fish of the sea, and 
over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, 
and over every creeping thing that creepeth 
upon the earth. So God created man in 
His own Image, in the Image of God cre¬ 
ated He him: male and female created He 
them” (Gen. i. 26, 27). “ In the day that 

God created man, in the likeness of God 
made He him; male and female created He 
them ; and blessed them, and called their 
name Adam, in the day when He created 
them” (Gen. v. 1, 2). “ Whoso sheddeth 

man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed : 
for in the Image of God made He man” 
(Gen. ix. 6). “ For a man indeed ought 

not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is 
the Image and glory of God; but the 
woman is the glory of the man” (1 Cor. xi. 
7). “Therewith [the tongue] bless we God, 
even the Father; and therewith curse we 
men, which are made after the similitude of 
God” (Jas. iii. 9). These directly state the 
bare fact that we are in God’s Likeness. St. 
Paul throws upon it a significant side light 
by adding the word “glory,” and asserting 
that woman (made out of man) is the glory 
of the man. This, however, cannot here 
be expanded. The second division of the 
subject is the fact that the Word of God 
became truly man. Here must be omitted 
the texts of the Old Testament of the One 
like to the Son of God or in the “ simili¬ 
tude of the sons of men.” 

II. “ Jesus Himself, . . . which was the 

son of Adam which was the Son of God” 
(St. Luke iii. 23-38). “God . . . hath in 
these last days spoken unto us by His Son, 
. . . who being the brightness of His glory, 
and the express image of His person, and 
upholding all things by the word of His 
power (Heb. i. 1-3), took on Him the end 
of Abraham” (Heb. ii. 16). “ God send¬ 

ing His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh” 
(Kom. viii. 3). “ For whom He did foreknow, 
He also did predestinate to be conformed to 
the image of His Son, that He might be the 
first-born among many brethren” (Rom. 
viii. 29). “ Let this mind be in you which 

was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the 
form of God, . . . was made in the likeness 
of men r and being found in fashion as a man, 
He humbled Himself and became obedient 
unto death, even the death of the Cross” 
(Phil. ii. 5-8). “So it is written, The first 
man Adam was made a living soul; the 
last Adam was made a quickening spirit” (1 
Cor. xv. 45). 

This class of texts can be expanded indefi¬ 
nitely, but they indicate that the word of 
God, the brightness of His glory ( cf . “ the 
glory of God” above), and the express Image 
of His Person, could wear fittingly, for our 
salvation, the likeness of God corrupted 
through sin, and wore it because He was to 
restore all things. Under the third division 
of texts this is very directly taught. 

III. “Forasmuch then as the children 


are partakers of flesh and blood, He also 
Himself likewise took part in the same; that 
through death He might destroy Him that 
hath the power of death, that is, the devil; 
and deliver them who through fear of death 
were all their lifetime subject to bondage” 
(Heb. ii. 14, 15). “ For our conversation is 

in heaven ; from whence also we look for the 
Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ : who shall 
change our vile body, that it may be fash¬ 
ioned like unto His glorious body, according 
to the working whereby He is able to sub¬ 
due all things unto Himself” (Phil. iii. 20, 
21). “ For as in Adam all die, even so in 

Christ shall all be made alive. But every 
man in his own order. ... As we have 
borne the image of the earthy, we shall also 
bear the image of the heavenly” (1 Cor. xv.). 
“ Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and 
it doth not yet appear what we shall be ; 
but we know that, when He shall appear, we 
shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as 
He is” (1 John iii. 2). 

Here again these leading texts constantly 
point to other and less vividly worded texts, 
binding the whole history of man from the 
time in which he stood forth the sinless 
Image of God in the Paradise of Eden, 
throughout his sinful corrupted course, till 
in the Resurrection-day, redeemed through 
the second Adam, he shall be restored to the 
Paradise of God. 

But as was said above, the lost gifts and 
faculties have been classified in the most op¬ 
posite ways. The true clue to the maze is 
to be found in whatever the Lord Jesus 
has to bestow, to restore to us. Putting aside 
forgiveness, because that must be prelimi¬ 
nary to any restoration whatever, we see 
that all His gifts are summed up in the 
Holy Ghost. Therefore, in whatever way 
He reaches into and satisfies and crowns our 
nature, in these things we can recover the 
lost traces of our original likeness. To re¬ 
count these is to recount the strengthening, 
the glory, the indwelling, the sanctification 
of the Holy Ghost, and to describe the 
work He doth, sent by Christ to abide in 
His Church, in and through the Church 
and all the restorations she has to give to 
us. Thus the earthly image of God shall, 
through the eternal Image, be restored to its 
original state. 

Images. The use of images in the hea¬ 
then world was of course largely, if not 
wholly, for idolatrous purposes. In the 
first days of Christianity the use of images 
at all was forbidden, and the artisan who 
had made his living thereby was, when 
converted, compelled to seek some other 
employment. With the daily sight of their 
worship, it was not possible that the Church 
could permit them to appear in the com¬ 
paratively few places of worship she owned. 
Iler earliest teachers, Tertullian, Clement 
of Alexandria, Origen, Minutius Felix, 
Lactantius, Arnobius, all denounce the 
sculptor’s art in more or less measured 
terms. There is a thorough consensus of 





IMAGES 


37(T IMMACULATE CONCEPTION 


the writers down to 350 a.d., testifying that 
such a thing as an image of Christ in a 
church was abhorrent to the Christian. 
This included painting also. But after this 
date we find the churches begin to be orna¬ 
mented with paintings of historical scenes 
from the Bible. Already a simple mono¬ 
gram, and then a figure of a lamb or a 
vine, and then of figures of the Good Shep¬ 
herd, had appeared in the catacombs, and 
upon the chalice of the Eucharistic vessels 
the Good Shepherd had been chased. But 
it had gone no further. But henceforth we 
begin to find traces, first of paintings, then 
of images proper, placed in the churches 
for adornment and instruction. Epiphanius 
tells how in one of the churches of Pales¬ 
tine he found a veil with a figure of 
Christ upon it. He tore it down and or¬ 
dered that it should be used to shroud some 
poor man, and paid the price of the veil 
into the Church treasury. But the adorn¬ 
ment of the churches had begun and went 
on apace. The next generation saw with 
complacency this beautifying of the House 
of God, and justified it on the ground that 
it was the most convenient way to teach the 
unlettered in the congregation. The future 
evil was by no means apparent as yet. But 
by the year 600 a.d. it began to show itself. 
Serenus of Marseilles had to remove and 
destroy all the statues in his Diocese, for 
the reason that adoration was paid to them, 
for which Gregory the Great blames him, 
as destroying what was useful for instruc¬ 
tion. In both East and West superstitious 
ideas were connected from this time on 
with images, paintings, and relics, and 
Gregory himself sets the example of re¬ 
cording absurd tales of miracles performed 
by the relics of saints. The struggle in 
the East to purify the Church of such a 
sin gave occasion to the famous Iconoclastic 
Controversy. 

In England, the Saxon Prelates tried to 
follow the lead of the Council of Frankfort, 
to which they had informally assented 
through King Offa. There are abundant 
proofs that they were fully alive to the 
danger. But with the Norman conquest 
came in the later Gallican practice, and soon 
it passed over the whole kingdom. Though, 
as in the mandate of William Grenefeld, 
Archbishop of York (1313 a.d.), there was 
an effort made to stem the evil. 

The Reformation in England put an end 
to this use of images, with greater zeal than 
knowledge, for in destroying the images and 
defacing the shrines much wanton destruc¬ 
tion was also committed. The Homily on 
the Peril of Idolatry was the Church’s dec¬ 
laration against one of the crying sins of 
the day. 

What is the true feeling of the Church 
upon this subject? Probably it may be ac¬ 
curately expressed in this paragraph from 
Blunt’s “ Dictionary of Doctrinal and His¬ 
torical Theology”: “There is no rule re¬ 
specting the use of images given to us in the 


New Testament. It may be concluded 
therefore that the Church is left (I.) to that 
in the Old Testament, which is of perpetual 
obligation; (II.) to the rules of reason, en¬ 
lightened by the principles of a complete 
revelation ; (III.) to the measures of a spir¬ 
itual prudence. Thus (I.) the severity of 
the Mosaic Law, by which God forbade the 
making images of visible creatures, was only 
of temporary reason, from the singular 
proneness of the people to idolatry ; the pre¬ 
cept of Deut. iv. 15, 16 (comp. Acts xvii. 
29), giving a natural reason for a natural 
duty, is binding on Christians ; (II.) reason 
points out the instruction which may thus 
be given to the ignorant, the stimulus to a 
devout imagination, the aid to the memory, 
the suggestions which may holily minister 
to faith, while (III.) spiritual prudence re¬ 
members that the more ignorance there is the 
more proneness to superstition, and reminds 
us that we must be ever on the watch lest 
faith should become dependent on sight, lest 
the body should overweight the mind, lest 
any innate or proper holiness should be at¬ 
tached to the image, and the mind instead 
of being helped to pass beyond the image, 
should rest upon it, as an object of wor¬ 
ship. Upon such general principles the 
Church has a lawful use of images.” Our 
appeal being to the use as well as doctrine 
of the first six centuries as warrant for our 
customs, there is nothing in which we can 
more safely follow them than in the limit the 
Fathers and Bishops in those ages put upon 
the adornments of the House of God, and in 
the strictness with which they sacrificed these 
ornaments when they found that they tended 
to superstitious veneration. It is better to 
be far within limits than to dare to exceed 
them. 

Immaculate Conception. The dogma 
that the Virgin Mary was herself conceived 
without sin, which was made an Article of 
Faith in the Roman Church December 8, 
1854 a.d. , and which must be believed by 
every Romanist on pain of excommunica¬ 
tion. It is, of course, utterly contrary to what 
Scripture has revealed. It is contrary to all 
the principles of theology to. draw any such 
deduction. It was a suggestion which was 
scouted by St. Bernard in 1130 a.d. in mem¬ 
orable words. He did not deny that to her, 
as to Jeremiah and to St. John Baptist, there 
was a sanctity before birth. But.to assert 
sinlessness of the Blessed Virgin was to go 
beyond reason and revelation. “ What if 
another should assert that festal honors 
should be paid to each of her parents ? But 
then the same could be urged for similar rea¬ 
son for her grandparents, and her great- 
grandparents, and therefore it would go on 
infinitely, and there would be no end of 
Feasts. . . . Though it is given to a few of 
the sons of men to receive sanctity before 
they receive birth, yet it is not given to be 
conceived without sin. To one the preroga¬ 
tive of a sinless conception was given who 
should sanctify all others, and Himself com- 




IMMANUEL 


377 IMPUTED RIGHTEOUSNESS 


ing without sin, might purge us of our 
sins.” (Letter to the Canons of Lyons, Ep. 
174 .) It was resisted by a long series of 
theologians, and curiously, all were forbidden 
finally by Pope Gregory XV. (1622A.D.)to 
discuss it except the Dominican Order, who 
had always opposed it! But under the in¬ 
fluence of the Jesuits the heresy, for it is no 
less, was promulgated by Pius IX., and 
made binding upon the Faith and Con¬ 
science of all Romanists. 

Immanuel. The name prophesied by 
Isaiah as the name of Him whom the Vir¬ 
gin should bear, and which was given by 
the Evangelist St. Matthew to the son of 
the Virgin. The two passages should be 
compared together. 

Isaiah vii. 10-16: “Moreover the Lord 
spake again unto Ahaz, saying, Ask thee a 
sign of the Lord thy God ; ask it either 
in the depth, or in the height above. But 
Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I 
tempt the Lord. And He said, Hear ye 
now, O house of David: Is it a small 
thing for you to weary men, but will ye 
weary my God also ? Therefore the Lord 
Himself shall give you a sign : Behold, a Vir¬ 
gin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall 
call His name Immanuel. Butter and honey 
shall He eat, that He may know to refuse the 
evil, and choose the good. For before the 
child shall know to refuse the evil, and 
choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest 
shall be forsaken of both her kings.” 

With this compare St. Matt. i. 22, 23: 
“ Now all this was done, that it might be 
fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by 
the prophet, saying, Behold, a Virgin shall 
be with child, and shall bring forth a son, 
and they shall call His name Emmanuel, 
which being interpreted is, God with us.” 

The Church has always held the prophecy 
in Isaiah to be fulfilled as the Evangelist by 
the Holy Ghost has recorded, and Imman¬ 
uel is one of the titles of our Blessed Sa¬ 
viour which declares to us His Divinity and 
the certainty of our redemption. Late neol¬ 
ogy has tried to attack the prophecy mainly 
on the ground of the latter part: “Butter 
and honey shall He eat, that He may know 
to refuse the evil, and choose the good. For 
before the child shall know to refuse the evil, 
and choose the good, the land that thou ab¬ 
horrest shall be forsaken of both her kings.” 
It is claimed that there must have been a 
local fulfillment. It is now admitted that 
Almah can only mean a pure virgin. It is 
also conceded that prophecy commingles the 
present and the future in a mode that makes 
it difficult to separate the one from the other 
till after the event has given us the clue to 
the interpretation. Here we have a double 
intermingling, for the Child (who should not 
be born, in fact, till seven hundred and forty 
years after) should not know to distinguish 
between pleasant and unpleasant food before 
the allies Pekah, King of Israel, and Rezin, 
King of Syria, should be defeated, Rezin 
killed', and Pekah deprived of half his do¬ 


minions. The obscurity lies in the assertion 
to Ahaz, that this should be a sign then, 
within a definite time, whereas its proper 
fulfillment was in CIirist. There is undoubt¬ 
edly a reference to some detail which is not 
recorded, while this special prophecy is 
bound up with the other clear reference to 
Christ, “ For unto us a child is born” (Is. ix. 
6). And that Immanuel was the name of 
the child of the distant future is clear, “ And 
he shall pass (i.«., the Assyrian king, as 
Sennacherib and Nebuchadnezzar) through 
Judah; he shall overflow and go over; he 
shall reach even to the neck; and the stretch¬ 
ing out of his wings shall fill the breadth of 
thy land, O Immanuel.” 

Immersion. Vide Baptism. 

Impannation. Vide Consubstantiation. 

Implicit Faith. A childlike disposition 
to receive doctrine or demands on obedience 
without question. But it is not the right of 
our free-will to surrender this Faith to any 
series of statements or to any doctrine, or to 
render such personal obedience save to those 
propounded to us by Him who has all-infal¬ 
lible authority. Therefore God alone is 
the Person to whom implicit faith can be 
yielded. Such a faith Abraham apparently 
yielded to God thrice. Such a faith the 
father of the lunatic child prayed for: 
“ Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbe¬ 
lief.” 

Imposition of Hands. A ceremony in 
blessing, ordaining, and in consecrating, 
which is of the earliest use in the Jewish 
and in the Christian Church. So the 
Patriarchs blessed their sons. Isaac blessed 
Jacob, Jacob blessed Joseph’s two sons, so 
our Lord blessed the children brought to 
Him. So too the sick had His Hands and 
the hands of His Apostles laid upon them. 
So Ananias laid his hands on the blinded 
Saul. So in confirmation this Imposition 
was and is essential (Acts viii. 17 ; Heb. vi. 
2). In ordination the Hands of the Apos¬ 
tle gave authority (2 Tim. i. 6; 1 Tim. v. 
22). So in consecration, Joshua had Moses’ 
hands laid upon him. So the Bishops lay 
hands on Bishops for consecration. As 
Moses laid his hands upon Joshua, so they 
give of their honor and rank to the Bishop 
elect. 

Impropriation. Ecclesiastical property 
whose profits have passed into lay hands. 
Appropriation is when a college receives 
such profits. Henry VIII. gave monastic 
property to lay favorites. Archbishop 
Laud endeavored to redeem such Impro¬ 
priations. 

Imputed Righteousness. It has been 

terribly perverted so as to be made to mean 
that Christ’s Righteousness is so given to 
us that no sin after that is laid to the charge 
of the believer. In other words, as one 
(Dr. Crisp) wrote over two hundred years 
ago, “ Though a believer, after he be a be¬ 
liever, doth sin often, yet God no longer 
stands offended and displeased with him 
when he hath once received Christ,” or 




INCARNATION 


378 


INCARNATION . 


Hervey, “ Notorious or confessed trans¬ 
gressors in themselves, they have a sinless 
obedience in Christ.” Now this is wholly 
opposed to all the teaching of Holy Scrip¬ 
ture. It denies the force of what is taught 
in Heb. vi. 4-6; x. 29, of innumerable 
other places which are scattered through¬ 
out the Epistles of St. Paul. But there is 
an imputed righteousness to the baptized 
person which is clearly taught in Holy 
Scripture, which yet teaches us that we can 
forfeit it. This imputed righteousness is 
set forth by St. Paul most emphatically, in 
his Epistle to the Philippians iii. 8-11 : 
“ Yea, doubtless, and I count all things but 
loss for the excellency of the knowledge of 
Jesus Christ my Lord : for whom I have 
suffered the loss of all things, and do count 
them but dung, that I may win Christ, and 
be found in Him, not having mine own 
righteousness, which is of the law, but that 
which is through the faith of Christ, the 
righteousness which is of God by faith; 
that I may know Him , and the 'power of His 
Resurrection , and the fellowship of His suf¬ 
ferings , being made conformable unto His 
death ; if by any means I might attain 
unto the resurrection of the dead.” Here 
it is all dependent upon Christ’s righteous¬ 
ness found in the believer, yet that believer 
must be risen with Christ, suffering with 
Christ, conforming to His death,-and, in 
the hope of the future resurrection of the 
dead, with a clinging, working dependence 
upon Christ. Also we are taught that in 
Baptism we put on Christ and are brought 
into a Holy Body, His Church, and are 
called to be saints, and there is given to us a 
share in that Holiness, a right to the privi¬ 
leges of Christ’s Church. As an adopted 
son claims the rank and honor of the fam¬ 
ily that adopts him, and is shielded by its 
power and influence and shares its priv¬ 
ileges in the face of the world, so Christ 
grants these to him, though he may not live 
in all things up to the lofty standard re¬ 
quired. But should he throw away or 
misuse these advantages given to him and 
allowed before all the world, surely the 
Head of the House who adopts may also 
deprive him and finally disinherit him of 
those grants his adoption bestowed on him. 
In these respects we have Christ’s 
righteousness imputed to us, that we may 
retain it and grow in it. Grace and the 
Sacraments are given us, and we are 
urged to live after the Spirit. Our dear 
Lord gives freely, but He demands a 
hearty, faithful use of what He so lovingly 
gives, and we may not dare trespass will¬ 
fully upon His forbearance. 

Incarnation, The. This central doctrine 
of all Christian faith in God the Father 
and in our Lord Jesus Christ is so freely 
discussed or used in other articles ( vide 
Creed, God, Jesus Christ), that it is only 
necessary to make a somewhat more com¬ 
pact and formal statement of the Church’s 
doctrine upon this momentous fact. 


The Incarnation was provided for in the 
eternal counsels of God. St. John saw our 
Lord as the Lamb of God as it had been 
slain from the foundation of the world (Rev. 
xiii. 8). It was promised at the Fall, it 
was foretold with ever-increasing fullness in 
succeeding ages, till Malachi closed the long 
series with the herald cry that the Angel of 
the Covenant was at hand (Mai. iii. 1). In 
the fullness of times the Word of God the 
Son from everlasting took upon Himself 
flesh,—not the nature of angels, but our 
flesh,—of the seed of Abraham in the royal 
line of David ; took upon Himself our flesh, 
—not a phantasmic garb of human form. 
He was conceived by the operation of the 
Holy Ghost in the pure womb of the 
Blessed Virgin Mary, and was made truly 
man. He took no body that could be in¬ 
habited by another soul. But the body pre¬ 
pared for Him (Ps. xl. 6 ; Heb. x. 5) He so 
united to Himself, being the Word from 
everlasting, that in the several stages of its 
conception, development, birth, and growth 
to full manhood He was ever present in it, 
filled it as our soul fills our body and is en¬ 
robed by it and dwells in it as our person¬ 
ality. He being two Natures, eternal Word 
and Perfect Man, became but one Person, 
Jesus Christ. And so He truly united 
Himself with us, taking body and soul to 
Himself, entered into and became a part 
of the vast stream of human beings who 
are born unto and live in sin, toil, and are 
disciplined in this world of ours. So He 
stooped to enter into time, emptied Him¬ 
self of the glory He had in His Father’s 
courts, took our flesh, became man, suf¬ 
fered pain and hunger and thirst most 
truly ; was sorrowful, and wept and watched 
and prayed and fasted, as we should; 
loved His disciples and friends, sympathized 
with all in sorrow, need, sickness, and afflic¬ 
tion, and compassionated the sin-sick, repent¬ 
ant souls; taught as man to fellow-men the 
wondrous facts about themselves, and of 
Himself and His purposes, and, making 
atonement, died as truly as ever man died, 
and as truly raised Himself the third day, 
and became, as before, subject to mortal 
change, so now immortal and above all mor¬ 
tal change. 

This but prepares the way for the fuller 
effect of His Incarnation upon our nature 
and history. It is a fundamental law that 
when men realize God’s presence and power 
they acknowledge a duty of service and 
worship. Were Christ but a sinless, per¬ 
fect, yet mere man, none would feel this 
duty, but being GoD-man, at once all own a 
bounden service and worship to Him, and a 
desire to be overshad wed by His mercy and 
share in His love, to be bound by His laws, 
to come into His covenant; and this is in¬ 
tensified by our instinctive recognition of 
the compassion and wondrous wisdom of His 
Incarnation, of the fact that it touches our 
deepest common humanity ; that His man¬ 
hood is related to the poorest and the highest 





INCENSE 


379 


INDEFECTIBILITY 


at once in as true and perfect a sense (and 
with a healing efficacy superadded) as is 
Adam’s. “The first man Adam was made 
a living soul, the last Adam (is) a quicken¬ 
ing spirit. . . . The first man (was) of the 
earth earthy, the second man is the Lord 
from heaven.” The first Adam died, the 
last Adam liveth forever; death hath no more 
dominion over Him. He has arranged the 
instrumentalities by which we enter into 
His human nature, are fed and nourished 
and grow therein,—not simply are in mys¬ 
tical covenant relations, but are made 
thereby as truly partakers of the Divine Na¬ 
ture (2 Pet. i. 4) as we by human birth are 
made, and only so made, sharers in the dead 
Adam’s human nature. Therefore the In¬ 
carnation of our Lord Jesus Christ was, 
and is, not only the pivotal fact of our his¬ 
tory, but it is the restoring and perfecting 
act of our most loving Father, whereby our 
sins are forgiven, ourselves are restored,— 
nay, more, are immortally set in the eternal 
throne of Jesus Christ, His Son (Eph. 
ii. 6 ; Rev. iii. 21, 22). 

Incense. Its ritual use, while enjoined 
in the Old Testament and used in the sacred 
visions of St. John’s Revelation in the New 
Testament, was not known in the early ages 
of the Christian Church. How early it 
was used in the East it is not easy to deter ¬ 
mine, but after 380 a.d. and before 594 
a.d. In the West, it did not become gen¬ 
eral in Europe till after 850 a.d. and before 
1000 a.d. , while in Italy it was introduced 
probably about 700 a.d. All the references 
to incense that have been quoted to prove 
its possibly early use can be very fairly in¬ 
terpreted mystically, and a great many 
passages in the same Fathers cannot be rec¬ 
onciled with any fact of its actual use. 
Strongly objected to by the early Christians 
probably because incense was used at heathen 
altars, and introduced late and very grad¬ 
ually into general ritual use, it became gen¬ 
eral only by about 950 a.d. In the Eng¬ 
lish Church after the Reformation it grad¬ 
ually passed out of use, though cases are to 
be noted here and there of its continuance. 
And its later revival has partaken too much 
of the partisan spirit. There is no canon or 
enactment against it, but the tone of the 
Anglican Church is against its use. 

Incomprehensible. In its theological 
use, means limitless, unbounded. The term 
is so used in the Athanasian Creed. “The 
Father incomprehensible, the Son incom¬ 
prehensible, and the Holy Ghost incom¬ 
prehensible. ... As also there are not 
three incomprehensibles . . . but one in¬ 
comprehensible.” It is the translation of 
the Latin immensus, which means omnipres¬ 
ent. The earlier rendering was immeasur¬ 
able, which is nearer the sense of the Creed, 
though the word incomprehensible did not 
then bear it. The fact of the Incomprehen¬ 
sibility of the Divine Nature is asserted (as 
elsewhere also) in the very familiar verse, 
“ If I climb up into heaven, Thou art there: 


if I go down to hell, Thou art there also : if 
I take the wings of the morning and remain 
in the uttermost parts of the sea—even there 
also Thy hand shall lead me, and Thy right 
hand shall hold me” (Ps. cxxxix. 8, 9). Yet 
it may well be said that to the human mind 
God is Incomprehensible. 

Incumbent. The holder of a Benefice at 
a given time. 

Indefectibility of the Church. I. “ And 

the gates of Hades shall not prevail against 
it” (St. Matt. xvi. 18). “ Lo, I am with you 
alway, even unto the end of the world” (St. 
Matt, xxviii. 20. So too, Is. Ixi. 8, 9; Dan. 
ii. 44 ; John xiv. 16, 17). In these passages 
we have pledged to us that God’s Church 
shall not fail as a whole. Branches of the 
Church may forfeit their participation in the 
promise. So Laodicea, Ephesus, Pergamos, 
and Thyatira have vanished. So any part 
may be found wanting and have its candle¬ 
stick removed. Faith may fail. Heresy 
may—nay, does infect parts of the Catholic 
Church. Yet the promise is sure that till 
the end shall come His Church shall surely 
survive. 

II. Inerrant, indefectible in Doctrine. 
That she should finally fail to teach the 
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the 
truth, it is impossible to believe. Our 
Lord’s promise covers in its perfect lan¬ 
guage the doctrine of the Church’s iner¬ 
rancy : “ And I will pray the Father, and 
He shall give you another Comforter, that 
He may abide with you forever. Even the 
Spirit of Truth. . . . But the Comforter, 
which is the Holy Ghost, whom the 
Father will send in my name, He shall 
teach you all things, and bring all things to 
your remembrance, whatsoever I have said 
unto you. . . . He will guide you into all 
Truth, for He shall not speak of Himself, 
but whatsoever He shall hear that shall He 
speak, and He will shew you things to come” 
(St.John xiv. 16, 17, 26; xvi. 13; comp. 1 
John ii. 27). In this is traced the very 
outline of the Church’s course upon her 
teaching. She has Him as her guide, 
her abiding Leader, the Advocate plead¬ 
ing in her and through her. But as 
He is her guide, she may stray and falter 
in following His leadership, but as He is 
to abide in her forever, she cannot fail 
to return and to receive of Him the 
full truth, and through Him to teach it 
to all. The XIX. and XX. Articles prac¬ 
tically set forth this doctrine in teaching 
that some Churches have erred, not only in 
life and ritual, but in the Articles of the 
Faith, and the XX. Article notes that the 
Holy Scripture is the only source from 
which she draws her Articles of Faith. She 
teaches and acts as a judge who must abide 
by the Law, not as a Lawgiver, for that it 
is from Christ by the Holy Ghost. There¬ 
fore the Church is inerrant. Yet as in a 
court, the case must be made up, to be tried, 
so evil doctrine may infest the Church for 
a long time before it so shapes itself that it 





INDEFECTIBLE GRACE 


380 


INDIANA 


can be tested and repudiated. But we have 
every pledge that when she does decide it 
will be by the grace of the Holy Ghost, 
who will keep her from error and lead her 
into all truth. It is, however, proper to re¬ 
mark that there are two modes in which 
error, false doctrine, and heresy can arise. 
Either from additions to the Faith (Mariol- 
atry, Infallibility, Immaculate Conception), 
or by denials, or imperfect analysis, of the 
Articles of the Creed (Arianism, Nestorian- 
ism, Monothelitism, Monophysitism). It 
is hardly probable that there can be any 
more heresies upon the dogmas in the 
Creed. But additions to the Faith may be 
infinite. To these, as they come up for the 
judgment of the Church, must be applied 
the'test of Scripture, and each part of the 
Church must use this test rigorously till it 
shall be, in the course of Providence, pos¬ 
sible to hold a true General Council. It is 
in this position that the Churches of Eng¬ 
land and America hold themselves. 

Indefectible Grace. A doctrine which 
logically inheres with the Calvinistic 
theory. But as has been elsewhere shown 
that Grace is given to us all to use, but that 
we can lose it. It is not irresistible, robbing 
us of our free-will, but filling out, strength¬ 
ening, and sanctifying our will, and there¬ 
fore if not irresistible, then it is not inde¬ 
fectible. We can fall from grace, and can 
be restored. Such is the teaching of the 
XV. Article 11 After we have received the 
Holy Ghost we may depart from grace 
given, and fall into sin. And by the grace 
of God we may arise again and amend our 
lives. And therefore they are to be con¬ 
demned which say they can no more sin as 
long as they live here, or deny the peace of 
forgiveness to such as truly repent.” 

Indiana, Diocese of. The State of Indi¬ 
ana had among its early settlers many per¬ 
sons who had been baptized and trained in 
the Episcopal Church. It was at rare in¬ 
tervals that they received its ministrations 
by visiting clergymen, who on some week¬ 
day or Sunday held service in a court-house 
or in a borrowed house of worship. Curios¬ 
ity, of course, attracted many outsiders, who 
wanted to see what kind of religion these 
“ Episcopals” had, who, when they saw the 
black gown and bands, and heard prayers 
read from a book, went away shaking their 
pious heads. These adverse influences 
caused many, no doubt, to drift with the 
popular current into other persuasions, as 
they were called in those days. 

In the year 1835 a.d. the General Con¬ 
vention elected as its first Missionary Bishop 
the Rev. Jackson Kemper, S.T.D., then 
Rector of St. Paul’s Church, Norwalk, 
Conn. He was consecrated on the 25th day 
of September of the same year, in the forty- 
sixth year of his age, and at once set out for 
his assigned field of labor in Indiana and 
Missouri. He began his work along the 
Ohio river towns at Madison, Jeffersonville, 
New Albany, and Evansville, and also vis¬ 


ited Vincennes and Terre Haute on the 
Wabash. In the summer and fall of 1836 
A D. he revisited the towns on the Ohio. In 
January, 1837 a.d., he visited Indianapolis, 
Richmond, and Crawfordsville, and in the 
fall of that year, in company with Rev. Sam¬ 
uel R. Johnson, Missionary at Lafayette, 
he made a tour of the northern part of the 
State, taking in Logansport, Michigan 
City, Laporte, South Bend, Mishawaka, 
Lima, and Fort Wayne, and thence descend¬ 
ing the Wabash Valley he visited Delphi, 
Americus, and Lafayette. 

It thus took two years for the Bishop to 
do a work which could now be done in two 
months. Indiana roads were almost im¬ 
passable for six months in the year. The 
mud wagon, drawn by four horses, was the 
only conveyance that could be pulled 
through the mire or that was safe in fording 
swollen rivers and creeks. Bishop Kem¬ 
per was often in great peril by land and 
water, but Providence had given him a 
short and compact body, a vigorous consti¬ 
tution, and a cheerful disposition with 
which to endure the hardships of travel. 

At a Convocation of the clergy of Indiana, 
summoned by the Missionary Bishop, which 
met at Evansville on the 9th of June, 1838 
a.d., it was resolved to hold a Convention 
at Madison on the 24th of August following, 
for the purpose of organizing a Diocese. 
At the time appointed the following del¬ 
egates assembled, viz.: Rev. Ashbel Steele, 
Missionary at New Albany; Rev. Melanc- 
thon Hoyt, Missionary at Crawfordsville ; 
Rev. James B. Britton, Missionary at In¬ 
dianapolis; Rev. Geo. Fiske, Missionary at 
Richmond; Rev.. Archibald H. Lamon, 
Missionary at Evansville ; and Rev. Samuel 
R. Johnson, Rector of St. John’s Church, 
Lafayette. The lay delegates were James 
W. Borden, of Richmond; Thomas P. 
Baldwin, of New Albany; Isaac C. Lea, 
John Creagh, Joseph L. White, Matthew 
Temperley, N. C. Brace, John Mclntire, 
and James Sidall, of Madison ; and James 
Morrison, of Indianapolis. The other clergy 
officiating in Indiana but not present were 
Rev. Henry Caswell, of Madison ; Rev. D. 
V. M. Johnson, of Michigan City; and 
Rev. Robt. Ash, of Jeffersonville. 

The following parishes were reported as 
organized : St. Paul’s, New Albany ; Christ 
Church, Madison ; Christ Church, Indian¬ 
apolis; St. John’s, Lafayette; St. Paul’s, 
Evansville; St. John’s, Crawfordsville; 
St. Paul’s, Jeffersonville; St. Paul’s, Rich¬ 
mond ; and Trinity, Michigan City. 

The Diocese as organized was received 
into union with the General Convention 
held at Philadelphia in September, 1838 
a.d., and was represented in that body by 
Rev. James B. Britton, Rev. Henry Cas- 
wall, Rev. Sami. R. Johnson, and Rev. Me- 
lancthon Hoyt; and by Messrs. Horace 
Thurston, James Morrison, Geo. W. Leon¬ 
ard, and E. T. Turner. 

At the fourth Annual Convention the 






INDIANA 


381 


INDIANA 


Rt. Rev. Jackson Kemper was elected Bishop 
of the Diocese, but declined, as it interfered 
with his missionary duties in other States 
and Territories. 

At a special Convention held at Indian¬ 
apolis, September 29, 1843 a.d., the Rev. 
Thomas Atkinson, Rector of St. Peter’s 
Church, Baltimore, Md., was elected Bishop 
of the Diocese, but he declined the office. 
The same gentleman was again elected the 
Bishop at the ninth Annual Convention, 
held at Indianapolis, July 9, 1846 a.d., and 
again declined the office. 

At the tenth Annual Convention, held at 
Delphi, July 15, 1847 a.d., the Rev. Sami. 
Bowman, D.D., Rector of St. James’ Church, 
Lancaster, Pa., was elected the Bishop of 
the Diocese, but declined the office. 

At the eleventh Annual Convention, held 
at Lafayette, June 1, 1848 a.d., the Rev. 
Francis Vinton, Rector of Emmanuel 
Church, Brooklyn, N. Y., was elected the 
Bishop of the Diocese, but declined the 
office. 

At the twelfth Annual Convention, held 
at Indianapolis, June 28, 1849 a.d., the Rev. 
George Upfold, D.D., Rector of Trinity 
Church, Pittsburg, was elected the Bishop 
of the Diocese. He accepted the office, and 
was consecrated in Christ Church, Indian¬ 
apolis, December 16, 1849 a.d., by the Rt. 
Rev. Benjamin Bosworth Smith, D.D., 
Bishop of Kentucky, assisted by the Rt. 
Rev. Charles Pettit Mcllvaine, D.D., 
Bishop of Ohio; the Rt. Rev. Jackson 
Kemper, D.D., Missionary Bishop of the 
Northwest; and the Rt. Rev. Cicero 
Stephen Hawks, D.D., Bishop of Missouri; 
and thus became the first Bishop of the Dio¬ 
cese of Indiana. 

He was born in Shenley Green, near 
Guilford, Surrey, England, on the 7th day 
of May, 1796 a.d. In 1804 a.d. his parents 
removed to the United States, and settled in 
Albany, N. Y. He graduated at Union 
College, Schenectady, N. Y., in 1814 a.d., 
and at the College of Physicians and Sur¬ 
geons, in New York City, received his de¬ 
gree of M.D. in 1816 a.d. In 1817 a.d. he 
took up the study of Theology under Bishop 
Hobart, who ordained him Deacon in Trin¬ 
ity Church. New York, in October, 1818 
a.d., and Priest in July, 1820 a.d. He 
became Rector of St. Luke’s Church, New 
York, in 1822 a.d. In 1830 a.d. he became 
Rector of St. Thomas’ Church in the same 
city, and in 1831 a.d. became Rector of 
Trinity Church, Pittsburg. Bishop Upfold 
received the degree of Doctor of Sacred The¬ 
ology from Columbia College, New York, 
in 1831 a.d. ; that of Doctor of Laws from 
the Western University of Pennsylvania, 
in 1856 a.d. 

Bishop Upfold entered immediately upon 
the duties of his office, and upon the evening 
of the day of his Consecration administered 
the rite of Confirmation in Christ Church, 
Indianapolis. He resigned the rectorship 
of Trinity Church, Pittsburg, January 1, I 


1850 a d., removed his family to Lafayette, 
Ind., having for additional support accepted 
the rectorship of St. John’s Church in that 
city, which he held for one year, and in 
March, 1857 a.d., removed his residence to 
Indianapolis. 

Bishop Upfold died at Indianapolis, Aug¬ 
ust 26, 1872 a.d. , having been for seven 
years totally disabled from work by neural¬ 
gic rheumatism. 

The Rt. Rev. Joseph Cruikshank Talbot, 
D.D., LL.D.,the second Bishop of Indiana, 
was born on the 5th day of September, 
1816 a.d., in Alexandria, Va. He was 
educated in Piermont Academy of that city, 
and in 1835 a.d. removed to Louisville, 
Ky., where he was engaged in business, for 
several years. He was baptized and con¬ 
firmed in 1837 a.d , ordered Deacon on his 
thirtieth birthday, and on the 6th day of 
September, 1848 a.d., was ordained Priest 
by the Bishop of Kentucky. He organized 
St. John’s Church, Louisville, while in 
Deacon’s orders, and upon his ordination to 
the Priesthood became its Rector. In 1853 
a.d. he became Rector of Christ Church, 
Indianapolis. 

He received the degree of Doctor of Di¬ 
vinity from the Western University of 
Pennsylvania, Pittsburg, 1854 a.d., and 
that of Doctor of Laws from the University 
of Cambridge, England, 1867 a.d. 

In 1859 a.d. the General Convention as¬ 
sembled at Richmond, Va., elected him 
Missionary Bishop of the Northwest, a 
jurisdiction embracing the Territories of 
Nebraska, Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, 
New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Montana, and 
Idaho. His consecration took place in 
Christ Church, Indianapolis, February 15, 
1860 a.d. , by the Rt. Rev. Jackson Kem¬ 
per, S.T.D., assisted by the Rt. Rev. Benja¬ 
min Bosworth Smith, S.T.D., the Rt. Rev. 
Cicero Stephen Hawks, D.D., the Rt. Rev. 
George Upfold, S.T.D., and the Rt. Rev. 
Gregory Thurston Bedell, D.D. 

After five years’ active labor in his exten¬ 
sive missionary jurisdiction, he was elected 
Assistant Bishop of Indiana, and was trans¬ 
lated to that Diocese October, 1865 a.d. 
Upon the death of Bishop Upfold he became 
the Bishop of Indiana. 

Bishop Talbot was stricken with partial 
paralysis in 1880 A.d., which finally ter¬ 
minated in his death at Indianapolis, Janu¬ 
ary 15, 1883 a.d. 

At a special Convention of the Diocese 
March 6, 1883 a.d., the Rev. Isaac Lee 
Nicholson, D.D., Rector of St. Mark’s 
Church, Philadelphia, was elected Bishop of 
the Diocese, but he declined the office. 

At the forty-sixth Annual Convention of 
the Diocese, held at Indianapolis, June5,1883 
a.d., the Rev. David Buell Kniekerbacker, 
D.D., Rector of Gethsemane Church, Min¬ 
neapolis, Minn., was elected Bishop of the 
Diocese.' His Consecration took place in 
St. Mark’s Church, Philadelphia, Sunday, 
October 14, 1883 a.d., by the Rt. Rev. A. 





INDUCTION 


382 


INSPIRATION 


C. Coxe, Bishop of Western New York, 
assisted by Rt. Rev. Theo. B. Lyman ; the 
Most Rev. J. Medley, Lord Bishop of Fred¬ 
ericton and Metropolitan of Canada ; the Rt. 
Rev. H. W. Whipple, Bishop of Wisconsin ; 
Rt. Rev. Wm. W. Niles, Bishop of New 
Hampshire; Rt. Rev. George D. Gillespie, 
Bishop of Western Michigan ; Rt. Rev. John 
Scarborough, Bishop of New Jersey; and 
Rt. Rev. George F. Seymour, Bishop of 
Springfield. 

Bishop Knickerbacker was born in 
Schaghticoke, N. Y., February 24,1833 a.d. 
Graduated at Trinity College, Hartford, 
Conn., 1853 a.d., and from the General 
Theological Seminary 1856 a.d. Ordered 
Deacon 1856 a.d. Ordained Priest July 12, 
1857 a.d. , and spent his whole clerical life 
in Minneapolis. Received the degree of 

D. D. from Trinity College in 1873 a.d. 
Entered upon his work as Bishop November 
1, 1883 a.d. 

The statistics reported in 1883 a.d. are as 
follows: Organized parishes, 40; organized 
missions, 5; missions not organized, 6; 
clergy canonically resident, 31; value of 
churches, $436,740; rectories, $46,500; com¬ 
municants, 3884; Sunday-school scholars, 
3171; teachers, 297; offerings, parochial, 
$79,598.54, diocesan, $4044.08. 

Hon. Isaac A. Kiersted. 

Induction. The form by which, in the 
English Church, a clergyman is put in pos¬ 
session of the church to which he is pre¬ 
sented, the glebe land belonging to it, and 
other temporalities. The usual method of 
induction is by virtue of a mandate under 
the seal of the Bishop to the Archdeacon of 
the place, who either himself, or by his war¬ 
rant to all clergymen within his Archdea¬ 
conry, inducts the new incumbent by tak¬ 
ing his hand, laying it on the key of the 
church in the door, and pronouncing these 
words : “ 1 induct you into the real and ac¬ 
tual possession of the rectory or vicarage 
of H-, with all its profits and appurte¬ 

nances.” Then he opens the door of the 
church and puts the person in possession of 
it, who enters to offer his devotions, which 
done, he tolls a bell to summon his parish¬ 
ioners. Compare the office of Institution in 
our American Prayer-Book. (Vide Hook’s 
Church Dictionary.) 

Inerrancy. Vide Indefectibility. 

Infallibility. There is a marked grada¬ 
tion in the meaning of the words Inerrancy, 
Indefectibility, and Infallibility. The first 
two are God’s gifts to His Church, the last 
is His own prerogative. In practical appli¬ 
cation the first may be defined as having, 
as the point from which they issue, His be¬ 
stowal of them on the Church, but Infalli¬ 
bility may be defined as an inherent attri¬ 
bute. 

Therefore to assert as an article of Faith 
the dogma that in any one person resides 
an infallibility, no matter how hedged in 
that infallibility may be by canonical or 
theological definitions, is to impute to mere 


man an attribute belonging to God, and 
therefore to fulfill the warning prophecy of 
the Apostle, that foretells that the “ man of 
sin is the son of perdition who opposeth and 
exalteth himself above all that is called 
God, or that is worshiped, so that He as 
God sitteth in the temple of God, showing 
Himself that He is God” (2 Thess. ii. 3,4). 

Infant Baptism. Vide Baptism. 

Infidel. He who is faithless to a cause to 
which he was pledged. It is very often im¬ 
properly used to mean an Atheist. An In¬ 
fidel is usually an Atheist, but an Atheist 
may have never been a Christian, while an 
Infidel must necessarily have been so to 
bear the name at all correctly. Such were 
those who went out from the Church (1 John 
ii. 18, 19). Such is the man who not provid¬ 
ing for his own “ hath denied the faith, and 
is worse than an unbeliever” (1 Tim. v. 8 
R. V.). 

Infinite. Boundless, whether in space or 
in time. (Vide Predestination.) 

Initiation. The early term applied to 
the baptized, as intrusted with all knowledge 
of Christian verities. When the Church’s 
doctrines were taught only to the baptized, 
and were carefully hidden from all others, 
it was frequently the case that the preacher 
to a congregation would say, “ The initiated 
know what I mean.” It occurs, e.g., in the 
Catechetical Lectures of St. Cyril of Jeru¬ 
salem (370-90 a.d.). 

Inquisition. A tribunal erected in Papal 
countries, and once very formidable. It was 
established by the Popes for the examina¬ 
tion and punishment of heretics. An en¬ 
gine of terrible cruelty, it was used with 
ruthless energy. It was one of the means 
of reducing Spain to Roman obedience, and 
the political result was disastrous.* So, too, 
in Italy and Portugal. While it had sway 
in other states (as, during their occupation 
by the Spaniards, in the Netherlands), in 
France and Austria its violence and power 
were a great deal curbed. Its history has 
never yet been fully written. 

Inspiration, or, as the word itself signi¬ 
fies, inbreathing, is an unseen and spiritual 
operation. The inspiration of the Holy 
Scriptures proceeded from an influence by 
the Holy Ghost bearing upon the minds 
and wills of the writers, and compelling 
them to declare specific facts or doctrines 
in words that accurately expressed them. 
The inspired person may have been willing 
or unwilling ; but he could not, while under 
inspiration, saj^ or write anything but the 
truth. 

In the economy of the Gospel the depart¬ 
ment of planning was and is the Father’s ; 
that of forming or organizing belongs to 
the Son ; while that of giving vitality and 
efficiency is the specific work of the Holy 
Ghost. These departments coincide with, 
and in some respects overlie, each other; 
but their centres lie each in the three distinct 
persons of the Holy Trinity. The unity 
of every divine action is. therefore, always 





INSPIRATION 


383 


INSPIRATION 


threefold. Creation itself, planned by the 
All-wise Father, was put into form by the 
Word, while life was inbreathed by the 
Holy Ghost. 

Inspiration belongs to the special function 
of the Spirit, who is “ the Lord and Giver 
of Life.” The inspiration of the Holy 
Scriptures was according to the will of the 
Father, through His Only-begotten Son, 
The Word, by the Holy Ghost. 

Revelation is distinct from inspiration, as 
subject is from method. Revelation flows 
through inspiration, as the waters of a river 
down its bed and between its banks, or as 
force develops from energ 3 T . Inspiration 
thus controls the bounds of revelation, keep¬ 
ing it within the limits of truth. It also 
supplies the efficiency necessary for its accu¬ 
rate inception and full deliverance. 

Revelation was progressive. It began 
with God’s first intercourse with man, and 
proceeded until the Christian dispensation 
was first formally completed by Christ, and 
then efficiently spiritualized by the full out¬ 
pouring of the Holy Ghost. Inspiration 
took its due position towards revelation at 
the first, and continued with it until the 
whole Gospel was organized, as the Church 
Body of Christ, with ministry, sacra¬ 
ments, and word, received its mission, and 
had its Scriptures completed. 

Inspiration is twofold,—miraculous and 
ordinary. Miraculous inspiration is that 
operation of the Spirit which was needful 
to effect a true and complete revelation. 
The ordinary inspiration is that operation 
of the Spirit which disposes and helps 
“ men of good will” to know the truth and 
do the right. The latter was, is, and ever 
will continue active, through all human 
rogress on earth and in the world to come, 
t is not confined to the men of good will, 
for there are calls of the Spirit which even 
the unwilling may hear. He acts wher¬ 
ever God’s love reaches. The world, which 
God so loved as to send to it His Son, is 
the field of the ordinary operations of the 
inspiring Spirit. The Church, which is the 
organized kingdom and specifically ordered 
household of the Lord, is the constant 
home of the inspiring Spirit. He pre¬ 
sides in her councils, acts through her sacra¬ 
ments, imbues with grace her utterances of 
devotion, and waits to bless the word read 
or preached to willing priests and people. 

This kind of inspiration is mingled with 
much human weakness and sin. We cannot 
separate often the one element from the 
other. We cannot know, for instance, what 
is divine and what human in any specific in¬ 
struction, exhortation, or advice which may 
reach our ears from “those who are over 
us in the Lord.” Still, the assurance of the 
ever-presence of the Holy Ghost in the liv¬ 
ing Church is designed to make us take heed 
how we hear,” and to ponder devoutly what¬ 
ever words touch or pierce the conscience. 
Although the usual channel of this form of 
inspiration is the Church, acting through 


worship, administration of holy things, and 
preaching, yet the brooding Spirit does not 
neglect the chaos of the darkened “ world 
lying in sin.” This fact is the warrant and 
encouragement which sustains evangelic 
missions, and animates all good works for 
the bodies and souls of those who know not 
Christ. 

Miraculous inspiration was granted as a 
merciful boon from the forbearing God of 
love to men who had wandered so far from 
original righteousness that they could no 
longer of themselves find out the way of 
Truth. Its recorded beginning was the 
Divine call, which Abraham was the first 
fully to heed and follow. Hence the history 
of the Divine Covenant, evolving through 
the Patriarchal, National, and Catholic 
Church, is coterminal with the history of this 
inspiration. It is miraculous in the sense 
of being a distinct, peculiar, and specific 
operation of the Holy Ghost ; made for the 
definite purpose of clearly setting forth the 
way and will of God in dealing with an 
elected people ; to whom was committed the 
noble work and high honor of bearing visi¬ 
ble witness to His name in the world. The 
means of grace were associated with this 
commission of witness, so that the way of 
salvation for fallen men covered the same 
path which preserved alive the knowledge 
and worship of the true God. These two 
conjunct objects of the Divine Covenant are 
to be carefully considered, in order to obtain 
a clear and accurate view of miraculous in¬ 
spiration by the Holy Ghost. By nature 
He gives ordinary inspiration. By grace 
He bestows extraordinary inspiration. Yet 
the two never conflict. They so work to¬ 
gether indeed as to appear often in conjunc¬ 
tion. Where the latter is sufficient the 
former is never resorted to. What even the 
inspired prophets and teachers could know 
through ordinary means, they were left to 
record by human wisdom. The Holy 
Ghost, however, supervised even the origi¬ 
nal narratives of those who declared what 
they saw and heard, and brought to remem¬ 
brance clearly the facts recorded. When 
existing documents were to be elevated to a 
place in the Scriptures of God, the Holy 
Ghost supplemented the human talents and 
knowledge of the writers, and enabled them 
to eliminate errors and corruptions. An 
eminent instance of this is seen in the two 
records of the creation which Moses has 
given in Genesis. They are sometimes given 
by him in detached portions, and sometimes 
mingled together ; but these were evidently 
two original records, out of which he selected 
the truth, and set it forth in the Book writ¬ 
ten by Divine command, under the inspira¬ 
tion of the Spirit. The “ Elohistic” record 
dealt mainly with the relations of man to 
nature, while the “ Jehovistic” record had 
for its leading idea and chief point the per¬ 
sonal relations of man to the personal God. 
Usually, in the English Bible, the word God 
is used in the Elohistic narrative, and the 






INSPIRATION 


384 


INSPIRATION 


word Lord in the Jehovistic. Both are 
none the less Holy Scriptures, because they 
were originally written before Moses. They 
became Holy Scripture by means of Moses, 
who put them in the book God commanded 
him to prepare, and which the Holy Ghost 
inspired him to write with accuracy. This 
fact links the new dispensation, which began 
with Abraham, with all the old dealings of 
the Merciful Father with His beloved 
human creatures from the beginning, and 
shows that the God of nature and of grace 
is one God. 

The resemblances between the Bible and 
some of the earliest writings held sacred in 
old heathen nations only strengthens the evi¬ 
dence of the miraculous inspiration of the 
Bible. It is entirely free from all those cor¬ 
rupt morals and wild mythical fancies which 
stain here and there the best books of hea¬ 
thenism. It gives, again, the true knowl¬ 
edge of the true God, which they had evi¬ 
dently lost, through the mere nature wor¬ 
ship which evolved the various forms of 
heathen mythology. The sun, the stars, the 
elements, the forces of nature, which the 
heathen worshiped, and which they person¬ 
ified and called by various names, as well 
as the energies of good or evil, to which 
they also assigned names and functions, often 
in rivalry or opposition to one another, were 
all swept away by Moses, while only 
what was true in their records of facts, of 
statements of morals, and doctrine was re¬ 
tained. The inspiration of the Holy Ghost 
appears in the perfectness and completeness 
of this redaction. 

After Moses, when other writers of Scrip¬ 
ture came on in due time, the same Spirit 
continued His inspiring aid. What the 
writers could record through ordinary knowl¬ 
edge they did evidently in their own way. 
Hence peculiarities of style distinguish the 
different books. They comprise together 
one book, the Bible, or Holy Scriptures, not 
because every word and form of expression 
was enforced by the Divine afflatus, but be¬ 
cause the facts and doctrines contained were 
kept exact and true by the watchful In¬ 
spires 

Under this continued influence the Divine 
revelation grew in volume. It, however, 
always kept even pace with the develop¬ 
ment of that visible kingdom, which was 
made formally complete when the Christian 
Church was established, being “built upon 
the foundation of the Apostles and Proph¬ 
ets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief 
corner stone.” 

The Patriarchs were inspired in accordance 
to the measure of revelation they were re¬ 
quired to record, and under which they were 
to live and serve God. The revelations given 
to them are the word of God. 

The Prophets were called personally. They 
appeared from time to time, and acted, spoke, 
or wrote as they were sent and commissioned. 
-Hence their revelations also are the word of 
God. 


The Old Testament as a whole is the word 
of God, in accordance with the sense and 
meaning we have given of the inspiration 
of the Holy Ghost. Not everything that 
is recorded is the word of God, for many 
acts of the otherwise holy men of old were 
obviously wrong and sinful, and many words 
they said were evidently erroneous, while 
some were partially or wholly wise only in 
the human sense. When, however, the de¬ 
finite “Thus saith the Lord” appears, or 
whenever the circumstances show that the 
Lord was giving His word, then the true 
revelation may be perceived. Still, the in¬ 
spiration reaches even beyond the revelation, 
and assures the accuracy of narrative, even 
where the thing narrated was neither in¬ 
spired nor approved of God. 

Throughout the Old Testament the inspi¬ 
ration of the Holy Ghost continues subser¬ 
vient to the Law. Gleams now and then 
appear both of the spirit and the facts of the 
Gospel. These, however, were foreshadow¬ 
ings or foretellings of things to come; not 
enough to lay open the future, but enough 
to show, when that future became present, 
the essential unity of the great divisions in 
the one developing Divine dispensation. One 
and the same spirit appears all along, frolli 
Abram to St. John the Evangelist. A 
marked and wonderful community of truth 
runs like a gleam of light through Holy 
Scripture from beginning to end, and binds 
all together in one golden chain of many 
links. The Divine element appears in every 
part, while the perfect correspondence of the 
parts stamps unity upon the whole, making 
it and showing it to be the very one Holy 
Scripture, or word of God. 

Both Testaments are of course open to 
criticism. No attempt should be made to 
exempt them from any fair form of investi¬ 
gation, or to place them beyond the reach of 
any legitimate tests. Mere scholarship, even 
when skeptical, should be met by Christian 
scholarship. God in His providence has 
hitherto provided the human wisdom and 
learning necessary for the defense and eluci¬ 
dation of the Bible upon merely scholastic 
grounds. Deep understanding of the word 
of God is, however, only possible to those 
whose own spirits are in harmony with the 
Divine Spirit. Spiritual things are spirit¬ 
ually discerned. This point should be duly 
considered and weighed not only in scholastic 
criticism, but in practical use of the Bible. 

Every writer in the books of the Bible 
was inspired, whether he were historian, 
psalmist, moral or religious instructor, 
warner, foreteller of future events, or 
speaker or actor in the advancing work of 
the developing church, kingdom, and house¬ 
hold of God. The human and peculiarly 
personal characteristics of each one give, 
indeed, variety of form to their styles and 
modes, but the essence of all remains 
Divine and therefore infallible truth. 

Although the stream of authentic revela¬ 
tion lay hidden for four hundred years after 








INSPIRATION 


385 


INSTITUTIONS 


Malachi—the last prophet of the Old Tes¬ 
tament—spake and wrote, yet the ever-pres¬ 
ent inspiring Spirit doubtless continued 
“still to strive with man." The books that 
were written in this interval preceding the 
coming of Christ were evidently not in¬ 
spired as were those of the Old Testament. 
Still, because of the Spirit’s presence ever 
with the chosen people, even the Apocry¬ 
pha “ the Church doth read for example of 
life and instruction of manners ; but yet 
doth it not apply them to establish any doc¬ 
trine.” (Art. VI.) 

The inspiration of the New Testament 
is essentially the same with Aiat of the Old 
Testament. The revelations of the latter 
coincide with, while they supplement those 
of, the former. Together they constitute 
the whole Holy Scripture. Similar charac¬ 
teristics mark both. The four Gospels give 
narratives of the life of Christ ; but they 
are evidently the work of writers who each 
viewed Christ from their own natural stand¬ 
points. Hence the true humanity of Jesus 
is the central and pervading idea of the Gos¬ 
pel of St. Matthew ; His royalty fills the 
inind of St. Mark; His sacrificial offering 
and work of atonement imbues St. Luke ; 
while His light of truth, on earth and in 
heaven, is the chief theme of St. John. 
The inspiration which guided and controlled 
each writer acted in and through his per¬ 
sonal character and peculiar circumstances, 
while the result is a record of the mortal 
life and work of Jesus that coincides in all 
essential particulars, and yet gives a whole 
presentation such as no one man could have 
delineated and recorded. 

The Acts, the Epistles, and the Apoca¬ 
lypse exhibit these same characteristics. St. 
Paul sets forth the Church, with the word, 
prominently on its Catholic side. He em¬ 
phatically pronounces it to be the one Body 
into which Jews and Gentiles are called and 
admitted on equal terms. St. James holds 
on to the Law. While making that promi¬ 
nent, he still presents the Gospel as the ful¬ 
fillment of the Law. St. Peter’s chief mis¬ 
sion was to those of the circumcision, and 
his writings turn upon the unity of the new 
and old dispensations. The writer of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews was some one who, 
to natural eloquence and high rhetorical cul¬ 
ture, added a full knowledge of the facts and 
principles of the Jewish worship. Hence 
that epistle is full of the essential unity of 
the offerings and priesthood of the Temple 
with those of the Catholic Church; while 
their conjunction in the One High-Priest 
and full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice— 
Jesus —is distinctly detailed and clearly 
shown. The Revelation of St. John the 
Divine is the effect of a Divine afflatus, 
poured through an Apostle, evidently the 
same as that with which Ezekiel and other 
old prophets were inspired. 

The fact of the inspiration of the Holy 
Scriptures by the Holy Ghost fits into the 
necessities of the whole case, and thus shows 

25 


the unity of all the acts of the God of na¬ 
ture and of grace. Could men have recov¬ 
ered the lost knowledge of God, and re¬ 
stored the personal communion with Him 
which sin had broken, they would have 
been left to their natural powers. Because 
they could not do this, and because the pa¬ 
tient mercy of the loving Jehovah sought to 
restore man, therefore "the Holy Ghost in¬ 
spired the revelation of the way of salva¬ 
tion. He did this, however, step by step, as 
the organization of the one Divine family 
was developing towards the completed unity 
of the visible Body of Christ. He did it 
also in conjunction with human talents and 
attainments, and in accordance with the 
concurrent environments of political, social, 
and ecclesiastical progress, and of knowl¬ 
edge. Divine facts, and precepts, and doc¬ 
trines He revealed. Mundane facts, and 
opinions, and views He permitted to be re¬ 
corded as contemporary wisdom and learn¬ 
ing regarded them ; only preserving from 
corruptions and error the moral and doc¬ 
trinal instruction they were interwoven 
with. Hence science and philosophy were 
not inspired. When they appear therefore 
in the Bible, they are open as elsewhere to 
criticism. Only the Divine truth, embalmed 
in them or illustrated by them, was inspired 
by the Holy Ghost; and this Divine truth 
stands now as hitherto, and as it ever will 
continue, the very word of the very God, 
infallible, sure, ever living, the foundation 
truth. The written word of God is so one 
with the person distinguished by name as 
“The Word of God” that they are true as 
He is “ The Truth.” 

Rev. Benjamin Franklin, D.D. 

Installation. The act of giving a Pre¬ 
bend or Canon possession of his seat by 
placing him in his stall. So too it is the 
placing of a Bishop in his Episcopal throne 
in his Cathedral church. 

Institution. I. “ Institution of a Chris¬ 
tian Man,” a book issued in the later years 
of Henry VIII.'s reign, which contained in¬ 
struction in the Christian religion. It is of 
value as giving the position and views per¬ 
mitted to Cranmer and his colleagues at that 
time, and as throwing light upon the ad¬ 
vance that the Reformation had made in Eng¬ 
land. The book is called the Bishop’s Book, 
since the Bishops dedicated it to the king, 
while a later modification of the same book 
was entitled “ A Necessary Doctrine and 
Erudition for any Christian Man, set forth 
by the King’s Majesty of England,” etc., 
1543 a.d., and so called the King’s Book. 
There are marked variations between the two 
books, and in some things a retrogression. 

II. The act in the English Church by 
which the Bishop commits the cure of a 
church to the clergyman who is nominated. 
To this the Office of Institution in our 
Prayer-Book is nearly the equivalent. ( Vide 
Minor Offices.) 

Institutions of the Church. There must 
be, from the nature of the case, a difference 





INSTITUTIONS 


386 


INSTITUTIONS 


in the relations which the several Institu¬ 
tions, Organizations, and Associations hold 
to the Church in the United States, or to 
the several Dioceses. Some Institutions are 
under the direct control of the General Con¬ 
vention and received their Constitution 
from it, and their corporators are chosen ac¬ 
cording to its directions, or as it has made 
provision in the rules it has given. It is of 
these Institutions that this article briefly 
treats. Other institutions are Diocesan, or 
are general voluntary organizations which 
are not confined to one city or Diocese, but 
have some common aim or purpose, which 
attracts members to it in other States, such 
as the Church Temperance Society. 

The first of the General Institutions of the 
Church in date of formation and second to 
none in importance to the Church is The 
General Theological Seminary. It was es¬ 
tablished by the General Convention May 
27, 1817 a.d. Its plan was drawn up in 1818 
a.d., by Bishops White and Hobart. The 
present location, in the then country village 
of Chelsea, a suburb of New York, was the 
munificent gift of Dr. Clement C. Moore. 
Its earliest Professors were the Rev. Drs. 
Jarvis and Turner. In May, 1819 a.d., it 
began with six students, who recited first in 
a room attached to St. Paul’s Chapel, then 
in the vestry-room of St. John’s Chapel, 
and afterwards in a building on the corner 
of Broadway and Cedar Street. Its finan¬ 
cial straits were so great that in 1820 a.d. it 
was removed to New Haven, but in 1822 
a.d. the Sherred legacy of $60,000 brought 
it back to New York. The corner-stone of 
the east building was laid in 1826 a.d. 
From that time on the seminary remained 
in New York, despite many efforts to have 
it removed. Active efforts were made to 
secure endowments and gifts for scholar¬ 
ships, and the Dioceses of New York, New 
Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Mary¬ 
land, North Carolina, and South Carolina 
now hold scholarships upon the basis of 
their gifts to the Seminary Funds. Its 
Professors and teachers have always num¬ 
bered among them men of great ability and 
mastery in their several chairs. To name 
but three, Drs. Turner, Johnson, and Ma¬ 
han, worthily carried forward the reputa¬ 
tion* of their departments won by their 
predecessors, and their successors have not 
failed to maintain the lofty standard they 
established. Recent efforts to increase the 
endowments and to restore and refit the 
building have been highly successful under 
its present Dean, Rev. Dr. E. A. Hoffman. 

The second institution under the super¬ 
vision of the General Convention is 

The Domestic and Foreign Missionary So¬ 
ciety. —The sketch of the operations of this 
Society is given in full in the article of the 
Missions of the Church, and here it will 
he only necessary to refer to such outlines of 
its history as are fitting. In the General 
Convention of 1820 a.d. “ there was pro¬ 
posed by the House of Clerical and Lay 


Deputies, and concurred in by the Bishops, 
a Constitution of a Missionary Society for 
Foreign and Domestic Missions, which be¬ 
came inefficient from an irregularity in the 
choice of Trustees. The Society was located 
in the city of Philadelphia, and the mem¬ 
bers there resident, after frequent consulta¬ 
tions, did not think themselves authorized to 
proceed. The error resulted from the press 
of business on the last day of the session.” 
(Bp. White’s Mem.) 

At a special meeting of the General Con¬ 
vention, 1821 a.d. , the oversight was re¬ 
paired and a Constitution was adopted. It 
worked under tfhe Constitution till 1835 a.d., 
when the great alteration in its Constitution 
was made. It was recommended by the 
Society that the Church herself, in de¬ 
pendence on her Divine Head, and for the 
promotion of His glory, undertake and carry 
on in her character as the Church, and as 
“ The Domestic and Foreign Missionary 
Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church 
in the United States of America,” the work 
of Christian Missions. The change was at 
once made; the Church recognized her 
true missionary character, and instead of 
appointing a Society, resolved itself into 
that Society, as in truth it is, and appointed 
two committees to carry on its work, one 
for Domestic and one for Foreign Missions. 
The two committees were kept apart, and 
at the close of the late war a Commission on 
the Colored Work was added as an append¬ 
age to the work of the Domestic Committee, 
but in 1871 and 1877 a.d. it was merged 
with the other committees into one General 
Management of a Board of Missions with a 
Board of Managers. The members of the 
Board of Missions are all the Bishops and 
the Deputies of the General Convention, 
and the Delegates from the Missionary Jur¬ 
isdiction. But the Board of Managers is an 
elective body, not necessarily drawn from 
the General Convention. It exercises the 
powers of the Domestic and Foreign Mis¬ 
sionary Society, and appoints from its own 
members the two committees and such other 
committees as it may deem desirable, and 
appoints the officers necessary for its work. 
These committees now are the Committee 
for Domestic Missions; the Committee for 
Foreign Missions; the Noble Women’s 
Auxiliary to the Board of Missions ; and the 
Church Society for Promoting Christianity 
among the Jews. In the Domestic Depart¬ 
ment, 14 Bishops and 470 Missionaries, of 
which are employed among white people 
372 ; colored, 55 (23 colored clergymen) ; 
Indians, 57 (13 native clergymen and 15 
native catechists). In the Foreign Depart¬ 
ment—Ordained clergy, Africa, 13 ; China, 
18 ; Japan, 9 ; Hayti, *3 ; Mexico, 12 ; total, 
65. Unordained workers, 201; candidates 
for orders and postulants, 26 ; communicants 
reported, 2668. 

The third organization, which is under 
the General Convention, is 

The American Church Building Fund 




INTENTION 


387 INTERCESSION OF CHRIST 


Commission .—The Commission was estab¬ 
lished October 25, 1880 a.d., by the Board 
of Missions, comprising in its membership 
both Houses of the General Convention. It 
consists of all the Bishops, of one clergy¬ 
man and one layman from each Diocese 
and Missionary Jurisdiction, and of twenty 
members at large appointed by the Presid¬ 
ing Bishop. Its object is to create, by an 
annual offering from every congregation for 
three years, and by individual gifts, a fund 
of one million dollars, the income of which 
shall be given, and portions of the principal 
of which may be loaned, to aid the building 
of new churches. 

And lastly, one of the most deserving of 
all, which ought to be thoroughly endowed 
indeed, 

The Fund for the Relief of Widows and 
Orphans of Deceased Clergymen , and of Aged, 
Infirm , and Disabled Clergymen .—Its pres¬ 
ent resources are a royalty upon the Hym¬ 
nal, and such collections and legacies as 
may come into its scanty treasury. 

These organizations were formed by and 
are under the control of the General Con¬ 
vention, and belong to the whole Church, 
have a claim upon it, and owe to it a faith¬ 
ful discharge of their various trusts. 

Intention. The motives which lie behind 
the act and impel the,doer to commit it 
have a modifying effect upon the moral value 
of the act. For no act can be committed 
which does not have more or less distinctly 
a moral value. The time, the place, the op¬ 
portunity, all affect it so, therefore still 
more the intention which precedes the act 
and is its efficient cause. In this lies a large 
measure of the responsibilities which attach 
to the person, because of the act and its con¬ 
sequences,—though apart from the intention, 
the actor is held responsible for much that 
flows from it. Both in morals and at law it 
is only equitable to allow due force to the 
motive, so in a notable class of moral and 
legal acts, the rule must be that intention 
makes marriage, and intention makes mur¬ 
der. 

Still, while intention has so much influ¬ 
ence in determining the status of an act, in¬ 
tention can have no power to affect the valid¬ 
ity of acts directed in behalf of others. A 
witness signing a deed,—his intention not 
to witness it cannot affect the validity of 
the signature. A magistrate executing his 
official duty cannot alter the authority of his 
acts by merely intending that they shall be 
of no effect. Therefore the.declaration of 
the Council of Trent, “ If any one shall say 
that in ministers, whilst they effect and con¬ 
fer the sacraments, there is not required the 
intention at least of doing what the Church 
does, let him be anathema” (Sess. vii., Can. 
xi.), is invalid and absurd, for if the valid¬ 
ity of baptism depends upon the intention of 
the administrator, it is then -impossible for 
the recipient to be assured that he is bap¬ 
tized, and, consequently, to be assured that 
he is a Christian at all, and the same is true 


of the Holy Communion. Indeed, were the 
doctrine even a remote fact, the possibility 
of there being no Church of God is, to say 
the very least, strongly suggested to the 
skeptic, and a powerful weapon is put into 
the hands of the atheist. A sacrament may 
b parodied by impious or by unauthorized 
men, and therefore invalid, but beyond this, 
the intention of the proper administrator can¬ 
not affect the efficiency of the sacrament if 
the several parts of that sacrament are duly 
administered. 

Intercession of Christ. The doctrine of 
the Mediatorship of our Lord must, as one 
of the offices of a Mediator, involve that of 
Intercession. Our Lord pledged Himself 
to His Apostles to do this : “ I will pray the 
Father, and He shall give you another Com¬ 
forter .” “ Wherefore He is able also to save 
them to the uttermost that come unto God 
by Him, seeing that He ever liveth to make 
intercession for them” (Heb. vii. 26). “ If 

any man sin, we have an advocate with the 
Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 
John ii. 1). It is, therefore, His work in 
His cession “ at the right hand of God the 
Father Almighty,” as we confess in the 
Creed. It is part of His priestly office as it 
was constituted. St. Paul’s argument, that 
He is a Priest forever after the order of 
Melchizedek, that His is an unchangeable 
Priesthood, has this fact of His intercession 
given as the conclusion. It is of the essence 
of the priestly office to intercede, and to in¬ 
tercede with an offering, therefore St. Paul’s 
argument requires that “ this man, after He 
had made one offering for sins, forever sat 
down on the right hand of God.” For 
“ Christ being come a high-priest of good 
things to come, ... by His own blood He 
entered in once into the Holy Place, having 
obtained eternal redemption for us.” And 
since He remaineth in the Holy of Holies till 
the consummation of all time, it follows that 
He offers and pleads His one sacrifice continu¬ 
ally. “ Intercessions and giving of thanks be 
made for all men ; for kings, and for all that 
are in authority ; that we may lead a quiet 
and a peaceable life in all godliness and hon¬ 
esty. For this is good and acceptable in the 
sight of God our Saviour; who will have 
all men to be sawed, and to come into the 
knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. ii. 1-4). 
This intercession underlies the structure of 
the Eucharistic office,—appearing in the 
“ Prayer for the whole estate of Christ, 
Church Militant,” and in the Invocation. 
It is the act binding the subordinate de¬ 
rivative office of His Church with Christ’s 
own High-Priestly office of Intercessor, and 
therefore is second in far-reaching conse¬ 
quences only to the atonement the Lord 
hath made. But it is to be noted that as our 
Lord’s coming brought divisions, a sword 
and a fire, so it is said that the angel who 
offered the prayers of the saints put fire from 
the altar into the censer wherein the prayers 
were placed, and cast the censer thus in¬ 
flamed upon the earth, and there were 





INTERCESSION OF SAINTS 388 


INTERPRETATION 


voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and 
an earthquake. Prayer and intercession is 
at first a disturbing power, that afterwards 
procureth peace, light, and glory. 

Intercession of Saints. It is a pious 
opinion that the saints in Paradise, as they 
with us have learnt the duty and precious¬ 
ness of intercession, should continue it there. 
But since they cannot hear us, or know of 
us and our condition from any prayer, or 
words, or thoughts, of ours, it is merest 
superstition to call upon them to pray for 
us; therefore it was but common sense in 
the Church of England and in our own to 
sweep away all such prayers, collects, or 
litanies from her service-books. 

Interdict. An ecclesiastical censure fre¬ 
quent in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth 
centuries, said to have been used first in 
France. Lyndwood defines it as an ecclesi¬ 
astical censure, inflicted as a penalty on 
contumacy or offenses whereby people are 
prohibited from receiving the sacraments. 
It could be general or personal. The first 
instance of its being fulminated against a 
people was the interdict pronounced by 
Gregory VII. against Poland, 1073 a.d. 
For details of the more famous interdicts,— 
e.g ., of England by Innocent III.,—see the 
Histories of England, France, Germany, 
and Venice. “ This censure hath been long 
disused, and nothing of it appeareth in the 
laws of Church or State since the Reforma¬ 
tion.” (Burns, Eccl. Law, sub voc.) 

Intermediate State. The place where all 
souls are gathered and kept till the resurrec¬ 
tion. ( Vide Hades, Hell, Paradise.) The 
language of Scripture, which, however, 
should not be pressed too far, implies that it 
is within the earth. “ He also descended 
first into the lower parts of the earth” (Eph. 
iv. 9). So other places. But without con¬ 
cerning ourselves where, we may concern 
ourselves how souls are there. In a former 
article (Hades) we have seen that there is a 
great gulf therein dividing it into two parts 
(St. Luke xvi. 26). In these there is a fore¬ 
taste of the natural consequences of the facts 
of our past human life, and of our already 
formed characters. It would seem that 
however much consequences may be sus¬ 
pended or avoided here, there there is no 
interference or suspension. It is useless to 
speculate upon details, but the feeling, at 
least of the early Church, was clear upon the 
felicity of those who died in the true faith of 
our Lord Jesus Christ {vide Prayers for 
the Dead), as is seen from the language of 
one of the oldest Liturgies which has come 
down to us : “ Remember Lord, the God of 
the Spirits and of all flesh, the orthodox 
whom we have commemorated and whom 
we have not commemorated, from righteous 
Abel unto this day. Give them rest there 
in the land of the living, in Thy Kingdom 
in the delight of Paradise, in the bosom of 
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, our holy 
Fathers, whence pain, sorrow, and groaning 
is exiled, where the light of Thy Counte¬ 


nance looks down and always shines. And 
direct Lord, 0 Lord, in peace the ends of 
our lives, so as to be Christians, and well 
pleasing to Thee, and blameless, collecting us 
under the feet of Thine Elect when Thou 
wilt, and as Thou wilt, only without shame 
and offense, through Thine Only-Begotten 
Son, our Lord and God and Saviour 
Jesus Christ, for He alone hath appeared 
on the earth without sin.” (St. James’ 
Liturgy.) This intermediate state of an- 
ticipative felicity was called the Beatific 
Vision, the Bosom of Abraham, the Para¬ 
dise of Pleasure. 

Interpretation of Scripture. It includes 
both Hermeneutics, the principles of Inter¬ 
pretation, and Exegesis, the detailed inter¬ 
pretation. It is clear that since the in¬ 
spired penmen wrote under the direction of 
the Holy Ghost, their writings cannot in 
every respect be subjected to the same mode 
of interpretation as that applied to ordinary 
writings; of course the time at which, the 
conditions under which the books were writ¬ 
ten, the surroundings of the national polity, 
or the spiritual development of the Church, 
whether Jewish or Christian, must be consid¬ 
ered, and the historical sense must be placed 
first with the grammatical construction, but 
if the guidance and inspiration of the Holy 
Spirit be admitted, there must be also 
added to these principles of interpretation, 
the allowance of a further and deeper sense, 
which comparison with other Scriptures or 
which time would explain. The admission 
that a large part of the Scriptures are pro¬ 
phetical, and that under another large part 
there is an ethical application that cannot be 
narrowed by the letter of some special case 
{e.g., eating meats offered to idols, or the 
various senses in which Faith is taken), 
modifies the use of the broad principles of 
both Hermeneutics and Exegesis. The 
Fathers finding Christ everywhere, made 
His presence the basis of their principles 
of interpretation, and so developed a noble 
system of Exegesis, marred indeed in places 
by a fanciful or an imperfect appreciation, 
and sometimes by a prepossession in favor 
of some topic, but above all devout, sin¬ 
cere, and having an insight that comes 
only from prayerful and prolonged study of 
the Word. The real defect of the Patristic 
Exegesis was the defect of a sound criticism. 
This, however, was not their fault; it was 
the fault or want of the whole space of time 
from St. Clement to the Reformation. Those 
who drew nearest to its principles were 
Chrysostom and Theodoret. Origen had it, 
but his Alexandrian education and his own 
devout enthused fancy prevented him from 
using it, and in this critical faculty too, 
whenever he did use it, as in the Hexapla, he 
was too far in advance of his day. 

The Fathers distinguished between the 
(a) grammatical, ( b ) the historical and logi¬ 
cal, and (c) the mystical senses of Scripture; 
and this last underlying sense they sub¬ 
divided still further into spiritual, figurative, 





INTONATION 


389 


IOWA 


allegorical. It will be seen that these sub¬ 
divisions may be carried still further, and 
some ancient expositors advocated as many 
as ten or twelve forms. St. Augustine says 
we must look for things that are eternal, 
that have been done, that must be done, 
that are future, and therefore hold to three, 
historical, moral, mystical. 

Modern interpreters, though often dis¬ 
claiming any such subdivision, are forced, 
often unconsciously, to use this; otherwise 
there could be no possible profit to us in a 
very large part of what has been written for 
our learning. It is too large a subject to be 
treated of in this work, but the reader may 
be referred to the very devout work of Wil¬ 
liams on the Study of the Gospels, and to 
Blunt’s and Wordsworth’s introductions to 
their several editions of the Bible. 

Intonation. (Vide Music.) The notes 
which introduce the chant or hymn. The 
Gregorian Tones have this intonation regu¬ 
larly prescribed for the first words of each 
Psalm. 

Intoning. The improper term for the 
musical rendering, on a monotone and in¬ 
flected closes, of the service by the officiating 
minister. 

Introit. The hymn or anthem sung by 
the choir when the officiating minister goes 
up from the stalls to the sanctuary to begin 
the ante-communion service. This is his 
entering into the chancel. The word occurs 
as early as in St. Mark’s Liturgy. The In¬ 
troit, therefore, was used very early in the 
East. It was probably introduced from 
Spain, which used many Eastern rites, so 
far as the West used it. The Spanish in¬ 
troit varied very much, but probably was at 
first the xciii. Psalm. The first book of 
Edward VI. (1549 a.d.) gave the Introits 
for the several Sundays’ Feasts and Fasts 
throughout the year. The use of the Introit 
is so ancient and so significant, that it were 
well to select the hymn upon some principle 
of continuous reference to the Church’s 
season. 

Invitatory. The xcv. Psalm is called the 
invitatory Psalm, from the spirit of the first 
verse, O come, let us sing unto the Lord. 
It was in very early use, having been, as 
Archdeacon Freeman shows, imbedded, as 
it were, into the structure of the morning 
services from the earliest notices of them 
that have survived. The Psalm was daily 
used in Jewish worship, which was prob¬ 
ably the reason why it was so markedly re¬ 
ferred to in the Epistle to the Hebrews (ch. 
iii.). St. Augustine tells us in a sermon 
that it was so used: “We have chanted 
the Psalm, exhorting one another with one 
voice, with one heart, saying, O come, let 
us adore Him and fall down before Him, 
and weep before the Lord who made us.’’ 
But the invitatory of mediaeval usage was 
different. A sentence that varied according 
to the season was interpolated at the close 
of each verse, and was sung after one verse 
entire and after another only in part, but 


always entirely at the close of the Venite, 
before the Gloria Patri. This was done 
away when the Prayer-Book was arranged. 

An invitatory anthem is substituted for 
the Venite at Easter (from 1 Cor. v. 7; 
Bom. vi. 9 ; and 1 Cor. xv. 20). 

The Invocation. The invoking of the 
grace and Presence of the Holy Ghost 
upon any special act or undertaking. 

It is technically the name of the second 
part of that noble prayer which follows the 
words of Institution in the Scotch and Amer¬ 
ican Prayer-Books. It is strictly in the 
spirit, and very nearly in the language, of 
the prayers of Oblation and Invocation in 
use in all the Eastern Liturgies. While 
there is a maimed and dislocated oblation in 
the English Liturgy, and a mere fragment 
of it in the Koman use, and in other now 
disused Western Liturgies, there is no 
Prayer for the blessing of the Elements by 
the Holy Ghost. It was in the Scotch 
Prayer-Book of 1764 a.d., which was a re¬ 
vival of the book of 1637 a.d., and revised 
under the influence of the Non-jurors. From 
this Bishop Seabury succeeded in having it 
transferred to our own Prayer-Book in 1789 
a.d., the only changes being that for the 
direct words, “ that they may become the 
Body and Blood of Thy most dearly-beloved 
Son Jesus Christ,” there were substituted, 
“ that we receiving them according to Thy 
Son our Saviour Jesus Christ's holy in¬ 
stitution, in remembrance of His Death and 
Passion, may be partakers of His most 
blessed Body and Blood.” There was an 
insertion of the word “humbly” before 
“ beseeching.” 

The Western Church always held that 
the words of Institution were all-sufficient, 
but the Eastern Theologians taught that 
whatsoever the Holy Ghost touched is 
sanctified and changed (St. Cyril, Catechet¬ 
ical Lectures). This is the concurrent teach¬ 
ing of the Eastern Doctors: That as Christ 
offered Himself by the Eternal Spirit a 
full, sufficient, and perfect Sacrifice, so the 
Invocation of the Holy Ghost in the act 
of Consecration is necessary in the Eucha¬ 
rist, the Memorial pleading that one Sacri¬ 
fice. For this prayer, then, we cannot be 
too thankful, as it makes our office so per¬ 
fect. 

Invocation of Saints. A practice wholly 
without warrant in Holy Scripture, and re¬ 
moved from the Offices of the English and 
American Church. (Vide Intermediate 
State, Intercession of Saints.) 

Iowa, Diocese of. In July, 1853 a.d., 
theRt. Rev. Jackson Kemper, D.D., the ven¬ 
erable Missionary Bishop of the Northwest, 
issued an invitation to the clergy and repre¬ 
sentatives of all organized Church congre¬ 
gations in the State of Iowa to meet him 
at Muscatine on Wednesday, August 17, at 
six o’clock p.m. In accordance with this 
invitation the parties designated assembled 
at the time appointed, in the chapel of 
Trinity Church, Muscatine. 




IOWA 


390 


IOWA 


The Bishop being absent, the meeting was 
resided over by the Bev. Alfred Louder- 
ack, Hector of Trinity Church, Davenport. 
By this Convention a Constitution and 
Canons for the Diocese of Iowa were unani¬ 
mously adopted, and the following memorial 
appears on the last page of the journal as a 
fitting tribute to this Apostolic man, whose 
remarkable zeal, wisdom, and virtue were 
chiefly instrumental in planting the Church 
in the Northwest: 

“ The Clergy and Laity of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Iowa, 
in separating the canonical connection be¬ 
tween them and the Rt. Rev. Jackson Kem¬ 
per, D.D., cannot allow this occasion to pass 
without expressing their deep sense of obli¬ 
gation to him for services rendered to the 
Church in this State. We shall ever hold 
in grateful remembrance his untiring zeal 
and unwearied labors in behalf of the 
Church in this Diocese; and although our 
canonical connection is dissolved, we hereby 
unanimously invite him to continue his 
Episcopal supervision of this Diocese until 
we are provided with a Bishop of our own.” 

Upon the day appointed by the Primary 
Convention, May 31, 1854 a.d., the first 
Convention of the Diocese of Iowa was 
called to order by Bishop Kemper. The 
place of meeting was Davenport. At the 
close of his report the Bishop thus addressed 
the assembled Clergy and Lay delegates: 

“ As you are now fully organized you 
will be anxious to enjoy every privilege, 
and at the earliest possible day to secure to 
yourselves a Diocesan. I will cordially co¬ 
operate with you in such efforts, and will 
rejoice to welcome another Bishop in the 
West. Seek out a man of God ; one who is 
earnest and simple-hearted, one who is pa¬ 
tient of fatigue, ready to endure hardship 
with a cheerful spirit for the Redeemer’s 
sake, and who will consecrate all his 
energies to the work before him, which un¬ 
questionably will be the building up of the 
Diocese in strength and holiness.’’ 

The choice of the Diocese fell upon a man 
whose future work made most justly appli¬ 
cable to him the words of the good Bishop. 
The Rev. Henry Washington Lee, D.D., 
Rector of St. Luke’s Church, Rochester, 
N. Y., having been duly elected, accepted 
the position, and was consecrated in his 
parish church, October 18, 1854 a.d., as 
the first Bishop of Iowa. Bishop Lee 
preached in his Diocese for the first time 
October 29, in St. John’s Church, Dubuque, 
of which the Rev. R. D. Brooke was rec¬ 
tor. Among Iowa’s pioneer missionaries 
none was more earnest and worthy than the 
Rector of St. John’s, Dubuque, and his 
parish had the honor of being the first in 
the new Diocese voluntarily to relinquish 
missionary aid. The first confirmation by 
Bishop Lee in Iowa took place November 5, 
in Trinity Church, Davenport. 

The second Annual Convention convened 
May 30, 1855 a.d., in Christ Church, Bur¬ 


lington, and at its opening service Bishop 
Lee held his first ordination, admitting to 
priest’s orders the Rev. George William 
Watsin", who remained for many years one 
of Iowa’s most respected, able, and success¬ 
ful Presbyters. 

Bishop Lee’s first effort in behalf of the 
material interests of his Diocese was the 
formation of the “ Iowa Episcopate Eund,” 
in which effort he was most successful. 
Through the liberality, chiefly of Eastern 
Churchmen, he obtained means for the pur¬ 
chase of six thousand acres of land in Iowa, 
which land was held until, through increase 
in value, sales became desirable, thus secur¬ 
ing a constantly increasing capital. A wise 
investment of this has already furnished 
means for the erection of an elegant and 
commodious house for the Bishop’s resi¬ 
dence, besides contributing materially to 
his support. 

On the 1st day of August, 1856 a.d., 
Bishop Lee having completed the purchase 
of the property in Davenport known as 
the “ Iowa College,” the Diocese took pos¬ 
session, giving it the name of the verier- 
able Bishop Griswold. On the 12th of 
December following, the Preparatory De¬ 
partment of this Institution was opened, 
under the charge ‘of the Rev. E. Emerson 
Judd, who is still one of Iowa’s working 
parochial clergy. 

In May, 1863 a.d., the College property, 
for which was paid $36,000, was in the 
hands of the Trustees, free from incum¬ 
brance. During the year 1864 the Trus¬ 
tees purchased a building in Dubuque for 
a girls’ school, which in September, 1865 
a.d., was opened as the “ Bishop Lee Semi¬ 
nary for Young Ladies.” The following 
year the Rev. E. Emerson Judd became 
the principal of this Institution, and held 
that position until May 1, 1871 a.d., at 
which time the work was discontinued. 

In June, 1866 a.d., by the generosity of 
David J. Ely, Esq., of Chicago, the “ Ely 
Professorship of Ecclesiastical History” in 
the Theological Department of Griswold 
College was endowed, and the Rev. Willis 
H. Barris was appointed its first Professor, 
a position which he still holds, being the 
oldest resident Presbyter in the Diocese. 
The “ Ely Professor” occupies a beautiful 
residence, erected upon the College grounds 
by the liberalty of Mrs. Ely, who after her 
husband’s death thus supplemented his most 
valuable gift; simultaneous with Mr. Ely’s 
donation was one of $10,000 towards the 
endowment of an “ Anthon Professorship” 
by a lady in New York. 

The Trustees of the College having au¬ 
thorized the erection of a Diocesan Church 
edifice upon the centre of the east block of 
their beautiful grounds, on the 27th of June, 
1868 a.d. , the corner-stone was laid by 
Bishop Lee, with most impressive cere¬ 
monies. This expensive and very handsome 
building having been completed, with the 
exception of the tower and spire, was duly 





IOWA 


391 


IOWA 


consecrated as “Grace Cathedral,” June 
18, 1873 a.d., by Bishop Lee, assisted by 
the Bishops of Nebraska and Minnesota, the 
Bishop of Minnesota preaching the conse¬ 
cration sermon. In elegance of structure 
and beauty of situation Grace Cathedral is 
unsurpassed by any Church edifice in the 
West. The “ Bishop’s House,’'’ built by the 
Trustees of the 1 “ Iowa Episcopate Fund,” 
was completed before the consecration, and 
at that time was the pleasant home of the 
Bishop’s family. But this happy home was 
soon to become the scene of an unexpected 
and sore bereavement. The good Bishop, 
although realizing that his health was ser¬ 
iously impaired, yet gave to his friends no 
indications of immediate danger; therefore 
his death, which occurred on the 26th day 
of September, 1874 a.d., after only a few 
days of alarming illness, both shocked and 
deeply grieved the entire Diocese. On 
the 29th his funeral services in Grace Ca¬ 
thedral were attended not only by a very 
large concourse of the citizens of Daven¬ 
port, but by lay representatives from par¬ 
ishes throughout the State, by the mass of 
the clergy of Iowa, and by numerous friends, 
both lay and clerical, from neighboring 
and other Dioceses. The services were con¬ 
ducted by the Rt. Rev. Bishops Whipple, 
of Minnesota, Robertson, of Missouri, and 
Vail, of Kansas. The sermon Avas preached 
by Bishop Vail. The ceremonies at the grave 
were participated in by all the Bishops, and 
thus the first Bishop of Iowa was laid to his 
rest. At a special Convention held in Grace 
Cathedral December 9, 1874 a.d., a sermon 
commemorative of the late Bishop was de¬ 
livered by the Rev. F. Emerson Judd from 
Romans xiv. 7. In this sermon the preacher 
paid to the memory of his late Diocesan 
the following tribute, which met with a 
hearty response throughout the State of 
Iowa: “In Iowa the foundations of the 
American Catholic Church have been wisely 
laid, broad and deep. No narrow bigotry 
and no effort of intolerance have ever found 
encouragement in the policy of the large- 
minded and large-hearted man, whose com¬ 
prehensive views and charitable rule for 
twenty years have guided the development 
of our youthful Diocese. All of Bishop 
Lee’s writings, his letters, his sermons, his 
Convention addresses, his pastorals and trien¬ 
nial charges, bear unmistakably the impress 

of Christ’s character and teaching. 

And if Bishop Lee was eminently catholic 
in his official position, he was eminently 
Christian in the various relations of private 
life. As a husband and father, tenderly 
thoughtful and affectionate. As a friend, 
considerate and true. As an acquaintance 
and neighbor, most sociable and charitable. 
His cheerful manners and entertaining con¬ 
versation rendered his society unusually at¬ 
tractive, his words of cheer and deeds of 
unostentatious, but judicious benevolence, 
quieted many an anxious heart and glad¬ 
dened many a needy home.” The Church¬ 


men of Iowa who knew him will most 
tenderly cherish the memory of their first 
Bishop so long as life shall be theirs ; and 
through all time the Church will gratefully 
acknowledge the strength of the foundation 
which, amid the changes and excitements of 
a youthful but giant State, he with so much 
foresight and toil laid for her future wel¬ 
fare. 

The special Convention elected first the 
Rev. Henry C. Potter, D.D., Rector of 
Grace Church, New York, who declined 
the position. The Rev. Wm. R. Hunting- 
ton, S.T.D., was then duly chosen, and the 
Convention adjourned. Dr. Huntington also 
having declined, at the twenty-second An¬ 
nual Convention, held in Grace Church, 
Cedar Rapids, May 25, 1875 a.d., the Rev. 
James Houston Eccleston, D.D., of Phila¬ 
delphia, was declared by the President duly 
elected; but he, in consequence of opposi¬ 
tion and alleged informality in the matter 
of his election, declined consideration of the 
subject. The twenty-third Annual Con¬ 
vention, held in St. Paul’s Church, Des 
Moines, May, 1876 a.d., unanimously elected 
the Rev. William Stevens Perry, D.D., of 
Geneva, N. Y., who accepted the position, 
and became, by his consecration in his parish 
church, September 10, 1876 a.d., the second 
Bishop of Iowa. 

During the interval, a few days less than 
two years, between the death of Bishop Lee 
and the consecration of Bishop Perry, the 
Rev. F. Emerson Judd, having been ap¬ 
pointed “ General Missionary” by the Dio¬ 
cesan Board, was instrumental in keeping 
alive the interest in vacant parishes and un¬ 
supplied mission stations, and the excellent 
Bishop Talbot, of Indiana, kindly made 
Episcopal visitations to the parishes having 
classes for confirmation. 

Bishop Perry, already widely known 
through the important positions held in the 
Church’s General Council, and in his pas¬ 
tor^ and collegiate relations, received a most 
hearty welcome throughout the entire Dio¬ 
cese. He found in his new field three very 
valuable monuments of his predecessor’s 
wise foresight, prudent effort, and untiring 
energy. The Iowa Episcopate Fund was 
represented by an elegant mansion, the 
“ Bishop’s House,” upon which had been 
expended $21,165.38, also by 1762 54-100 
acres of valuable land in the State of Iowa, 
and investments to the amount of $20,063.60, 
all of which was drawing interest at the 
rate of ten per cent, per annum. 

Griswold College was in possession of a 
handsome stone edifice for collegiate pur¬ 
poses, a convenient boarding-house, a chapel, 
and a commodious residence for the Pres¬ 
ident, all situated in a commanding and 
very beautiful location in the city of Daven¬ 
port. Two Professorships were permanently 
endowed, the “ Ely” fully, and the “ An- 
thon” partially. The Cathedral occupying 
the centre of the east block of the college 
grounds, and adjoining the lot upon which 






IOWA 


392 


IOWA 


stands the “ Bishop’s House,” was completed 
with the exception of the towers and spire, 
and had been consecrated by Bishop Lee as 
being “ free from incumbrance.” But with 
the two latter of these advantages were as¬ 
sociated very grave responsibilities and 
many serious difficulties. The college and 
theological schools were to be reorganized, 
and an adequate support secured, and a suit¬ 
able cathedral system was to be inaugurated. 
To the accomplishment of both these ob¬ 
jects Bishop Perry was singularly adapted, 
having had peculiar advantages in connec¬ 
tion with both educational and Diocesan in¬ 
stitutions. As was to be expected, there¬ 
fore, under his wise administration and suc¬ 
cessful efforts, both college and cathedral 
were soon put in a position to do good and 
permanent work. Also at a Conference held 
in Davenport by the eight Bishops whose 
Sees and Jurisdictions lie between the Mis¬ 
sissippi and the Rocky Mountains, it was de¬ 
cided “ to unite on Seabury and Griswold 
as Theological School and College for the 
great West stretching from the Mississippi 
to the Pacific slope.” 

But the extent of the Diocese might well 
have appalled the stoutest of heart and the 
strongest in effort. “ Larger than all Eng¬ 
land, or than the five Dioceses of New York, 
with Connecticut besides,” and embracing 
nearly half a million of souls, it was no 
wonder that the Diocese of Iowa compelled 
her second Bishop to say, “We are unable to 
do this work. It can be no experiment to 
seek the up-building of a future See.” The 
huge Diocese remains undivided, and its one 
hundred counties still look to Bishop Perry 
for Episcopal care, nor do they look in vain. 
The older parishes, with scarcely an excep¬ 
tion, are progressing most favorably, many 
new ones are springing up, and everywhere 
the Church is rapidly gaining in favor. 

The Diocese was most materially bene¬ 
fited by the bequests of a very estimable 
lady, who was one of the most efficient 
Church-workers in Iowa when under the 
jurisdiction of Bishop Kemper. Of this 
truly good woman Bishop Perry, in his 
Convention address of 1879, thus speaks : 
“ In the decease of Mrs. Clarissa C. Cook, 
widow of the late Hon. Ebenezer Cook, the 
Church in Iowa has lost one of her mem¬ 
bers whom generations yet to come will rise 
up to call blessed. During her years of 
widowhood she had devised and executed a 
noble charity,—the building of Trinity 
Church and School in memory of her hus¬ 
band, and at her death she gave back to 
God most of the wealth He had permitted 
her to acquire. With a thoughtful care for 
those who must ever be a care toothers, this 
devoted Churchwoman devised nearly half 
of her estate to the founding of a ‘ Home 
for the Friendless’ in the city of Davenport, 
while a sum second only to this bequest was 
given for the support of the indigent clergy¬ 
men and the widows and orphans of de¬ 
ceased clergymen of the Diocese of Iowa. 


The Board of Missions and the weaker par¬ 
ishes within our bounds were kindly remem¬ 
bered, while the gifts to her parish church 
and to the congregation of Christ’s Church, 
and to other Church charities outside of the 
Diocese, attested the interest of this excel¬ 
lent woman in the work of the Church at 
home and abroad.” From Mrs. Cook the 
Diocese received for Missions $10,000, for 
weak parishes $10,000, and $5000 placed 
under the direction of the Bishop. The 
“ Old Clergy Fund” received a direct be¬ 
quest of $10,000, and was also made the re¬ 
cipient of half of the “ rest and residue” of 
the estate after all legacies had been paid. 
As residuary legatee the Fund has received 
thus far $65,000. In the Bishop’s address 
to the Convention of 1882 a.d. is found the 
following most encouraging statement: 

“ From the Convention journals it appears 
that the increase of permanent values of 
Church- property, exclusive of stipends, 
salaries, subscriptions for current expenses, 
and offerings for local or general Church 
work, and inclusive only of moneys paid to 
redeem Church property from indebtedness; 
for the erection or purchase of churches, 
chapels, and rectories, and endowments for 
Church purposes raised in Iowa and from 
the Diocese alone, has been at the rate of 
upwards of one thousand dollars per 
week for the nearly six years of the 
present Episcopate. If to this large sum 
we add the gifts from outside to our 
college and churches and Church work 
in various forms, and the appreciation 
of Church property in Iowa during the last 
six years, we can estimate the increase of 
Church property in Iowa during the last six 
years as nearly or quite half a million,—a 
sum equal to the permanent acquisitions of 
the preceding quarter of a century. Grate¬ 
fully do we record these proofs of a ma¬ 
terial prosperity. In spiritual things the 
blessing has not been withheld. The net 
increase of communicants alone during this 
period has been fifty per cent. For all 
these tokens of His power to God alone be 
the praise.” 

The Diocese when organized in 1853 a.d. 
numbered ten places, in which services were 
held with seven clergy and sixty-five 
communicants. In 1883 a.d., thirty years 
after, the number of parishes and stations 
reported in the journal is one hundred and 
eleven, while the number of clergymen 
canonically connected with the Diocese is 
fifty-eight. The communicants reported 
number four thousand two hundred and 
forty-seven, and the individuals under pas¬ 
toral care twelve thousand four hundred 
and eighty-nine. This paper qannot per¬ 
haps find a better conclusion than in quota¬ 
tions from Bishop Perry’s last Convention 
address (1883 a.d.) : “ It is of little moment 
the number of clergy and congregations in 
Iowa has increased tenfold, that the number 
of communicants has multiplied in far 
greater proportion, even an hundredfold; 






IRELAND, CHURCH OF 


393 


IRELAND, CHURCH OF 


that we have more than ten times the num¬ 
ber of churches, chapels, and rectories that 
we possessed in 1853 a.d. ; that we have ac¬ 
quired a noble property in endowments for 
the Episcopate, for the college, for the 
Theological School, for our indigent, dis¬ 
abled clergy, for the widows of deceased 
clergy, for feeble parishes, for missions, and 
for various educational, eleemosynary, and 
parochial purposes,—what has been accom¬ 
plished is only to be regarded as a begin¬ 
ning. Foundations have been laid. We are 
to build thereupon. . . . It is not our 
privilege as a Church to boast of numbers 
in comparison with the religious bodies 
about us. It will be enough if we abound 
in good works, if we take the lead in good 
deeds, if, like the Master, we care for the 
bodies as well as the - souls of our fellow- 
man. There have been noble beginnings in 
this direction. The establishment and en¬ 
dowment of Homes for the Friendless by 
the late Hon. J. M. Griffith, at Dubuque, 
and the late Mrs. Cook, of Davenport, and the 
successful founding of the more distinctively 
Church charity at Des Moines, the Cottage 
Hospital, are each and all steps in the right 
direction. Gratefully and gladly do we re¬ 
member and record the fact that Church¬ 
men and Church women have taken the lead 
in the inauguration of these charities. They 
are part and parcel of the work given us by 
God to do.” Rev. F. E. Judd. 

Ireland, Church of. Though some of the 
Irish had probably received Christianity 
from the British at some earlier date, yet 
the conversion of Ireland is attributed to 
Palladius, who (410 a.d.) was consecrated 
Bishop for the Irish by Pope Celestine, but 
it is nearly certain that he never reached 
Ireland. The work of conversion was really 
effected by St. Patrick, whose whole history 
was very romantic. His knowledge of men, 
his good common sense, energy, and cour¬ 
age gave him great influence, and he was 
able to effect the conversion of a large part 
of the Irish clans. But he fashioned the 
methods of Church work to suit the wild 
people with whom he dealt. The principle 
was a monastic one of the simplest mode. 
Bishops were very numerous, and were 
probably engaged without Dioceses in Mis¬ 
sionary work, or were Bishops in charge of 
a monastery, or working in a clan as tribe 
Bishop, with the honors which belong to the 
chief of a tribe. Pagan customs would nat¬ 
urally long survive, though the exiled Brit¬ 
ish, fleeing from the Saxons, helped some¬ 
what to elevate the Irish. 

The energy that had been expended in 
piracy and clan feuds now took a missionary 
form, and the active Irish, hardy, bold, en¬ 
thusiastic youths, were the pioneer mission¬ 
aries among the Piets, and among the tribes 
of Northern and Central Europe, whose work 
was garnered by men carrying a stronger 
plan of organization. St. Aidan’s mission 
from Lindisfarne to the northern Saxons was 
in truth the firmest and most enduring of the 


missions in England. This simple flexible 
mode of work broke down before the later 
organized methods, when the people were 
prepared for them, but not before. The 
Christianity avowed moulded but slowly 
the character of the tribes, but it produced 
many noble Christian men and women. 

As they rose into more regular system the 
Irish Archbishops obtained consecration 
from England. The Archbishop of Dublin 
was consecrated by Lanfranc 1079 a.d. But 
in 1155 a.d., Hadrian IV. granted Ireland 
to Henry II. This led to the Norman in¬ 
vasion (1170 a.d. ). From this date the 
island was the theatre of guerrilla wars and 
raidings. The conquered possessions, whose 
limits varied with the political fortunes of 
the colony, were called the English Pale. 
The clans in the more difficult parts of the 
island long remained unbroken. The na¬ 
tive Irish Church was at a great disadvan¬ 
tage, and disabilities were declared against 
the native clergy. The Church of history 
is practically the Norman-English establish¬ 
ment. The Councils, as of Cashel (1172 
a.d. ), Dublin (1217 a.d.), of Nova Villa 
(1216 a.d.), when Paparo, the Legate, pre¬ 
sided, were under Anglo-Norman rule. 
Gradually, however, there was more amal¬ 
gamation, and some time before the date of 
the Reformation the Norman influence had 
re-moulded the Irish Church, and Diocesan 
Episcopacy ruled the Irish Church. Abuses 
had arisen. Papal aggrandizement had gone 
forward since it could act as a mediator be¬ 
tween the two parties. 

Henry VIII. easily dissolved the monas¬ 
teries, but some escaped his ruthless rapacity, 
and the Reformation he had begun in Eng¬ 
land but proceeded to the same point in 
Ireland, and more laxly, for Bishops nom¬ 
inated at Rome were not refused their Sees. 
Edward’s Prayer-Book was accepted by the 
Archbishop of Dublin, but was rejected by 
the Archbishop of Armagh. Mary’s acces¬ 
sion drove out the Bishops inclined to Re¬ 
form. But Elizabeth’s supremacy and the 
English ritual were accepted in a Parlia¬ 
ment in 1560 a.d. , where there were three 
Archbishops and seventeen Bishops out of 
twenty-six. The records are doubtful, but as 
only two Bishops were a little later deprived 
of their Sees (and these were intruded under 
Mary), it is very fair to assert that the rest 
followed the example of the Archbishop of 
Dublin and conformed to the reform intro¬ 
duced by Elizabeth. But Roman intrigues 
obtained a representation at Trent in 1563 
a.d. The unhappy antagonisms of the races 
which were in the island gave a powerful 
opportunity to the Jesuits to set the two 
parties at greater variance, and to establish 
a schism which has included by far the 
greater part of the Celtic population and 
has paralyzed all efforts for raising it to a 
higher level. 

The political disturbances were too often 
fomented by the Priests, and the unfortu¬ 
nate Irish have been used as tools for de- 





IRELAND, CHURCH OF 


394 


ISAAC 


signing men. There is no space here for 
detailing the guerrilla wars in Elizabeth’s 
and the Stewart reigns. In the iron rule of 
Cromwell Irish representatives sat in Par¬ 
liament in London. James II. made his 
only stand in Ireland. From that time on 
Ireland was a banned country, misunder¬ 
stood, restive, misruled. After the insur¬ 
rection of 1798 a.d., the Act of Union 
joined the two countries' and the two 
Churches together politically. 

But the gift of emancipation from polit¬ 
ical disabilities granted to the Romanists in 
1829 a.d. led to further concessions, till at 
last the Irish Church was disestablished, its 
revenues seized, its incomes commuted. It 
was enacted in 1869 a.d., but went into effect 
in 1871 a.d. 

By it the Irish Church was freed from de¬ 
pendence on the Crown. It confined eccle¬ 
siastical Law only to the members of the 
Church. It confiscated to public uses, but 
subject to life interests, revenues to the 
amount of £581,000. The Irish Church 
had to organize anew its work. It declared 
its sisterhood with the English Church in a 
General Convention in 1870 a.d. (February), 
and took preliminary steps for organization. 

The General Synod was finally shaped, 
and became the Church Council. The 
governing arrangement for the Church is as 
follows : It consists of the House of Bishops, 
consisting of two Archbishops and twelve 
Bishops, and the House of Representatives, 
consisting of two hundred and eight Clergy 
and four hundred and sixteen Laity ; but, 
except for special reasons, the two houses 
sit together. They are presided over by the 
Archbishop of Armagh by ancient right. 
The Diocesan Synod consists of the Bishop, 
Clergy of the Diocese, and Synodsmen sent 
by the Vestries. There is a Diocesan Court 
for cases arising in the Diocese, and a Court 
of General Synod to hear appeals and to try 
greater causes. The ancient offices of Dean, 
Archdeacons, and Canons are retained. The 
Archbishop of Armagh is elected by the 
Bishops, but the Archbishop of Dublin is 
elected in Diocesan Synod, as are also the 
other Bishops. 

The present Clergy by law are entitled to 
an annuity from the Government, for which 
they may comrmite , by transferring the cap¬ 
ital sum it represents to the Governing 
Body, the corporation in the Church which 
controls the property; and a composition 
also may be effected, by which a clergyman 
may compound his right to this annuity by 
resigning his liability to duty, and receiving 
a reduced share according to an established 
scale, varying with age, etc. Vigorous efforts 
were made to raise the endowments needed 
and to fund the capital received from Gov¬ 
ernment : the result is a capital of over 
$35,000,000. The Irish Church has about 
640,000 members out of a total population 
of 5,200,000, or forms one-eighth of the 
whole. There are 1218 parishes in the 
twelve Dioceses. 


It will be seen that as a historical fact the 
two parties into which the Old Irish Church 
has been divided by political and race an¬ 
tagonisms have changed sides. So long as 
the Anglo-Roman Church was in the Papal 
obedience the old Irish Church, while hold¬ 
ing the same doctrines, was in opposition. 
As soon as the Anglo-Irish Church initiated 
reform, the Celtic Irish Church threw itself 
eagerly into the Roman obedience. 

Irregularity. A canonical impediment; 
an incapacity for holding a benefice for 
some act requiring punishment. It also 
means the impediments to the reception of 
Holy Orders, such as occurred by a personal 
blemish, as under the Jewish law, or under 
some disability, as being slaves or serfs, or 
illegitimate, or having received baptism on 
a sick-bed, or as guilty of some crime which 
rendered them notorious. The 113th Canon 
of 1603 a.d. threatened the clergyman re¬ 
vealing “ any crime or offense committed to 
his trust and secrecy” in confession with the 
“pain of irregularity.” It involved the 
loss of his benefice, if the clergyman had 
one, or else incapacitated him for holding 
one if he had not. 

Isaac. The incidents of a life which has 
such momentous lessons in it are strangely 
few. The child of a promise made to Abra¬ 
ham in consequence of his faith, he had from 
his youth ever before him the memory of 
that act of still greater faith in which he 
was a participant, even though in a subordi¬ 
nate mode. His character seems to have 
been ever quiet, thoughtful, reserved, and 
deeply devout. His mother seems to have 
resented for him the jealous ridicule of Ish- 
mael. When a youth, certainly old enough 
to know something of the transaction, he 
was offered up by his father, who received 
him again in a figure from the dead. It 
would seem that this solemn action shadowed 
his life ever after. His father procured for 
him his wife Rebecca when he was forty, and 
he was childless for twenty years. Fifteen 
years later he buried his father. By a fam¬ 
ine he was forced to leave Lahai-Roi and go 
to Gerar. Here God renewed His covenant 
with him. The same timidity which influ¬ 
enced his father led him to deny that Rebecca 
was his wife to Abimelech, the Philistine 
king. In this quiet life lay, too, the capa¬ 
cities for something greater, for he increased 
in wealth and in importance till he roused 
the jealousy of the Philistines, whose herds¬ 
men contended with his servants for the 
wells. The deceit of Jacob, in wrongfully 
claiming what God would have given him 
openly, broke into Isaac’s domestic peace, 
and by Rebecca’s persuasion he sent him to 
Laban, in Padan Aram. His life is now for 
us a blank till we read that Jacob returned 
with a large family and considerable prop¬ 
erty, in time to see his father before his 
death. “ And the days of Isaac were a hun¬ 
dred and fourscore years, . . . and his sons 
Esau and Jacob buried him.” The quiet 
patience and the peaceableness of his 







ISAIAH 


395 


ISAIAH, BOOK OF 


character are the leading traits, which seem 
to be CHRiST-like, but in one great point he 
stands the sole, the pre-eminent type of our 
Lord. In the act of sacrifice by which 
Abraham placed him upon the altar of wood 
and was about to slay him, he was the type of 
the atonement. It was the prefigurement in 
action of the one great sacrifice on the same 
mount nineteen centuries later, by his de¬ 
scendant according to the flesh, Jesus 
Christ. It was a figure, a type, and a 
prophecy of the death and the resurrection of 
Christ, and if larger teaching were given 
to him as to its meaning, he may well have 
loved to meditate upon it ever after. 

Isaiah (Heb. Geshayahu ,—Jehovah is 
helper), a name in its abbreviated English 
form found oply in connection with the ear¬ 
liest of the four greater prophets, but in its 
fuller Hebrew form occurring also as the 
name of certain Levites in the time of David 
(1 Chron. xxv. 3 ; xxvi. 25). The prophet was 
the son of Amos, of whom nothing is known 
except that he is not the same with the 
prophet Amos, the two names being very' 
different in Hebrew, though written alike in 
the Greek of the Septuagint. Of his per¬ 
sonal history almost nothing has been pre¬ 
served except the few incidental notices in 
the course of his prophecies. In 2 Chron. 
xxvi. 22, we are told that he was the histo¬ 
rian of Uzziah’s reign. There is a tradi¬ 
tion that he lived to the reign of Manasseh, 
and was put to death under that monarch by 
being “ sawn asunder,” to which Heb. xi. 
37, is supposed to allude ; but this tradition 
is very doubtful. We only know that he 
prophesied “ in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, 
Ahaz, and Sezekiah, kings of Judah” (Isa. 
i. 1), and that he was still actively en¬ 
gaged in his duties in the fourteenth year 
of the last reign (Isa. xxxvi. 1 ; xxxvii.- 
xxxix.). Supposing his prophecies to have 
begun in the last year of Uzziah (comp. Isa. 
vi. 1), they must have extended over a period 
of at least forty-seven years, and as neither 
the beginning nor the end of them is fixed, 
they may have covered a considerably longer 
period. Isaiah is shown by his prophecies 
to have been a man of high culture and of 
great eloquence. He was the counselor of 
kings, an eminent patriot, and a wise states¬ 
man. He was evidently much esteemed by 
Hezekiah (Isa. xxxvii. 2 ; xxxviii. 1; xxxix. 
3-8). 

Isaiah, Book of. This, in point of time 
and of the order of the Canon, is the first, 
as it is in many respects the most important, 
of the “Greater Prophets.” The author 
lived in Judah before, during, and after the 
captivity of the kingdom of the ten tribes, 
which took place in the sixth year of Heze¬ 
kiah (2 Kings xviii. 9-12). its prophecies 
are mainly addressed to Judah, although, as 
in the other prophets, there are burdens in re¬ 
lation to other nations occupying xiii.—xxiii., 
and some other utterances not especially re¬ 
lating to Judah, as xxviii. 

Isaiah’s prophecies are the centre of a large 


prophetic activity. Amos also prophesied 
under Uzziah, and Hosea and Micah were 
strictly contemporaries of Isaiah, while Joel 
is referred by many writers to the same pe¬ 
riod. It was a great crisis in the history of 
Israel, when the northern kingdom was car¬ 
ried into captivity and the southern also was 
threatened with the same fate. At no other 
period in the history of the ancient Church 
was there such an outburst of prophetic 
teaching, except at the still darker time of 
the captivity of Judah. 

The period was one of great political 
vicissitudes, and to understand the prophecies 
of Isaiah it is necessary to take into con¬ 
sideration the great political events of the 
several reigns under which he lived. Uzziah 
was a wise and good monarch, succeeding to 
the throne at the age of sixteen, after the 
assassination of his father, and reigning fifty- 
two years. His long, wise, and pious reign 
brought about a state of great comparative 
prosperity. He subdued the Edomites and 
other lesser tribes of that part of Arabia, 
and took Elath, which he fortified as a com¬ 
mercial port at the head of the east branch 
of the lied Sea. He extended his sway 
over the Ammonites and Moabites on the 
east of the Jordan valley and the Dead 
Sea. They had hitherto been tributary to 
Israel; he made them tributary to Judah. 
On the west also he was successful against 
the Philistines, and razed their principal 
cities and built new fortified towns in their 
territory. He also strengthened Jerusalem, 
and brought a large army into a high state 
of efficiency, and thoroughly equipped them 
according to the fashion of the times. His 
internal administration was equally good. 
He loved agriculture, dug many wells, and 
built towns for the protection of the flocks 
in the parts of the wilderness fitted for pas¬ 
turage, and he cultivated vineyards and 
orchards for himself. He was under the 
influence of a certain prophet Zechariah 
(not the later Zechariah of the Canon, 2 
Chron. xxvi. 5), and never fell away from the 
worship of Jehovah. But towards the close 
of his reign his prosperity was too much for 
him ; he became inflated with pride and in¬ 
sisted on taking upon himself the priest’s 
office of burning incense (ch. xxvi , 16-21). 
The High-Priest remonstrated with him in 
vain, and he was smitten with leprosy. In 
consequence of this he was obliged to live 
apart the rest of his life and govern the king¬ 
dom through his son Jotham (2 Kings xv. 
5). The only prophecy of Isaiah distinctly 
dated in this reign is chapter vi., in its last 
year; but the previous chapters may prob¬ 
ably be considered as belonging to its closing 
years, except chapter i., which is rather a 
general introduction to the whole book. It 
was, however, under the state of things 
brought about by this reign that Isaiah’s 
earlier prophecies were uttered. 

Jotham succeeded his father at the age of 
twenty-five years and reigned sixteen years. 
He does not appear to have been a man of 




ISAIAH, BOOK OF 396 ISAIAH, BOOK OF 


the same force of character, but followed his 
father’s policy as far as he was able. He 
further strengthened Jerusalem, and built 
various fortifications in Judah. He also 
subdued a revolt of the Ammonites. Near 
the end of his reign the confederacy between 
Pekah, King of Israel, and Rezin, King of 
Damascus, againsl Judah, began to assume 
threatening proportions. There are none 
of Isaiah’s prophecies dated as belonging to 
this reign. 

Jotham was succeeded by Ahaz at the 
age of twenty. He reigned also sixteen 
years, and was both a weak and wicked 
king. The league of Israel and Syria for 
the utter destruction of the kingdom of 
Judah now came into active operation. 
They invaded the territories of Judah, and 
finally laid siege to Jerusalem. They failed 
in the latter attempt, but carried off vast 
spoil and an immense number of captives. 
The latter were given up at the instance of 
the prophet Oded (2 Kings xvi. ; 2 Chron. 
xxviii.); but the kingdom of Judah was 
otherwise greatly crippled. The allies took 
the port of Elath, and, as they had no use 
for it themselves, they restored it to the 
Edomites ; they laid waste the eastern part 
of Judah and gave an opportunity to the 
Philistines to invade the south and west. 
Ahaz, in his distress, and thus encompassed 
with enemies on every side, sought the as¬ 
sistance of Tiglath-Pileser, the king of As¬ 
syria. He helped him just so far as suited 
his own purposes, conquering and annexing 
to his own dominions Syria and the trans- 
Jordanic and northern parts of Israel; but 
he impoverished Ahaz by the enormous 
tribute laid upon him. He also led (or prob¬ 
ably forced) him to introduce the worship 
of his own gods into Judah. During this 
reign Isaiah appears as a patriot prophet, 
and probably the saving of Jerusalem was 
largely due to his energy and influence. 
The prophecies of chapters vii.-ix. belong to 
this reign, and probably also those of x.-xii. 
The difficulties in the interpretation of the 
former are largely removed by remember¬ 
ing that the purpose of Pekah and Rezin 
was nothing less than the utter and perma¬ 
nent destruction of the kingdom of Judah, 
and that the promise of the Messiah was a 
proof that this purpose must fail. 

Hezekiah, the best of the kings of Judah, 
succeeded Ahaz, and reigned twenty-nine 
years (2 Kings xviii. 5, 6). He restored the 
temple and its worship, and destroyed the 
11 high places.” He also destroyed the brazen 
serpent which had been preserved from the 
time of Moses, but which had become an 
object of idolatrous worship. After the fall 
of the kingdom of Israel, which occurred in 
his sixth year, he invited the remnants of 
those tribes to join in his great celebration of 
the Passover. His invitation was generally 
ridiculed (2 Chron. xxx. 10), yet was finally 
accepted by u many of Ephraim, and Manas- 
seh, Issachar, and Zebulun” (ch. xxx., 18), 
and probably by smaller numbers of other 


tribes. From this time the remnants of all 
the tribes seem to have looked upon Judah 
as their head, and gradually becoming in¬ 
corporated with it, the continuity of the 
whole nation was thus kept up. This fact 
is of some importance in understanding those 
later passages of the Old Testament, and es¬ 
pecially those of the New, in which the ex¬ 
isting nation is considered as representing 
the whole il twelve tribes.” Hezekiah at¬ 
tacked the Philistines, retook the lost cities 
and gained others ; he also refused the pay¬ 
ment of tribute to Assyria. Shalmaneser 
(successor to Tiglath-Piieser) marched 
against him, but was detained five years by 
the unsuccessful siege of Tyre. Meanwhile 
Hezekiah strengthened Jerusalem, and the 
people were prevented by the efforts of Isaiah 
from forming an alliance with Egypt. Shal¬ 
maneser was succeeded by Sargon, who in¬ 
vaded Judah twice. His first attack had no 
important results, and is merely alluded to 
in the history; in the second he took large 
numbers of the cities of Judah. Hezekiah 
at this time (in his fourteenth year) was very 
ill, and in answer to his earnest prayer re¬ 
ceived the promise of the prolongation of his 
life for fifteen years, the going back of the 
shadow upon the sun-dial of Ahaz being 
given him as an assurance of the promise 
(Isa. xxxviii. 1-8). The report of his sick¬ 
ness and recovery reached Babylon, and the 
king sent him an embassy of congratulation. 
There is every reason to suppose that this 
embassy covered a political purpose, and the 
suggestion of an alliance between Judah and 
Babylon against their common oppressor, 
Assyria. It was doubtless to prove the value 
of his alliance that Hezekiah ostentatiously 
showed to the ambassadors all his possessions, 
especially his treasures and “ the house of 
his armor.” In consequence of this, Isaiah 
pronounced the doom that all these things, 
together with the descendants of Hezekiah 
himself, should be carried away to Babylon, 
—a prophecy which in the existing state of 
empires seemed impossible of accomplish¬ 
ment, but which was accurately fulfilled 
after the conquest of Nineveh by Babylon. 
Sennacharib succeeded Sargon and twice in¬ 
vaded Judah. Hezekiah paid him three 
hundred talents o*f silver and thirty of gold, 
and suffered the loss of part of his dominions, 
which were given to the Philistines. Egypt 
also was terribly defeated by Sennacharib. 
His second attack on Judah was most con¬ 
temptuous of the God of Israel, and was 
miraculously defeated. Whenever the people 
relied on Egypt, they suffered ; when such 
aid was out of the question, they were deliv¬ 
ered. Hezekiah survived this last invasion 
only one year. 

In the opening of the book he describes 
his prophecies as “ the vision of Isaiah.” 
This word is here evidently to be taken in 
the general sense of the revelation commu¬ 
nicated to him. Of “ vision” in the stricter 
sense, as used by several of the other proph¬ 
ets, there is but a single instance (ch. vi.) 




ISAIAH, BOOK OF 


397 


ISAIAH, BOOK OF 


in the whole book. The style of Isaiah has 
been generally recognized by critics as of 
the highest order. He has been truly de¬ 
scribed as the most complete and many- 
sided of all the prophets, and passages of 
surpassing eloquence may be selected from 
almost any part of his writings. He is 
often called “ the Evangelical Prophet,” 
from the clearness and fullness of his Messi¬ 
anic predictions, and especially from the dis¬ 
tinctness with which he foretells our Lord’s 
vicarious suffering for our sins (lii. 13-liii.). 

During the last century the i ntegrity of the 
book has been very earnestly called in ques¬ 
tion. The book naturally falls into two great 
parts, chapter i.-xxxix. and chapter xl.- 
lxvi., the latter forming one complete and 
closely connected prophecy, while the for¬ 
mer is made up of a great number of shorter 
and more or less disconnected prophecies, 
and includes some historical matter. The 
first suspicion that the whole was not the 
work ot Isaiah was suggested by Koppe, 
about 1780 a.d., and related only to a dif¬ 
ferent authorship of these two parts. His 
views were taken up and extended by many 
German writers, until now the supposition 
of a “ Deutero-Isaiah” has become the pre¬ 
vailing one among German scholars. There 
have been, however, all along, earnest de¬ 
fenders of the integrity of the book among 
German scholars. Of these, during the 
present century, may he mentioned Jahn 
(1802 a.d.), Moller (1825 a.d.), Kleinert 
(1829 a.d. ), Henstenberg and Havernick 
(1849 a.d.), Stier (1850 a.d.), Keil (1853 
a.d.), and Nagelsbach (1877 a.d.). The 
last is translated in the large commentary 
edited by Schaff. In the course of the con¬ 
troversy it became evident to both parties 
that the arguments relied on to disprove 
Isaiah’s authorship of the last twenty-seven 
chapters were of equal force against many in 
the earlier part. The critics were therefore 
compelled to dismember that also, and reject 
Isaiah’s authorship of (as stated by Ewald) 
chapters xii. 2; xiv. 23; xxi. 1-10; xxiv.- 
xxvii. ; xxxiv.; xxxv., or about one-quarter 
of the whole. Other critics differ in regard 
to several of these passages, and would deny 
Isaiah’s authorship of other passages. Many 
subsidiary reasons have been urged against 
the integrity of the book, but these have 
been amply met, and confessedly are only 
of secondary importance. The chief argu¬ 
ment, and the only one on which much 
reliance is placed, is that the author of the 
second part takes his stand-point at the close 
of the Babylonian captivity and thence 
looks forward to the subsequent future. 

It is urged, with reason, that the date of 
an author must be determined from his own 
description of the times in which he lived 
and in which he places himself. Ihis prin¬ 
ciple may be fully accepted, and on it may 
be constructed the strongest argument for 
the unity of Isaiah. *The question is simply 
whether the author of the disputed portions 
actually lived in the time of the close of the 


captivity ; or whether, living at an earlier 
date, he merely transported himself in pro¬ 
phetic thought to that period. Now, if we 
are willing to set aside entirely the unques¬ 
tioned tradition of all the previous centu¬ 
ries, and the opinions of all students of the 
Bible in the ages before us ; and if we can 
explain away the citations in the New Testa¬ 
ment from the latter part of the book under 
Isaiah’s name (St. Matt. iii. 3 and parallels ; 
xii. 17-21; St. Luke iv. 17-19; St. John xii. 
38 ; Acts viii. 30, 32 ; Rom. x. 16 ; x. 20, 21); 
if we can set aside the express statement of 
Josephus (Ant.,xi. 1, $2) that Cyrus read in 
the book which the prophet Isaiah had left 
behind him the prophecies concerning him¬ 
self ; if we can forget the unity of design 
connecting the last part with what has gone 
before, and attach no weight to the unity of 
diction pervading both parts ; if we could 
account for the fading out from history of 
the name of the author of such magnificent 
and important prophecies, and their being 
falsely attributed to Isaiah;—if all these 
things, on which there is not here space to 
enlarge, could be set aside, there yet remain 
conclusive reasons why the second part of 
Isaiah cannot be assigned to the period of 
the close of the captivity. (1) There is in 
this second part a recognition of the sacrifi¬ 
cial worship of the Jews as actually going 
on in the time of the writer. Chapter xl. 16 
seems to imply this, but lxvi. 3 is a distinct 
recognition of it. Now we know that all 
such worship was entirely suspended during 
the exile. (2) The denunciations of the 
bold and open idolatry of the people occupy 
no inconsiderable portion of this second part 
(xl. 13-20; xlviii. 5; lvii.5-8; lxv. 2-4, 11; 
lxvi. 17). But it is well known that they 
were finally weaned from idolatry by the 
exile, and that even the little practiced by 
them at the first of it was, as appears from 
Ezekiel, of an entirely secret character. The 
critics endeavor to parry the force of this 
evidence by supposing these passages to have 
been written for the idolatrous remnant who 
continued to live in Judaea. History, how¬ 
ever, shows that there was no such remnant. 
The people who were not carried off by 
Nebuchadnezzar sought refuge from him 
in Egypt, and on the return from the cap¬ 
tivity there is no recognition of any Israel¬ 
ites as remaining in the land. (3) Through¬ 
out this entire part the prediction of Cyrus 
and of the things belonging to the close of 
the captivity are claimed as proofs of the 
foreknowledge of God, and therefore of His 
rightful claim to the allegiance of His peo¬ 
ple. (See, e.< 7 .,xliv. 24-xlv. 6; xlv. 19-21; 
xlvi. 8-13; xlviii. 5-8.) It is inconceivable 
that any prophet could have used such ar¬ 
guments except he were writing so long be¬ 
fore the events that they were not yet within 
the scope of human sagacity. The internal 
evidence of the book is therefore entirely in 
accordance with the unbroken tradition of 
its unity. 

Rev. Prof. Frederic Gardiner, D.D. 




JACOB 


398 


JAMES (SAINT) 


J. 


Jacob. The grandson of Abraham. His 
father Isaac was fifty-nine years old when 
the twins Esau and Jacob were born. It was 
foretold to his mother Rebecca that Jacob’s 
descendant should rule his brothers. From 
this Rebecca endeavored, on at least one 
memorable occasion, to push his interests 
forward at his brother’s expense. The two 
young men were brought up together 
sharing their father’s wandering life. Esau 
was loved by Isaac, Jacob by his mother. It 
was characteristic of Jacob that he should 
take advantage of his brother’s faintness after 
a long chase, and buy of him the coveted 
birthright foretold to be his. Esau probably 
thought little of the sale of it for a mess of 
pottage, but Jacob treasured it up, and was 
the more ready to lend himself to his 
mother’s instigation to perpetrate the well- 
known deceit upon his father. He obtained 
the blessing by fraud and it brought its own 
punishment, in the hatred of his brother 
and his own flight from home. Rebecca’s 
influence over Isaac was great enough to 
persuade him to send Jacob to seek a wife 
in his kinsman Laban’s family. On this 
journey was renewed to him at Bethel the 
covenant, which Jehovah had made with 
Abraham and Isaac, in the vision of the lad¬ 
der reaching down to earth. The fraud which 
he had practiced was repaid him by Laban, 
who betrothed to him Rachel, the younger 
daughter, but on the marriage night substi¬ 
tuted Leah, the older. Jacob was indignant, 
but Laban bestowed on him his other 
daughter also, and gave to each a hand¬ 
maid. Leah bore to Jacob, Reuben, Simeon, 
Levi, Judah ; Bilhah, Rachel’s maid, bore 
him Dan and Naphtali; Zilpah, Leah’s 
maid, Gad and Asher; Leah gave him Is- 
sachar and Zebulun and Rachel, Joseph 
and Benjamin. The wary, observant char¬ 
acter of Jacob was shown in the manage¬ 
ment of Laban’s flocks. It was while he 
was serving Laban, and before Rachel’s 
death, that Joseph, a lad of seventeen, was 
sold by his brethren into slavery. His early 
sin was sorely visited upon him by Laban’s 
fraud, the turbulence of his sons, and the 
loss of Joseph. After twenty-one years’ ab¬ 
sence, finding Laban very jealous because 
of his success in caring for his own flocks, 
he set out to return home to his father. His 
journey home was marked by three dan¬ 
gers,—the angry pursuit of Laban, whom 
God warned not to speak either good or bad 
to Jacob; the meeting with his angry 
brother Esau, whom he propitiated with a 
present, which, however, Esau would not 
accept; on the night before, when in 
anxious sorrow he sent his caravan forward 
and paused at the brook Jabbok, the Angel 


of the Lord, the Jehovah-Angel, wrestled 
with him. In that mysterious contest, 
which was typical of the religious earnest¬ 
ness and perseverance of the Patriarch, there 
is much significance, both of the weakness 
and the strength of the people. Both the 
contest, the halting, and the blessing have 
rested together with .the name upon Israel. 
Jacob rested at Shechem, where occurred 
the disgrace of his daughter Dinah and the 
vengeance which Simeon and Levi exacted 
of the Shechemites. Here Divine interposi¬ 
tion took him to Bethel, where he purged his 
family of the idols they had learned to use 
in Padan-aram, and renewed his covenant 
with God. Apparently he reached his 
father not long before Isaac’s death. Jacob 
is left here by the sacred narrative, and the 
acts of Judah are next recorded and the his¬ 
tory of Joseph-is given. Jacob went down 
to Egypt to his son Joseph when he was an 
hundred and thirty years old. 

The life of Jacob is marked in the sacred 
history. He was a type of Christ, as a 
supplanter; the second Adam, not casting 
out, but supplanting the first Adam with a 
better life. In this view his fraud is not to 
be considered as at all justified. The bless¬ 
ing would have been given him could he 
have waited God’s time. His after-career 
was a just sequel to the deceit, while with it 
were mingled manj 7 Divine comforts and 
blessings. His character was undoubtedly 
formed in reality by his life and struggles 
under Laban’s jealous and repressive 
treatment, and but for his own shrewdness 
he would have fared badly under his kins¬ 
man ; thrice were his wages changed. His 
patience was tested and developed ; he felt 
the power of God over about him ; his deep 
religiousness was ever-quickened. His dream 
on the plain; the meeting of the angels at 
Mahanaim; the wrestling with the Man at 
Peniel; his renewed covenant with God at 
Bethel, and throughout his whole career his 
vow of the tenth which could only be offered 
as a sacrifice, educated him in the life hid 
with God. In two points was his life a 
type of our Lord’s: he was the one who 
should be a substitute offering a better, 
holier life; he was a type of Christ in that 
he prevailed in his wrestling. So our 
Lord’s human trials and temptations and 
prayers and strong cry prevailed, and He, 
as the Patriarch of old (Gen. xlix.), has left 
a perpetual blessing behind Him on all 
who believe on Him who is the God of 
Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of 
Jacob. 

James, St., usually ifurnamed the Great, 
the brother of John the beloved disciple. 
The notices of him in the Gospels are very 







JAMES (SAINT) 


399 


JAMES THE JUST 


few. With his brother he was a fisherman, 
working in his father Zebedee’s boat, when 
he was called by Jesus to follow Him. He 
was one of the Twelve, and of these he was 
the second of the three who stood nearest our 
Lord. (“ And He taketh with Him Peter, 
James, and John.”) He with the other 
two went into the death-chamber of Jairus’ 
daughter. With them he was on the 
Mount of Transfiguration. His zeal pro¬ 
cured him the surname Boanerges,—Son of 
Thunder. It brought upon him the rebuke 
of the Lord. For him and his brother his 
mother preferred her petition that they 
might sit, the one on the right hand, the 
other on the left, in His Kingdom. He was 
one of the four who questioned the Master 
about the last days. He was one of the 
three at the Agon}” in the Garden. Ex¬ 
cept the record of his name in the list in 
Acts i. 13, he is not mentioned till we read 
that Herod killed James, the brother of 
John, with sword (a.d. 44), when he 
drank of his Master’s cup and received his 
Master’s baptism. Every notice of him by 
the Evangelists, slight as it is, leaves the 
impression that there was a nobleness and 
loveliness in his character. That he and 
his brother were chosen to be our Lord’s 
most intimate earthly companions proves 
their sympathy with Him, if not the insight, 
which they afterwards assuredly received, 
into His nature. Even their ambitions 
tended to better things. Of his labors we 
know nothing. Everything that is told of 
him outside the Gospels and Acts is purely 
legendary. His mission to Spain (of which 
he is the patron saint) is wholly mythical. 
His twelve years of work in Jerusalem were 
not wasted we may be sure, but it is one of 
the mysterious acts of Providence that he 
should have been killed just when, humanly 
speaking, he could have been most usefully 
employed. 

James, St., the Less, properly the Little, 
the son of Alphaeus, is another instance where 
the life of one chosen to do the Lord’s 
work has left no earthly record save the 
name. Their work we know is not for¬ 
gotten in the Book of Kemembrance, and 
here it was merged into the sum of the labor 
necessary for founding the Church ; but ex¬ 
cept his title, the son of Alphaeus, and his 
own name in the list of the Apostles, we 
know nothing about him. It is here as¬ 
sumed that he is not the same as the James 
to whom the Lord appeared at His Resur¬ 
rection (1 Cor. xv. 7), who presided at the 
Council at Jerusalem, and who wrote the 
Epistle. There is considerable difficulty 
upon either hypothesis, but upon a review 
of the whole evidence it is more probable 
that James the Little was not James the 
brother of the Lord. 

James the Just, the brother of the Lord. 
It is claimed that this James was really 
the cousin of our Lord, and the son of 
Alphaeus, or Clopas, names which can be 
shown to be identical, for the title Brother, 


often meant Cousin, as Son is often “ de¬ 
scendant;” that when it is said, “neither 
did His brethren believe on Him,” it does 
not necessarily include all His brethren; 
that the omission of the title Brethren of 
the Lord from the names of James the 
Little and Jude, his brother, does not prove 
that they were not Ilis brethren; that it is 
strange that our Lord should have in¬ 
trusted His mother to St. John, when there 
were those whose duty it was to care for her, 
had there been any brethren according to 
the Flesh. The reply is that “ brother,” 
denoting a kinship, is always used accurately 
in the New Testament, that the Lord’s 
brethren appear separately in the Gospel ; 
that the Lord’s brethren are separated 
from the Apostles in 1 Cor. ix. 5; that 
James was called a pillar and distinguished 
from the Apostles by St. Paul (Gal. ii. 9, 
and Gal. i. 9). The arguments can be 
seen in full for the identity of the two in 
Smith’s “Dictionary of the Bible;” for 
the view that they are separate persons, see 
Professor Plumptre’s Introduction to Epistle 
of St. James, in the Cambridge Bible for 
Schools. 

Assuming, then, that James, the brother 
of the Lord, was a separate person, the 
recorded facts of his life are almost as mea¬ 
gre as those in the life of St. James the 
Greater. His brethren did not believe on 
him during his life. “ A prophet,” said our 
Lord, “ is not without honor but in his own 
country and among his own kin and in his 
own house.” They, with His mother and 
sisters, seek Him out, desiring to speak with 
Him to withdraw Him from His course. They 
were at the last feast of Tabernacles that 
preceded His Passion. They were, or at any 
rate James was, at Jerusalem at the time of 
His Passion, for the risen Lord was seen first 
of Cephas, then of the Twelve, then of the five 
hundred brethren at once, tben of James, 
then of all the Apostles (1 Cor. xv. 5-7). 
The brethren were present with the Twelve 
at the election of St. Matthias. Then James 
appears as the pillar of the Church at Jeru¬ 
salem when St. Paul goes up thither, then 
he is the presiding Apostle at the Council 
(Acts xv.). Then he receives St. Paul upon 
his last visit to Jerusalem. There is noth¬ 
ing more recorded in the sacred narrative. 
His Epistle is his great work. That tells us 
more of his character than anything else 
we have. The account of his death as 
given by Eusebius (E.H., ii. 23) out of Heg- 
gesipus fits into the current of events and is 
marked with the traits implied in his Epis¬ 
tle so as to bear at least the air of the truth. 
“ Noted for his asceticism—a Nazarite—he 
had gained great influence with the people, 
whom he taught concerning Jesus the 
Door. He bore the title of Oblias, the bul¬ 
wark of the people, and the Righteous or 
Just. He frequented the sanctuary in con¬ 
stant prayer for the people, so that his knees 
became callous. He was urged to stay those 
who had gone astray after Jesus, and for 





JAMES THE JUST 


400 


JAMES THE JUST 


this purpose was put upon the pinnacle of 
the Temple and called upon to proclaim 
from thence, ‘ What is the door of Jesus ?’ 
‘ And he answered with a loud voice, Why- 
ask ye me concerning Jesus the Son of 
Man? He hath sat down in heaven on the 
right hand of the Great Power, and is 
about to come in the clouds of heaven.’ 
Upon this many believed and cried ‘Hosanna 
to the son of David.’ But the Scribes and 
Pharisees who had set him upon the pinna¬ 
cle were filled with wrath and cast him 
down, and the people in the court stoned 
him, and a fuller beat out his brains while, 
like St. Stephen, he was praying for his 
murderers.” Such is the bare outline of the 
beautiful narrative Eusebius quotes in full. 
In it there is nothing improbable, but rather 
it falls in with all we know of the state of 
mind among the Jews then. 

It is difficult to fix the date of the death 
of St. James. If the Epistle to the He¬ 
brews be St. Paul’s, is there a reference to 
St. James in chapter xiii. 7? “Remem¬ 
ber them which have the rule over you, 
who have spoken unto you the word of God : 
considering the end of their conversation : 
Jesus Christ the same yesterday, to-day, 
and forever.” If so, then, as the Epistle was 
written about 64 a.d., the martyrdom oc¬ 
curred later. In fact, Heggesipus (Eusebius, 
E. H.) says, and straightway Vespasian be¬ 
gan the siege, placing it then about 70 a.d. 
His Epistle has been questioned, rejected, 
and when received has been the subject of 
countless controversies. The Church has 
always received it, though it was classed for 
a time with the doubtful Epistles. This 
hesitation most likely was because it was 
imperfectly circulated, being addressed to 
the Jewish converts. At the time of the 
Reformation it was violently discussed, and 
by some rejected because of its teaching, 
which seemed so opposed to that of St. Paul. 
The date of the Epistle has much to do with 
considering the extent of that alleged antag¬ 
onism. If (with the Cambridge Editor 
Plumptre) it is dated before the Council of 
Jerusalem, it must be placed before 51 a.d. 
As our space only permits us to give the re¬ 
sults, not the details by which this conclu¬ 
sion is reached, we will accept as proven 
this date in place of the later one of 61 a.d. 

The contents of the Epistle have caused 
great debates, it being claimed that he was 
opposed to St. Paul. There is no foundation 
whatever for this in the inspired narrative. 
Its real source is in the perversions of the 
heretical romance of the Recognitions and 
the Homilies of the pseudo-Clement, used 
with critical skill and infidel principles by 
the German critics. This, then, is summa¬ 
rily dismissed, for James the Just was not 
the man to give the right hand of fellowship 
to a man to whom he was opposed. Let us 
look at the contents of the Epistle, and then 
we will be able to judge of the relation of 
St. James’ doctrine of Works to St. Paul’s 
doctrine of Faith. There are many paral¬ 


lelisms of thought and of teaching in this 
Epistle to that of St. John Baptist. Of 
these are James i. 22-27 with St. Matt. iii.; 
James ii. 15, 16, with St. Luke iii. 11; James 
ii. 19, 20; St. Matt. iii. 9 ; James v. 1-6; St. 
Matt. iii. 10-12. There are others to the Ser¬ 
mon on the Mount ( e.g ., James ii. 14; St. 
Matt. vii. 21-23; James v. 2 to St. Matt. vi. 
19). The Jewish cast of thought, the refer¬ 
ences to the Old Testament history (to 
Abraham, Job, Rahab, and Elijah), the 
probable influence of the Wisdom of the 
son of Sirach, make this a peculiar Epistle. 
It is more intense than the Epistles of St. 
Peter, and in this respect is like the First 
Epistle of St. John. Its ascetic tone, its 
practical teaching, its stern reproofs, all 
mark it. But its doctrine of the relation of 
Faith to Works gives it a special prominence 
relative to St. Paul’s Epistles to the Romans 
and Galatians. St. Paul asserts Faith without 
Works alone can save. St. James teaches, 
“ I will show thee my Faith by my Works.” 
St. Paul condemns dead works. St. James 
condemns a dead Faith. St. Paul adduces 
Abraham’s obedience before circumcision as 
the obedience of Faith, “ and it was counted 
unto him for righteousness.” St. James ad¬ 
duces the obedience of Abraham in offering 
up Isaac as the righteousness by works. 
“ Seest thou how Faith wrought with his 
works, and by works was Faith made per¬ 
fect (ch. ii. 22). Is there any antagonism be¬ 
tween these two Apostles, both zealous for 
their Master, both of the straitest sect, both 
eager to teach the whole truth? It is im¬ 
possible to believe this. The Apostle to 
the Gentiles was writing to the Gentiles as 
well as to the Jews, and he adduces one part 
of Abraham’s life, the beginning of his won¬ 
derful career. Faith in him must be prece¬ 
dent to action, and all have their blessed sig¬ 
nificance from his faith. St. James the Just, 
the unceasing pleader for his people, the 
Bishop in the Holy City, argues with the 
faithful of the Dispersion, from the crown¬ 
ing act of faith in Abraham, when his act 
in its sublimity proved his faith. There is 
no antagonism, but, rather, both taught the 
very same truth. For in one of those grand 
outpourings of his enthusiasm, St. Paul longs 
that he may “ be found in Him,” not having 
mine own righteousness, which is of the Law, 
but that which is through the faith of 
Christ, the righteousness which is of God 
by faith, that I may know Him, and the 
power of His resurrection, and the fellow¬ 
ship of His sufferings, being made conform¬ 
able to His death if by any means I might 
attain to the resurrection of the dead.” It 
is impossible to exclude work, life-long 
work, sanctified by Faith, from these words. 
The fellowship of His suffering, the confor¬ 
mation to His death, the capacity for having 
the power of His resurrection unto life rest¬ 
ing upon him, demand a preceding and con¬ 
tinuing presence of Faith shown in and by 
works. It is noticeable that St. James does 
not appeal to the Law, “which was four 


/ 






JEHOVAH 


401 


JEREMIAH 


hundred years after,” but to the life of Abra¬ 
ham to establish his position. So doth St. 
Paul, but St. Paul contrasts it for the Gen¬ 
tiles with the mere literal outward obedience 
to the Law, while St. James in all his 
teaching which refers to the Law is writing 
to those Christians who yet felt the binding 
authority of the Law, and ’urges the true 
law of liberty.' It is the fact that a similar 
use of the Law is made by the writer of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews that indicates that 
St. Paul must be its author. It is a cavil¬ 
ing spirit, or one which, too curiously con¬ 
trasting the two Apostles, does not mark 
their agreement, and overlooks the fact that 
they were addressing Christian audiences 
differently trained, that can now insist that 
St. James and St. Paul are in opposition to 
each other. 

The Epistle is not written upon any fixed 
plan. It deals just with the unsettled, 
tempted, self-indulgent, self-excusing man. 
Then it passes to practicing the duty of 
caring in every way for the poor as a mat¬ 
ter of practical faith. Then St. James re¬ 
proves his readers for sins of the tongue; 
roused by this, the next chapter (iv.) and part 
of the filth are filled with warning and in¬ 
vective against the careless, the rich, the 
worldly-minded. The pause is sudden, the 
return to a gentle tone is quite remarkable 
after so vehement an outburst, and with 
earnest suggestions upon patience and prayer, 
he closes with an abruptness that occurs in 
no other book in the ^ew Testament. It is 
in perfect keeping with the character of one 
who was filled with noble, devout asceticism, 
who was a keen observer and a fearless de¬ 
nouncer of sin, who though not having a 
polished education was a master of the learn¬ 
ing which maketh wise unto salvation, who 
deserved pre-eminently the title of the 
Righteous. 

Jehovah. The glorious name of God. In 
the English Version it is always translated 
Lord, as Elohim is translated God. It oc¬ 
curs in its simplest form Jah in the lxviii. 
Psalm, 4 v., and is transferred without trans¬ 
lation in Ex. vi. 3 ; Ps. lxxxiii. 18 ; Is. xii. 2 
(Jah Jehovah) xxvi. 4 (Jah Jehovah), 
and in compound names several times. It was 
the ineffable name, the Tetragrammaton, 
the name of four letters, and its true pro¬ 
nunciation is said to be lost. Its formal an¬ 
nouncement to the nation (for it was known 
before) was itself a step up for the chosen 
people. Its meaning, the self-existent One, 
the living God (vide Elohim), involved a 
doctrine which was the greatest revelation 
that the-Israelite had yet received, and one 
which of itself separated him from the hea¬ 
then. It was held to be wrong to pronounce 
it (Lev. xxiv. 16), and other vowels were at¬ 
tached to the four consonants, so that it is 
claimed that its true pronunciation is lost, 
but from the law of the formation of words 
in Hebrew its true pronunciation was 
Jahaveh or Jahveh. Its meaning from the 
Hebrew verb “ to be” is I Am that I Am. 

26 


He has the attribute of self-existence, and 
therefore of eternity. “ I am Jahveh, I alter 
not” (Mai. iii. 6). Again, in Joshua (xxii. 
22) and in Psalm 1. 1, the three titles El, 
Elohim, Jahveh follow in ascending in¬ 
tensity of meaning. “ The Mighty, The 
Mighty Ones, The Self-Existent,” hath 
spoken, or knoweth. It implies, then, per¬ 
sonality in the strictest sense, and gives the 
true Israelite a knowledge of Him, a knowl¬ 
edge which revelation can alone establish, 
that is beyond all the speculations of men. 
The distinction between El (and Elohim) 
as God known from nature, and Jehovah 
as known by His revelation of Himself, will 
give a clue to the reason why God —Elohim 
is used at times, Lord —Jehovah at others, 
and why again both names are combined. 
A study of these will reveal to him who will 
undertake it devoutly the marvelous depth 
and accurate language of Holy Scripture 
even when it apparently is most arbitrary. 

Jeremiah. The prophet whose life and 
prophetic work was spent in protests against 
those sins of his people, both political, eccle¬ 
siastical, and social, which led to the cap¬ 
tivity and to the burning of the Temple by 
Nebuchadnezzar. 

He was the son of Hilkiah, who may have 
been the Hilkiah the High-Priest, who dis¬ 
covered the Book of the Law in the House of 
the Lord (2 Kings xxii. 8). He was sanctified 
for his work from his mother’s womb, or¬ 
dained a prophet unto the nations. His birth¬ 
place was in the priestly city of Anathoth. 
He was called to his life-work quite early. 
Just at that date Egypt and Nineveh were 
the upper and lower millstones between 
which Judah feared she would be ground, 
and was wavering between alliances with 
either power, and finally chose to side with 
Egypt. .The people still hankered for the 
old idolatries, the Ashera (A. Y. groves), 
Astaroth and Moloch. They were guilty 
of open adultery, false swearing, and mur¬ 
der, and claimed that they were given over 
to do these abominations ; and withal punctu¬ 
ally performed the offices of the Temple. 
Whatever training Jeremiah as the son of a 
Priest and marked out for a prophet’s work 
received, it had ^s its basis a deep study of the 
Law and a grasp of its true spiritual meaning. 
He prophesied in the last eighteen years of 
Josiah’s reign (629 or 627 B.c. ?), and through 
the reigns of Jehoahaz (three months), of Je- 
hoiakim of eleven years, and of Jehoiachin 
(three months), and of Zedekiah of eleven 
years, in all, his prophecies were uttered dur¬ 
ing a period of forty years. It was a career 
full of sorrow and of misunderstanding and 
gainsaying. He was exposed to reproach and 
derision, his fellow-townsmen of Anathoth 
sought his life, his brethren dealt treacher¬ 
ously with him. He was smitten by a fel¬ 
low-priest, and put in the stocks because 
of his prophecies. The roll of his prophe¬ 
cies was burnt in the king’s presence. 
Though many of his prophecies had been 
fulfilled and political events were rapidly 




JEREMIAH 


402 


JESUS CHRIST 


hifrrying to the final catastrophe which lie 
foretold, yet he met with but little attention, 
and when he tried to leave thtf now nearly 
beleaguered city to attend to his private af¬ 
fairs at Anathoth, he was arrested as a 
deserter and put into ward under Jonathan 
the scribe in the prison till Zedekiah sent for 
him. Jeremiah told him plainly his coming 
fate and asked for better treatment. The 
king remanded him to prison, but ordered 
bread for him. But his political opponents 
obtained him from the king and cast him 
into a pit in the prison court, where Jere¬ 
miah sank in the mire. From this he was 
saved by Ebed Melech. Another interview, 
first with the feeble-minded King and then 
with Pashur and with Zephaniah, proved 
useless. 

In the eleventh year of Zedekiah the city 
was stormed, the Temple burnt, Zedekiah 
captured, his sons slain, and then himself 
blinded. But Jeremiah himself was cared for 
by Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, 
who had a special order about him. He settled 
at Mizpah till Gedeliah, the governor under 
Nebuchadnezzar, was murdered by Ishmael 
and the refugees at Mizpah carried away 
captive. Jeremiah was rescued by Johanan, 
who, despite Jeremiah’s prophecy of evil at¬ 
tendant on such a step, carried the whole 
company down into Egypt, where the prophet 
ended his days. The noble form of Jere¬ 
miah, the greatest? of all the historical and 
literary prophets, fades from our sight to¬ 
gether with the monarchy. In misery and 
continual peril of death he witnessed the fall 
of the state and the destruction of Jerusa¬ 
lem; he survived it, but found his tomb 
in an alien land. His was a rare courage, 
yet he was of a quiet, retiring disposition, 
shrinking under the great weight of responsi¬ 
bility laid upon him, despairing because so 
misunderstood and hated; alone, and sus¬ 
tained only by divine comfort. He speaks 
plainly, simply, honestly ; he makes no pre¬ 
tensions to great literary polish, and does not 
hesitate to repeat phrases and images and 
the same thoughts over and often, yet there 
is such intensity in his purpose that it is no 
mere repetition, but rather a Divine insist¬ 
ence. He falls back upon the Law and upon 
earlier predictions. His prophecies do not 
only relate to the Jews but also to the 
heathen, for whom also he was ordained a 
prophet. He bears the cup of fury to the 
Jews and to the Gentiles from the petty 
kings of Palestine to the kings of Egypt and 
Babylon (Sheshak). The burden of woe 
passed upon Egypt, Philistia, Moab, Am¬ 
mon, Edom, Damascus, Kedar and Hazor, 
Elam and Babylon (ch. xlvi.-li.). 

The prophecies, as they are now arranged, 
are evidently not in the order in which they 
were uttered. It is probable that when the 
prophet added many more like words to the 
new roll, which Baruch wrote at his mouth, 
he made the nucleus of the present work, 
but that it took a new shape. There are 
transpositions, and the whole order bespeaks 


haste and oversight such as would most natu¬ 
rally happen to one who was so hated, im¬ 
prisoned, maltreated, and forced into a for¬ 
eign land to die there a sorrowful death. The 
transpositions that are often dwelt upon as 
against the authenticity of the book are, in 
fact, the best internal proof of its genuine¬ 
ness. The later prophecies, inserted in the 
midst of certainly much earlier matter, show 
that the prophet had no opportunity to ar¬ 
range the transcripts of prophecies uttered 
in so troubled a time. It is probable that 
the last chapter was added by another hand, 
possibly by Baruch. Chapter xli. ends, “ thus 
far are the words of Jeremiah.” The next 
chapter contains material found in Jei. 
xxxix. and in 2 Kings xxiv. 8; xxv. 80; but 
it also contains other matter besides, and re¬ 
cords some things Jeremiah probably did 
not live to see,—the liberation of Jehoiachin, 
and the placing him at the royal table. 

Jeremiah, in some respects, is himself a 
type of Christ. A parallelism runs through 
their lives. Not only does he prophesy of 
Christ as the righteous Branch, the Lord 
our Righteousness, and utter other allusions 
to the Messianic kingdom, but in his own 
person there are analogies. In both there 
is the same early manifestation of the con¬ 
sciousness of a Divine mission ; the persecu¬ 
tion which drove the prophet from Anathoth 
had its counterpart in the enmity of the men 
of Nazareth. His protests against the priests 
and prophets are the types of the woes against 
the Pharisee, the scrjbe, and the lawyer. 
His lamentations over the coming miseries 
of his country are as the weeping of the Son 
of Man over Jerusalem. His sufferings, of 
those of the whole army of martyrs, come 
nearest to those of the Teacher against whom 
princes and priests and elders and people 
were gathered together. He saw, more 
clearly than others, that new covenant, with 
all its gifts of spiritual life and power, which 
was proclaimed and ratified in the death 
upon the cross. 

Jesus Christ. I. Divinity of .—Our Lord 
asked, “ Whom do men say that I the Son 
of Man am ?” Simon Peter replied, 
“ Thou art the Ciirist, the Son of the Liv¬ 
ing God” (St. Matt. xvi. 13, 16). The Sav¬ 
iour then blesses him and declares that God 
the Father has revealed this important 
doctrine of Christ’s Divinity to Him (v. 
17). Still the Manhood of Christ is con¬ 
stantly kept in view in Scripture. “The 
Word was made flesh”(John i. 14). As 
“ the Angel of the Lord,” Christ appears 
to Abraham at Mamre (Gen. xviii. 22, and 
xix. 1), to Hagar (Gen. xvi. 11), to Jacob 
(Gen. xxxii. 1 and 30), to Moses at the bush 
(Ex. iii. 1, 2), to Joshua (Josh. v. 14), to 
Gideon (Judges vi.ll and 22), and to Manoah 
and his wife (Judges xiii. 3-24). Our Lord 
declared that the Old Testament testified of 
Him (John v. 39), and the Theophaines add 
their testimony to prophecy, “ No man hath 
seen God” (John i. 18) the Father, hence 
“the only-begotten Son” is the One who 





JESUS CHRIST 


403 


JESUS CHRIST 


“ hath declared Him. ” Our Lord’s plan to 
form a world-wide spiritual Kingdom was a 
Divine one, and its execution implied Di¬ 
vine aid. Without human greatness and 
position Jesus Christ leaps in a moment 
beyond the widest view of the greatest em¬ 
peror. The Kingdom of Christ still ad¬ 
vances, though its moral requirements are 
high. The miracles were the work of God. 
The Son claims “ absolute Oneness of Es¬ 
sence” with the Father, in St. John x. 30: 
“ I and my Father are one.” He asserts 
pre-existence thus: “ Before Abraham was, 
I am” (St. John viii. 58). He has life in Him¬ 
self (see St. John v. 26). He is “the Pure 
Light” (St. John i. 9). He is “ the Way, the 
Truth, and the Life” (xiv. 6). The love of 
God shines out in the death of Christ (I 
John iii. 16). Life, Love, and Light meet in 
God and in Christ. The title “ Son of 
God” is given freely to Jesus in the high¬ 
est sense, and God’s voice from heaven calls 
Him “ Beloved Son” (St. John iii. 17). St. 
John, the closest companion of our Lord, 
is the one who most strongly and constantly 
asserts His Divinity. In the sermon of St. 
Peter on the Day of Pentecost, and in St. 
Paul’s discourses and writings, it is the as¬ 
sertion of Christ’s Divinity that gives the 
power by the co-working of the Holy Ghost. 
Creative power is claimed for Jesus 
Christ. “ All things were made by Him” 
(St. John i. 3 ; compare Col. i. 16). “ Faith 
in Christ” as Divine is St. Paul’s frequent 
theme (see Col. ii. 5 ; Phil. i. 29 ; Rom. x. 
14; Philem. 5). Jesus Christ has been 
adored as God from the beginning of Chris¬ 
tianity. St. Thomas addresses Him as “ my 
Lord and my God” (St. John xx. 28). 
When St. John sees Him in glory he falls 
“ at His feet as dead” till he feels the touch 
of His right hand, and hears the comfort¬ 
ing words “Fear not” (Rev. i. 17). The 
worship of Jesus Christ, begun by the 
Wise Men and repeated by those who had 
experienced the benefit of His miracles, and 
by the holy women after the Resurrection 
(St. Matt, xxviii. 9), and by the early Chris¬ 
tians described by Pliny, who at their morn¬ 
ing service sang responsive hymns to 
Christ as God, has continued and increased 
on earth, and will continue and increase till 
“ at the name of Jesus every knee” shall 
bow and “every tongue” . . . u confess 
that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of 
God the FATHER”(Phil. iii. 10, 11). Heaven 
itself shall continue the song of praise to 
the Divine Christ, “for the Lord God 
Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of 
it” (Rev. xxi. 22). 

II. Life of. —Our Blessed Lord and Sav¬ 
iour Jesus Christ, both God and man, was 
born in Bethlehem in Judaea, of the Blessed 
Virgin Mary, by the power of the Holy 
Ghost. The Incarnation of Jesus Christ 
is the foundation-stone of Christianity. To 
it the prophets looked forward as seamen 
peer in darkness for a light-house; those 
who lived in Christ’s day could rejoice in 


His light as those who are opposite the light¬ 
house. We now look back upon it, but with 
like rejoicing. The heathen themselves 
longed for it, and had their dim prophecies 
of it. Every heathen idol in human form 
was but a blind groping after the GoD-man. 
Jesus came as a child to sanctify childhood. 
He came in poverty to teach contempt of 
mere worldly riches. The Collect for the 
second Sunday after Easter shows the double 
purpose of the Incarnation as “ both a sacri¬ 
fice for sin, and also an example of godly 
life,” and it prays that through His grace 
we may strive “ to follow the blessed steps 
of His most holy life.” The example of 
humility presents itself at every step. The 
retirement and obedience of His childhood 
are a pattern for the young. The early visit to 
the temple at Jerusalem is a lesson of confir¬ 
mation. The toil of the Carpenter (St. Mark 
vi. 3) has given dignity to labor. In early 
manhood the Christ comes into public life. 
The Baptism teaches His followers to imitate 
Him in this sacred act. The presence at 
the wedding feast, and the miracle there 
performed, indicate the sanctity of domestic 
life. The whole social intercourse of our 
Lord is an example to the Christian. The 
halt, the maimed, and the blind were as near 
to Him as the rich and the great. He entered 
the dark and humble dwellings of Jewish 
peasants, and conversed with them as an 
“ Elder Brother.” Wherever sickness or 
sorrow met His eye He strove at once to 
lighten or remove the load. The unselfish¬ 
ness of this Divine, yet human life, has never 
had a parallel. The many miracles recorded, 
and implied, were not acts of display, but 
means of healing and blessing poor suffering 
humanity. 

Our Lord sought in every way to in¬ 
struct men in the Divine life. The Parables 
forced all nature into service, and the grow¬ 
ing grain, and the singing bird, or the inno¬ 
cent lamb were used to inculcate the highest 
lessons. 

While the blessed self-denying work of 
healing and teaching advanced, Satan insti¬ 
gated men to take the life of the Redeemer 
of men. The Saviour sees the dark cloud 
approaching, but meets hatred and persecu¬ 
tion with love. That His work may be 
continued on earth, He founds His Holy 
Church, and appoints the Apostles as Bishops 
of it. He institutes the Holy Communion, 
and commands its observation. In agony 
He prays for relief from the approaching 
struggle with the powers of evil, but sub¬ 
mits meekly to the Father’s will. He 
dies on the cross, but in dying prays for His 
murderers and pardons a dying penitent. 
He rises from the tomb, and for a time 
teaches His wondering disciples. He then 
ascends heavenward, and now the man 
Christ Jesus, in His life of glory, rules 
and guides His Church on earth and aids 
His saints, that when their earthly life is 
ended, they may be with Him and behold 
His glory (St. Jonh xvii. 24). The “ sacrifice 





JEW 


404 


JOB 


for sin” was the object of this earthly life. 
It all looked forward to the cross, and now 
the world looks back to it. “I, if I be 
lifted up from the earth, will draw all men 
unto Me rt (St. John xii. 82). The tree of scorn 
is now the tree of glory, and no monarch’s 
crown compares with the cross of Christ. 
Keble asks,— 

“ Is it not strange .... 

That to the Cross the mourner’s eye should turn 

Sooner than where the stars of Christmas burn ?” 

So it is the sin-sick have looked for cen¬ 
turies to that cross as their only hope, and 
from it have heard the words of pardon and 
forgiveness, “Thy faith hath saved thee,” 
and, “ Go, and sin no more.” To that cross 
the eyes of the dying have been turned in 
faith, and, like the stricken Israelites bitten 
by serpents in the desert, they have found 
new life. The character and work of our 
Lord Jesus Christ stand alone in the 
world’s history. Such grandeur and hu¬ 
mility, such purity, charity, and forgive¬ 
ness, never appear in any other record. Such 
wisdom was never before heard on earth. 
It was the officers sent to apprehend Him 
who exclaimed, “ Never man spake like this 
Man” (St. John vii. 32). It was a soldier who 
watched Him, who cried, “ Truly this Man 
was theSoN of God” (St. Mark xv. 39). It is 
remarkable that sinful men and women con¬ 
stantly seek this “ Sinless Sufferer,” while 
they fear to confess their faults even to their 
wicked fellow-mortals. But the Lord’s 
life teaches that pity is a Divine attribute, 
and that the Lord God, the “ lover of souls” 
(Wisdom xi. 26), is more merciful than 
man. The work of Jesus Christ the Son 
of God, and the Son of man, was not in¬ 
tended merely to excite wonder; it is in¬ 
tensely practical. “ He appeared to put 
away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And 
as it is appointed unto men once to die, but 
after this the judgment: so Christ was 
once offered to bear the sins of many; and 
unto them that look for Him shall He ap¬ 
pear the second time without sin unto salva¬ 
tion” (Heb. ix. 26-28). He who reads this 
wonderful life is to make the example and 
the sacrifice influential in his own life- 
pilgrimage, and to strive by faith to learn 
the full meaning of those words, which 
show Christ’s life repeated in every be¬ 
lieving heart, “ Christ in you, the hope of 
glory” (Col. i. 27). 

Authority : Liddon’s Bampton Lectures, 
on “ The Divinity of our Lord and Saviour 
Jesus Christ.” Bey. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Jew. It was not known as a separate 
name till after the ten tribes revolted, and 
was not in current use till the tribal distinc¬ 
tions were lost at the Captivity and the 
Tribe of Judah overshadowed the others. 
It then became common, partly as this tribe 
was the largest and most powerful, and 
partly because of the Temple and all the 
religious associations connected with it were, 
together with the Priesthood, within the 


territory of Judah. After the Captivity, 
Judaean (Jew) was the usual term for the 
Israelites of whatever'descent. In the syn¬ 
optic Gospels the terms are, the People, the 
Pharisees, Herodians, Sadducees, till the Pas¬ 
sion of our Lord is recited. St. Matt. (ch. ii. 
2) alone uses it elsewhere. But St. John uses 
it often, and distinguishes between the peo¬ 
ple, the Galileans, and the dwellers at Je¬ 
rusalem. As a restored nation after the 
Captivity they were ruled, first by the Per¬ 
sians (536-338 b.c.), by the Seleucidse 

(333-167 b.c. ), by their own Asrnonaean 
Princes (167-63 b.c.), and by the Idumaean 
Herods (63 b.c. -70 a.d.), till the Tem¬ 
ple was burnt, Jerusalem razed, millions 
slain or sold into captivity, and the rem¬ 
nant wanderers upon the earth. But their 
history of six hundred years had a great 
effect both upon them and upon the Chris¬ 
tian Church, for the training in obedience 
to a holy law arid a ritual, the lessons in 
faith, the fact forced upon them that the 
Spiritual Kingdom was separate from the 
temporal, all were impressed upon the early 
Christians who were cradled in the very 
midst of these teachings. The Christian 
owes the Jew a debt of love and compassion, 
and desires to bring him to the knowledge 
of the Messiah, a reunion which shall be 
the glory of the Jew and Gentile together 
(Rom. x., xi.). 

Jewry. Of Judah. It occurs once in the 
Old Testament (Dan. v. 13), and once in the 
Prayer-Book (Ps. lxxvi. 1). In the Con¬ 
tinental cities, and in Oxford, London, and 
elsewhere in England, the Jews’ quarter was 
and is known as the Jewry. 

Job. This book upon the man of Uz, 
recording his afflictions and his patience, is 
filled with some of the most magnificent 
thoughts and most sublime imagery ever 
given to men. The endless theories of 
adverse critics upon its genuineness and 
antiquity are so mutually destructive that 
they need no refutation. As Ezekiel (ch. 
xiv. 14, 20) and ISt. James (ch. v. 11) 
both refer to him as a real personage, 
surely we cannot doubt the truthfulness 
of the work. Job’s riches, patriarchal in¬ 
fluence, devout and noble character, are 
not merely proverbial. They stand forth 
as characteristics of the devout rich man. 
It is beyond the plan of this Cyclopaedia 
to discuss the many questions its .contents 
suggest upon the law of our trials and the 
extent of Satan’s permitted power, upon the 
scope of the arguments of a natural the¬ 
ology so strongly stated in it, upon the 
knowledge Job had of a Redeemer and a 
Resurrection, and of the power of inter- 
cessional prayer, or upon the invisible and 
supernatural facts it reveals to us. His 
patience is proverbial, yet it is full of 
self-respect. He confesses humbly his sin¬ 
fulness, and the justice of God towards 
him in this affliction. Yet he is conscious 
of no willful sin; and he defends himself 
against the insinuations or open attacks 




JOEL 


405 


JOHN (SAINT) 


of his three friends. “Though He slay 
me yet 'will I trust in Him, but I will 
maintain mine own ways before Him” (ch. 
xiii. 15), well expresses the tone of his de¬ 
fense before the three friends. And his 
humility when God speaks displays his 
devout submission. His losses were doubly 
repaid when God restored him to his health. 
■When so much is, at least at present, con¬ 
jecture, the opinion that Moses either 
obtained a copy of the book or himself 
wrote down the narrative when he was 
in Midian is the most consonant with the 
style of the book, and that Job lived about 
the time of Joseph is most consonant with 
its contents. ( Vide Smith ; s Dictionary of 
the .Bible, and Canon Mozley’s analysis of 
the book in the Christian Remembrancer of 
1863 a.d.). 

Joel. The second in the order of the 
minor prophets. He is called the son of 
Pethuel, but beyond this we know nothing of 
him. His prophetic work was in Judaea. It 
was in the distress of a public.calamity that 
seems to have given occasion to his proph¬ 
ecy, but only the occasion. Its' scope is as 
vast as the judgments Jehovah has revealed. 
It uses the immediate event as a type for the 
greater events that lie in God’s future. 
The plague of the locusts is probably merely 
figurative, as the prophet uses it as the type 
of the terrible scourge of stern, disciplined 
armies passing through the land. His calls 
to repentance and to intercession and prayer 
are most sublime, and his promise of restor¬ 
ation and blessing and increase and the 
pouring out of the Spirit so gloriously ful¬ 
filled on the day of Pentecost, are full of 
spiritual beauty and force. But his proph¬ 
ecy passes swiftly farther than that great day, 
and under the type of the gathering of all 
people in the valley of Jehoshaphat he pic¬ 
tures the valley of this world, the time of 
the long-suffering and forbearance of God in 
this valley of decision, over which the day of 
the Lord hangs as a cloud either of mercy or 
of judgment. The world is ripe for the sickle 
of the angelic harvesters (Rev. xiv. 14-20), 
and then will come the Day of Judgment. 
The prophet closes with a picture of ineffable 
peace and joy and plenty. In his prophecy 
are the germ phrases for the revelations only 
outlined by him, but more fully given to 
other later prophets to develop. He uses the 
term “great and terrible day of the Lord,” 
which means for us the Day of Judgment. 
The intercessions dictated by him have 
passed into our Litany. The ingathering of 
the Gentiles is implied by him (Joel ii. 32). 
His imagery is probably more freely used 
in the Apocalypse than that of any other 
single prophet. (Vide Smith’s Bible Dic¬ 
tionary, The Speaker’s Commentary, Pusey 
on Joel, in Minor Prophets.) 

John, St. The beloved disciple, to whom 
the English-speaking people owe more than 
to any other of the Apostles, since from him 
they have received that Apostolic succession 
to which they appeal at once for their Apos- 


tolicity, Catholicity, and proper independ¬ 
ence. The sons of Zebedee seem to have 
drawn more of their disposition from their 
mother Salome Xian from their father. John 
appears as a devout young man, energetic as 
his friend Simon, but better balanced, as 
fervent and as active. Doubtless the four, 
Simon and Andrew, James and John, had 
often spoken together of the hopes of Israel 
then filling every heart. He and Andrew 
knew the Baptist, though apparently not 
among his disciples, and were present with 
him when Jesus walked in Bethabara be¬ 
yond Jordan, when St. John pointed Him 
out to them with the words, “ Behold the 
Lamb of God” (St. John i. 35-39). They im¬ 
mediately followed Jesus, and abode with 
Him that night. Then began that love, that 
attachment to the Person of the Lord, which 
seems to distinguish St. John and St. Peter 
from the others. Zebedee did not hinder 
his sons from following the new Master. 
They were with Him as yet informally, yet 
as disciples in Jerusalem when He purged 
the Temple the first time, and at Cana when 
He manifested His glory and they were 
confirmed in their faith. When called, they 
left all and went with Him. Afterwards 
chosen into the band of Apostles, John and 
his brother James, with Simon, are taken 
more closely into our Lord’s confidence. It 
is noticeable that St. John in his Gospel does 
not speak of the band as Apostles, but as 
Disciples. Going in and out with Him, see¬ 
ing His miracles, listening to His gracious 
words, wondering at His love, forbearance, 
patience, the disciples were trained for their 
future work. Yet, how dull they were! 
How slowly the truth, brought back to their 
memory, was afterwards understood ! The 
character he developed, his zeal, his love, 
his readiness, all endeared him to his Lord. 
He was not devoid of ambition, as is shown 
by the request which the disciples, or their 
mother on their behalf, preferred to our 
Lord, to sit the one on the right hand, 
the other on the left, in His Kingdom. Our 
Lord at once questions: “Ye would have 
this ; can ye pay its price? Are ye able to 
drink of the cup that I shall drink, and to be 
baptized with the baptism that 1 am baptized 
with? They say unto Him, W T e are able.” 
His reply was afterwards fulfilled, when this 
baptism was of blood for the one and of 
long toil and martyrdom for the other. 

The Apostle’s zealous energy, that gained 
for him and his brother the appellation of 
“the Sons of Thunder,” was shown in the 
request to punish the inhospitable Samaritans 
with fire, and in forbidding one who did a 
miracle in Christ’s name. With Simon 
and his brother James he was chosen to wit¬ 
ness the Transfiguration, and was afterwards 
taken to watch at Gethsemane. Though 
after joining in the avowal of readiness to die 
with the Master he fled in the tumult of the 
arrest, yet he came back and gained an en¬ 
trance with Simon Peter into the court-yard- 
of the High-Priest’s palace, and it would 




JOHN (SAINT) 


406 JOHN (SAINT), GOSPEL OF 


seem that his courage rose, for he followed 
to the Cross, and was with the Holy women 
as they stood by, and he received the charge 
of caring for the Virgin Mary from her 
Divine Son, and apparently was present at 
the taking down of the Sacred Body. He 
was first at the Sepulchre on the morning of 
the Resurrection, was presont when the Lord 
appeared to the disciples that even, and after¬ 
wards was the first to recognize Him when 
He stood on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias 
and called to them. “ Therefore that disciple 
whom Jesus loved saith unto Peter, It is 
the Lord!” Of him from the Lord’s 
words, “ If I will that he tarry till I come,” 
the report went out that he would not die. 
In the Acts we find him (ch. i.) after the 
Resurrection in the upper chamber with the 
little company of the faithful when St. Peter 
proposed that one should he selected to fill 
the place of the traitor Judas. He was a 
constant attendant upon the Temple wor¬ 
ship, with St. Peter he was taken before the 
Sanhedrim, with St. Peter he is sent to con¬ 
firm the Samaritans. Later he also, with 
St. James the Lord’s Brother, and St. 
Peter, welcomes Barnabas and Paul into 
the Apostolic fellowship. Where he la¬ 
bored during this time, whether in Jeru¬ 
salem or elsewhere, we cannot know. He 
has no place in the record of the Acts 
when the Apostle whom he so cordially 
welcomed into the Apostolic brotherhood 
came forward. His Epistles, written before 
the Revelation, and the Gospels, written after 
it, are the precious legacy the Spirit has 
given us through him. From the Revela¬ 
tion we can gather only these facts : that he 
was banished to Patmos for the testimony of 
Jesus Christ. It has been conjectured with 
some truth that he had exercised Apostolic 
oversight over the seven Churches of Asia 
Minor to whom Christ sends His messages 
of warning and forbearing love. An early 
tradition says that upon the death of Do- 
mitian (97 a.d.) he was released from Pat¬ 
mos and went to Ephesus, where the Pres¬ 
byters of that Church, since St. Timothy 
was dead, prayed him to take the oversight 
of it. There at their request he wrote the 
Fourth Gospel, and the last written of the 
books finally accepted as inspired. He must 
have attained a great age. The cup of sor¬ 
row, and of loneliness, of pain, because of 
the defection of those who should have 
proved faithful, because of the denial of the 
Lord, was his to drink to the dregs. Yet 
what solace was his ! From the little com¬ 
pany of one hundred and twenty names to so 
vast an ingathering! He who was wrapt in 
the horror of the great darkness of the Cru¬ 
cifixion was permitted to stand in the white 
light of the Presence of Presences. He who 
in sorrow had committed to him the care of 
the Virgin Mother of Christ, saw in joy 
the Church, the New Jerusalem, the Bride 
of Christ, descending from heaven. 

His intense, energetic, enthusiastic love, 
fused every power and capacity into its 


own great heat, and made him use words 
that smote with their strength, tfiat could 
brook nothing less than utter devotion to 
the Person of Him who so loved us, suffered 
for us, died a death of shame for us, and 
rose again for us. This love, strong and 
overbearing, makes St. John the Son of 
Thunder for the Church, in the writings he 
has left it. 

His Feast is well placed (December 27) 
two days after the Nativity of his Master. 

John, St., Gospel of. It has always tijl 
recently been claimed as the last written of 
the Canonical books of the New Testament, 
and has usually been placed after the Revela¬ 
tion, which was dated as about 95 a.d., 
making the date of the Gospel about 98 
a.d. But recent conjectures make the 
banishment to Patmos earlier and under 
Nero, and place the writing of the Gospel 
between the destruction of Jerusalem, 7? 
a.d., and 95 a.d. This is not the place 
to enter into elaborate discussions, and 
while giving these later dates, it is well 
here to assign to the Gospel the latest date 
of 98 a.d. It is more generally admitted 
that it was written at the request of the 
Ephesian Presbyters. The destruction of 
Jerusalem, and so the severing of the di¬ 
rect tie that bound the Church to Judaism, 
the expansion of the work among the Gen¬ 
tiles, had made a restatement of the Apos¬ 
tolic teaching of Jesus Christ eminently 
proper. St-. Paul’s writings and the use of 
doctrinal terms had now paved the way 
for it,— e.g ., the use of the word Logos 
(Word) as applied to our Lord’s eternal 
nature was growing (Heb. iv. 12; Tit. i. 8), 
the regeneration which St. Paul had taught 
(Tit. iii. 7), the Faith in the Person of the 
Lord, which the doctrine of the Justification 
by Faith had brought forward, these and 
the growing errors which might break into 
heresies within the Church and the heresies 
without, all demanded a final restatement 
of the Truth. These facts led the Apostle 
to compose the glorious Fourth Gospel. It 
has no statement which cannot be found 
in the germ in the other three, except the 
statements of the sixth chapter, but it ex¬ 
pands some things and adds some facts not in 
the others, though it repeats but few of the 
incidents they record. The fibres that 
bind it to the other three are many and 
subtle, but they are no less real. There are 
sentences in the others that seem as if they 
were from St. John himself, while again 
many statements they make are found in 
his Gospel. A rapid analysis of his Gospel 
is annexed, but first it may be well to say 
a few words respecting the controversy 
about the genuineness of this, the Fourth 
Gospel. It was not suspected at all till 
within the last century. A fierce attack 
has been made upon it from rationalistic 
writers, and it is to be feared from some 
who sought for notoriety more than for the 
truth. The objections are, that it comes 
into prominence only sixty years after the 




JOHN (SAINT), GOSPEL OF 407 JOHN (SAINT), GOSPEL OF 


alleged date of its composition; that it 
contains allusions that are not compatible 
with the Apostolic age, and combats later 
heresies; that is different in style from the 
other acknowledged Apostolic writings, that 
it belonged to a much later date, and every 
year from 116 to 150 a.d. has been assigned 
for the date of its composition. But the 
truth is that it is either quoted or alluded 
to in unmistakable ways by Ignatius. The 
early written, but not genuine Epistle of 
Barnabas, Justin Martyr, Polycarp, re¬ 
fers to the First Epistle, and as the Gospel is 
admitted to be from the same hand, his quo¬ 
tation establishes the Gospel also. This 
catena of Christian doctors is strengthened 
by the use the heretic Basilides made of 
it. These all wrote between 107-150 I.d. 
Beyond the last date it is needless to go. 
But the internal evidence that it was writ¬ 
ten by an Apostle who companied with 
Jesus from the beginning is still clearer. 
He says at the outset “ we beheld His glory” 
(ch. i. 14). The narrative differing in so 
many things from the Synoptic Gospels, 
implies an eye-witness, and this the writer 
claims to be. “This is the disciple who 
witnesseth concerning these things, and who 
wrote these things, and we know his writ¬ 
ing is true” (xxi. 24). “ He that hath seen 

hath borne witness, and his writing is 
true” (xix. 35). None but an eye-witness 
could have given such life-like descriptions 
or reported concourses as that of the sixth 
chapter. He was an Apostle, for he is in¬ 
trusted with the motives and wishes of his 
Master,— e.g ., xiii. 1-2 ; xix. 27-28. 

That it combats later errors is no more 
than what all the Gospels are now doing and 
will do so long as error exists. Who is it 
that has not noted with apparent surprise that 
a single word written eighteen centuries ago 
seems to have its full force only now, and with 
reference to some current modern error ? 

But too imperfect as this outline is, it is 
needless to go further into a controversy 
which only serves to bring out still more 
clearly the wonderful truth of this Fourth 
Gospel. The plan of the Gospel is clear, 
distinct, and straightforward ; the main out¬ 
lines (Cambridge Bible for Schools, vol. on 
St. John) may be given somewhat thus: 

I. The Prologue (i. 1-18).—1, The Word 
in His own nature (1-5); 2, His Revelation 
to men and rejection by them (6-18); 3, His 
Revelation of the Father (14-18). 

II. First Mam Division , Christ's Minis¬ 

try , or His Revelation of Himself to the 
World (i. 19 ; xii. 50).— (a) The Testimony. 
1, of John the Baptist (i. 19-37); 2, of the 
Disciples (38-51); 3, of the first sign (ii. 1- 
11). (6) The Work. 1, among the Jews 

(ii. 13; iii. 36); 2, among the Samaritans 
(iv. 1-42); 3, among the Galileans (iv. 43- 
54); (the work has become a .conflict) 4, 
among mixed multitudes (v.-xi.). (c) The 

Judgment. 1, of men (xii. 1-36); 2, of the 
Evangelist (37-43); 3, of Christ (44-50); 
close of Christ’s public ministry. 


III. Second Main Division , Issues of 

Christ's Ministry , or His Revelation of Him¬ 
self to His Disciples. —( d ) The inner Glorifi¬ 
cation in His last Discourses. 1, His love in 
Humiliation (xiiii. 1-30); 2, His love to His 
own (xiii. 31; xv. 27); 3, the promise of the 
Comforter and of His return (xvi.). (e) The 

outer Glorification of His Passion. 1, the 
betrayal (xvii. 1-11); 2, the ecclesiastical 
and civil trials (xviii. 12; xix. 16); 3, the 
crucifixion and burial (xix. 17-42). (/) 

The Resurrection. 1, The manifestation to 
Mary Magdalene (xx. 1-18); 2, the mani¬ 
festation to the Ten (xx. 19-23); 3, the man¬ 
ifestation to Thomas with the Ten (xx. 24- 
29); 4, the Conclusion (xx. 30-31). 

IV. The Epilogue or Appendix. 

There is no one of the other Gospels which 
is so rich in spiritual insight. All the Evan¬ 
gelists have this more or less, but none so 
fully, for neither of the other three had that 
ripe experience, that conviction from long 
trial, that thorough habit of spiritual ap¬ 
prehension . that characterizes St. John’s 
writing. It was a glorious gift, and lightly 
purchased by the cross he had to bear after 
liis Master, and he has transmitted it to us. 
To a mind so richly stored with deep knowl¬ 
edge both of the things of Christ and of 
men’s character, and so filled with the Holy 
Spirit and with love, there was no difficulty 
in selecting those things which should meet 
the needs of men, and comfort and strengthen 
their minds for all time to come. 

Epistles of.— The three Epistles, together 
with those of St. Peter, St. James, and St. 
Jude, are called the Catholic Epistles, since 
they are not addressed to any one Church by 
name, but are, as it were, universal, catholic, 
in their use and purpose. But in these 
Epistles which, were written by the Holy 
Apostle we find combined the same charac¬ 
teristics which gave him both the surname of 
the Son of Thunder and the far gentler title 
of the Disciple whom Jesus loved. There is 
the same energy and zeal and sternness, an 
uncompromising trait, yet there is through¬ 
out a tenderness and an outpouring of love. 
It would seem at first sight that these are 
incompatible, but if we consider the Person 
on whom his love was poured, and the deep 
reality of the consequences of either loving 
or hating that Person, which he felt in all 
their intensity, and know that his whole 
Epistles are but a comment upon St. Paul’s 
passionate utterance, “ If any man love not 
the Lord Jesus Christ let him be anath¬ 
ema,” we can see that they are not merely 
compatible, but they are the proper and true 
outcome of such a strong nature as we have 
seen St. John to have possessed. The evils 
which pressed upon the Church at the time 
he wrote, the solitariness of the Apostle, the 
need for a strong, positive proclamation of 
the love of God, and that it was not a senti¬ 
ment, but a law of life or of death to men; 
the pain of seeing those in the Church 
worldly, of seeing those who misunderstood 
and perverted the truth leaving it, to their 







JOHN (SAINT), GOSPEL OF 408 


JONAH 


own destruction, branding themselves as 
anti-CHRisTS,—all these things enter into the 
Epistle which the Holy Spirit moved the 
Apostle to write. Its contents may be sum¬ 
marized thus : (A) A declaration of our 
Lord’s Incarnation as the Word of Life, of 
whose real human subsistence the Apostle 
solemnly affirms, and the claim that those 
who would share in the gift of Life eternal 
must be in the Apostolic fellowship, which 
is bound up in the Father and the Son, in 
which fellowship lies the forgiveness of sin, 
by the blood of Jesus Christ, who is our 
Advocate and the Propitiation for our sins 
(ch. i.-ii. 3). (B) This forgiveness from Him 
claims our love, but our love to Him im¬ 
plies love to our brother and a renunciation 
of the world (ch. ii. 4, vs. 20). (C) A second 
positive statement of the Sonship of Christ 
follows, with a further reference to the gift 
(anointing) of the Holy Ghost in Confir¬ 
mation (ch. ii. 20-29). (U) A magnificent 

appeal, based upon God’s love to us and our 
hope of a resurrection by our union in His 
Son, to love one another, and to put away 
all hatred, and to show all compassion (ch. 
iii.). (E) Chapter iv. implies some partial 
withdrawal of the gift of prophecy, as the 
Church needed it less, but it was not the less 
influential and pronounced in power when¬ 
ever given and used to proclaim the Sonship 
of our Lord. Again the Apostle reverts 
to the topic of brotherly love, which he 
mingles with short, clear enunciations of 
doctrine. And as his Epistle draws to an 
end he puts forward again the absolute need 
of unity with Him. “ Little children, keep 
yourselves from idols. Amen. And we know 
that the SOn of God is come, and hath 
given us an understanding that we may know 
Him that is true, and we are in Him that is 
true, even in His Son, Jesus Christ. This 
is the true God and Eternal Life.” So ends 
the first Epistle of the greatest Apostle of 
the original Twelve. • 

The second Epistle has been doubted, but 
its contents are so similar to those of the 
first, in fact principally restatements, in so 
concise a form that no forger would care to 
give himself so much risk for so little result, 
and the tone of the letter is unmistakably 
that of St. John. Who the elect lady was, 
whether a phrase for the Church or some in¬ 
fluential lady within St. John’s jurisdiction, 
has been questioned, but the personal allu¬ 
sions make this latter supposition the only 
really tenable one; her children are spoken 
of in the first verse and her sister’s children 
in the last verse. The subject of the Epistle 
is a restatement Of the main topic of the first 
Epistle, the doctrine of Christ come in the 
flesh and a warning against deceivers. 

The third Epistle, though much the 
shortest, has one or two points of great in¬ 
terest in it. It is written to Gaius, whose 
hospitality and zeal he commends. But he 
then speaks of a certain Diotrephes who re¬ 
jected his authority and would not receive 
those whom St. John sent, but cast them 


out. St. John threatens to discipline him. 
The Apostle also commends Demetrius as 
bearing a good report from all men. Who 
was Diotrephes ? It has been generally as¬ 
sumed that it was some turbulent Presbyter 
who rejected St. John’s authority. But one 
in that order would scarcely have dared to 
do so. Nor would any attention have been 
paid to him had he held only that office, 
while one in the Apostolic office holding the 
same relation to St. John that St. Timothy, 
or Titus, or Silas did to St. Paul, might en¬ 
deavor to shake off the inconvenient re¬ 
straint St. John held over his ambition. 
This is much more likely than that an Elder 
would act in so authoritative a manner as to 
rej^pt those whom St. John had sent, and 
discipline those fellow-Presbyters who would 
receive them, since he would be in no posi¬ 
tion to do so, nor could he criticise and 
speak maliciously of St. John. Altogether 
it would seem that Diotrephes held a higher 
office, and one in which it needed St. John’s 
presence as his sole superior to restrain 
and chastise him. In this letter to Gaius he 
»eiterates soraO of his positive sentences found 
in the first Epistle. 

Jonah, though the sixth in order of the 
Minor Prophets, is generally considered the 
earliest of all the prophets, whose writings 
are extant. The reason for this opinion is 
based on 2 Kings xiv. 25, where it is stated 
that Jeroboam II. “ restored the coast of 
Israel from the entering of Hamath unto 
the sea of the plain, according to the word 
of the Lord, which He spake by the hand 
of his servant Jonah the son of Amittai, 
which was of Gath-Hepher.” Now Jero¬ 
boam began to reign 825 B.C., and on the 
supposition that Jonah made the prophecy 
some time before his accession, the prophet’s 
date is fixed about the middle of the ninth 
century b.c., or as given in the Bible, 862 
b.c. ; but Canon Kawlinson prefers a later 
date. (Vide Five Great Monarchies.) As 
already stated, Jonah was the son of Amit¬ 
tai, of Gath-Hepher in Galilee, from which, 
therefore, a prophet did arise contrary to the 
proverb of the Pharisees. His personal his¬ 
tory is entirely drawn from the Book of 
Jonah, which is an account of his mission 
to Nineveh. It was perhaps after prophesy¬ 
ing to Israel (for Jonah begins in the Hebrew 
with “ and the word of the Lord,” etc.) that 
the prophet was bidden to go to Nineveh 
and prophesy against it. But Jonah shrank 
from the task, probably from timidity (for 
Jonah means a dove), though other motives 
are suggested, such as a desire that Nineveh 
might be destroyed in the interest of Israel. 
So he sought to flee from the presence of the 
Lord, — i.e., from discharging this mission 
before the Lord,— and he took ship at Joppa, 
now Jaffa, for Tarshish, which may have 
been Tarsus in Cilicia, or Tartessus in Spain. 
This attempt to escape duty proved of no 
avail, for such a storm arose as to imperil 
the ship ; and when lots were cast to see who 
was the guilty cause of it, the lot fell upon 





JONAH 


409 


JOSEPH 


Jonah, who bade the mariners cast him into 
the sea, “ For I know that for my sake this 
tempest is upon you.” The men being un¬ 
willing to do it, strove hard to row to land, 
from which it should appear that they could 
not have gone far from port. “ But they 
could not, so they took up Jonah and cast 
him forth into the sea, and the sea ceased 
from raging.” But the Lord had prepared 
a great fish to swallow up Jonah ; and J onah 
was in the belly of the fish three days and 
three nights. To this miracle great objec¬ 
tion has been made, and some have affirmed 
that the book of Jonah is merely allegorical, 
others that it is purely fabulous, or a little 
history highly ornamented with fable. Of 
course, with those who deny the possibility 
of miracles at all, there can be no discus¬ 
sion ; but others who find a difficulty in be¬ 
lieving this experience of Jonah,-should ob¬ 
serve that one miracle is as easy to accept as 
any other, and that there is especial reason 
for believing this particular one, because it 
was a type of our Lord’s entombment and 
resurrection, and referred to by. Him as 
such; and those who believe the greater 
miracle of the Resurrection cannot object 
reasonably to the lesser one which fore¬ 
shadowed it. 

These difficulties on the ground of natural 
history are sufficiently met by the fact that 
there are fish large enough to swallow a 
man whole, though it may be a mistake to 
call such fish whales, as the translators have 
in St. Matt. xii. 40 ; it is simply a great fish 
in Jonah. At the end of the three days 
Jonah repented and humbled himself before 
God, and “the Lord spake unto the fish, 
and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry 
land.” When the command to preach 
unto Nineveh came a second time it was 
obeyed, and Jonah came to Nineveh, an 
exceeding great city of three days’ journey, 
and began to enter into the city a day’s 
journey, and cried and said, “ Yet forty 
days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” 
However these expressions of the day’s 
journey be understood, they indicate a 
place of immense extent, and these indica¬ 
tions are fully corroborated by modern 
explorations and discoveries. (Vide Five 
Great Monarchies.) Word of this strange 
message came to the king, who proclaimed 
a strict fast even for beast as well as man, and 
ordered intercessions, in the hope that God 
would repent and turn away from His fierce 
anger; and so it came about, for God saw 
their works and deferred the evil threatened 
to them. Now Jonah had already with¬ 
drawn from the city to watch and see what 
would become of it, and when the forty days 
were expired and the city was not de¬ 
stroyed, it displeased him exceedingly that 
his prophecy was not fulfilled, and he 
wished that he might die; but the Lord 
condescended to reason with him, in words 
and by the parable of a gourd (Palma 
Christi), which grew up suddenly and was 
a comfort to the prophet by reason of 


its shade and pleasing form. But no sooner 
had Jonah realized its worth to him than 
it was destroyed by a worm, and again 
he wished he might die. Then the Lord 
said to Jonah, “ Doest thou well to be an¬ 
gry for the gourd? And he said, I do 
well to be angry, even unto death. Then 
said the Lord, Thou hast had pity on the 
gourd, for the which thou hast not labored, 
neither madest it grow; which came up 
in a night, and perished in a night; 
and should not I spare Nineveh, that 
great city, wherein are more than six- 
score thousand persons that cannot discern 
between their right hand and their left 
hand; and also much cattle?” Here the 
book of Jonah ends. It may be that some 
fail to see in what respect Jonah is a prophet 
of any but near events, whose interest 
ended with their fulfillment; but such per¬ 
sons may learn to find a deeper meaning in 
the book if they will observe that its sub¬ 
ject is not so much the mission to Nineveh 
as the spiritual instruction of Jonah—and 
the world,—that in every nation he that 
feareth God and worketh righteousness is 
accepted by Him, and that God has a ten¬ 
der compassionate care for every man, 
whether he be a King of Nineveh or a 
Phoenician sailor. 

Further, the book, as already stated, is a 
prophecy by types of the death, burial, and 
resurrection of our Lord, as is shown not 
only by our Lord Himself in His refer¬ 
ences to it (St. Matt. xii. 40; xvi. 4; St. 
Luke xi. 30; xxiv. 46), but also by St. Paul, 
whose allusion in 1 Cor. xv. '4, is understood 
to mean the Book of Jonah. 

Authorities: Smith’s Bible Dictionary, 
Five Ancient Monarchies, Gray’s Introduc¬ 
tion, Bible Commentary. 

Joseph. The oldest son of Rachel, the 
well-loved wife of Jacob. The history of 
his life is one of the most beautiful passages 
in the book of Genesis. It is stamped 
with a naturalness and an inwoven truth¬ 
fulness that make the objections to it appear 
as they are, pitiful and but the merest wan¬ 
tonness of hypercriticism. His father’s love 
for him, his own gentle goodness, yet the 
vanity which was the result of Jacob’s 
treatment; the rough turbulence of shep¬ 
herd sons, his elder brethren, who lived a 
hardy, roving, out-of-door life, filled with 
free, undisciplined willfulnesses; the jeal¬ 
ousies that arose, which were the scourge of 
Jacob’s own former deceit; the robe, proba¬ 
bly a white tunic embroidered or edged 
with purple, the gift of a father’s love, and 
the petty cause of hatred; the dreams of 
the boy and the wonder and hatred they 
elicited ; the cruel sale, the career in Egypt, 
—all these, so well known, are chiefly dwelt 
upon as links in the Providential prepara¬ 
tions made for the preservation of the chosen 
people. But while this is true, there is 
something more. The patriarch was chosen, 
in and by the very means that his brethren 
sought to destroy him, to become the deliv- 





JOSEPH 


410 


JOSHUA 


erer of Egypt for the sake of his father’s 
house, and so to aid in further and larger po¬ 
litical events which flowed to all the world 
from his conduct and statesmanship. Re¬ 
membering these things, to the Christian 
his career is a type of Christ in its outlines. 
As was remarked in the article on Jonah, we 
must carefully separate the human channels 
from the Divine purpose that flows through 
them, the human earthiness from the divine 
gold mingled in it. Jacob’s love for Joseph is 
a type of God’s love for His Son. The sale 
of Joseph for the price of a slave typified 
the sale of the Lord for the same price. 
His courage, obedience, and his disgrace 
while yet finding favor in the eyes of his ene¬ 
mies, are a type of the far lovelier character 
of Christ. His deliverance and his Lord- 
ship, and the provision he thus made, both 
for Egypt and for his father’s house, is a type 
of both the Resurrection and the untiring, 
loving care of Christ over all men, willing 
that none should be lost, and providing still 
better things for the household of faith. 
These are salient points in his life that 
make him an especial type, but a close study 
of the incidents will develop other and 
beautiful suggestions. His coat of many 
colors the royal robe, the type of the 
robe of righteousness. His prospering 
in all things committed to his care as 
steward. His resisting evil suggestions, 
the patience with which he bore the 
discipline (Heb. v. 7-9), and other points of 
resemblance which would lead us too far 
afield to trace here. In these, and in the 
blessings which' were bestowed upon him by 
his father and upon his two sons, and later 
upon the ten thousands of Ephraim and the 
thousands of Manasseh, he is pre-eminently 
a type of Jesus the Christ. His history 
is recorded in Gen. xxx. 22-24; xxxvii., 
xxxix. to the end of the book. The bless¬ 
ing of Moses upon the two half-tribes, 
Ephraim and Manasseh (Deut. xxxiii. 13- 
17). For a full discussion of the history see 
Geike’s Hours with the Bible, and Smith’s 
Bible Dictionary. The date of Joseph’s 
birth is placed there at 1906 b.c. Since the 
date of the Pharaoh of Joseph’s famine can¬ 
not be certainly identified as yet, this is the 
approximate date. 

Joseph. The husband of the Blessed 
Virgin Mary, who was most probably of 
the family of Nathan, the son of David. 
But little is told us of him. A just man, 
of the house and lineage of David, and 
thoughtful and kind. He lived in Naza¬ 
reth, a carpenter by occupation, betrothed 
to the Virgin, probabl 3 r his cousin, and 
whom, upon the direction of the Angel, he 
took to wife. He carried the Virgin Mary 
to Bethlehem, there to be enrolled with him¬ 
self as of the royal house of David, where 
her son was born. He carried the mother 
and the young child into the Temple, was 
resent when the wise men offered their 
omage ; he fled to Egypt, and remained 
there until he was divinely bidden to return, 


and finally settled in Nazareth, where he 
continued to care for the wondrous child 
growing up into a favored, loved youth. 
When Jesus was twelve years old, Joseph 
and Mary took Him up to the Temple to 
keep the Passover, and ^ien they returned 
to Nazareth, the Child continued to be obe¬ 
dient to His parents, increasing in wisdom 
and stature, and in favor with God and 
man. Here our knowledge of him ends, 
for there is no further record of him in the 
Gospel history. 

Joshua. The Son of Nun, one of Israel’s 
great generals. He appears first most sud¬ 
denly at the battle of liephidim: “And 
Moses said unto Joshua, Choose us out men, 
and go out, fight with Amalek^’ (Ex. xvii. 
9). In 1 Chron. vii. 27 his descent from 
Ephraim is given, giving thus some ground 
for the blessing Moses put ifpon the tribes 
of Joseph: “ His glory the firstling of his 
bullocks, and his horns the horns of uni¬ 
corns ; with them he shall push the people 
together to the end of the land,” — i.e., 
Canaan (Deut. xxxiii. 17). Joshua’s in¬ 
stincts are military. The attendant upon 
Moses what time the Leader went up 
into the cloudy top of Sinai, when Moses 
came down at God’s bidding to quell the 
apostasy of Israel, Joshua, as they turned to 
go down to the riotous people, exclaimed, 
“ There is a noise of war in the camp!” He 
is annoyed at the irregularity of Eldad and 
Medad’s prophesying in the camp unbidden. 
Apparently it seemed to him a breach of 
discipline,—an act without proper commis¬ 
sion. Next he appears as one of the spies 
who traversed the promised land. Of all 
the band he and Caleb alone insisted that 
the people could take possession of the land 
at once. He drops out of mention till 
Moses is ready to lay down his burdensome 
charge. Most probably he resumed that at¬ 
tendance upon the tabernacle which ap¬ 
parently fell to him when the tabernacle was 
first erected (Ex. xxxiii. 11). But upon the 
plain of Moab, this side Jordan, he has the 
commission given him to lead the people 
over the river to take possession of the Land, 
by the laying on of Moses’ hands, before 
Eleazar the priest and the whole congrega¬ 
tion, and by a special charge (Numb, xxvii. 
14; Deut. xxxi. 14, 23). After Moses' 
death Joshua sent out spies to Jericho, 
crossed the Jordan, and at Gilgal circum¬ 
cised all the males; and had a vision of the 
Captain of the Lord’s Host. Jericho fell 
by a miracle; Ai was taken after Achan’s 
sin had been purged ; the Law was recited 
upon Mount Ebal; the treaty was heedlessly 
made with the Gibeonites ; the victory at 
Makkedah, won by Divine aid, opened 
Canaan up to Kadesli Barnea and Gaza ; 
that at the waters of Merom broke the 
Canaanitish kingdoms of the north under 
Jabin, King of Hazor. “ So Joshua took 
all that land, the hills, and all the south 
country, and all the land of Goshen, and the 
valley, and the plain, and the mountain of 






JOSHUA 


411 


JUDE (SAINT) 


Israel, and the valley of the same; even 
from the Mount Helak, that goeth up to 
Seir, even unto Baal-gad'in the valley of 
Lebanon, under»Mount Hermon: and all 
their kings he took, and smote them and 
slew them. Joshua made war long time 
with all those kings” (Josh. xi. 16-18). In 
six years he broke the power of the Ganaan- 
ite, destroyed the Anakim, and established 
Israel firmly in the territory which God 
gave them ; but he did not utterly dispossess 
them. Lt was expressly ordered that, they 
should not be utterly destroyed ; though 
against some, as against Amalek, the decree 
of extermination was finally carried out. 
There is no space here to point out the 
strategy and skillful planning of Joshua, 
which was the more noticeable that the 
composition of the army he led must have 
made any combined operations nearly im- 
ossible. Fearless, straightforward, enthused 
y his grand mission, noble and kindly, his 
was indeed a royal nature, born to lead and 
to command. Devout and unselfish, for he 
was trained by Moses, he showed the strength 
of the Israelitish character at its best. His 
book, which records his campaigns and the 
division of the land by lot to the tribes, was 
written either by himself or by an eye¬ 
witness in close relation to him. In the ac¬ 
count of the division, when we remember 
that land was allotted to the several tribes 
which had not yet been fairly conquered 
and occupied, many alleged discrepancies 
will disappear. For instance, in chapter 
xiii. 3, it is stated that Ekron was yet to be 
taken ; but in chapter xv. 45, it is assigned 
to Judah. Ekron was in the limits of the 
lot which fell to Judah, but Ekron was in 
the hands of the Philistines except for the 
period of the Judges ; so of Gaza and Aske- 
lon, which remained finally as Philistine 
cities. Joshua’s history is a clear, terse ac¬ 
count of God’s dealings in behalf of His 
people by the hand of Joshua, in fulfilling 
His promise to Abraham regarding the land. 
It falls into three sections: I. The Conquest. 
II. The Division. III. The Charge and 
Warning of the aged, war-worn Captain. 
There is not sufficient proof of it, but the 
indirect evidence goes to show that Joshua 
himself wrote the book. Not only Jewish 
tradition, but the minute notes of the trans¬ 
actions, the words of conversations, the 
phrases, point to Joshua’s pen* Of course 
the closing paragraphs were added by an¬ 
other, probably contemporary, pen. But we 
must add the main points in which he was 
a type of Jesus. As Moses was His type as 
Lawgiver, so in name ^tnd in act Joshua 
was the type of Jesus the Captain of our 
salvation. Joshua began his life in Egypt, 
atid, despite his protest to the people, wan¬ 
dered with them in the wilderness; so 
Christ our Jesus was with us in our Egypt 
of sin, and has borne with us in our life 
here. At Jordan Joshua crossed over; at 
the same stream Jesus was baptized and 
received His consecration for His work. At 


Gilgal Joshua rolled away the reproach of 
Egypt from the people; at Golgotha Jesus 
rolled away the reproach of the spiritual 
Egypt from His people. Joshua, by com¬ 
mand of the Captain of the Lord’s host, be¬ 
gan his work; but the Captain Himself has 
begun the conquest for us. Joshua mastered 
Canaan, and gave all its strategic points and 
many of its strongholds into the people’s 
hands, and broke the Canaanitish power and 
exterminated the vilest of the nations ; so 
Jesus hath spoiled the strong man, and 
bound him, and given us his high places, but 
hath left to us to complete the conquest under 
His care by His might, with the armor He 
has furnished. And as Joshua at the first 
gathering of the people, so Jesus before His 
Passion ; and as Joshua at Shechem at the 
second gathering, so Jesus after His Resur¬ 
rection gave’a solemn charge, and renewed 
the Covenant, and left a witness of it. 

Jubilate. The anthem after the second 
lesson. It was adopted in the Prayer-Book 
of 1552 a.d., but is said to have been in use 
after the Gospel in some Gallican Churches 
as early as 450 a.d. It is a joyful anthem 
of praise to the Good Shepherd. Its con¬ 
tinuous use should fall during the Sundays 
after Trinity. 

Jubilee. The year of release, the fiftieth 
year, in which all lands by the Mosaic law 
reverted to their original owners, or their 
heirs. All debts were released, all Hebrew 
servants sold for debt were set free, unless 
they chose to remain in bondage. It was a 
placing upon a common footing, so far as it 
was possible in their original condition, all 
the relations of property and its dependen¬ 
cies. This idea of the Jubilee was taken up 
in mediaeval tii»es, and a general indulgence 
and release ordered by the Pope, and certain 
privileges granted to those who made pil¬ 
grimages, especially to Rome and its holy 
places. • 

Jude, or Judas. There were four who 
bore this name,—Judas, Judas Iscariot, 
Judas, surnamed Barnabas, who went with 
Silas to hear the Encyclical letter to Antioch 
together with St. Paul and Barnabas, and 
Jude the brother of James. The name 
Jude or Judas occurs beside as borne by 
others, but they are not at all prominent. 

Jude, St., who wrote the Epistle. It is 
difficult in the clash of contending views to 
arrive at any definite conclusion as to 
whether the Jude the brother of James was 
the Jude who was the Apostle, or the Jude 
the Lord’s brother. This last is the most 
probable conjecture, though it is not without 
difficulties. If so, then there were but three 
Judes. Of this Jude we know nothing. 
Eusebius says that his two grandsons were 
seized by Domitian’s orders and carried to 
Rome and examined. But when he saw 
that they were poor laboring illiterate men, 
and listened to their description of the 
spiritual kingdom of Jesus the King of the 
Jews, Domitian dismissed them with con¬ 
tempt, and stopped the persecution of the 





JUDE (SAINT), EPISTLE OF 412 


JUDGES 


Church. They were sent home to Jerusa¬ 
lem, and there were influential as being of 
the Lord’s family and confessors. 

Jude, St., Epistle of. It was held as one 
of the doubtful Epistles, not that it was a for¬ 
gery, but, since it was so brief and as its con¬ 
tents were found elsewhere, it was questioned 
whether its author was of weight enough to 
have it placed in the Canon. As it came 
more into circulation this objection disap¬ 
peared, and it was received into the Canon. 
It is in style so like the second Epistle of St. 
Peter that it is a question which was the 
earlier of the two. For the later writer was 
acquainted with the earlier work and used 
it with some freedom. If so, it is more 
likely that the shorter Epistle would be the 
earlier, as it was more probable that it would 
be incorporated into a longer one than that 
the shorter would be excerpted out of the 
longer, and, too, the difficult phrases in the 
Epistle of St. Jude would be eliminated from 
St. Peter’s Epistle. It contains a couple 
of references found nowhere else: “Yet 
Michael the Archangel, when contending 
with the devil he disputed about the body of 
Moses, durst not bring against him a railing 
accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee,” 
a quotation which has not been traced. “ And 
Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophe¬ 
sied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord 
cometh with ten thousands of His Saints to 
execute judgment upon all, and to convince 
all that are ungodly among them of all their 
ungodly deeds which they have ungodly com¬ 
mitted, and of all their hard speeches which 
ungodly sources have spoken against Him,” 
a translation from the Apocryphal Book of 
Enoch, which had been written about 40 B.C. 
The Epistle of St. Jude is characterized by 
warmth and energy. The purity of the Faith 
once delivered to the saints is earnestly de¬ 
fended, and its corrupters are denounced with 
vehemence in one of the shortest of all the 
writings in the sacred Canon. The zeal of 
St. Jude in behalf of the Faith has left us a 
tracing of the trials and the discipline which 
the Church then as now had to undergo. 
The kinsman of the Lord J esus, the brother 
of James, himself not of the original Twelve 
{vide v. 17), could not but be zealous, and 
this zeal was reflected in the later Epistle 
of St. Peter (2 Peter). 

Judges. From the conquest of Canaan 
hy Joshua to the Judgeship of Samuel were 
three hundred and fifty years. During this 
long period the record of the book of Judges 
is tilled with the fragmentary details of the 
confusion, disobedience, and scourgings of 
the people. Throughout the greatest dis¬ 
turbances and under the sternest tyrants 
who subjugated them, they neither lost their 
nationality nor were they driven out, nor 
with all their departure from the Law did 
they lose their knowledge of Jehovah. He 
did not wholly forsake them, but bore with 
them while disciplining them severely. The 
books of Joshua and Judges, the one as it 
were the counterpart of the other in the 


Israelitish history, would correspond to the 
position of the Acts in the New Testament. 
It is divided into three parts : The introduc¬ 
tion (i.-iii. 7). The condition of Israel after 
Joshua. The era of the Judges (iii. 8 ; xvi.). 
Incidents detailing the moral and social ills 
of the time (xvii.-xxi.). It is difficult to 
compress into a few paragraphs the discus¬ 
sions of events that have so much bearing 
upon Israel’s future history. All that we 
can do here is to point out the faith, i.e ., full 
trust, in God, the Judges severally showed. 
Their personal shortcomings of duty and 
the deliverances they wrought would require 
too much space. The introduction is occu¬ 
pied with recording the prosecution of the 
conquest after Joshua’s death ; Caleb’s cap¬ 
ture of the possession assigned him ; the sloth 
of the other tribes compared with the activity 
of Judah and Simeon; the intermarriages 
which led to idolatry, and then the mysteri¬ 
ous visit of the Angel of the Lord at Bochim, 
and their temporary repentance ; lastly, their 
lapse into such evil that they were given into 
the land of Cushan-rishathaim. The era of 
the Judges is parted into four groups: 
The deliverances and judgeships of Othniel 
(forty years), of Ehud (after eighteen years’ 
oppression by the Moabites, for eighty years), 
of Deborah’s deliverance (of forty years after 
Jabin’<6 oppression of twenty years). Then 
follows the era of Gideon and his son Abim- 
elech, whose resistance to Midian, after 
seven years’ servitude, reached to forty-three 
years. Then as a transition group come 
Tola and Jair, who judg&d and defended 
Israel, the first twenty-three and the second 
twenty-two years. 

The third group are, after eighteen years 
under the Ammonites, the Judges, Jepthah, 
Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon, a period of thirty- 
one years. Lastly comes Samson, whose won¬ 
derful birth, preparation, work, and fate are 
the most remarkable of all the histories in 
the book ; he judged Israel twenty years. 
The story of the Benjaminites and their ter¬ 
rible punishment is to be placed as occur¬ 
ring just after Joshua’s death (ch. xx. 28), 
and the story of Micah and the Danites is 
probably but little later, perhaps before the 
first oppression by Cushan-rishathaim. 
Various theories have been held as to the 
writer of the book. It is most likely that it 
was drawn up from documents which were 
put together before Samuel’s time, and that 
the last part was added in David’s time. 
But it is mere conjecture. Nathan and 
Gad both composed histories, and if this 
were by either one of these prophets, we 
would have the date of the work in David’s 
reign. This, however, does not affect either 
the inspiration of the writer or the true 
place of the book in the Canon of Scripture. 
It is recorded for our learning, that we may 
see the result of religious disunity. Their 
service of Jehovah was the national bond 
of Israel, and whenever that was broken, 
every man did as seemed good in his eyes; 
each fell in with the superstitions of the 






JUDGMENT-DAY 


413 


JUDGMENT-DAY 


Canaanitish communities about them, inter¬ 
married, forgot their national obligations, 
and were given over into the hand of suc¬ 
cessive oppressors. It is notable that each 
oppressor whose yQke was thrown off never 
renewed it. So first the Mesopotamian king, 
then Moab, then Jabin, then the Midianites, 
then the Philistines, whose power was 
shaken by the last slaughter by Samson. 
Some of these people fought with and suc¬ 
cessfully invaded Israel again and again, as 
did the Philistines and Moabites, but not in 
the sense of the oppressions during the eras 
of the Judges. Of all the Judges Sanison 
was the leading type of Christ in many re¬ 
markable points, but for this we must refer 
to the article on Samson. 

Judgment-Day. The doctrine of a judg¬ 
ment after death has always been associated 
with the idea of man’s immortality. It is 
maintained on the ground of responsibility, 
and on the absence of a due proportion of 
rewards and punishments in human actions 
in this life. The ancient Egyptians passed 
judgment on the acts of men after their 
death. In Holy Scripture earthly judg¬ 
ments forecast future ones (Eccl. xi. 9; Heb. 
ix. 27 ; Joel iii. 1, etc.; Amos v. 18, etc.; Isa. 

iii. 14, xxxiv. 1, lxvi. 15, and Dan. vii. 22). 

They explicitly declare that there will be 

a Day of Judgment, when, in great solem¬ 
nity, before the universe, the Lord Jesus 
Christ is to appear in glory as Judge at 
the resurrection of the dead, when they 
that have done good shall be partakers of 
the resurrection of life, and they that have 
done evil of the resurrection of damnation 
(St. John v. 21-29 ; 1 Cor. xv. 22; Kev. xx. 
11 ; St. John vi. 39, 40; xi. 24; 1 Thess. 

iv. 15). It is declared that the Judgment- 
Day shall be ushered in by the sound of a 
trumpet, as the Jewish assemblies were 
called together. This trump of God shall 
resound through the earth and call all men 
before His throne (1 Cor. xv. 52, and 1 
Thess. iv. 16). (See Ebrard in Schaff-Her- 
zog’s Encjmlopaedia, and Chambers’s Library 
of Universal Knowledge.) 

Bishop Pearson, in his work on the Creed, 
thus expresses the necessity of a future judg¬ 
ment: “Nothing more certain than that in 
this life rewards are not correspondent to the 
virtues, punishment not proportionable to 
the sins, of mem Which consideration will 
enforce one of these conclusions,—either 
that there is no judge of the actions of man¬ 
kind, or if there be a judge, and that judge 
be just, then there is a judgment in another 
world, and the effects thereof concern 
another life. Being, then, we must acknowl¬ 
edge that there is a judge, which judgeth 
the earth ; being we cannot deny but God 
is that judge, and all must confess that God 
is most just; being the rewards and punish¬ 
ments of this life are no way.answerable to 
so exact a justice as that which is divine 
must be ; it followeth that there is a judg¬ 
ment yet to come, in which God will-show a 
perfect demonstration of His justice, and to 


which every man shall in his own bosom 
carry an undeniable witness of all his ac¬ 
tions.” So the Church teaches the worshiper 
to say in the Creed of Christ, “ From thence 
He shall come to judge the quick and the 
dead.” The feeling with which men look 
forward to that judgment is shown in that 
old Latin hymn, “ Dies Irse.” Theodoret 
observes, that if the loud sound of the trum¬ 
pet at the giving of the law from Sinai was so 
dreadful to the Jews that they said to Moses, 
“ Let not the Lord speak to us lest we die,” 
how terrible must the sound be of the trum¬ 
pet which calls all men to final judgment! 
De Quincey refers to a person in danger of 
death seeing “in a moment her whole life 
in its minutest incidents arrayed before her 
simultaneously, as in a mirror,” and applies 
the thought to the judgment, saying that 
things are never forgotten, but disappear 
like stars. Kev. Dr. H. C. McCook likens 
the records of the heart to things written 
with invisible ink, which may be brought 
out by holding the paper to the fire. 

Our Blessed Lord constantly kept the 
thought of a final judgment before His 
hearers, and showed the happiness and the 
misery of a future life of endless duration. 
The parables continually teach this lesson. 
See “The Unjust Steward” (St. Luke xvi. 
1), “The Marriage of the King’s Son” (St. 
Matt. xxii. 13), with joy within and dark¬ 
ness without, “The Vineyard, with the de¬ 
struction of the t rebels” (St. Matt. xx. 16), 
“The Wheat and the Tares” (St. Matt, 
xiii. 42), with the “furnace of fire” to de¬ 
stroy the wicked, while the righteous shine 
forth as the sun in the Kingdom of God. 
In the same chapter the parable of the Net 
teaches the same lesson of the “ wailing” of 
the wicked. But the angels, and not men, 
are to separate the good and bad. “Judge 
nothing before the time” (1 Cor. iv. 5) is 
the command for the present life. While 
the wicked receive punishment the righteous 
are rewarded. It is declared by Christ 
Himself that the cup of cold water shall not 
be forgotten by God, and that he who feasts 
the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the 
blind shall be recompensed at the resurrec¬ 
tion of the just (St. Luke xiv. 13, 14). He 
who neglected the Christian teaching was 
left in a worse condition than the inhabitants 
of Sodom and Gomorrah as regarded the 
Day of Judgment (St. Matt. x. 15). 
If the Apostles shook off' the dust of their 
feet in leaving a neglectful house or city, 
they were in danger of perdition. While 
our Lord came not to judge the world, pre¬ 
monitions of His final work are shown in 
His woes uttered against the Scribes and 
Pharisees (St. Matt, xxiii. 13-39). What a 
foretaste of the last day in verse 33 !—“ Ye 
serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can 
ye escape the damnation of hell?” The 
judgments of Cain and of Pharaoh in the 
Old Testament and of Judas Iscariot and 
Ananias and Sapphira in the New are of 
the final work of judgment. 





JURISDICTION 


414 


JUSTIFICATION 


“If such was the splendor of Ilis appear¬ 
ance then, and such its effects, what will 
they be when He comes hereafter in His 
glorious Majesty to judge the quick and 
dead?” (Bishop Wordsworth on Acts xxvi. 
13.) 

“ Hannibal is said, after the subjection of 
Carthage by Rome, to have walked through 
the city, and as he saw the tears, and heard 
the wailing of the people who groaned under 
the terrible burden imposed upon them by 
the conquerors, to have laughed. Then, 
when his fellow-citizens rose up against him 
in indignation, he replied, 1 1 laugh not from 
joy to see your bondage, but I laugh at your 
tears, now too late, now in vain; for had 
you in proper time fought as men, now you 
would not be weeping as women.’ ” (S. 

Baring Gould’s Post-Mediaeval Preachers.) 

Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Jurisdiction. The sphere of law, whether 
spiritual, temporal, or territorial, and the 
limits under which the executive of the law 
can act. *Thus a Bishop has jurisdiction ter¬ 
ritorially over his Diocese, and spiritually in 
the Church, holding a common authoritj^ 
with his brethren in the sphere of his duty 
and office. The Lord gave the Apostles juris¬ 
diction. “All power is given unto mein 
heaven and in earth. . . . Go ye, therefore” 
(St. Matt, xxviii. 18, 19). This is the con¬ 
joint jurisdiction, but as local order demands 
that there should be a subdivision, diocesan 
divisions followed, and an assignment of 
territorial authority. This led to Churches 
in the several parts of the civilized world, 
and to the principle of Sees. The temporal 
jurisdiction is the Patriarchal. Temporal, 
for it is the result of the needs of the time, 
and is onty so far territorial as the Patriarch 
is limited by the bounds of his Province, but 
is not so as using a mere local authority be¬ 
longing to the Bishops of the Dioceses in 
the Province, and his jurisdiction is disci¬ 
plinary and appellative. There are, then, 
for the Episcopal jurisdiction three forms 
historically : I. The Apostolic mission of 
Christ. II. The diocesan distribution for 
the sake of order, work, and development. 
III. The Provincial or Patriarchal juris¬ 
diction for the sake of discipline and unifi¬ 
cation of Church work. But under this of 
the Apostolic there is also the priestly juris¬ 
diction committed by the Bishop to the 
Priest as rector or pastor in the parish to be 
“ Messengers, watchmen, and stewards of 
the Lord, to teach and to premopish, to feed 
and provide for the Lord’s family, to seek 
for Christ’s sheep that are dispersed abroad, 
and for His children who are in the midst 
of this naughty world, that they may be 
saved through Christ forever.” This sub¬ 
ordinate jurisdiction definitely committed to 
the Priest by the words of ordination (vide 
Ordering of Priests in the Prayer-Book) is 
the most important in the Diocese under the 
Bishop, and should be clearly understood 
both in its responsibilities and in its limita¬ 
tions, since the layman’s covenant relation 


to God is made through the agency of the 
Priest in and by the Sacraments. Its respon¬ 
sibilities are well set forth in the charge 
given to the candidate for that holy order as 
set forth in the office. It is wholly subordi¬ 
nate to the Bishop, and its holder is prop¬ 
erly the Bishop’s representative, performing 
for him the functions committed to that 
order. Its limitations, then, are first in the 
nature of a limited agency having defined 
duties to discharge, and in the bounds set 
by the Canons, and by the conditions of the 
cure which he is to discharge, and by the 
canonical limits of the parochial work he is 
to do. 

Justification. Much needless confusion 
has been imported into the definitions upon 
this most wholesome and comfortable doc¬ 
trine. Luther, who brought the doctrine 
into prominence during the controversies of 
the Reformation, did much towards confirm¬ 
ing it by his vehement assertions, which 
savor of a solifidianism that he would have 
repudiated. Again, terms which only partly 
state the doctrine have been introduced and 
sharply debated, such as forensic justifica¬ 
tion and inherent righteousness. And the 
words righteousness and justification repre¬ 
sent the same Greek word, and are in some 
degree interchangeable, but as “justifica¬ 
tion” and “ to justify” refer to God’s acts to 
us, restoring us, there has necessarily been 
added a further meaning to the word. This 
is not so much an addition to, as it is an ex¬ 
tension of, its meaning, if we can so speak 
of a word which denoting God’s perfect 
righteousness descends also to imply His 
righteousness in us upon our forgiveness and 
our being taken into the membership of His 
Son. It is also difficult in so short an article 
to sharply define the transition to, and yet 
the later continuous parallelism with, sanc¬ 
tification. And, again, the formal statement 
of the doctrine of justification is hardly 
needed for one who spiritually apprehends 
the force of our adoption and the reality 
of our being made partakers of the Divine 
nature, and our growth in that participation 
by a continual living in the grace of our 
dear Lord. 

It must be borne in mind that the root 
idea in the word righteous or in the word 
just must be the giving to each one who has 
a claim upon us his rights, - whether it be to 
God, to self, or to our brother. Therefore 
St. John (1 John iii. 7) writes, “He that 
doeth righteousness is righteous, even as He 
is righteous.” But this yielding to each his 
right is a complex act, as God’s rights from 
us are Obedience, Love, Worship, and 
Works, with all that these imply ; our 
brother’s rights are all that we can give of 
love, forbearance, and aid; the rights due 
to ourselves are the life and holy happiness, 
which were ours by creation, and are offered 
and urged by'Gon’s mercy. It is equall} 1 - 
true that we are impotent through sinful 
weakness to render to each party his rights, 
while we have a capacity with no true abil- 






JUSTIFICATION 


415 


JUSTIFICATION 


ity. External aid is needed to enable us ; a 
preliminary act of forgiveness, of freeing 
from the punishment due to sin, and a res¬ 
toration to that position wherein we may, 
under covenanted grounds begin to fulfill the 
duties bounden upon us. Herein lie the 
facts of our Lord’s Atonement and the 
power of His Resurrection, and the gift of 
these acts conveyed to us in the Sacraments. 
“ He saw that there was no man, and won¬ 
dered that there was no intercessor,” so He 
wrought our righteousness for us, fulfilling 
the Law for us. So He was made under the 
Law as well as born of a woman, therefore 
St. Paul declares that by the deeds of the 
Law there shall be no man justified in His 
sight (Rom. iii. 20). 

Since without holiness no man can see 
God, and we cannot be or become holy by 
our own strength, God gave His only 
Son to become our righteousness, our holi¬ 
ness, our justification (1 Cor. i. 30 ; Rom. 
iv. 25; 1 Pet. i. 15). He by His fulfilling 
the Law for us, His brethren, to His Father, 
to Himself, and to us, obtained for us that 
He could become our bondsman, His 
righteousness be accepted for us, and we, 
under the covenant of Christ, be restored, 
adopted, and sanctified. Therefore God 
was in Christ reconciling the word unto 
Himself. God receives us because of Jesus 
Christ the righteous, who is the propitiation 
for our sins (1 John ii. 2). 

The mode of restoration is prepared, the 
means and instruments on God’s part are all 
ready. It remains for us to lay hold of 
them to make them ours, to use them, to 
grow in them, to become transformed by the 
renewing of our minds by the power of the 
Holy Ghost. This latter part of our Chris¬ 
tian life and estate towards our Father 
is more properly, discussed under the title 
Sanctification. The means whereby we 
lay hold of those gifts and mercies of God 
are the two hands of the soul which we can 
stretch up to Him,—Repentance and Faith. 
Justification, then, the accounting us right¬ 
eous because of, and solely through, the 
righteousness of Christ, is made ours by 
the forms and ways by which we lay hold 
of and secure it to ourselves. We are 
said very truly to be justified by re¬ 
pentance (St. Luke xviii. 14). Yet re¬ 
pentance cannot be repentance without 
faith. We are justified by the free gift 
of God, i.e., by grace, but we lay hold of 
the grace by faith. We are justified by 
works, but works to be works at all in any 
Christian sense must be done in faith. In 
fact, our justification has many sides, is 
applied in many ways, can be approached 
by many paths, but all of these have the 
common element of Faith mingled in them. 
As our Lord is called a Vine, a Lamb, a 
Fount, a Door, a Rock, that by these He 
may show His sympathy with all forms of 
the human mind, and may be to each what 
be needs, and yet He is the one Jesus 
Christ, so His righteousness is laid hold 


of in many wa} T s, yet so that Faith is the 
infusing and controlling power. We lay 
hold of His justification by our repentance, 
but how can we repent unless we believe in 
a loving Lord, whom we have wronged, 
and also believe that He will restore 
us ? Therefore the Fathers called Re¬ 
pentance and Faith the two hands we 
can stretch out to God. By these we 
receive His gift in Baptism, the adoption 
into the citizenship of the Kingdom of His 
dear Son, the new birth into a new creation 
in God, and into life. For as in Adam 
(by natural birth) all die, even so (by bap¬ 
tism) in Christ shall all be made alive. 
But this life is by the righteousness which 
we have in Him. His righteousness, as we 
are under covenant through Him, is ours, as 
He has purchased our redemption by His 
blood, and accounted righteous in Him by 
mercy, we must use this grace, grow in it, 
make it our second nature, and so grow in 
sanctification as we more completely assimi¬ 
late our life to our Lord in habit and in 
principle, through the channels by which 
He pours His holy life into our hearts. It is 
not easy to avoid reverting to the original 
statements, but in so complex an act as this 
of our justification, which rests upon the 
several parts of our Lord’s redemption, we 
have to go back in order to follow up an¬ 
other of its many applications. 

Righteousness in us rests upon the forgive¬ 
ness given us in Christ. Then, as redemp¬ 
tion through His blood is conveyed to us 
upon our faithful reception of this forgive¬ 
ness, it follows that Absolution and the Holy 
Communion are to the faithful so many 
means of laying hold of that righteousness 
that is from Him, and thus are approaches 
to our Father, who justifieth us in Christ. 
Baptism, then, conveys to us His justifica¬ 
tion, and the Sacrament of the Lord’s Sup¬ 
per continues us in this state, and helps us 
to grow in it. “If any man sin, we have 
an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ 
the righteous, and He is the propitiation for 
our sins, and not for ours only, but for the 
sins of the whole world.” And it is with the 
same true, lively faith we lay hold on 
Christ, and receive Him and His righteous¬ 
ness in this solemn renewal of our covenant. 
But, again, as we are justified by repentance 
and by faith, and have it freely conveyed to 
us in the first Sacrament and renewed in the 
second, so we are also justified by works. 
“But works without faith are not pleasant 
unto God, as they spring not of faith in Jesus 
Christ, but they have the nature of sin. 
Therefore works, which are the fruits of 
faith, and follow after justification, are pleas¬ 
ing and acceptable to God in Christ, and 
do spring necessarily out of a true and lively 
faith, insomuch that by them a lively faith 
may be as evidently known as a tree dis¬ 
cerned by the fruit.” By works we show 
forth, and also intensify and strengthen, our 
faith, and stamp upon our characters so far 
the justification which God giveth to our 





JUSTIFICATION 


416 


KANSAS 


faith. Works react upon faith, and aid it 
by their consequents, proving God’s mercy 
and love, and that there is no unrighteous¬ 
ness in Him. What has been said is in¬ 
cluded in the wonderfully comprehensive 
language of St. Paul in three several pas¬ 
sages, which are placed together, not that 
they should be torn out of their connec¬ 
tion, but that they may be conveniently 
examined. The first is from Rom. iii. 
21 : 

“ But now the righteousness of God with¬ 
out the law is manifested, being witnessed 
by the law and the prophets; even the right¬ 
eousness of God which is by faith of Jesus 
Christ unto all and upon all thefn that be¬ 
lieve : for there is.no difference : for all have 
sinned, and come short of the glory of God ; 
being justified freely by His grace through 
the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 
whom God hath set forth to be a .propitia¬ 
tion through faith in His blood, to declare 
His righteousness for the remission of sins 
that are past, through the forbearance of 
God. To declare, I say, at this time His 
righteousness; that He might be just, and 
the justifier of him which believeth in Je¬ 
sus.” In this it must be noted (a) that the 
Apostle could not suppose that any one could 
believe and not at once receive baptism; 
and ( b ) that St. Paul uses the word pro¬ 
pitiation, referring to our redemption in 
Christ (the sprinkling of blood on the 
mercy-seat), and the Church gives a Eucha¬ 
ristic interpretation 'to it by using, among 
the comfortable words of the Communion 
Service, the parallel passage from St. John’s 
Epistle. 

The second passage is from 1 Cor. vi. 11 : 
“But ye are washed, but ye are'sanctified, 
but ye are justified in the name of the Lord 
Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.” Here, 
again, it must be remarked, name means 
power and authority, and may most properly 
be connected with the threefold name in 


which we are baptized ; but this verse is an 
outline of the Christian life. 

The third passage is from Titus iii. 4-9: 
“ But after that the kindness and love of 
God our Saviour toward man appeared, 
not by works of righteousness which we 
have done, but according to His mercy He 
saved us, by the washing of regeneration 
and renewing of the Holy Ghost ; which 
He shed on us abundantly through Jesus 
Christ our Saviour; that being justified 
by His grace, we should be made heirs ac¬ 
cording to the hope of eternal life.” 

These passages are in the main the basis 
of the XI. Article of Religion. “We are 
accounted righteous before God only for the 
merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
Christ by Faith, and not for our own works 
or deservings, wherefore that we are justi¬ 
fied by Faith only as a most wholesome 
doctrine and very full of comfort, as is more 
largely expressed in the Homily of Justifi¬ 
cation.” 

This article while in the general line of the 
confession of Augsburg and agreeing with 
Luther and Melancthon’s teachings, at the 
same time is on a very distinct and in¬ 
dependent footing, rather following out the 
general ancient teaching than making such 
positive and exclusive statements as are 
elsewhere found, which give a narrowness to 
the all-embracing doctrine of justification. 

In this outline no attempt has been made 
to give any sketch of the controversies, or to 
quote formal statements, or even to refer to 
all the texts which bear upon this doctrine. 
To do so at all adequately would far exceed 
our limits. But the “Introduction to the 
Epistles to the Romans and Galatians,” by 
Bishop Wordsworth, the comment upon the 
IX. Article in Bishop Browne’s work upon 
the XXXIX. Articles, and Hooker’s famous 
sermon on Justification, refuting the Romish 
doctrine of an inherent Righteousness, are 
to be consulted and studied. 




K. 


Kansas, Diocese of. The organic act of 
Congress under which the Territory of 
Kansas was thrown open to settlement was 
approved on the 30th day of May, 1854 a.d. 
The Constitution of the State was adopted 
by the Constitutional Convention on the 
29th day of July, 1859 a.d.,. and was ratified 
artd adopted by the people of the State at an 
election held on the 4th day of October, 
1859 a.d. The State was admitted into the 
Union by an Act of Congress, approved on 
the 20th day of Mav, 1861 a.d. Between 
the organic act and the act of admission 


population came into the Territory, and the 
organization of Churches of different de¬ 
nominations went on side by side with other 
developments in the opening of a new 
country. 

The first missionary of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church appointed for Kansas was 
sent by the Domestic Committee in 1854 a.d., 
—the Rev. John McNamara, now D.D., and 
the head of Nebraska College. He had served 
for two or three years before in Western 
Missouri, at Weston and St. Joseph. His 
appointment in Kansas was for Leaven- 






KANSAS 


417 


KANSAS 


worth. He struggled on for a time, but 
was soon compelled to withdraw, for those 
were troublous times of intense political and 
partisan contest. His experiences are 
graphically described by him in his very 
readable book, entitled “ Three Years on the 
Kansas Border.” 

The first Episcopal missionary who se¬ 
cured a footing and a home was the Rev. 
Hiram Stone, whose ministry was at Leav¬ 
enworth, which city, then containing about 
two thousand people, he entered on Novem¬ 
ber 24, 1856 a.d., and where he organized 
a parish on December 10 of the same year. 
In the course of the next three years parishes 
were formed in Atchison, Fort Scott, Junc¬ 
tion City, Lawrence, Manhattan, Topeka, 
Troy, and Wyandotte. The Territory was a 
part of the Jurisdiction of Bishop Kemper, 
the Missionary Bishop of the Northwest, 
the first and only Missionary Bishop then in 
the Church. 

In 1859 a.d. the few Churches at that 
time existing constituted themselves into a 
Diocese, at a Primary Convention at Wy¬ 
andotte, on the 11th and 12th days of Au¬ 
gust, under the Presidency of Bishop Kem¬ 
per, who, on the 26th of the previous 
July, had summoned the Convention for 
this purpose. There were at that time in 
the Territory ten clergymen,—the Rev. 
Messrs. Callaway, Clarkson, Drummond, 
Henderson, Nash, Preston, Reynolds, Ryan, 
Staudenmayer, and Stone. The Diocese 
was received into union with the General 
Convention at its Triennial Session in the 
October following. 

At a special Convention held April 11 
and 12, 1860 a.d., an attempt was made to 
elect a Bishop. Eight clergymen were pres¬ 
ent, and eight parishes were represented. 
On the twelfth ballot the Rev. Herman 
Dyer, D.D., of New York, was elected by 
the clergy, and their choice was confirmed 
by the laity. But a question arose as to the 
validity of the election, under the limita¬ 
tions prescribed by the General Canon “ of 
Bishops.” The incipient controversy was 
silenced by the prompt action of the Bishop- 
elect, who declined the election. That 
action of the Rev. Dr. Dyer was a happy 
thing for the Church, in so far as it retained 
him in that most important and command¬ 
ing position in the centre of our Church 
work in the United States, which he has so 
long occupied in the city of New York. 

At the Annual Convention in the Sep¬ 
tember following, the Rt. Rev. Henry W. 
Lee, Bishop of Iowa, was invited to take 
the Episcopal charge of the Diocese until 
the Diocese should elect its own Bishop. 
The invitation was accepted, and Bishop Lee 
continued this provisional charge until the 
election of the present Diocesan, in Septem¬ 
ber, 1864 a.d.- v 

As a Territory Kansas included not only 
all the country now within its prescribed 
limits, but also so much of Colorado as ex¬ 
tended through the three degrees of the 

27 


width of the State from north to south, 
thence westward to the top of the Rocky 
Mountains, including and far beyond Den¬ 
ver,—a district known as Arrapahoe County, 
and almost as large as all the rest of the 
State. Kansas became a Diocese while it 
was a Territory, and as such was admitted 
into union with the General Convention, and 
had the right to remain so with all the do¬ 
main which then belonged to it. Ecclesias¬ 
tical divisions are entirely independent of 
the civil, as we may have, and have had, 
Dioceses made of parts of several States, or 
several Dioceses in one State. The parties 
concerned could alone remedy the trouble. 
Bishop Talbot, Missionary Bishop of the 
Northwest, consented to receive Arrapa¬ 
hoe County as a part of his jurisdiction ; the 
Diocese of Kansas in its Convention, and the 
Bishop in charge of it, assented to the change, 
and the case was then finally referred to the 
General Convention of 1862 a.d., which rati¬ 
fied the change proposed, and made the Dio¬ 
cese coterminous with the State of Kansas. 

During the four years of Bishop Lee’s 
charge he made three visitations, confirming 
in the few parishes on the Missouri River, 
and once going into the interior as far as 
Lawrence and Topeka. West of these there 
were only about four nominal parishes, and 
these very small and feeble. The number 
of persons confirmed in these four years 
hardly exceeded a couple of dozen. Two 
Deacons, the Rev. Messrs. Henderson and 
Ilickcox, were ordained by him to the Priest¬ 
hood. One corner-stone was laid by him, 
which was found a few years later, by care¬ 
ful measurement and digging, when a fine 
stone church was built upon it. His work 
was during the long Civil War, when the 
wonder is that the Church in this new and 
border State was not entirely obliterated. 
But his happy influence in his brief visita¬ 
tions in Kansas, taken out of his crowding 
labors in his own large Diocese, was to keep 
alive “the things that remained,” in expec¬ 
tation of the brighter day which came with 
the return of peace. The Diocese is under 
lasting obligations to this wise overseer. 

At the Annual Convention in Atchison, at 
which Bishop Lee presided, on the 14tli and 
15th days of September, 1864 a.d., the Dio¬ 
cese, on the recommendation of the Bishop 
in charge, proceeded to the election of a 
Bishop. The Rev. William II. Hiekcox was 
the Secretary. Six clergymen answered to 
their names,—the Rev. Messrs. Egar, Hick- 
cox, Nash, Preston, Ryan, and Stone. Seven 
parishes were represented,—Atchison, Bur¬ 
lington, Leavenworth, Manhattan, Topeka, 
Troy, and Wyandotte. The Rev. Thomas 
H. Yail, D.D., Rector of Trinity Church, 
Muscatine, Iowa, was unanimously elected 
by the clergy, and their election was unani¬ 
mously confirmed by the laity. The Rev. 
R. W. Oliver, Rector of Trinity Church, 
Lawrence, who arrived just as the election 
had been concluded, by permission added his 
suffrage to the electing vote. 





KANSAS 


418 


KENTUCKY 


The consecration of the Bishop-elect took 
place at Muscatine, on December 15, 1864 
a.d. The Bishops present were Bishop 
Kemper, the first Missionary Bishop of the 
Northwest, and at the time of this service 
Bishop of Wisconsin, the Presiding Conse- 
crator; Bishop Lee, of Iowa, who preached 
the sermon ; and Bishop Bedell (assistant), of 
Ohio, and Bishop W T hitehouse, of Illinois, 
who together presented the Bishop-elect. 
On the 1st of January, 1865 a.d., Bishop 
Yail started for his new field. On the 15th 
of December, 1883 a.d., he entered upon the 
twentieth year of his Episcopate. 

When he came to the State there were 
three little churches in it in use, at Law¬ 
rence, at Leavenworth, and at Wyandotte, 
and four others had been commenced, at 
Fort Scott, Junction City, Manhattan, and 
Topeka. Larger churches have taken the 
place of the first three. The four then com¬ 
menced have been finished or rebuilt, and 
twenty-five entirely new churches have been 
added to the previous number. So that 
now, in December, 1883 a.d., there are 32 
churches built and paid for. In connection 
with these there are also 15 parsonages. In 
addition to the organized parishes there are 
some 30 or more missions and preaching 
stations, so that now there are about seventy 
points in the Diocese where the services of 
the Church are held by regular appoint¬ 
ment at longer or shorter intervals. Every 
church which has been built in the Diocese 
has been aided by or through the Bishop, 
in amounts varying from $350 to $2500 each. 
The present rate of aid is from $300 to $500 
each. There are now 32 clergymen on the 
clerical roll. 

There is in the Diocese but one benevolent 
institution in the strict sense, Christ’s Hos¬ 
pital in Topeka, arranged on the pavilion 
plan. The grounds, 10 acres in extent, in 
the form of a parallelogram, 600 feet wide 
by 727 feet long, cost $5000, and were 
presented by Mrs. Vail and the Bishop to 
the Board of Trustees. There is as yet but 
one building completed, 160 feet long. The 
administration end is 40 by 60 feet, and of 
three stories. The ward is attached of one 
story, 100 feet long by 28 feet wide, and 16 
feet high in the clear. This ward is sub¬ 
divided into two half-wards of 42 feet long, 
and each of these again into two quarter- 
wards of 21 feet in length. Between these 
half-wards is a reception-room 16 feet long, 
for receiving patients. Each quarter-ward 
will hold six or (in an emergency) nine 
beds, the entire ward holding a total of 
twenty-four or thirty-six beds. $5500 were 
raised for the building by voluntary contri¬ 
butions in Topeka, and $5500 were given 
by friends outside of Topeka through the 
Bishop. The total cost so far has been 
$16,000, all of which is paid. 

Of educational institutions, besides two 
or three parochial schools, there is properly 
but one, the College of the Sisters of Beth¬ 
any, exclusively for girls, the only one of 


the sort under any Protestant oversight in 
the State of Kansas, and for an immense 
country south and south west from Kansas. 
This institution has proved a great success. 
For eighteen years it has been growing into 
favor as its facilities have been more and 
more extended. It now embraces four scho¬ 
lastic departments,—the Kindergarten, the 
Primary, the Preparatory, and the Collegi¬ 
ate. Girls may enter at a very tender age, 
and may graduate at eighteen or twenty, 
with an education about parallel with that 
of young men who receive their A.B. at 
other colleges. In connection with these 
studies, the ornamental branches of music, 
vocal, choral, and instrumental, and of 
art in the several grades and varieties of 
drawing, painting, and sketching in oil and 
water colors, designing, decorating on cera¬ 
mics, silks, etc., are thoroughly taught. In 
the last year 153 pupils were trained in 
music, and 55 in art. 

In addition to the chaplain, who is head¬ 
master, and the choir-master or precentor, 
and to the bursar, house-mother, matron, 
and health-matron, twenty lady teachers 
are employed in the College. Over 300 
girls were in attendance during the last year. 
The institution must soon be greatly en¬ 
larged to meet its increasing opportunities. 

Rt. Rev. Thos. H. Vail, D.D., 

Bishop of Kansas. 

Kentucky, The History of the Church 

in. Kentucky, as a State, was admitted into 
union with the nation June 1, 1792 a.d.; 
as a Diocese in the Church’s federation, 1829 

A.D. 

Ante-Diocesan History. —Christ Church, 
Lexington, was organized July 3, 1809 a.d. 
Down to the first Convention in 1829 a.d., 
twelve clergymen can be named who, through 
“good or evil report,” kept the work and 
name of the Church alive. Among these 
was the Rev. Mr. Lythe, Chaplain of the 
first Proprietary Legislature, which met at 
Harrodsburg in 1795 a.d., and who distin¬ 
guished himself as a member of that body 
by offering a bill “ To prevent Profane 
Swearing and Sabbath-breaking.” Lythe 
was the first priest, as he was also the first 
minister of any kind or name , to offer up the 
sacrifice of prayer and praise to the Living 
God in Kentucky ; and this, under the shade 
of an elm-tree, on the first Sunday after this 
Legislature assembled. Humphrey Mar¬ 
shall, in his “History of Kentucky,” pub¬ 
lished 1824 a.d., writes of 1792 a.d. : “ There 
were in the country, and chiefly from Vir¬ 
ginia, many Episcopalians, but who had 
formed no Church, there being no parson to 
take charge of it at the period of separation 
from Virginia in 1792 a.d. It might have 
been hazarded as a public conjecture that no 
Episcopalian Church could ever be erected 
in Kentucky. There is, however (1824 a.d.), 
one pastor who has a church in Lexington. 
Education is with this fraternity a necessary 
qualification for administering the affairs of 
both Church and State. The forms of their 





KENTUCKY 


419 


KENTUCKY 


worship are highly decorous, and their dis¬ 
cipline calculated to make good citizens.” 

The Rev. Mr. Moore, educated for the 
Presbyterian ministry, and chosen President 
of the Transylvania University, was ad¬ 
mitted into holy orders by Bishop Madi¬ 
son, 1794-98 a.d. He was the first clergyman 
who ministered to the Churchmen of Lex¬ 
ington, and was the means of erecting the 
first building. “ The Rev. Mr. Kavanaugh 
came to the Diocese in 1802, and ministered 
generally that year, then removed to Hender¬ 
son, where he died, respected and lamented, 
and followed by many good works, in 1806.” 
Record is found of a Rev. Mr. Eliot, who had 
temporary charge of Christ Church, Lex¬ 
ington, in 1813 a.d. The Rev. Mr. Ward 
succeeded Mr. Moore in this parish; after 
him the Rev. Mr. Burgee, who was ordained 
by Bishop Chase, at Worthington, Ohio, 
June 16, 1819 a.d., who died shortly after, 
and then the Rev. Dr. Chapman, which 
brings us down to Diocesan times. It should 
be mentioned here that six of these twelve 
clergymen crossed the sea to receive holy or¬ 
ders. They were Sebastian, Gantt, Cham¬ 
bers, Johnson, Eliot, and Crawford. On 
their return the first named blossomed into a 
politician and a judge, and of the rest silence 
shall reign. 

On the 8th day of July, 1829 a.d., the 
Primary Convention assembled in Christ 
Church, Lexington. Two Priests, one Dea¬ 
con, with nine Laymen, representing the 
Parishes of Lexington, Danville, and Louis¬ 
ville, composed the body. To the Rev. Dr. 
Chapman is due the honor of organizing the 
Diocese. He was the sole rector in it. An¬ 
ticipating the General Convention of 1829 
a.d. , in the spring of that year he issued 
public notices, visited Danville, organized 
Trinity Parish, which appointed delegates, 
and from thence to Louisville, arousing gen¬ 
eral interest. He was chosen President, and 
rightfully. He was a man of zeal, power, 
and learning; and all these virtues are at¬ 
tested, too, by his volume of sermons on 
the “ Distinctive Principles of the'Church,” 
a book which was highly commended by 
Bishop Brownell and by Freeman, histori¬ 
ographer of Kentucky,, as “ having done 
more in all parts of the country to dissemi¬ 
nate sound knowledge concerning the 
Church, and bring converts into her Fold, 
than any work since ‘ Daubney’s Guide,’ 
which our Fathers put in circulation.” To 
this latter testimony this Diocese can at¬ 
test that all her larger and more perma¬ 
nent churchly life is due. The Rev. B. O. 
Peers was chosen Secretary. He was then 
the Principal of the Pestallozi Academy, 
Lexington, and afterwards became promi¬ 
nent in Diocesan affairs, “not only for his 
devotion to the cause of Christian education, 
but for his learning and ardent piety.” He 
was the fifth President of the Transylvania 
University, which institution was largely 
controlled by Churchmen from its begin¬ 
ning to its close,—from Moore to Coil, to 


Peers, to Holley. Peers was untiring. He 
spent time, labor, and money, and is the 
father of common-school education in the 
State. He was a writer of considerable 
merit, his chief literary work being that on 
“ Christian Education,” although in Church 
circles he was better known in his connec¬ 
tion with the old Sunday-School Union. He 
died at Louisville in 1842 a.d. 

The Rev. John Ward, the other clerical 
member, was principal of a girls’ school at 
Lexington. After the Convention had been 
organized, it was moved “ That the Rev. 
Samuel Johnston, Rector of St. Paul’s 
Church, Cincinnati, being present, be recog¬ 
nized as a member of this Convention,” and 
he took his seat accordingly. 

Kentucky owes much of her growth to the 
fact of the character of her devoted lay 
members. They have for the most part 
been unflinching in contending for the “ faith 
once delivered.” Notably in this first Con¬ 
vention we find Dr. J. Esten Cooke, a 
prominent citizen and a physician, learned 
and beloved, in Lexington. He was a con¬ 
vert from Methodism, “the most profound 
medical philosopher of his time,” and wrote 
a masterly work on the “ Invalidity of Pres¬ 
byterian Ordination,”—which “ attained a 
remarkable celebrity in England as well as 
America.” Richard Barnes, “a man in 
moderate circumstances, but the moving 
spirit of Christ Church, Louisville.” John 
Bustard, who afterwards endowed the 
Female Orphan Asylum of that city. From 
Danville that great physician, Ephraim 
McDowell, “Father of Ovariotomy,” and 
whose memory is honored by his profession 
with the erection of a public monument in 
the city of Danville. H. J. Cowan, who lives 
in his devoted sons, and Frederick Jeiser. 
Resolutions were offered in this Convention 
for the “ employment of lay readers in con¬ 
gregations destitute of clerical services,” and 
that “it be recommended to all families of 
the Church in the Diocese to have daily 
family worship.” It was at this Conven¬ 
tion that Dr. Chapman learned that Bishop 
Ravenscroft, “that noble Cceur de Lion of 
the Church,” was in Nashville, and an invi¬ 
tation was extended him to visit the Diocese ; 
he willingly responded by appearing in Lex¬ 
ington on the 25th of July, and confirmed 
ninety-one persons. Near the close of the 
year Bishop Brownell, of Connecticut, 
visited the Diocese. From his “ private note¬ 
book” and the manuscripts of his “ itiner¬ 
ary” the fullest information is afforded, here 
briefly summed up. “ Arrived at Louisville 
November 29 “ found the Parish in a cold 

and depressed state owing to its having been 
for fifteen months without a clergyman, and 
to the divisions which had taken place in 
regard to Mr. Shaw, the last Rector.” Dur¬ 
ing the Bishop’s visit the new rector, Mr. 
Paige, arrives, and he departs from Louisville 
for Frankfort, leaving all things in the most 
hopeful state in that Parish, predicting that 
it will become “ the most flourishing in the 





KENTUCKY 


420 


KENTUCKY 


Diocese.” “On board the boat we had a 
motley company,—several members of the 
Legislature, half a dozen blacklegs , and a 
couple of actors and actresses,— the latter the 
best behaved of the company. Constant 
gambling on board and much gross profanity. 
The members of the Legislature had been 
introduced to us in Louisville and treated us 
with great attention.” “ Lexington is the 
Athens of the West. A fine medical school, 
excellent buildings, and an able faculty, and 
two hundred students. Academical depart¬ 
ment has one hundred and thirty-six stu¬ 
dents, eighty of them collegians, the rest in 
the grammar school. The country the finest 
in the world; the society highly intelligent, 
yet plain and simple in their manners. Dr. 
Chapman’s congregation embraces the most 
valuable part of it. Leaving Lexington, ar¬ 
rive at Frankfort December 7. Next morn¬ 
ing call on Governor Metcalfe, and receive a 
visit from Mr. John J. Crittenden, the most 
eloquent law} 7 er in the State. Went with the 
Governor and Mr. Hanna to the House of 
Representatives, thence to the Senate,whence 
we heard speeches from Mr. Wiclifie and 
Mr. Hardin, the two most distinguished 
members. Took boat for Louisville ; this is 
the great mart of the commerce of Ken¬ 
tucky. Kentucky is a noble State,—fertile 
soil; fine race of men.” The ofiicial acts 
of the Bishop on this visitation were as fol¬ 
lows: He consecrated Christ Church, Lex¬ 
ington, and confirmed three. He conse¬ 
crated Christ Church, Louisville, baptized 
four adults and eleven infants, and confirmed 
thirty-one. Stirred up a<great interest in 
Church work “by the dignity and suavity 
of his manners and the elevation of his 
piet}\” 

The first recorded statistics of the Church 
are found in the fragmentary journal of 
the second Convention, held at Danville, 
May, 1830 a.d. Population, 687,917 ; num¬ 
ber of parishes, 3 ; number of clergy, 4 ; bap¬ 
tisms, infants, 32, adults, 6; marriages, 3; 
burials, 10. At this Convention an invita¬ 
tion was extended to the Right Reverend W. 
Meade, Assistant Bishop of Virginia. He 
came into the Diocese on the 19th of May, 
1831 a.d., and began his visitation at Mavs- 
ville. This was general, extending over the 
State, and ending at Hopkinsville, June 
20. The results were, consecration of Trin¬ 
ity Church, Danville ; ordination in Christ 
Church, Louisville, to the Priesthood of 
Revs. Messrs. Ash, Deacon, and Giddinge, 
and at two confirmations fifty-four con¬ 
firmed. 

At the third Annual Convention, the Rev. 
B. B. Smith, the newly elected Rector of 
Christ Church, Lexington, was chosen 
Bishop, but by reason of some informality 
in the election he declined. At the follow¬ 
ing Convention, June 11, 1832 a.d., held at 
Hopkinsville, he was again elected unani¬ 
mously. He was consecrated in St. Paul’s 
Chapel, New York, on the 31st day of Octo¬ 
ber, 1832 a.d. He was born at Bristol, 


Rhode Island, June 13, 1794 a.d. ; graduated 
at Brown University, 1816 a.d. ; made Dea¬ 
con, 1817 a.d. ; ordained Priest, 1818 a.d. 
“ For more than twenty years the offerings 
in the Diocese did not exceed the Bishop’s 
traveling expenses to and from the General 
Convention.” When he came to Kentucky 
not a parish had a set of communion vessels, 
and but one had either bell or organ. 
Thomas H. Quinlan, L. H. Van Doren, and 
D. H. Deacon were the first candidates for 
holy orders. The first Presbyter ordained 
was the Rev. S. S. Lewis, and the first Deacon 
was Erastus* Burr, both in 1833 a.d. 

In 1834 a.d. the cholera prevailed in Lex¬ 
ington, necessitating the postponement of 
the Convention to October following, when 
a Day of Humiliation was fitly observed. 
In this scourge two Presbyters, three candi¬ 
dates for holy orders, and fifty communi¬ 
cants of the Diocese—one-fourth of its 
whole strength—had been carried away. 
In this calamity the Bishop had borne him¬ 
self with a courage never excelled. He was 
the only servant of God in Lexington, save 
his Roman Catholic brother, who reported 
for service. After the cholera, and in this 
same year, the Diocese also lost largely by 
emigration to Illinois and Missouri. The 
Bishop, on May 25, consecrated Christ 
Church, St. Louis, and confirmed twenty- 
six, and also laid the first corner-stone in 
Illinois. Name of place not found. 

The Theological Seminary was incorpor¬ 
ated February 24, 1834 a.d. A building and 
two acres of ground were purchased at a cost 
of $9000. The institution opened with three 
professors, nine students, and a library of 
3500 volumes. In 1835 a.d. the Bishop se¬ 
cured $14,000 for the Theological Fund. 
Among works undertaken by the students 
of the Seminary was a Sunday-school for 
colored children, numbering seventy-five, 
but going further than oral instruction, the 
mayor of the city requested its discontinu¬ 
ance. In 1836 a.d. there were eighteen stu¬ 
dents in the Seminary. Of the number re¬ 
ceiving instruction within its walls there 
were twenty-five received ordination. In 
1844 a.d. the building and ground were sold 
for $11,500, and the. library was transferred 
to Shelby College. The Church Advocate 
was the first Diocesan paper, with Caswall 
as editor. Its existence was brief. 

Shelby College was organized in 1836 a.d. 
and transferred to the Diocese in 1840 a.d. 
The Rev. Mr. Drane was its first President. 
Under the Presidency of Rev. W. J. Wal¬ 
ler, covering a period of many years, over 
$40,000 were spent in improvements on the 
property, etc. After varying fortunes and 
many embarrassments the Diocese, on the 
20th day of August, 1870 a.d., surrendered 
the property to the Trustees of the town of 
Shelbyville. 

At the Convention of 1863 a.d., Bishop 
Smith had reached the seventieth year of 
his age and the thirtieth year of his Episco¬ 
pate. The baptisms had been, from 1832 to 




KENTUCKY 


421 


KEYS 


1862 a.d., 7470, confirmations 3402, and the 
communicants 1821. 

On Friday, June 1, 1866 a.d., the Key. 
George David Cummins, D.D., was chosen 
by the Convention as Assistant Bishop of 
Kentucky. Consecrated in Christ Church, 
Louisville, November 16,1866 a.d. He was 
born December 11, 1832 a.d , in Kent, Del. 
In 1873 a.d. he sent his resignation to the 
presiding Bishop. Died June 26, 1876 a.d. 
In this decade the baptisms were 6219, 
confirmations 4805, and the communicants 
3328. 

Institutions .—The Protestant Episcopal 
Female Orphan Asylum, Louisville, organ¬ 
ized October 6, 1835 a.d., has an endowment 
fund of $35,400, good building and grounds, 
and has accommodation for forty inmates. 

Orphanage of the Good Shepherd, for 
boys, Louisville, organized 1869 a.d. Has 
a fine building, two acres of ground, and an 
endowment fund of $1000. Supported by 
voluntary offerings. Inmates are taught 
trades, and there is a fine printing-house 
connected with the building. The Diocesan 
paper, the Kentucky Church Chronicle , is is¬ 
sued from this press. 

The Home of the Innocents, Louisville, 
was founded in 1879 a.d. Its work has so 
far been done in rented buildings. It pro¬ 
vides for sick and destitute children under 
six years of age, and has also been reasona¬ 
bly successful in aiding fallen women. The 
work has received general sympathy since 
its inception. 

Church Home for Females and Infirm¬ 
ary for the Sick of both Sexes, Louisville. 
Ground on which this building stands cost 
$6000, the structure itself $100,000. The 
charter was obtained in 1872 a.d , but the 
work was not begun until 1882 a.d. So far 
this has been the work of one man. Is not 
yet opened for patients. 

The John N. Norton Memorial Infirmary, 
Louisville, 1882 a.d. Has a fine building, 
not yet completed. Cost to date $45,000. 
Will probably be opened within the present 
year (1884 a.d.). 

Since the year 1872 a.d. the Bishop of the 
Diocese has, by permission, resided without 
its limits, save that he made a final visita¬ 
tion, and presided at the Annual Conven¬ 
tion, May, 1874 a.d. At a Special Con¬ 
vention held in Louisville, November 11 
and 12, 1874 a.d., the Kev. Thomas Under¬ 
wood Dudley, D.D., was chosen as Assistant 
Bishop, and was consecrated in Christ 
Church, Baltimore, January 27, 1875 a.d. 
He was born in Iiichmond, Va., September 
26, 1837 a.d. Graduated at the University 
of Virginia, 1858 a.d. Made Deacon 1867 
a.d. Ordered Priest 1868 a.d. In the 
last decade the baptisms have been 5375, 
confirmations 3447, communicants 4382. 
The statistics for the year ending 1883 a.d. 
are as follows: clergy, 37; parishes, 33; 
missions, 5 ; candidates for holy orders, 4 ; 
Sunday-school teachers, 351; scholars, 3218 ; 
total contributions, $93,258.54. 


Authorities : Collins’s, Allen’s, and Mar¬ 
shall’s Histories of Kentucky, Craik’s 
Sketches, Freeman’s Historical Discourse, 
1878 a.d. , Diocesan Journals 1829-1883 a.d. 

L. P. Tschiffely. 

Keys. Power of the Keys. There is 
constant danger of emptying Holy Scrip¬ 
ture of all meaning, and an equal danger of 
putting far more meaning into it than it 
can bear. This danger is further in¬ 
creased by the drift of language, and by 
the fact that when a doctrine has been 
understated stronger language is needed to 
restore the fuller form of the truth. This 
is the fact with the Doctrines of Absolution 
and Excommunication, or the “ Power of 
the Keys.” The term Key, in the Old Tes¬ 
tament, means a power or stewardship con¬ 
ferred. The Key of the House of David 
(Is. xxii. 22) surely means something, when 
its possessor opens and no man shuts, and 
he shuts and no man opens,—a power Christ 
hath. Then to say that it was a mere formula, 
meaning nothing when the Lord gave it to 
St. Peter, and then to all the Apostles 
together (St. Matt. xvi. 19: xviii. 18), is to 
do a wrong to truth. To say that it was a 
gift to the Apostles alone, and to cease with 
them, is to take from the Human Agency 
Christ established, by which to confer on His 
Visible Church the very power to admit or 
to reject, the sole power which it was to 
exercise. The Key to open is to admit; the 
Key to shut is to reject. And these are 
of the essence of discipline. It follows that 
the power of the Keys must be an everliving 
gift in the Church, and is the pledge of His 
presence in and through His Apostles. But 
the real question is, having these Keys, how 
far are they in the power of the human 
agent, the proper officer? For it is evident 
that the admission into the Kingdom is 
by Baptism, and the Deacon being author¬ 
ised to baptize, then can admit, and the 
rejection, before baptism, is also in his 
hands, and after baptism, in the Bishop’s 
hands finally. Putting aside the refusal to 
baptize those who are evidently unfit,—the 
impenitent or the hypocritical,—the power 
of admission, the opening Key, is and can 
be very seldom refused. It is Christ Him¬ 
self who is the Baptizer, as the Church has 
ever held. It is He who confers admission, 
and therefore, upon any reasonable evidence 
of a real though imperfect faith and repent¬ 
ance, no minister in the Church can refuse 
admission, and if in doubt, can always ap¬ 
peal to, and abide by, the sentence of the 
Bishop. The reality of the Power of this 
Key is identical with the reality and power 
of the gifts of Baptism. But the power 
of discipline, the Key to shut out, to reject, 
is not in any other hands but those of 
the Bishop. If the Deacon or Priest refuse 
Baptism to the applicant, he can lay his case 
before the Bishop. If after Baptism the 
Priest refuse the Holy Communion, the 
person so denied must be reported to the 
Bishop, and the wrong, if it be one, must be 







KINGS 


422 


KINGS 


decided by him. As the Bishop holds the 
final authority from the Lord, and as each 
sentence must be decided by him under re- 
visal finally by the Master, this Key of 
shutting is and will be very carefully 
wielded, for, after all, as the ministry is a 
stewardship of the mysteries and gifts of 
Christ, and as a strict account of these 
stewardships will be exacted, the Lord 
Himself will revise and repair wrongs. 
The discipline of the Church must be ex¬ 
ercised and enforced, but in a large and 
loving mode, and with a constant refer¬ 
ence to the grace and guidance of the 
Holy Ghost and the personal superin¬ 
tendence of the Lord Jesus, who has 
promised to be always with His Apostles 
to the end of the world. Then the reply to 
the question, Does the man who holds these 
Keys act on his own reponsibility ? is this, 
No more and no less than an officer of the 
law has to do so in execution of his trust. 
Errors occur, even wrongs are willfully 
committed, but because of these facts no one 
would abolish the office, but would direct 
the officer to be admonished for not observ¬ 
ing the limitations of his trust whenever 
there is error, and to be punished for wil¬ 
ful misuse of the power committed to him. 
But the law mu§t be executed, and this ex¬ 
ecution must be effected by man. 

Kings, i and 2 . It is very probable that 
Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, and these two 
books made one continuous history. In 
fact, the book of Kings was divided into two 
ortions (1st and 2d) by the Bomberg Rab- 
inical edition (Yenice, 1525 a.d.), after the 
example of the Septuagint. It was very 
probably composed by Jeremiah, since many 
phrases in Jeremiah appear in the Kings. 
The captives enumerated in 2 Kings xxiv. 
14, correspond with Jer. xxiv. 1. The refer¬ 
ence to the vessels of the Temple in the one 
fits in with the other,—2 Kings xxv. 13 sq. 
compared with Jer. xxvii. 19-22. The fate 
of Seraiah and Zephaniah and the other 
under officers enumerated in eh. xxiv. 18-21, 
is foretold in Jer. xxi. 1-7 ; xxix. 20 sq., 
and so of many minor points of resemblance 
and interconnection. The historical ac¬ 
counts of the books are thoroughly corrob¬ 
orated by the remarkable discoveries at 
Babylon and Nineveh, even in very minute 
particulars, where different statements might 
yet relate truly to the same facts. The 
names of Omri, Jehu, Menahem, Hezekiah 
are found in the Assyrian inscriptions, as 
also Tiglath-Peleser, Sargon, Sennacherib, 
and Esarhaddon. But the chronology of 
the period covered by these two books—a 
period of 427 years—is filled with difficul¬ 
ties that point to the probability that some 
late Jewish writer had inserted the dates, 
since in several places the text can fairly be 
read without the date ( e.g ., 1 Kings vi. 1, 
compared with 2 Chron. iii. 2). These lead 
to discrepancies in synchronizing the reigns 
of the kings of Judah and of Israel, which 
amount to some twenty years. These dis¬ 


crepancies may be in part removed by sup¬ 
posing in places an unnoticed interval be¬ 
tween the death of a king and the accession 
of his successor, and in counting current 
unfinished years — regnal years—as com¬ 
plete. Still the remaining differences are 
too great, especially as the main periods 
are noted in the text; as the simultaneous 
accession of Jeroboam over Israel and Reho- 
boam over Judah ; the simultaneous deaths 
of Jehoram and Ahaziah ; the fifteenth year 
of Amaziah, which was the first year of 
Jeroboam II.; the first three years of Ahaz, 
which synchronize with the last three years 
of Pekah ; and the sixth year of Hezekiah, 
which fell on the ninth of Hoshea. These 
undoubted points of, synchronization show 
that the attempted dates are interpolations. 
In scope the books of the Kings record the 
events which befell Israel from the accession 
of Solomon to the destruction of the Tem¬ 
ple, a period of 427 years, ending 588 b.c., 
with a supplemental notice of Jehoiachin’s 
better treatment twenty-six years later,—a 
period filled in with the most varied events 
for good and for evil: a Solomon, a Jehosho- 
phat, and a Hezekiah and a Josiah, with an 
Ahab, an Ahaz, a Manasseh, and an Am¬ 
mon. The corruption in religion and in 
government; the weakness through apos¬ 
tasy ; the slow but sure punishment that fol¬ 
lowed in the path of sin; the perfectly im¬ 
partial statement of both good and evil acts ; 
the constant reference to Jehovah’s ever- 
superintending care ; the prominence given 
to the prophets, as Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, 
Abijah ; notices of others, as Jonah; the 
glory of the Temple and its worship, and 
the profanation of it by Ahaz, and the sur¬ 
render of its treasures for tribute by Asa 
and by Hezekiah; the retribution for the 
blood of Naboth upon Ahab and upon Jez¬ 
ebel.; the rise of the flood of sin year by 
year, till the blood which had filled Jeru¬ 
salem cried for retribution, and Nebuchad¬ 
nezzar, with his bands of Chaldeans and his 
confederates, the Syrians, Moabites, and Am¬ 
monites, but executed the commandment of 
the Lord upon Judah. 

“But it is for their deep religious teach¬ 
ing and for the insight which they give us 
into God’s providential and moral govern¬ 
ment of the world, that they are above 
all valuable. The books which describe 
the glory of Solomon and yet record his 
fall; which make us acquainted with the 
painful ministry of Elijah and his transla¬ 
tion into heaven; and which tell us how 
the most magnificent temple ever built for 
God’s glory and of which He vouchsafed to 
take possession by a visible symbol of His 
Presence, was consigned to the flames and 
to desolation for the sins of those who wor¬ 
shiped in it, read us such lessons concern¬ 
ing both God and man as are the best evi¬ 
dence of their divine origin, and make them 
the richest treasure to every Christian man.” 
(See for a full discussion of the critical ques¬ 
tions concerning these books Lord Arthur 




KISS OF PEACE 


423 


KYRIE ELEISON 


Hervey’s article in Smith’s Dictionary of 
the Bible.) 

Kiss of Peace. A salutation mentioned 
frequently in the Old and the New Testa¬ 
ments. In the latter it has also a ritual signif¬ 
icance, since in the celebration of the Divine 
Offices the Kiss of Peace was exchanged be¬ 
tween the communicants, at first exchanged 
with all of both sexes, but later it was only 
given by the men to each other, and by the 
women to their female fellow-communicants. 
It was a part of every act of Christian wor¬ 
ship, but it was especially used at the Holy 
Communion. In the Eastern Church this 
salutation comes after the dismissal of the 
non-communicants and the Oblation. In 
the West its place varied. In the Churches 
which were derived from the East, as the 
Mozarabic and the Gallican, the Kiss came 
before the Preface. But in the Churches 
derived from Italy, as the African, it 
comes directly after the Consecration and 
before Communion. The Kiss is still used 
in the Oriental Church. The Kiss was 
given at Baptism, at Ordination, at Espous¬ 
als, and to the dying ; and the “ voice of na¬ 
ture was listened to and a final kiss was 
given to the corpse before actual interment.” 
(Vide Kiss in Smith’s Dictionary of Chris¬ 
tian Antiquities.) 

Kneeling, as a posture in divine worship, 
has seemed most natural and fit for a sup¬ 
pliant, in all ages and nations, probably 
from the time “ that men began first to call 
upon the name of the Lord.” In the West¬ 
ern Church the practice has always formed a 
part of the services, and has been enforced by 
the Bishops and Councils. It is not only a' 
voluntary act of personal humility and rever¬ 
ence, but also one that is required of every 
person as an individual, forming part of a 
large congregation, and to neglect it is to 
omit a duty imposed upon us by the cus¬ 
toms of the Church in the worship of 
Almighty God. The Rubric in the Prayer- 
Book for the proper observance of Public 
Worship directs that all persons then pres¬ 
ent shall reverently kneel upon their knees 
when the General Confession, Litany, and 
other prayers are read. In the rite of Con¬ 
firmation all those who receive the Laying 
on of Hands are to kneel, and in the Mar¬ 
riage Service, the Nuptial Benediction on the 
newly-married couple is received kneeling. 


In the administration of the Lord’s Sup¬ 
per the communicants are to receive the 
same kneeling, as a signification of our hum¬ 
ble and grateful thanks for the benefits of 
Christ’s passion therein given to all worthy 
receivers, and for the avoiding any profana¬ 
tion or unseemly disorder that might other¬ 
wise ensue. 

In the Eastern Church the practice is dis¬ 
similar to ours. Kneeling is not observed, 
but the whole congregation stand through¬ 
out the entire service, with heads bowed low 
in reverence during the prayers. Even in 
receiving the Holy Mysteries they do not 
kneel, esteeming that our human nature has 
been so exalted by the union with the Divine 
in the Person of our Lord, and that so 
lowly a posture does not comport with so 
joyful and comforting a service. Once only 
in the year do the people kneel in the ser¬ 
vice of the Greek Church, and that is on 
Whitsunday, or the descent of the Holy 
Ghost. 

Kyrie Eleison (Greek, Lord, have mercy). 
The oldest, the most sorrowful plea of all 
obsecrations offered to God. It is the plea 
in the Psalms often repeated. It is the cry 
of the Prophets. It was the prayer of the 
publican, of the lepers, of blind Barti- 
masus. It has passed into the continuous 
solemn Litanies of the Church. Lord, have 
mercy upon us, Christ, have mercy upon us, 
has risen from the Church continually. It 
is retained in the Greek words in all Liturgies 
but our own, and there it is translated upon 
the general principle that the compilers of 
the Prayer-Book set for themselves. So 
Halleluia is translated “ Praise ye the 
Lord.” The Kyrie is used in the second 
part of the Litany, and forms the first por¬ 
tion of the responses to the Commandments : 
11 Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline 
our hearts to keep this Law.” In many of¬ 
fices in the Greek Church, and in the older 
Western offices, it was repeated successively 
quite a number of times. In one of the mon¬ 
astic offices it is ordered to be said thirty times 
at one point in the service. In its use in the 
responses to the Commandments we imitate 
closely the publican, who, for his transgres¬ 
sions of the Law, would not lift up so much 
as his eyes to heaven, but smote on his 
breast, saying, “ God be merciful to me a 
sinner.” 




LAITY 


424 ' 


LAITY 


L. 


Laity. The people of the Christian Ch arch 
as distinguished from the clergy^ In several 
relations they have different names,—the 
congregation as gathered into the separate 
Churches or Parishes, the Laity as a single 
body, Christians in relation to their Faith. 
The Laity, as distinguished from the clergy, 
have had their rights and duties duly noted 
from the earliest notices of Church history. 
In the New Testament they are called the 
Brethren,—though this title was not theirs 
exclusively,—the Faithful, and the Saints. 
As the recipients of the grace offered by the 
Embassadors of Christ, they are the gov¬ 
erned in the Ecclesia or Church ; but since 
the governed have rights and duties as well 
as the governors, the laity have had an in¬ 
fluence, sometimes a controlling one, either 
for good or for evil, as saith the prophet, 
“ and my people love to have it so.” The 
responsibility in either case lies not wholly, 
but largely, with the Laity. The recogni¬ 
tion of the Laity as such in the Church goes 
as far back as the Epistles of Clement (96 
a.d.), and from that time on more or less 
frequent notice of them and their position is 
made by the Church writers. Their presence 
is necessary to the proper celebration of all 
acts of worship and for the due administra¬ 
tion of all rites and sacraments, since our 
Lord’s rule holds universally, “ where two 
or three are gathered together in my name, 
there am I in the midst of them” (St. Matt, 
xviii. 20). So Baptism, while it may not be 
refused because of the failure to have them, 
should yet be administered before witnesses. 
The Holy Communion is not a Communion 
( i.e ., fellowship) in the ordinary usage of 
the word without communicants beside the 
celebrant. Marriage is before “ a company.” 
The Morning and Evening Prayer is in the 
presence of the dearly beloved brethren, and 
so every office either presupposes or demands 
their presence. This is, then, the duty which 
the Layman owes the Church as the visible 
Body of Christ, that he should be punctual 
and strict in attendance on her rites to re¬ 
ceive her gifts and blessings. In her is the 
discharge of his Covenant with God, and 
therefore it is a matter of obligation as 
well as reverence to God to attend upon all 
her services. Being themselves so important 
a part of all services, the Laity have a right 
to demand all the services the Church can 
give them. Morning and Evening Prayer 
cannot be refused to any sufficient number 
of the congregation demanding it; nor can 
the Holy Communion if there be cause. 
"With regard to the Diocese, the Laity have a 
representation in the Council or Convention, 
a voice in the management of Diocesan af¬ 
fairs, and their vote should be refused only 


on doctrinal definitions, but is theirs of right 
in all questions of local discipline and polity. 
They usually confirm the nomination of a 
Bishop made by the vote of the clergy. The 
reverse should be the case, and was so in the 
earlier elections. The Laity nominated, the 
clergy accepted and presented to the Metro¬ 
politan, though there were frequent excep¬ 
tions to this rule. * 

The Laity having the purse have this duty 
and sacrifice as part of their Priesthood: 
“ To do good and to distribute forget not: 
for with such sacrifices God is well pleased” 
(Heb. xiii. 16). But as the covenant is be¬ 
tween God and them by His Embassadors, 
and He has ordered His Embassadors to live 
of the Gospel, it is a part of the layman’s 
bounden duty to contribute liberally to the 
livelihood of the ministry. “ Let him that 
is taught in the word communicate unto 
him that teacheth all good things. Be not 
deceived; God is not mocked: for whatso¬ 
ever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. 
For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the 
flesh reap corruption ; but he that soweth to 
the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life ever¬ 
lasting. . . . As we have therefore oppor¬ 
tunity, let us do good unto all men, especially 
unto them who are of the household of 
faith” (Gal. vi. 6-8, 10). And this sup¬ 
port must not be limited to the Parish dues, 
but to the larger needs of the Diocese also. 
The true principle is in the old rule of a 
Com-mon Diocesan Fund , out of which the 
needs of Bishop, clergy, and poor were sup¬ 
plied ; the present Parochial system is later 
by a thousand years and more. The Lay¬ 
man, as a member of the congregation and 
a communicant, has a right, under the Can¬ 
ons of each Diocese, to a voice and a vote at 
all congregational meetings in the elections 
of the vestry and wardens, who are his 
chosen representatives for all legal ecclesias¬ 
tical purposes, and in some Dioceses votes for 
the lay delegates to the Council or Conven¬ 
tion of the Diocese. He has also a sharing 
in the Priesthood belonging to the whole 
Church, certain offices to which he may be 
eligible. His inherent Priesthood is dis¬ 
charged by his presence at all services and 
by his sharing in all acts of worship. But 
as lay-reader, and therefore as representative 
for the congregation in all prayer and sup¬ 
plication, he exercises this; so also as 
chorister in the worship of song. He should 
share in the general work of the Parish, 
such as aiding in visiting the sick, in dis¬ 
tributing, under the direction of the Rector, 
proper tracts, doing his share of work in the 
Sunday-school, helping to form guilds or 
brotherhoods, and zealously aiding in sus¬ 
taining them and in giving them efficiency. 




LAMENTATIONS 


425 


LAPSED 


These are duties and privileges which be¬ 
long to his order in the Church, functions 
not less important, not inferior in their 
place, to the functions of the ministry ap¬ 
pointed to serve him in all the gifts, graces, 
and blessings which the Lord has left in 
His Church for His people. Beyond these 
limits the Layman trenches on the sin of 
Korah; below these limits he fails of his 
duty to God and his Saviour and to the 
Church he should so dearly love for the sake 
of his Lord. 

Whenever the Layman takes an active in¬ 
terest in the parish work the parish will 
grow, and as his life is moulded by his ac¬ 
tive Church work, so will his own influence 
extend, and so will the Church’s influence be 
deepened and broadened. It needs but little 
consideration to perceive clearly that there is 
really less, proportionately to their position, 
in the eloquence and popularity of the Rector 
than there is in the true, earnest zeal and in 
the devout moral courage of the Layman, 
that develops the healthy growth and in¬ 
fluence of the .Parish. Too frequently a 
Parish languishes because of the selfish care¬ 
lessness of the congregation, who think that 
they have done all when they have only at¬ 
tended the ordinary services with convenient 
regularity. The devout Layman owes it to 
his own spiritual welfare and to his loving 
Lord and to the Church to spend a part at 
least of that energy he gives to his daily 
toil in her service, for he thereby exercises 
his ministry also. 

Lamentations of Jeremiah. They were 
written by the Prophet probably imme¬ 
diately after the fall of the city into the hands 
of the Chaldeans. The book is written in a 
rhythmic style. The verses of the first, sec¬ 
ond, and fourth chapters begin with a suc¬ 
cessive letter of the alphabet. In the third 
chapter three verses in succession begin so. 
“ Further, if we take the four alphabetical po¬ 
ems separately, we find the first three of each 
of the xxii. parts (or verses, but note in chap¬ 
ter iii. each part equals three English verses), 
may itself as a rule be subdivided into three, 
in chapter iv. into two only, while in the third 
chapter each of these subdivisions begins with 
the same letter, and is itself divisible into two. 
In chapter v., although the number of the 
verses is the same, the alphabetical order is 
dropped.” “ The subject, as we have noted, 
is the capture of the city under Nebuchad¬ 
nezzar, and the sorrow and suffering thereby 
entailed. Herewith are united both the con¬ 
fession that this has come upon the people 
on account of their sins, and entreaties for 
deliverance. Taking the poems severally, 
chapter i. dwells upon the solitary condi¬ 
tion and grief of the city. Chapter ii. sets 
forth the destruction that has come upon 
her, and acknowledges that it is the result 
of sin. Chapter iii., which, although framed 
for the most part in the singular number, 
yet includes the nation throughout, com¬ 
plains of the bitter cup which God’s people 
have to drink, and yet acknowledges that 


the trials which are come upon them are 
inflicted by a Father’s hand. Chapter iv. 
describes the reverses in fortune that have 
been brought about by recent events, and 
again acknowledges sin. Chapter v. reca¬ 
pitulates the pitiful details of their condi¬ 
tion, and ends by an earnest prayer for de¬ 
liverance. ‘ There are few portions of the 
Old Testament, perhaps, which appear to 
have done the work they were meant to do 
more effectually than this.’ It has not been 
connected with the theological or ecclesiasti¬ 
cal disputes of any age, while it has supplied 
the earnest Christian of all times with words 
in which to confess his sins and shortcom¬ 
ings, as well as with a pioture of Him who 
bore our sins and carried our sorrows, on 
whom was ‘laid the iniquity of us all.’” 
The book is annually read among the Jews 
to commemorate the burning of the Temple. 
The first and a part of the third are read on 
Quinquagesima Sunday in the Lessons. 

Lammas-day. The observation of this 
day (August 1) as a feast of thanksgiving 
for the first fruits of the corn dates from 
Saxon times, in which it was called Hlaf- 
maesse, or Loaf-mass, from the oflferi ng of 
bread made of new corn. Hence Lam-mass. 

Laodicea. A Council was held at Lao- 
dicea some time in the fourth century, vari¬ 
ous dates being assigned, as follows: 314, 
363, 365, 372, and 399 a.d. Thirty-two 
Bishops are recorded as present, and a large 
number (sixty) of Canons were passed, which, 
though the tone of the Council was semi- 
Arian at the least, have gained reception in 
the code of the whole Church. They are al¬ 
most all prohibitory, and refer to discipline; 
some prescribe a proper and becoming order 
of services; the 57th forbids the placing of 
Bishops in villages and country places, es¬ 
tablishing in their stead Visitors, correspond¬ 
ing nearly to Archdeacons or Rural Deans ; 
and the 60th gives a list of the Canonical 
Scriptures, in which none of the Apocry¬ 
phal books are found, nor the Revelation. 

Lapsed. These were those Christians 
who had not strength to encounter persecu¬ 
tion, who complied in some form or other 
with the demands of the heathen magistrates 
to take part in idol worship,—“they which 
for a while believed, but in time of tempta¬ 
tion fell away.” As the persecution ceased 
the greater part of those who had lapsed 
would seek reconciliation with the Church. 
In the first ages such penitents were, upon 
their confession, readmitted by imposition 
of hands, and confessors interceding for 
them often obtained a too speedy reconcilia¬ 
tion for these penitents. It became a seri¬ 
ous hindrance to the administration of dis¬ 
cipline, and it was a lowering of the inten¬ 
sity of repentance in those who sought to be 
restored. St. Cyprian had both the courage 
and the tact to break the power of so 
dangerous an influence. He very wisely 
insisted upon strict discipline in time of rest, 
but when a fresh storm of persecution was 
at hand, he permitted the restoration of all 





LATERAN I. 


426 


LAVIPEDUM 


the earnest penitents, believing that they 
would be stronger in the coming trial. This 
practice of the Church is a comment upon 
the modern teaching of some upon the im¬ 
possibility of the restoration of those who 
have fallen. Compare the XVI. Article, 
which gives the true doctrine of Holy 
Scripture. 

Lateran I. A Council was held in Rome 
in 649 a.d. by Pope Martin, “ which, from 
having met in the ‘ Basilica of Constantine,’ 
the great patriarchal church adjoining the 
Lateran Palace, is known as the first Lat¬ 
eran Council.” As many as one hundred 
and five Bishops were in attendance, among 
whom was Stephen, Bishop of Dor, who 
had received a special charge from Sophro- 
nius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, to maintain 
the struggle against Monothelism. The de¬ 
cisions of the Synod were against this her¬ 
esy, and in condemnation of the Ecthesis 
and the Type (edicts of the emperors favor¬ 
able to it), and in opposition to them this pos¬ 
itive dogma was published : “ that there are 
in the Saviour two natural wills and oper¬ 
ations, the Divine and the human, the same 
Lord Jesus Christ, willing and working 
our salvation both as God and man.” (Vide 
Sixth General Council.) In retaliation 
for this reflection upon the Imperial edicts, 
Martin was dragged to Constantinople, sub¬ 
jected to various examinations concerning 
alleged political offenses, treated with cru¬ 
elty as a condemned criminal, and finally 
banished to the Chersonesus to die in want 
and destitution, a veritable martyr to the 
truth. Much the same treatment was meted 
out to Maximus, a learned Abbot, and one 
of the most persevering opponents of Mo¬ 
nothelism of his day. 

Authorities : Robertson’s Church History, 
Landon’s Manual of Councils. • 

Lateran IV. A Council was announced 
in 1213 a.d. b} 7 " Pope Innocent III. with the 
avowed object of correcting the evils of the 
Church and the depravity of morals. It 
finally assembled in 1215 a.d. in Rome, and 
is by some styled the twelfth (Ecumenical 
Council, and by others the fourth General 
Council of the Lateran. There were present 
77 Primates and Metropolitans, 412 Bishops, 
and 800 Abbots, who, with the various em¬ 
bassadors and others entitled to seats, made 
a total of more than 2000 members. But it 
does not appear that this imposing assem¬ 
bly did very much as a Council, for the Pope 
presented certain chapters of his own prep¬ 
aration which were not debated, and re¬ 
ceived consent only by the silence of the 
Bishops. In fact, they were quoted as the 
decrees of Innocent, rather than of the 
Council, for a long period after. Arrange¬ 
ments were made for a crusade, which, how¬ 
ever, was never carried out; and the Eng- 
‘lish troubles between King John and his 
barons were meddled with, not to mention 
interference in French affairs. “ But the 
fourth Lateran Council is chiefly memorable 
for two Canons, relating to matters of doc¬ 


trine and discipline respectively; the first, 
which for the first time laid down, by the 
authority of the whole Western Church, 
the doctrine of transubstantiation in the 
Eucharist; and the twenty-first, which pre¬ 
scribed for every Catholic Christian the 
duty of confessing once a year, at least, to 
his own parish priest, and of yearly receiv¬ 
ing the Holy Eucharist at Easter. 

Authorities : Robertson’s Church History, 
Gieseler, Hardwick, Hagenbach’s History of 
Doctrines, Landon’s Manual of Councils. 

Latitudinarianism. A school of thought 
in the Church,—now generally represented 
by the term Broad-Churchmanship, which 
dwelling upon the Church of God and the 
gifts therein, does not yet set forth, as fully 
as might be insisted upon, “the power ot 
Christ’s Resurrection and the fellowship of 
His sufferings” as a principal portion of our 
spiritual life. It is an undervaluing of the 
necessity of strong dogmatical teaching. The 
school of Latitudinarians as an influence in 
the Church has closed since the days of Dr. S. 
Clarke (1720 a.d.), but much of its teaching 
was later reproduced in Coleridge’s “ Aids to 
Faith,” and under the vague name of Broad 
Church, which, however, does not by any 
means yield as much as did the older Lati- 
tudinarian, has included many very able 
and influential men. 

Latria. Worship of God. The word is 
used exclusively for the service and worship 
of the Holy and Blessed Trinity. If given 
to any other, or if the so-called hyperdulia 
trenches on the Latria or adoring worship, 
it is idolatry. Latria is, then, the generic 
term to describe all acts of worship that are 
or can be offered to Jehovah by every wor¬ 
shiper, and it includes the simplest and 
merest act and reaches to the highest and 
most solemn. But it should be noted also 
that this worship includes some idea of sac¬ 
rifice more or less distinctly connected with 
it, and that it is offered under a covenant. 
“ Gather My saints together unto Me, those 
that have made a covenant with Me by 
sacrifice.” 

Lauds. The daybreak service of the 
English Church before the Reformation, 
and a part of which was incorporated into 
the Morning Prayer. The Benedictus and 
the 1st and 2d Collect were specially drawn 
from it. 

Laura. The name given to a collection 
of little cells at some distance from each 
other, in which the hermits of ancient times 
lived together in a wilderness. There was 
no community life here, each hermit provid¬ 
ing for himself. The most celebrated Lauras 
were in Palestine and in Egypt. ( Virf.e 
Kingsley’s “ Hermits.”) 

Lavipedum. The washing of feet after 
the example of our Lord (St. John xiii.). 
It was observed yearly in the churches on 
Maundy-Thursday, and has been continued 
in many places, as in Jerusalem, Constanti¬ 
nople, Milan, Rome. Bishops and sovereigns 
have performed this act. Queen Elizabeth, 





LAW OF CHRIST 


427 


LAY CO-OPERATION 


in 1572 a.d., washed the feet of thirty-nine 
poor people, that being the number of years 
of her age. The last English sovereign who 
used this service was James II., but the lord 
high almoners continued it till 1731 a.d., 
and perhaps later. A trace of it is still re¬ 
tained, in the service for Maundy-Thursday, 
at Whitehall, the almoner and his assistants 
being girt with linen towels during the ser¬ 
vice. 

Law of Christ. The Gospel and the prin¬ 
ciples of it developed and applied by the 
Epistles. Christ’s Law is the binding of 
the precepts of the moral Law to His spirit¬ 
ual life and raising them, illuminating them, 
and giving them a sanctifying influence. It 
includes the influence of His revelation upon 
human life, moulding it anew, since He has 
brought to light life and immortality. It 
gives a new stand-point, Christ Himself the 
chief foundation, a fresh motive, love to Him, 
for obedience, a new end to be attained, ever¬ 
lasting life. But to apply Christ’s Law by 
the inspiring motive of love to Him leads to 
new arrangements of the details of our life. 
It brings out our moral courage and tests it 
in many ways. It shows the intensity of 
our purpose, the steadfastness of our will, 
the depth of our self-denial; therefore our 
Lord said, “ He that endureth to the end 
shall be saved.” This has introduced the 
whole subject of casuistry (vide Casuistry), 
or cases of conscience. It is the elevation 
and consent of the heart which quiekeneth 
both the doctrine of faith and manners. 
These wise words of Bishop Taylor are well 
worthy careful thought: “ There is no other 
positive measure of a Christian duty but 
that which can have no measure itself, and 
that is love. He that loves will think every¬ 
thing too little ; and be that thinks so will 
endeavor to do more and to do it better. We 
are for the present children of God by adop¬ 
tion, sealed with His Spirit, renewed by re¬ 
generation, justified by His grace, and in¬ 
vited forward by most glorious promises 
greater than we can understand. Now he 
that considers this state of things and hopes 
for that state of blessings, will proceed in 
duty and love together toward the perfec¬ 
tions of God, never giving over till he par¬ 
take of the purities of God and His utmost 
glories.” The Law of Christ is to imitate 
Him, for His life, and therefore all the part 
of it, is our example. When He gives no 
precept but leaves an example therein we 
have our Law. 

Lay Co-operation. In order to obtain a 
correct and definite idea of the proper work 
of laymen in the Church and the best 
methods of performing it we must first clearly 
understand the relative positions of clergy 
and laity. Under -the Roman, or Hierarch¬ 
ical, idea of the constitution of the Church 
the laity have by right neither voice nor 
office in her. The clergy are the Church, 
and they only are the working element, ex¬ 
cept in so far as they may assign certain 
duties to her lay members, which are to be 


performed entirely under clerical control 
and direction. Under what may be termed 
“the Congregational” idea, on the other 
hand, the laity are the Church, and form the 
authoritative and working element, the 
clergy being selected and set apart by them 
for the duties of preaching and of various 
public and private ministrations. Under 
both these systems of organization an im¬ 
mense work has been done and is doing for 
the cause of religion and the extension of 
its influences. But for a true test of the cor¬ 
rectness of these ideas we must look not to 
their practical results in this direction, but 
to the position in which, respectively, they 
place the clerical order, as compared with 
the position held by that order in the Apos¬ 
tolic and Post-Apostolic Church. By such 
comparison we find that the clergy are in the 
first case unduly exalted over the laity, and 
in the second unduly degraded, and that 
consequently in both cases the proper balance 
of co-operative effort is destroyed and the 
efficiency of such effort necessarily impaired. 
Hence neither of these ideas can be correct, 
and just in proportion to the influence and 
direction given by either to lay co-opera¬ 
tion its practical usefulness must be lessened. 
In the organization of the Church as dis¬ 
played in the New Testament we find that 
clergy and laity are essential, inseparable, 
integrant parts of an organism, possessing 
functions, rights, and responsibilities, some 
in common and some distinct and peculiar, 
but all necessarily co-operative to a common 
end, namely, the manifestation of “the 
Truth as it is in Jesus” and the salvation of 
mankind through its instrumentality. All 
baptized Christians who are not Apostles, 
Presbyters, or Deacons constitute the lay 
element, and are recognized by the Apostolic 
writers as co-workers with them towards the 
objects of the Church’s organization. Under 
the Anglican system these principles are dis¬ 
tinctly and prominently recognized, and 
they are the underlying and directing prin¬ 
ciples of all efficient and correct methods of 
lay co-operation. 

The Church being an organization as well 
as an organism, of course organization is 
essential to the full efficiency of all her 
work, but we must remember that a most 
valuable and practical work can be done by 
laymen acting as individuals and upon the 
conviction of individual Christian responsi¬ 
bility. If this responsibility, which rests 
upon all baptized persons, were more gener¬ 
ally recognized the labors of the clergy 
would not, perhaps, be lightened, but would 
certainly be immensely more fruitful. 
Nothing can be mpre obstructive to the ex¬ 
tension of the Church’s work and the ac¬ 
complishment of her great mission than the 
idea that the laity are merely the receivers 
of benefits which she brings, and on the 
other hand nothing could more effectively in¬ 
crease her efficiency than the practical rec¬ 
ognition of the fact that membership in 
her entails the obligation to work. The field 






LAY CO-OPERATION 


428 


LAY CO-OPERATION 


for this kind of lay co-operation is almost 
without limit in every parish, and extends 
over almost every relation of life. The care¬ 
ful teaching of children and servants, the 
quiet effort to lead others to confirmation or 
to attendance on public worship, systematic 
attention to the poor and to strangers, the 
habit of giving to the clergy all information 
which may be useful in directing their 
labors,—these and innumerable other meth¬ 
ods which will suggest themselves come 
under the class of unorganized lay co-opera¬ 
tion. But while all these things are helpful 
and necessary, their efficiency may be vastly 
increased and strengthened by proper or¬ 
ganization, and this organization should 
extend through the whole system of the 
Church. We find it exemplified first in the 
General Convention, where the laity form a 
most important element in the legislative 
authority, as well as in matters pertaining 
to general financial administration. While 
ecclesiastical law is a distinct system, differ¬ 
ing from civil law in its application and de¬ 
tails, yet the same general principles under¬ 
lie all law, and it is of the utmost impor¬ 
tance that minds thoroughly formed by legal 
training and experience, and proved by the 
test of success, should take part in the fram¬ 
ing of a legal system which is to be enforced 
upon and for the benefit of laymen as well 
as clergymen. Hence the careful study of 
Canon Law by earnest laymen of legal knowl¬ 
edge and experience opens up a most useful 
field of co-operation. Again, in all busi¬ 
ness affairs the laity can render most efficient 
service, as well in the Diocese and Parish as 
in the General Church. Apart entirely from 
spiritual concerns, but absolutely necessary 
to the maintenance of that organization by 
which they are administered, there is a great 
amount of business detail which the clergy¬ 
man, however competent, cannot attend to 
without serious hindrance to his more pecu¬ 
liar work. These details are exactly the 
same which pertain to all secular business, 
and must be conducted with the same ac¬ 
curacy, promptness, and fidelity, and upon 
precisely the same principles. Vestries es¬ 
pecially may co-operate with their rectors 
most efficiently by observing the same busi¬ 
ness habits and rules in connection with 
parish matters as they do in those of bank¬ 
ing or commercial houses, or of any other 
business corporations. Their meetings should 
be regular and conducted by parliamentary 
usage and law. The income and expendi¬ 
ture of the parish should be collected and 
disbursed with thq most jealously accurate 
care, and the books of the treasurer should 
show the same exactness as those of the 
cashier of a bank. All parish property 
should be kept fully insured and in good re¬ 
pair and order. All subscriptions and pew- 
rents should be promptly collected, and all 
salaries promptly paid. No debt should be 
incurred unless provision be made before¬ 
hand for its proper payment when due. 
Vestrymen and parish officers should be se¬ 


lected solely upon the ground of their active 
interest in the Church and their thorough 
fitness for the duties to be performed, and 
should be required to perform diligently all 
that they undertake. 

Without such administration behind him 
a clergyman is as helpless as the captain of 
a vessel whose crew and engineers are incom¬ 
petent or negligent of their duties, and there 
is no form or method of lay co-operation 
which is more practical or more essential to 
the progress and welfare of the Church. But 
to reach this point of efficiency a vestry must 
be truly representative of the congregation, 
and that can be the case only where the mem¬ 
bers of the congregation maintain an active 
interest in the parish as work for which they 
are responsible, keeping themselves informed 
of its affairs and using their right of suf¬ 
frage with the same diligence which they 
would exercise in regard to a bank or rail¬ 
road in which they might be stockholders. 
A parish so conducted, with an active and 
earnest rector at its head, supported and up¬ 
held by his laity, and encouraged by the as¬ 
surance of their cheerful and hearty co-op¬ 
eration, will surely illustrate all the possi¬ 
bilities open to it for the performance of the 
Lord’s work. Then the Sunday-school 
should be conducted entirely by lay-work 
under the supervision and direction of the 
rector. The superintendent should be al¬ 
ways a communicant of influence and high 
standing, commanding the confidence of 
the parishioners and the rector, and the re¬ 
spect of the teachers and pupils. It is his 
place to relieve the rector, while acting en¬ 
tirely with his advice and approval, of 
every duty and care in the organization, 
management, and discipline of the school 
not necessarily and properly pertaining to 
the clerical office. The teachers should be 
selected and should perform their duties with 
the same conscientious diligence which they 
would exhibit as salaried assistants in a sec¬ 
ular academy, so that the rector will always 
feel assured of the proper and s} ? stematic 
management of the school as well in his ab¬ 
sence as when present, and of the careful 
and certain carrying out of all his plans and 
directions. It is hard to estimate the value 
of this branch of lay co-operation, since upon 
it depends the character of the future laity of 
the Church, not only as to religious instruc¬ 
tion, but no less as to thorough grounding in 
all churchly knowledge and habits. Lay- 
reading is another co-operative duty to 
which special attention has of late been di¬ 
rected. There should be in every parish 
several men of high standing in the congre¬ 
gation and community who have been reg¬ 
ularly licensed by the Bishop to read the 
services in the absence of the minister, or to 
assist him therein when present. Not only 
are the labors of a clergyman greatly re¬ 
lieved by such assistance, but he is often en¬ 
abled to bestow his services upon some 
point where a promising opening is pre¬ 
sented for implanting the Church. The lay- 





LAY CO-OPERATION 


429 


LECTIONARY 


reader himself may often pave the way to 
such openings by gathering a few people 
around him and giving them the service, 
and many instances might be cited of flour¬ 
ishing parishes growing out of such begin¬ 
nings. In England it has become quite cus¬ 
tomary for such lay-readers to preach ser¬ 
mons of their own composition under the 
Bishop’s license, but they have always a 
wide choice in selecting from published 
discourses. Parish Guilds and Brother¬ 
hoods form another very important and effi¬ 
cient arm of the service of lay co-operation. 
So various are the modes of organizing these 
associations and so many the methods of 
operation, that it will be sufficient only to 
point out the principle upon which they 
should be formed, and to suggest some of 
the means which may be used through them. 
The rector should always be the president 
or chairman, and the memberships should 
comprise all the active men in the parish, 
old and young. Woman’s work is most'effi- 
cient when separately organized, and al¬ 
though her active zeal forms a most impor¬ 
tant part of lay co-operation, such organiza¬ 
tions may he best treated under a different 
heading. The Guild should have regular 
and frequent times of meeting, and a code of 
by-laws suited to its special needs and objects. 
The work to be done should be systemati¬ 
cally assigned to various committees, each 
of which should be composed of members 
specially qualified for the duties expected of 
them, the rector being ex-officio chairman of 
each committee, the object being to interest 
all in Church work by giving each some of 
it to do, the heavier tasks being laid upon 
the more earnest, and the less thoughtful 
made to realize that they are of some use in 
and to the Church. ( Vide Guild.) 

Thus there should be committees on 
“ Charities,” on 11 Sunday-School,” on 
“ Visiting,” on “ Music,” on “ Finances,” 
on “ Hospitality,” on “ Amusements,” etc. 
Those who will do nothing else will often 
consent to act as ushers in regular turn. 
Wherever practicable a hall or room should 
be furnished, and supplied with a library, 
periodicals, newspapers, chess- and checker- 
tables, etc., and if possible, a gymnasium 
attached. Many useful hints may be ob¬ 
tained from the “ Christian Associations,” 
where all these things are utilized in the 
cause of religion. A most important branch 
of lay co-operation is found in associations of 
laymen in every Diocese for the relief of aged 
and infirm clergymen, and the families of de¬ 
ceased clergymen. These associations should 
be regularly organized and have stated 
meetings. By a very small expenditure 
they may keep the life of the rector insured 
in some reliable company or society. On 
the death of a clergyman of the Diocese 
each member should pay a stipulated assess¬ 
ment for the benefit of his family, and a 
similar assessment may he niade to relieve 
the aged or indigent. The best form of 
organization is a board of twelve directors, 


who shall manage all details, and a contribut¬ 
ing membership as large as can be obtained 
in the Diocese. The regular contributions 
should go to form a permanent Relief Fund 
and a Widows’ and Orphans’ Benefit Fund, 
which, as soon as they begin to assume im¬ 
portant proportions, may be readily in¬ 
creased by bequests, gifts, special offertories, 
and other like methods. 

Rev. R. Wilson, D.D. 

Lectionary (Lat. lectionarium , from 
legere , to read) is a word used to designate 
the Table of Lessons from the Holy Scrip¬ 
ture appointed to be read in the public ser¬ 
vice of the Church. These Lessons are to 
be distinguished from the Epistles and 
Gospels. The latter are (1) short passages 
of Scripture (except in Holy Week) ; (2) 
are part of the Communion office, and (3) 
are appointed only for Sundays and the 
greater holidays. 

The practice of reading portions of Holy 
Scripture in public worship is very ancient, 
and existed, in fact, before the coming of 
our Saviour (Nehem. viii. 8; see also St. 
Luke iv. 7, for the custom during the time 
of our Lord). The Apostolic Church seem3 
to have adopted the practice which the Sjma- 
gogue had made familiar. And St. Paul 
charges the Thessalonians that his Epistle 
should be read unto “ all the holy brethren” 
(1 Thess. v. 27). In early times there was 
probably no fixed Lectionary, though some 
traces of appointed Lessons are found in 
writers of the fourth century. In the follow¬ 
ing century, unquestionably, Lectionaries 
were in use, and one is still extant which is 
more than twelve hundred years old. (Daniel 
on the Prayer-Book, p. 114.) 

At the Reformation the Lectionary was re¬ 
vised in the English Church so that the Old 
Testament should be read nearly through 
once a year, and the New Testament thrice a 
year. The Apocrypha was retained and read 
during a part of the year. The books of 
Chronicles were omitted because to a great 
extent they covered the same period of history 
as the books of Kings. The Song of Solomon, 
large portions of Ezekiel and the Apocalypse, 
were omitted because it was thought that 
their obscurity rendered them unfit for read- 
ingin public worship. Isaiah was read in Ad¬ 
vent because his prophecies refer so largely 
to the coming of the Messiah. The old 
Lectionary of the English Prayer-Book con¬ 
tinued until 1871 a.d. to be the only one 
permitted. In that year a new one was put 
forth, though the use of the old was allowed 
until January 1, 1879 a.d. 

In the United States the Lectionary was 
revised when the new American Prayer- 
Book was issued, in 1785 a.d. The Lessons 
were considerably shortened, more appro¬ 
priate chapters were chosen for the Sun¬ 
days, and, contrary to the English practice, 
special Second Lessons were appointed from 
the New Testament on Sundays, both for 
the morning and afternoon. The chapters 
from the Apocrypha were much diminished 





LECTIONARY 


430 


LECTIONARY 


in number, and these were taken from the 
Sapiential Books. 

At the General Convention of 1883 a.d. 
a new American Lectionary was adopted, 
which included a special Table of Lessons for 
Lent. Many features of our new Lectionary 
closely resemble the English Lectionary of 
1871 a.d., which is generally considered to be 
in many respects a decided improvement 
upon the old one. It was not introduced, 
however, without sharp criticism from sev¬ 
eral divines, among whom may be particu¬ 
larly mentioned Bishop Wordsworth, of 
Lincoln, Dean Burgon, and Dean Goulburn. 

The following remarks on the New Eng¬ 
lish Lectionary (of 1871 a.d.) are taken 
from Daniel on the Prayer-Book. They 
apply to a very large extent to the New 
American Lectionary. One important dif¬ 
ference in the American Table is that special 
Second Lessons are appointed for Sundays, 
whereas even in the new English Lectionary 
the New Testament is read through in course, 
and the Second Lesson for Sunday is the one 
appointed in the Calendar for the month. 

“The chief respects/’ says the Rev. Evan 
Daniel, “ in which the New Lectionary dif¬ 
fers from the old are the following : 

“ 1. The week-day Lessons have been con¬ 
siderably shortened, and are no longer coin¬ 
cident with the present unsatisfactory divis¬ 
ion of the Bible into chapters, which often 
obscures the sense by separating premises 
from conclusion (see Heb. xi., xii.), or an 
exhortation from the grounds on which it 
is based (see Heb. iv. v.).” (The second 
of these instances is corrected in our Ameri¬ 
can Lectionary, but the former remains.) 

“2. The New Testament is read through 
twice in the year instead of thrice.” (This 
change had been previously introduced into 
the American Lectionary 1785 a.d.) 

“ 3. The Second Lessons in the morning, 
on ordinary days, are no longer taken exclu¬ 
sively from the Gospels and the Acts of the 
Apostles, nor the Second Lessons in the 
evening from the Epistles; but the Lessons 
are so arranged that when the Gospels are 
read in the morning the Epistles are read in 
the evening, and vice versa; so that persons 
who are able to attend divine service daily, 
either at matins or even-song, have an op¬ 
portunity of hearing the whole of the New 
Testament, with the exception of portions 
of the Apocalypse, read through in the course 
of the year. 

“4. The Lessons for Festivals and Holy- 
days have in some cases been changed for 
passages more appropriate to the occasion.” 
(As an example, compare the new Lessons 
for St. James’ day (July 25) with the old.) 

“ 5. More portions of the Books of Chroni¬ 
cles, which supplement the Books of Kings, 
are now read. ... It will be observed,” 
continues Mr. Daniel, “ that the new Lec¬ 
tionary is cast in the same mould as the 
Old, and only deviates from it for the purpose 
of carrying out more thoroughly the princi¬ 
ples on which the Old Lessons were selected. 


Persons unable to attend Church, except on 
Sundays, may now follow a course of Lessons 
embracing all the most important passages 
in the Bible; and persons unable to attend 
Church more than once a day, instead of hear¬ 
ing, as formerly, the same portions of the 
New Testament read over and over again, 
while others were never heard at all, 
may now hear nearly the whole of the 
New Testament read through in the course 
of the year. In the Lessons for Holy-days 
the relations between type and anti-type are 
more frequently indicated, prophecies are 
brought into juxtaposition with their ful¬ 
fillment, and incidents from the New Tes¬ 
tament are instinctively paralleled from the 
Old.” 

In the American Lectionary, as has been 
mentioned, there is a special table of Les¬ 
sons for the Forty Days of Lent. The three 
rules following were adopted by the Gen¬ 
eral Convention of 1883 a.d. : 

“«f in any Church, upon a Sunday or 
Holy Day, both Morning and Evening 
Prayer be not said, the minister may read 
the Lessons appointed either for Morning 
or Evening Prayer. 

“ At Evening Prayer on Sunday, the 
minister may read the Lesson from the Gos¬ 
pels appointed for that day of the month in 
place of the second Lesson for’the Sunday. 

“ Upon any day for which no Proper Les¬ 
sons are provided, the Lessons appointed in 
the Calendar for any day in the same week 
may be read in place of the Lessons for the 
day.” 

The following rules for determining the 
Lessons in certain doubtful cases are taken 
from the well-known volume entitled “The 
Prayer-Book Interleaved” (London, 1866 
a.d. , 2d edit., p. 29) : 

1. “ A Proper Lesson always takes precedence of a 
Calendar Lesson. . . . 

2. “ A Lesson from the Canonical books always (?) 
takes precedence of a Lesson from the Apocryphal. 

4. “ The Lessons for the first and fourth Sundays in 
Advent, for the first Sunday after Christmas, for the first 
and fifth Sundays in Lent, for the Sunday next before 
Easter, for Easter-day, for the first Sunday after Easter, 
for Whitsunday, for Trinity-Sunday, take precedence 
of the Lessons appointed for any Saints’ Days which 
may occur on those Sundaj r s. 

3. “ The Lessons for the Circumcision, the Epiphany, 
St.John Baptist, St. Michael, St. Simon, and St. Jude 
take precedence of the Lessons for any Sunday on 
which they occur.” 

The above rules on a disputed question 
have the authority which may belong to the 
excellent manual from which they are taken, 
and which may be derived from extensive 
usage among clergymen. They are, of 
course, not binding in law. Any country 
clergyman, for example, who is unable to 
hold services on Saints’ Days, may well avail 
himself, if he see fit, of the concurrence 
of a Saint’s Day with a Sunday to let his 
congregation hear a fine chapter from the 
Sapiential books of the Apocrypha ; for, 
owing to the sale of Bibles without the 
Apocrypha, very many persons are hardly 
aware of the existence of those books, much 





LECTERN 


431 


LENT 


less of the wisdom and beauty to be found in 
them. Key. Hall Harrison. 

Lectern. Vide Architecture. 

Legate. A person sent or deputed by 
another to act in his stead. The name is 
now confined to such as are deputed by the 
Pope to act in his stead in all matters to be 
negotiated, administered, or arranged in the 
different Churches which yield to his head¬ 
ship. Before the Reformation Legates 
could only enter the kingdom by Royal 
permission, or English Bishops appointed 
as Legates could only so act by Royal 
consent. After the Reformation they were 
not admitted into England. Cardinal Pole 
was the last Legate to the English Church. 
Queen Elizabeth forbade the Papal Agents 
sent by Pius IV. to set foot in England. 

Legend. Anything to be read, hence 
a passage, either of Scripture or of the 
Fathers, or of history which was read 
aloud out of a book generally at Divine 
Service, but often in the refectory while the 
monks were at meals. The word Legend 
( legenda) became a synonym for all that is 
told as marvelous, and is absurd and im¬ 
probable. The word Legend is now often 
used for traditional tales, orally transmitted, 
and has thus suffered a slight deflection 
from its original meaning. 

Lent. A fast before Easter has been 
observed from the earliest Christian times ; 
but the period of its duration varied in 
different countries and ages down to the sev¬ 
enth century. Of these variations Irenaeus 
wrote in his Epistle to Victor, Bishop of 
Rome, about the close of the second century, 
when (speaking of the varying rules about 
Easter) he says, “ For the difference of 
opinion is not about the day alone, but 
about the manner of fasting ; for some 
think they are to fast one day, some two, 
some more; some measure their day as 
forty hours of the day and night.” Ter- 
tullian, a few years later, speaks of the 
practice of the Church as founded upon 
that passage of the Gospel in which those 
days were appointed for fasting during 
which the Bridegroom was taken away; 
implying a fast extending from Good- 
Friday morning to the night before Easter. 
Some few years later, however, towards 
the middle of the third century, Origen 
speaks of forty days being consecrated to 
fasting before Easter. And at the Council 
of Nicsea this period was taken for granted 
as if long in use. 

But however early the extension of the 
Lenten fast to forty days may have been, 
it is certain that the time was counted in 
several different ways, though.always im¬ 
mediately preceding Easter. By various 
Churches the forty days were distributed 
over periods of nine, eight, and seven weeks 
( i.e ., from Septuagesima, Sexagesima,. or 
Quinquagesima to Easter), by the omission 
of Sundays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, of 
Saturdays and Sundays, or of Sundays 
alone, from the number of fast-days, and 


it would appear that Lent was sometimes 
called by the three names now confined to 
the three Sundays preceding, as well as by 
the name of Quadrigesima. 

St. Gregory the Great introduced our pres¬ 
ent mode of observance, or sanctioned it 
with his authority, at the end of the sixth cen¬ 
tury, by excluding Sundays from the num¬ 
ber of fasting days and making the thirty- 
six days thus left of the forty-two imme¬ 
diately preceding Easter into an exact forty 
by beginning the Fast on the Wednesday 
before Quadrigesima Sunday instead of on 
the Monday following it. This rule seems 
to have been very readily accepted in the 
West, but in the East Lent begins on the 
Monday after Quinquagesima, and the rule 
of fasting is so strict, that although some 
slight relaxation of its rigor is allowed on 
Sundays and Saturdays, not even the former 
are wholly excluded from the number of 
fasting days. The primary object of the in¬ 
stitution of a fast before Easter was doubt¬ 
less that of perpetuating in the hearts of 
every generation of Christians the sorrow 
and mourning which the Apostles and Dis¬ 
ciples felt during the time the Bridegroom 
was taken away from them. This sorrow 
had indeed been turned into joy by the Res¬ 
urrection, yet no Easter joys could erase 
from the mind of the Church the memory 
of the awful forty hours of blank and deso¬ 
lation which followed the last sufferings of 
her Lord ; and she lives over year by year, 
the time from the morning of Good-Friday 
to the morning of Easter-day, by a represen¬ 
tation of Christ, evidently set forth cruci¬ 
fied among us (Gal. iii. 1). This was prob¬ 
ably the earliest idea of a fast before Easter. 
But sorrow for Christ’s death should be 
accompanied by sorrow concerning the cause 
of that death, and hence the Lenten fast be¬ 
came a period of self-discipline, and was so 
probably from its first institution in Apos¬ 
tolic times. And according to the literal 
habit which the early Church had of looking 
up to the pattern of her Divine Master, the 
forty days of His fasting in the wilderness 
while He was undergoing Temptation be¬ 
came the gauge of the servants’ Lent, deriv¬ 
ing still the more force as an example from 
the typical prophecy of it, which was so 
evident in the case of Moses and Elijah. 

St. Chrysostom speaks of great strictness 
in fasting on the part of many in his day, 
such as is still found in the Eastern Church. 
“ There are those,” he says, “ who rival one 
another in fasting and show a marvelous 
emulation in it; some indeed who spend 
two whole days without food, and others who 
rejecting from their tables not only the use 
of wine and of oil but of every dish, and 
taking only bread and water, persevere in 
this practice during the whole of Lent ” 

Lent was in the early Church the princi¬ 
pal time for preparing the catechumens for 
Baptism, and a large portion of St. Cyril’s 
Catechetical Lectures were delivered at this 
season. There were also constant daily ser- 





LESSONS 


432 


LEVITICUS 


xnons at the services. Public shows were 
more or less strictly forbidden, and works of 
charity were engaged in by all who could 
undertake them. It was a time when sin¬ 
ners were called upon to do outward penance 
as a sign of inward contrition, that they 
might be received back to Communion at 
Easter. Lent was in fact a season of hu¬ 
miliation, abstinence from pleasure, fasting, 
prayer, penitence, and general depression of 
tone on account of sin, and was marked on 
every side with the sombre token of mourn¬ 
ing. 

The Churches of England and of America 
have not expressly defined any rule on the 
subject of Fasting. But so far as any inti¬ 
mation of its use is of worth, the Homily on 
Fasting in the Book of Homilies, whose 
teaching is recognized as of authority {vide 
Art. XXXV.), has urged the example of the 
early Church, as if intending it to be followed 
with a considerable amount of strictness. 
The work that is set before most persons, in 
the Providence of God, at the present day 
makes it quite impossible, however, for those 
who have to do it to fast every day through¬ 
out Lent. But conscientious desire to do 
our duty to ourselves demands that we shall 
use fasting and abstinence. IVe can fast at 
stated times and use due abstinence at all 
other times in the Lenten season as becomes 
the faithful of the Church. It is impossible to 
lay down any general law as to the amount 
of abstinence from food which is compatible 
with individual duties, nor can any one ex¬ 
cept a person possessed of much physiologi¬ 
cal acumen determine what is to be the rule 
for another. But the general rules may be 
laid down: I. That it is possible for all to 
diminish in some degree the quantity of 
their food on fasting days without harm re¬ 
sulting. II. That many can safely abstain 
from animal food altogether for some days 
in the week. III. That food should be 
taken on fasting days as a necessity, and its 
quality so regulated that it shall not be a 
luxury. IV. That all can deny themselves 
delicacies on fast-days which may be very 
properly used at other times. 

Lessons. Vide Lectionary. 

Letter of Orders. The letters of orders 
given to each Priest or Deacon upon his or¬ 
dination may, in the use of the several 
Bishops, differ. There is no form fixed by 
canon law; this that follows is one in use 
in Pennsylvania: 

“ LETTER OF ORDERS. 

“ Be it known by these Presents , 

“ That on the day of , in the 

year of our Lord one thousand eight hun¬ 
dred and , in Church, 

in the and Diocese of , our 

beloved in Christ A. B. was by me rightly 
and canonically ordained and made a , 
I being well assured of his virtuous and 

f >ious life, and conversation, and competent 
earning and knowledge in the Holy Scrip¬ 
tures ; and he having, in my presence, freely 


and voluntarily declared that he believes the 
Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testa¬ 
ments to be the word of God, and to contain 
all things necessary to salvation, and having 
also solemnly engaged to conform to the doc¬ 
trines and worship of the Protestant Episco¬ 
pal Church in the United States of America. 

“ In testimony whereof I have hereunto 
set my hand and seal at , this said 

day of , in the year of our 

Lord one thousand and in the 

year of my consecration.” 

Leviticus. The third book of Moses. It 
was also called the “ Law of the Priests” 
and the “ Law of Offerings,” from its con¬ 
tents. It can be divided into seven heads : 
(a) Laws on Sacrifices (ch. i.-vii.). (b) A 

historical section on the consecration of 
Aaron and his sons (ch. viii.); his offering 
for himself and the people (ch. ix.) ; the 
death by fire of his sons Nadab and Abihu 
for offering strange fire before the Lord 
(ch. x.). ( c) Laws on purity and purification 
of impurity (ch. xv., xvi.). (d) Laws 
chiefly intended to mark the separation be¬ 
tween Israel and the heathen (ch. xvii.-xx.). 
(e) Laws for priests (ch. xxi.); holy-days 
and festivals (ch. xxiii.); the episode of the 
blasphemer (ch. xxiv.) and the law about 
blasphemy (ch. xxvi. 2). (/) Promises 

and threats (ch. xxvi. 2-46). ( g ) An ap¬ 
pendix of the law of vows. 

This book is linked to Exodus by the 
latter closing with the completion of the 
tabernacle, and its consecration b} 7 the de¬ 
scent of the cloud upon it. “ From the 
tabernacle, thus rendered glorious by the 
Divine presence, issues the legislation con¬ 
tained in the book of Leviticus. At first 
God spake to the people out of the thunder 
and lightning of Sinai, and gave them His 
holy commandments bj 7 the hand of a 
mediator. But henceforth His presence is to 
dwell not on the secret top of Sinai but in the 
midst of His people, both in their wander¬ 
ings through the wilderness, and afterwards 
in the land of Promise. Hence the first 
directions which Moses received after the 
work is finished have reference to the offer¬ 
ings which were to be brought to the door 
of the Tabernacle. As Jehovah draws near 
to the people in the Tabernacle so the people 
draw near to Jehovah in the offering. The 
regulations respecting sacrifices fall into 
three groups, and each of these groups again 
consists of a decalogue of instructions. 
Bertheau has observed that this principle 
runs through all the laws of Moses. They 
are all modeled after the pattern of the 
Ten Commandments, so that each distinct 
subject of legislation is always treated of 
under ten several enactments or provisions.” 

Objections asserted against other books of 
Moses seem to be in a great measure aban¬ 
doned as regards this book. Its archaic form, 
the bold simplicity of its formulas, give dis¬ 
proof to any assertion of a late date; and 
if those who urge that the historical books 
of Moses were the work of the palmy days 





LIBERTINES 


433 


LIFE 


of Israelitish history, can only say that 
Leviticus must be not later than the times 
of the Judges, we can safely challenge them 
to show why it does not belong to the period 
of the Exodus. 

The discussion on the groups of the laws 
in Leviticus is too intricate for the present 
work. “ But we must not quit this book 
without a word on what may be called its 
spiritual meaning; that so elaborate a ritual 
looked beyond itself we cannot doubt. It 
was a prophecy of things to come; a 
shadow whereof the substance was Christ 
and His Kingdom. Of many things we 
may be sure that they belonged only to the 
nation to whom they were given, contain¬ 
ing no prophetic significance, but serving as 
witnesses and signs to them of God’s covenant 
of grace. We may hesitate to pronounce 
with Jerome that ‘every sacrifice, nay, al¬ 
most every syllable,—the garments of Aaron 
and the whole Levitical system,—breathe of 
heavenly mysteries.’ But we cannot read 
the Epistle to the Hebrews and not acknowl¬ 
edge that the Levitical priests 4 served the 
pattern and type of heavenly things;’ that 
the sacrifices of the Law pointed to and found 
their interpretation the Lamb of God ; that 
the ordinances of outward purification sig¬ 
nified the true inner cleansing of the heart 
and conscience from dead works to serve the 
living God. One idea, moreover, pene¬ 
trates the whole vast and burdensome cere¬ 
monial, and gives it a real glory even apart 
from any prophetic significance. Holiness is 
its end. Holiness is its character. The taber¬ 
nacle is holy ; the vessels are holy; the 
offerings are most holy unto Jehovah ; the 
garments of the priests are holy ; all who 
approach Him whose name is 4 Holy,’ 
whether priests who minister unto Him, or 
people who worship Him, must be holy. It 
would seem as if amid the camp and dwell¬ 
ings of Israel was ever to be heard an echo 
of that solemn strain which fills the courts 
above, where the Seraphim cry one unto 
another, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy.’” (Smith’s 
Dictionary of the Bible, sub voc.) 

Libertines. The synagogue of the Lib¬ 
ertines is mentioned in Acts vi. 9. Most 

robably the libertines were the Jews who 

ad been taken and sold into slavery by 
Pompey and other Roman generals, and had 
afterwards been emancipated and had set¬ 
tled in Jerusalem or were therefor the feasts. 
The larger part of the Jews in Rome were 
in the condition of “ freedmen” and had a 
quarter in the Trans-Tiber, but were ban¬ 
ished by Tiberius about 19 a.d. Probably 
many of these had found their way back to 
Jerusalem, and would become zealous de¬ 
fenders of the law. 

Liberty. It would be out of place to do 
more than to hint at one or two points of 
Christian Liberty. True liberty is to be 
distinguished from false liberty, the equiv¬ 
alent for license and anarchy, by the submis¬ 
sion to law, by the means used,— i.e., whether 
selfish and only for self-gratification, whether 

28 


guided by a pure conscience or by a narrow 
prejudice substituted for a conscience; and 
also by the end proposed,—whether termi¬ 
nating in self alone. The truest liberty is 
always relative towards others, since our 
life is conditioned by so many antagonizing 
claims. It must be founded upon a prac¬ 
tical compromise. But within ourselves the 
liberty we claim is that of sole account¬ 
ability to God in the use of the laws, phys¬ 
ical, mental, and spiritual, under which we 
display this triple activity of being. Yet 
no man is at liberty to harbor or believe in 
a wrong thought, since wrong antagonizes 
right and is destructive of all right liberty. 
Again, the Church permits the utmost lib¬ 
erty of mere opinion compatible with a 
hearty acceptance of the Apostolic Creed 
and an honest, sincere use of her formularies. 
She allows the broadest scope to the play of 
those faculties which mark individual minds 
whenever, to use Hooker’s phrase, her 
members do not by their speculations “ deny 
the foundation by the consequents.” In 
these things there is the true Catholicity, 
for it is founded upon a firm adherence to the 
truths of the Faith. We must beware that 
the so-called liberty of conscience be not 
mistaken for a liberty to entertain prejudice, 
for conscience cannot claim to judge till it 
knows, and if it judges before it is properly- 
informed it is no longer a true conscience, 
but a prejudging self-will. 

Life. The creative gift of God to man. 
It is a complex gift, and is so recognized by 
Moses : “ And God breathed into li is nos¬ 
trils the breath of life, and man became a 
living soul,” when the Hebrew (and the 
margin) read “the breath of lives.” It was 
not only a fact recorded by Moses, but it 
was also a part of that belief which be¬ 
longed to the purer faith of patriarchal 
ages. “ The breath of the Almighty hath 
given me life” (Job xxxiii.). It is there¬ 
fore but a sequence to this truth that 
though modern science can trace out the 
adjuncts and manifestations of the phys¬ 
ical life, it cannot touch the life itself,—the 
vital power that converts, combines, and 
employs all material presented to it for its 
use. Heat, light, electricity, nervous force, 
are intimately associated with the physical 
part of this complex power; respiration and 
other functions are intimately woven into 
its manifestation,—they are the conditions 
which it uses, by which it remains a tenant 
of this body of dust. But physical life in 
man provides also a mental or intellectual 
life. And since these are the gift of a benefi¬ 
cent Creator, and are of His breath, there 
is also the spiritual life added. Then it fol¬ 
lows that in some as yet unrevealed way 
our Lord, in whom was Life, is intimately 
concerned in the restoration not only of a 
spiritual sense, but of actual living power, 
lost by the fall, heightening the lower forms 
of this life or living soul by this restora¬ 
tion. For as the Father hath life in Him¬ 
self, so hath He given to the Son to have 







LIGHT 


434 


LITURGY 


life in Himself,—“ the dead shall hear the 
voice of the Son of God, and they that hear 
shall live” (St. John v. 25). Compare the 
teaching that “The first man Adam was 
made a living soul ; the last Adam was made 
a quickening spirit.” 

Therefore we find the fact that “in Him 
we live and move and have our being” in¬ 
cludes all forms of our life, however mani¬ 
fested, and binds them to Him. His own 
words, “ I am the Life,” are true in the 
widest sense; and as He has given certain 
physical functions as the conditions under 
which the body retains the physical life, so 
there are certain spiritual functions also 
necessary for us to foster and develop. His 
quickening, reinforcing presence is felt in 
this our spiritual life. Our souls are the 
breath of lives which He gave, and which 
return to Him, not losing their individuality 
thereby, but ever most truly existing in 
Him with whom is the fountain of life, and 
in whose light we see light. 

Life is a most sacred gift, hedged about 
with many defenses, and protected by direct 
command of God. Life is His, for His very 
Name Jehovah means He that is. There¬ 
fore there can be nothing more sacred to us 
than life itself, and being restored by regen¬ 
eration in the Son of God who is the Life, 
and sanctified by the Holy Ghost who is 
the Lord and Giver of life, it must be looked 
upon as the holiest, as it is the basis of all 
else we can have,—the first of the talents 
committed to us. 

Light. The gift to the world made on 
the first day of creation. It is typical of 
the spiritual light vouchsafed to the soul, 
“and in Thy light shall we see light.” So 
our Lord was to be the Light that lighteneth 
the Gentiles, and of Himself He said, “ I am 
the Light of the world.” 

Light has always been the attendant on 
whatever visible manifestations God has 
chosen to give us of His presence. 

It was the “ burning lamp” of Abraham’s 
covenant, the burning bush which spake 
with Moses, the pillar of fire, the glory as 
of a devouring firempon Mount Sinai, which 
also filled the Feast of the Tabernacle at its 
consecration, so that Moses could not enter. 
And again, at the dedication of the Temple 
the glory of the Lord so filled the Holy of 
Holies and the House of the Lord that the 
priests could not stand to minister because 
of the cloud. It was the infolding fire Eze¬ 
kiel saw; the light of burning coals at His 
feet of Habakkuk’s vision. These revelations 
all sum up in the glory of the Sun of right- 
ousness, and who is the Light and Sun of 
His holy Temple. As soon as the Church 
ritual had developed, soon after the cessation 
of persecution, light was used symbolically, 
for the lights were burned at the reading of 
the Gospel and at other services, as at bap¬ 
tism (when a lighted taper was sometimes 
put into the hand of the catechumen), and 
at the celebration of the Holy Communion. 
Lights were used freely at different festivals 


and at funeral rites; but while the practice 
was general, the usages and times at which 
the lights were used varied very much in the 
Western Church in the different provinces. 
The ritual use of lights in the English and 
American Churches is not at all usual. 

Limbus. A word of rather late introduc¬ 
tion ( i.e ., after 1150 a.d.), and one which 
in the form “ limbo” is so perverted by still 
later misuse that it cannot be employed for 
any theological purposes. It was invented 
to describe the place in Hades which the 
righteous heathen and unbaptized infants 
and those who lived before the Advent of 
Christ occupy. It was taught in a vague 
way by the early Church Fathers, but was 
more dwelt upon by the schoolmen, and re¬ 
ceived form from them. Every writer of 
the early Fathers who has occasion to dwell 
upon the state of the departed in general, 
had something to say of those who are “ un¬ 
der the uncovenanted mercies of God.” But 
their teaching was perfectly distinct from 
even the thought of a Purgatory. 

Litany. A supplicatory prayer restricted 
to a responsive form of intercession between 
priest and people. It was used in proces¬ 
sions. The Litany received its greatest 
development in France about the fifth and 
sixth centuries. It passed into English 
usage in 747 a.d., though the first vernacu¬ 
lar Litany was published in 1544 a.d. by 
Henry VIII. It was the earliest part of 
the English Prayer-Book that was pub¬ 
lished, for the Creed, Commandments, and 
Lord’s Prayer (1536 a.d.) were for general 
instruction. It was placed in the Prayer- 
Book of 1549 a.d., to be said before the 
Communion Office on Wednesdays and Fri¬ 
days, but in 1552 a.d. it was ordered as 
now for Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. 
It is a compilation from many sources, which 
Cranmer used freely, removing from them 
all objectionable phrases, but it is an incom¬ 
parably perfect form of intercession for all 
estates of men. It may be divided into five 
main divisions: 

I. The obsecrations offered to the Holy 
Trinity. II. The intercessions offered to 
our Lord, which take two forms of response : 
the first reciting petitions for special deliv¬ 
erances and pleading His redemptive acts, 
the second offering general intercessions for 
all estates. III. The Kyrie eleisons. IV. 
The prayers interspersed with responsive 
versicles. V. The closing prayers, which are 
enlarged in our American Prayer-Book by 
placing before the final collect the beautiful 
General Thanksgiving, which in a slightly 
different form (with space .for special prayers 
for those who desired the prayers of the con¬ 
gregation) was in English occasional prayers. 
The practice which omits the versiele “ Let 
us pray” loses the use of the ancient call to 
increased fervor in prayer, uttered by the 
Deacon at certain points in the old Liturgies. 

Litany-Desk. Vide Faldstool. 

Liturgy. The classical use of Aaroupyta, “ a 
public work” or “duty,” was transferred in 





LITURGY 


435 


LITURGY 


the Septuagint and New Testament alike to 
the ministration of public worship ; at first, 
and for several centuries a.d., including the 
offices of worship generally, but gradually 
restricted in ecclesiastical language to the 
Holy Communion. In popular use at the 
present day, the older and wider meaning 
reappears of any precomposed form of pub¬ 
lic prayer; but we treat here only of those 
forms for the celebration of the Holy Com¬ 
munion found in all ages of Christianity. 

The divinely prescribed ceremonial of the 
Passover was, in its essential features, ob¬ 
served by our Lord at the Institution of 
the Holy Communion; and His own acts 
and words on that occasion became the 
frame-work of all Christian Liturgies. Be¬ 
yond these,— i.e ., the breaking of the bread, 
the taking of the cup, the blessing or giving 
thanks ( Eucharist ), the words of institution, 
and perhaps the Lord's Prayer and a hymn 
(or psalm),—there was probably no original 
form of Liturgy from which later ones have 
been derived. In other words, each church, 
community, or Diocese had its own way of 
filling in this outline. But as the earliest 
centres of Church life and work grew into 
metropolitan and patriarchal Sees, their use 
or ritual became naturally that of the lesser 
Dioceses around them, and crystallized, so to 
speak, in fixed form as it extended its circle 
of observance. This was especially the case 
with the chief Apostolic Sees, afterwards the 
great Patriarchates of the East and West, 
—Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, and 
Rome, and in later days Constantinople ; and 


It is highly probable, however, that the 
Lord’s Prayer was used in every form of 
Liturgy, though not always mentioned in 
the above accounts. 

2. We come next to the Alexandrian family 
of Liturgies, the service of Egypt and Ethi¬ 
opia ; comprising the Greek of “ St. Mark” 
and Coptic of “St. Cyril” (two most closely 
related), two others, each in Coptic, Arabic, 
and Greek, by name (and by name only) 
those of “St. Basil” and “St. Gregory,” 
and the “ Ethiopic Canon.” Here again 
the points of agreement are many, the dif¬ 
ferences mostly in order of parts, which, 
however, is invariable for the “ ante-com¬ 
munion” or preparation (where it is given), 


the Liturgies of these Churches, together 
with that of Ephesus, have been undoubt¬ 
edly the sources of all modern Eucharistic 
offices. 

1. Aside from the well-known mention of 
Christian worship in Pliny’s letter to Trajan, 
where he appears to refer to the Eucharist, 
the earliest account of a Liturgy is given us 
by Justin Martyr; probably that of Antioch, 
about 150 a.d. St. Cyril, of Jerusalem (347 
a.d.), in his last Catechetical Lecture, de¬ 
scribes the Liturgical use of his day and 
place, and St. Chrysostom, a little later, that 
of Antioch, in terms from which it would 
appear that all these three were of the 
same family, and essentially the same as 
the so-called Liturgy of St. James, still in 
use in its Syriac version by the Jacobites 
(or Monophysites) of the East, though its 
Greek or orthodox form has long been dis¬ 
used. With them all may be compared the 
Greek Liturgy given in the Eighth Book of 
the Apostolical Constitutions, undoubtedly 
of or near the age of Chrysostom, and the most 
complete in all its parts which has come 
down to us from that day, though we have 
no proof that it exactly represents any Eu¬ 
charistic service in actual use. A tabular 
view, taking the Liturgy of the Apostolical 
Constitutions as a standard, shows concisely 
the parts and order of each of these ancient 
services. All were preceded by Epistle, Gos¬ 
pel, sermon, and prayers for those not yet 
admitted to Communion,—in other words, a 
Missa Catechumenorum , or ante-communion 
service. 

Apostolical Justin Jerusalem' St. James 
Constitutions. Martvr. (St. Cyril). (St. Chrysostom). 

1 

4 

5 
2 
3 

6 

7 

8 
9 

ii 

13 

15 

16 

io 

9 12 

14 

Sursum Corda. , Proface, Sanctus, and Con¬ 
secration. In St. Mark and St. Cyril the 
Second Oblation both precedes and follows 
the Words of Institution (Consecration); 
and here occur liturgical phrases (interces¬ 
sions) identical with those found in St. 
Clement of Rome,—a curious proof of early 
communion between Egypt and Rome. All 
have the Lord's Prayer after Consecration ; 
the Ethiopic Canon alone after Communion 
(as in the English Liturgy), and this only 
does not mention either Sursum Corda or 
the reading of the “ Diptychs,” which, or 
some corresponding mention of the living 
and the departed, was undoubtedly a feature 
of every primitive Liturgy. It may be 


First Intercessory Prayers for the Faithful. x 

Pax (“ The Peace of God”) and Kiss of Peace. 2 

Priest’s Ablution of Hands. 8 

First Oblation of the Elements (and offerings in kind or money).. 4 

Priest’s Preparatory Prayer and Vesting. 5 

Apostolic Benediction. 6 

Sursum Corda (“ Lift up your hearts”) . 7 

Preface (variable or constant) and Sanctus. 8 

Consecration and Second Oblation (of the Consecrated Elements). 9 

Intercession for the Living and the Departed. 10 

Pax (second time). 11 

Sanctus Sanctis (“ Holy things for the holy”). 12 

Gloria in Escelsis .-. 13 

Communion. 14 

Thanksgiving and Prayer. 15 

Benediction. 16 

Not in (The Lord’s Prayer. 

Apost.-< (Instate (‘‘O taste and see how gracious”). 

Const. (Breaking of Bread (for Distribution).:. 


10 

11 
























LITURGY 


436 


LITURGY 


noted here that there is no trace of the 
Creed in any form in the Eucharistic Ser¬ 
vice before the sixth century; while, as is 
well known, it was an important part of the 
Baptismal Office. 

3. The Liturgy of Caesarea , commonly 
known as that of St. Basil (and rightly, as 
belonging to his Episcopate, and in part, no 
doubt, composed by him), with that of Con¬ 
stantinople, called St. Chrysostom’s, but 
probably several centuries later, are in use 
throughout most parts of the Eastern 
Church at this day, but with many modern 
interpolations. We have both, however, in 
a comparatively early and incorrupt form, 
in MSS. of the close of the ninth centur}^, 
at Rome. Both add to the earlier Liturgies, 
above noticed, the Creed ; and in both, as 
in some of the Egyptian Liturgies, the In¬ 
tercessions for the living and the dead follow 
the Consecration and Second Oblation. 

4. Passing over three Nestorian Liturgies 
in Syriac, still preserved and used by the 
Christians of Mesopotamia (of “ The Apos¬ 
tles,” “ Theodore the Interpreter,” and 
“ Nestorius”), and presenting no ancient 
characteristics of special note, we come to 
the Latin Liturgy of Carthage , no longer 
extant, but described quite fully by Tertul- 
lian, St. Cyprian, and St. Augustine. It dif¬ 
fers from the Greek order chiefly, perhaps 
solely, in the introduction of the Pax and 
Kiss of Peace immediately after the Conse¬ 
cration and Second Oblation ; and the In¬ 
tercession for the Living and the Dead, not 
only before but after the Communion. 

5. The next variation of importance is 
found in the early Liturgies of Spain (in¬ 
cluding the Mozarabic , preserved by the 
Christians of Granada after the conquest by 
the Moors) and France , long since super¬ 
seded in both countries by the Roman, but 
having distinct traces of an independent 
Eastern origin, apparently from the Church 
of Ephesus ; and this family has a special 
interest for us, as the principal, immediate 
source of the present English Liturgy. 
This type of Liturgy, although ascribed 
traditionally to St. John (as would naturally 
be the case from his late residence at 
Ephesus), may be supposed with much prob¬ 
ability to have originated with St. Paul. 
(See Freeman, Principles of Divine Service, 
ii. 399, 404.) Like the Eastern Liturgies 
before noted, it is preceded by Lessons from 
the Old Testament, Epistle, and Gospel; the 
Offertory is accompanied by a Trisagion (in 
Greek); then comes the Apostolic Bendic- 
tion, Kiss of Peace, Sursurn Corda, Preface, 
Sanctus, etc.; the wordsof Institution begin 
as in Greek, “ In the night in which He was 
betrayed,” not, as in other Latin Liturgies, 
“the day before;” the “ Sanctus Sanctis ” 
and “ Gustate ” are given. The marked 
characteristics were the constantly varying 
Prefaces, and the Embolismus , or expan¬ 
sion of the Lord’s Prayer, with variable in¬ 
troduction, in Spain before, in France after, 
Communion. Both the living and the dead 


are mentioned by name in the Intercessions. 
Before the Gospel was sung Benedicite, and 
after it was a Sermon, followed in the Spanish 
and Mozarabic, at least, by the Creed of Con¬ 
stantinople. In all there is a special Sym¬ 
bolical Fraction (not mentioned in other 
Eastern Liturgies) with minute rites, per¬ 
haps not as ancient as the substance of these 
Liturgies. Manuscripts and records of the 
Spanish and French Liturgies go back to 
the seventh century; but the original fea¬ 
tures of the Mozarabic only appear from 
their correspondence with those of the East¬ 
ern Church. The Gallican, with all its 
Eastern peculiarities, was undoubtedly the 
type introduced into England by St. Augus¬ 
tine of Canterbury, and many features of it 
were preserved in the Uses of York, Sarum, 
and Hereford, down to the Reformation,— 
e.g., the Hymn Veni Creator ; the first Obla¬ 
tion after the Introit, of Bread and Wine si¬ 
multaneously ; the entire omission of Adora¬ 
tion after Consecration. All these seem to 
indicate a fusion, to some extent, not only of 
the Gallican, but of the ancient British and 
Irish forms observed at the planting of 
Christianity in Britain with the later gen¬ 
eral type derived from Rome. 

6. The Roman Liturgy, through the influ¬ 
ence of the Apostolic See, superseded in 
course of time all other Liturgies in the 
West. Special features of it can be traced 
with some certainty to the latter part of the 
fifth century; but in this instance we must 
distinguish carefully between the Sacra¬ 
mentary (Libri Sacramentorum ) or variable 
portion of the service,— i.e., the Collect, 
Epistle, Gospel, Secreta (silent prayer before 
the Oblation), Preface, Thanksgiving, and 
Benediction, which is still extant, as 
arranged by (probably even before) Pope 
Gelasius (495 a.d.), —and the “ Canon of 
the Mass,” which in its earliest existing 
form is that of St. Gregory the Great, a 
century later. The earlier Sacramentary 
and later Canon were certainly long com¬ 
bined, and much of Gelasius’s work is prob¬ 
ably still included in the Roman Missal. The 
first part, or Ordo Missce, in the Gregorian 
Sacramentar 3 r , consists of the Introit, Kyrie , 
Gloria in Excelsis , Collect, Epistle, Gradual 
(or Alleluia), Gospel, Offertory, and First 
Oblation (of the Elements); and the Canon 
begins with the last words of the prayer 
Super Oblata (the same as the Secreta of 
Gelasius) said aloud, and followed immedi¬ 
ately by Dominus Vobiscum , Sursum Corda , 
Preface (“ It is very meet,” etc., as in the 
English Liturgy, followed by the Proper 
of the Day), Sanctus, Intercession for the 
Living, Consecration, and Second Oblation, 
Commemoration of, and Intercession for, the 
Departed, Lord’s Prayer (with a brief Em¬ 
bolismus), Pax (substituted for the more 
ancient Kiss of Peace), and Benediction. 
The actual Communion following the Pax 
has no mention in the Canon , whose rubrics , 
it must be noticed, are of more modern date. 
Nor does the Creed occur in the Ordo , 





LITURGY 


437 


LONG ISLAND 


though from the sixth or seventh century 
its Eucharistic use after the Gospel became 
common in the Western Church. 

7. The Church of Milan retained its own 
independent Ambrosian Liturgy, in spite of 
all the efforts of the Roman See, till our own 
day, varying from the Gregorian in the in¬ 
troduction of a Lesson from the Prophets, 
Antiphon, or short Anthem, and Benedictus 
with Alleluia , between Collect and Epistle; 
Gloj'ia in Excelsis and Benediction before 
the Gospel; Kyrie and Antiphon after 
the Gospel ; the First Oblation brought in to 
the Priest by ten aged men and as many 
women ; Hymns and Prefaces in great num¬ 
ber, and many parts of the Canon differing 
considerably from the Roman Missal. 

8. The above represent in a general way 
all the Liturgies of early Christianity in 
the East and West. All, it will be noted, 
show both an essential agreement, in doc¬ 
trinal teaching, and material differences 
from the modern uses of Rome and Con¬ 
stantinople. 

Intercessions for the living and the de¬ 
parted appear in every account from Ter- 
tullian down, but neither separated (by 
placing the latter after the Consecration, as 
now in the Roman Missal), nor supple¬ 
mented by Invocations of the Saints until 
the sixth or seventh century. Both the First 
Oblation (bringing of the Elements) and 
the Second (after Consecration), with the 
doctrine of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, are 
recognized by Justin Martyr (the latter in 
his “ Dialogue with Trypho”), and by every 
Liturgy after his day. The Epiclesis , or 
Invocation of the Holy Spirit, follows the 
Consecration in all Liturgies of Eastern 
origin (including the Spanish and Gallican), 
but not in those of the West. The dis¬ 
missal of the catechumens (or non-commu¬ 
nicants) and actual Communion of the faith¬ 
ful present, are obvious instances of differ¬ 
ences between ancient and modern Roman 
use. 

9. To these we add a brief notice of some 
modern forms of the Liturgy. 

(a) The Church of England set forth in 
1549 a.d. a translation and revision of her 
ancient Liturgy (in what is known as the 
“First Book of Edward VI.”), following 
closely, in most respects, the Gregorian Ordo 
and Canon ; omitting its Invocations of 
Saints, but retaining its Invocation of the 
Holy Ghost, Commemoration of the Saints, 
Second Oblation, Intercessions for the De¬ 
parted (restoring these to their ancient place 
before the Consecration), and Words of 
Delivery (“the Body of our Lord,” etc.); 
all of which, together with the rubrics for 
Eucharistic Vestments, dismissal of non¬ 
communicants, bringing in of the Elements, 
and action of Consecration, were left out, or 
greatly changed three years later, by the 
“Second Book,” under the influence of the 
German Reformers Bucer and Martyr. 
Subsequent revisions in 1562, 1604, and 1662 
a.d., especially the latter, have restored the 


Commemoration, Second Oblation (optional, 
indeed, and after Communion), Words of 
Delivery (prefixed to those of the Second 
Book), and rubrics for the bringing in of the 
Elements and Consecration, adding others 
for reverent presentation of Alms and cov¬ 
ering and consumption of Elements remain¬ 
ing. The Lord’s Prayer and Gloria in 
Excelsis are placed after Communion (con¬ 
trary to all ancient use as well as to the 
Gregorian Canon), and, on the other hand, 
the ancient vestments appear to be restored 
by the present rubrics, though this is ques¬ 
tioned. 

( b) The Liturgy of the Scottish Church, 
1718 a.d., superseding one set forth by Arch¬ 
bishop Laud in 1637 a.d., was optional in 
Scotland with the English Liturgy, has been 
closely followed in most points by (c) the 
American Liturgy of 1789 a.d. In both, 
the Second Oblation and Invocation of the 
Holy Spirit are restored to their ancient 
place immediately after Consecration, the 
American inserting in the Oblation the sig¬ 
nificant words, “ which we now offer unto 
Thee;” and in some less important details 
these resemble, more nearly than the Eng¬ 
lish, the First Book of Edward VI. A re¬ 
vision of the American Liturgy, not affect¬ 
ing its doctrinal teaching, is now (1883-86 
a.d.) in progress. ( d ) The Old Catholic 
Liturgy of 1880 a.d., and (e) the Liturgy 
of Sweden (Evangelical Lutheran), are 
translations and revisions of the Roman 
Missal, differing, however, very widely, the 
former following the Gregorian Canon even 
more closely than does the first English 
Liturgy, with which the Old Catholic ser¬ 
vice is doctrinally identical; the latter a 
somewhat bald abridgment, wanting many 
characteristic features of the ancient Eucha¬ 
ristic services. (Both, with the Roman Lit¬ 
urgy, may be found in the American Church 
Review , Jan., 1881 a.d., and June, 1883 a.d. 
See also Diet, of Chr. Antiquities, of whose 
full and valuable articles there is little more 
than a condensation, and references there 
given.) 

Consult also Neale’s Holy Eastern Church, 
Daniel's Codex Liturgicus, Rev. C. R. Hale’s 
Translation of the Mozarabic Liturgy, 
Blunt’s Annotated Book of Common Prayer. 

Rev. C. W. Hayes. 

Lollards. The followers of Wycklif, 
who took up many of his teachings. Lol- 
lardism became a movement about 1380 a.d., 
and continued on, more as a political move¬ 
ment among the people, till about 1550 a.d. 
It was to repress Lollardism that the statute 
“on burning heretics” was passed in the 
first year of Henry IV. 

Long Island, Diocese of, extending 
from east to west one hundred and twenty 
miles, with an average width of fifteen 
miles, embracing an area of 1682 square 
miles, and including the counties of Kings, 
Queens, and Suffolk, was set off from the 
Diocese of New York on the 15th of No¬ 
vember, 1868 a.d. The Primary Conven- 




LONG ISLAND 


438 


LONG ISLAND 


tion was held in the city of Brooklyn on the 
18th and 19th insts. following, when the 
new Diocese was formally organized, and the 
Rev. Abram Newkirk Littlejohn, D.D., 
Rector of the Church of the Holy Trinity, 
Brooklyn, was elected Bishop. The num¬ 
ber of clergy belonging to the Diocese was 
eighty-five, of whom sixty-nine were enti¬ 
tled to act as deputies; and of organized 
parishes in union with Convention, fifty-five. 
There were at this time 9014 communicants, 
and for the conventional year preceding, 
1691 baptisms, 725 confirmations, 503 mar¬ 
riages, 951 burials ; Sunday-school teachers, 
1230, and scholars, 10,677 ; and offerings 
for all purposes, $204,720.62. Dr. Littlejohn 
was consecrated on the 27th of January, 
1869 a.d., the Rt. Rev. Horatio Potter, 
D.D., of New York, being Consecrator, as¬ 
sisted by the Bishops of New Jersey, Vir¬ 
ginia, Western New York, Nebraska and 
Dakota, Colorado, Pittsburg, Maine, and 
Oregon and Washington Territories. Bishop 
Littlejohn was born on the 13th of Decem¬ 
ber, 1824 a d. ; graduated at Union College, 
1845 a.d. ; admitted to the Diaconate on the 
19th of March, 1848 a.d., by Bishop De 
Lancey ; and to the Priesthood on the 12th 
of June, 1849 a.d., by Bishop Brownell. 
After officiating for brief periods at St. 
Ann’s Church, Amsterdam, N. Y.; St. An¬ 
drew’s, Meriden, Conn. ; and Christ Church, 
Springfield, Mass., he became, in June, 1851 
a.d. , Rector of St. Paul’s, New Haven, and 
served also for seven years as lecturer on 
Pastoral Theology in the Berkeley Divinity 
School. In 1860 a.d. he removed to Brook¬ 
lyn, L. I., having accepted the rectorship 
of the Church of the Holy Trinity, which 
he held until his elevation to the Episcopate. 
In 1874 a.d. he was appointed by the Pre¬ 
siding Bishop to take charge of the Amer¬ 
ican Episcopal Churches on the Continent of 
Europe. Besides various charges and occa¬ 
sional sermons, he has contributed numerous 
critiques, essays, and reviews to the current 
literature of the day, and published the fol¬ 
lowing volumes : “ Condones ad Clerum,” 

1879-80 a.d. ; “ Individualism, its Growth 
and Tendencies;” Sermons delivered before 
the University of Cambridge, England, in 
November, 1880 a.d. ; “ The Priesthood in 
the latter part of the Nineteenth Century 
lectures on the Bishop-Paddock Foundation, 
1884 a.d. 

At the end of the first decade of Bishop 
Littlejohn’s active Episcopate the following 
statistics show the healthful growth of the 
Diocese. There had been over 20,000 bap¬ 
tisms; confirmations, 12,763; number of 
communicants, 14,587 ; Sunday-school teach¬ 
ers, 2033, and scholars, 15,508 ; Deacon¬ 
esses admitted, 19; candidates for Orders, 
53; Priests ordained, 46; Deacons, 41; 
Communion alms, $149,167.99; contribu¬ 
tions to missions, $303,182.99; education 
for the ministry, $36,430.99; Parochial, 
Diocesan, and general purposes, $4,640,- 
032.82; to which should be added several 


items not appearing in the summary of the 
parochial reports, viz. : benefactions to the 
Church Charity Foundation, liquidation of 
church debts, increase of several Diocesan 
funds, purchase of the Episcopal residence, 
$40,000; donations of property held by the 
trustees of the estate belonging to the Dio¬ 
cese, $100,000, forming an aggregate for the 
first ten years of over five millions of dol¬ 
lars. 

Besides the development of parochial and 
missionary work, especial attention has been 
given to the establishment and building up 
of charitable institutions and church schools. 
The Church Charity Foundation, with its 
several buildings, located on Atlantic Ave¬ 
nue, Brooklyn, and covering an area of 
forty-five city lots, comprises a Home for 
Aged Indigent Women, Aged Men, and 
Aged Married Couples; an Orphan House 
and School, with a Printing Establishment 
known as the “ Orphans’ Press ;” and St. 
John’s Hospital, organized in June, 1871 
a.d., with a Memorial Chapel for the ac¬ 
commodation of the several houses, which 
are under the charge of the Deaconesses of 
the Diocese and a resident Chaplain,—the 
whole constituting a property valued at 
over $300,000, with an endowment fund of 
$100,000, the income of which, together 
with the contributions of the churches 
throughout the Diocese, defrays the cur¬ 
rent expenses of the beneficiaries. There 
are also in Brooklyn the Atlantic Ave¬ 
nue Dispensary for the gratuitous treat¬ 
ment of the poor; the Sheltering Arms 
Nursery, with its Infirmary; St. Phebe’s 
Mission, for special work in the pub¬ 
lic institutions; and a Deaconesses’ House, 
on Washington Avenue, owned by the 
Order. In the latter, with its adjoining 
capacious school-house, is located St. Cath¬ 
erine’s Hall, a boarding and day school for 
girls, under the management of the Sisters 
of St. John. Several of the city churches 
also have parochial and industrial schools. 

In 1877 a.d. the Diocese accepted the mu¬ 
nificent offer of Mrs. A. T. Stewart to erect 
a Cathedral at Garden City, with an Epis¬ 
copal residence and Cathedral Schools, in 
memory of her husband, Alexander T. Stew¬ 
art; and, accordingly, the corner-stone of 
the Cathedral of the Incarnation was laid 
on the 28th of June, 1877 a.d., and on the 
19th of September following, St. Paul’s 
School for Boys, and St. Mary’s for Girls, 
were opened. On the 18th of June, 1879 
a.d. , the corner-stone was laid of the large 
and permanent building, for St. Paul’s 
School, which was finished and occupied in 
September, 1883 a.d., and is regarded as 
one of the most complete edifices for educa¬ 
tional purposes in this country, having a fa- 
qade 300 feet in length, with three wings, each 
180 feet deep, comprising a chapel, school¬ 
rooms, library, and parlors, dining-hall, 
gymnasium, laboratory, infirmary, dormi¬ 
tories, bath-rooms, kitchens, etc. The Epis¬ 
copal residence is also an ornate and com- 





LORD 


439 


LORD’S SUPPER 


modious building, situated in the extensive 
park surrounding the Cathedral. Seven 
years were occupied in the erection of the 
Cathedral, which is Early English in style, 
and is constructed of Beilville stone elabo¬ 
rately wrought, consisting of nave and aisles, 
transepts, choir and chancel, baptistery, 
tower and spire, with a crypt, sacristy, 
chantry, and mausoleum. The total length 
is 190 feet; of choir and chancel, 60 feet; 
width of transepts, which have aisles, 80 
feet; of nave 52 feet, and height of spire 
221 feet. The organ is one of the largest 
ever constructed, and consists of six separate 
portions located in different parts of the edi¬ 
fice, connected by electric wires and played 
from one key-box, as are also the chime of 
bells, thirteen in number. The rich and beau¬ 
tiful design, and its solid and substantial 
materials and workmanship; the delicately 
chiseled stone and marbles in the baptistery, 
rood-screen, and mausoleum; the elegant 
font and altar ; the exquisitely carved organ- 
cases, Episcopal throne and sedilia; the 
superb pictorial glass, with the admirable 
proportions and decorations of the structure 
everywhere, combine to render this an im¬ 
posing memorial of the founder of Garden 
City, and a most worthy and appropriate 
ecclesiastical edifice and official centre for 
the Bishop of the Diocese. At the time of 
writing the Diocese numbers: Clergy, 107; 
parishes and missions, 100 churches; fami¬ 
lies, 12,514 ; individuals, 57,773 ; baptisms, 
infants, 1804; adults, 242; total, 2046; con¬ 
firmed, 1142; communicants, 16,327; mar¬ 
riages, 621; burials, 1450; Sunday-schools, 
teachers, 2008 ; scholars, 16,041; contribu¬ 
tions, $462,434.99. The census of 1880 a.d. 
gives the population of Kings County as 
599,549 ; of Queens, 90,547 ; and of Suffolk, 
53,926; total, 744,022. 

Rev. T. S. Drowne, D.D. 

Lord. The word used to translate the 
Hebrew Jehovah. It is used freely with 
the other title, God, Elohim ( vide Elo- 
him) ; so that the hypercritical attempt to 
distinguish between what are called the 
Elohistic and the Jenovistic documents falls 
to pieces. Lord as the self-existent One, 
the source of Life to all others, is the most 
secret name revealed to us. This Lordship 
belongs to the Father, to the Son, and to 
the Holy Ghost by the unity of the Di¬ 
vine principle. As in the Son dwells the 
fullness of the Father, and as the Father 
communicates to the Son of His own nature 
and giveth to Him to have life in Himself, 
Lordship must belong to the Son. So 
since the Holy Ghost proceeds from the 
Father and is sent by the Son, so to Him 
too belongs the title of Lord. But in rela¬ 
tion to ourselves, the Word of God, the 
eternal Son, is both Lord and Christ. 
For the Father put all power into His 
Hands, has made Him Judge as well as Re¬ 
deemer, and because He has taken our na¬ 
ture and has made Atonement for us He is 
our High-Priest, and so our Lord and our 


Christ. This Lordship is given to Him 
in and through His Resurrection. (Vide Re¬ 
surrection.) 

Lord’s Day. Vide Sunday. 

Lord’s Prayer was given on two separate 
occasions, first upon the preaching of the 
Sermon on the Mount, and secondly when 
His disciples came to Him to ask Him to 
teach them how to pray (St. Luke xi. 2-4). 
In the Sermon on the Mount He set it as the 
model of all. “ After this manner therefore 
pray ye,” was the charge then. But as the 
sum of all prayer it was given privately,— 
“ When ye pray, say.” The Church seems to 
make something of this use in the twofold 
use of it in the Holy Communion, placing it 
as the very first prayer, and apparently to the 
minister only,—“And the Minister stand¬ 
ing at the right side of the Table, or where 
Morning and Evening Prayer are appointed 
to be said, shall say the Lord’s Prayer and 
the Collect following, the People kneeling.” 
But at the close of the Celebration the Peo¬ 
ple are to repeat with him the Lord’s 
Prayer. It was taught to the catechumens 
just before baptism as one of the sacred 
trusts of doctrine. It was used especially 
in the Liturgies, where it was frequently fol¬ 
lowed by a special prayer founded upon the 
last petition. It was incorporated into every 
public office, and is an integral part of 
every separate office in the Prayer-Book. It 
has passed into the constant private devo¬ 
tions of every Christian. 

The effort has been made to show that its 
petitions had been in some form in use be¬ 
fore our Lord taught this prayer. It is 
true that such ideas as are therein used are 
common to all prayers, but not so com¬ 
pacted and pregnant with multifold mean¬ 
ings. And whenever any apparent paral¬ 
lels have been produced, it has always fol¬ 
lowed that they are of a date later than 
the Gospel. There is a slight variation in 
the petition for daily bread. St. Matthew 
has “ this day,” St. Luke has “ day by day,” 
but these are proper to the two separate oc¬ 
casions on which they were given. 

Lord’s Supper. One of the two great 
Sacraments of the Church, ordained by 
Christ Himself. ( Vide Sacrament.) Bap¬ 
tism being the Sacrament of admission into, 
the Lord’s Supper that of continuance in, 
His Church. 

In this article will be considered re¬ 
garding this Rite, (A) The names by which 
it has been called, as throwing light upon 
the meanings attached to it. (B) Its His¬ 
tory. (C) Its Nature. (Vide also Priest and 
Real Presence.) 

(A) THE NAMES GIVEN TO THIS SACRAMENT. 

(1) The Lord's Supper .—It is so called 
by St. Paul (1 Cor. xi. 20), doubtless from 
the fact of its institution during the Paschal 
Supper, and it is called by this name by 
several early writers. It appears to have 
been at first celebrated in connection with 
the Love-Feast (Agape), the abuse of which 






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LORD’S SUPPER 


the Apostle in the above passage is condemn¬ 
ing. As that gradually was disused and 
the time of administering the sacrament 
was changed from evening to early morn¬ 
ing, so this name drifted out of frequent use, 
for it seemed less used, though found in all 
the early writers. It is one of the names 
given it in the Prayer-Book. 

(2) Eucharist. —This was the most com¬ 
mon name for this Sacrament; the giving- 
of-thanks, or Eucharism, being a prominent 
feature of the institution of our Lord. St. 
Paul is supposed to allude to this when he 
asks, “ How shall he that occupieth the room 
of the unlearned say Amen at Thy giving 
of thanks?” literally, “at Thy Eucharis- 
ing” (1 Cor. xiv. 16). It was applied to the 
Sacrament from the earliest times. Ignatius; 
Justin Martyr, Irenseus, Origen, Clemens 
Alexandrinus, all use it. Thus Justin Mar¬ 
tyr, 140 a.d., says, after describing the cele¬ 
bration, “And this food-taking is called 
among us the Eucharist.” Clemens writes, 
“ Melchisedec gave bread and wine, conse¬ 
crated food, as a type of the Eucharist.” 
(Scudamore, Notitia Eucharistica, p. 7.) 

(3) Holy Communion. — This is also a 
Scriptural name. “The cup of blessing 
which we bless, is it not the Communion (or 
partaking) of the blood of Christ ? The 
bread which we break, is it not the Com¬ 
munion of the body of Christ?” (1 Cor. 
x. 16.) The context shows that the Apostle 
also refers to the Communion or fellowship 
Christians have one with another as mem¬ 
bers of Christ’s body, by the joint par¬ 
taking of this spiritual food : “ For we being 
many are one bread, and one body; for we are 
all partakers of that one bread.” So that the 
word had a double meaning, of the Com¬ 
muning with Christ and through Him with 
one another ; hence is very appropriate. It 
was not, however, so generally used of the 
Sacrament as were some other names, being 
more frequently used to express Church 
membership. It is the other name used in 
the Prayer-Book. 

(4) The Breaking of the Bread. —It is 
generally agreed that this Sacrament is in¬ 
tended in Acts ii. 42: “They continued 
steadfastly in the Apostles’ doctrine and fel¬ 
lowship, and in the breaking of the bread 
and the prayers.” Also in Acts xx. 7 : “And 
upon the first day of the week, when the 
disciples came together to break bread,” 
the Holy Communion is meant. This 
name, however, never came into very gen¬ 
eral use. 

(5) The Oblation, or Offering. —This name 
at first was given because of the various 
offerings of alms, in kind or money, for the 
poor, and for the support of th e-ministry, and 
also of bread and wine for the celebration 
itself, which were made at the time of the 
Eucharist; also because of the spiritual obla¬ 
tion in the commemoration of the Sacrifice 
of Christ. Gradually the term came to be 
used chiefly of this last, and so of the Com¬ 
munion itself, and “ to partake of the holy 


oblation” meant to receive. In our own 
service the bread and wine placed upon the 
Holy Table are called oblations, and after 
the words of consecration are offered to the 
Divine Majesty, as the memorial the Son 
has commanded us to make; which in the 
margin is called The Oblation. 

(6) Analogous to this is the term Sacrifice , 
which from very early days is found used of 
this Sacrament, though not in the New Tes¬ 
tament. It was first used for the material 
offerings of the alms and of the Bread and 
Wine, and afterwards of the Commemora¬ 
tion of the Sacrifice of the death of Christ. 
Thus Justin Martyr says, that “ the Sacri¬ 
fices’’ which Christians offer, as Christ 
commanded, “ that is, in the Eucharist of 
the Bread and of the cup,” are pleasing to 
God as foretold by the Prophet Malachi. 
“ Which sacrifices only,” he further says, 
“ Christians have undertaken to make ; and 
in the remembrance also of their food, both 
dry and liquid, in which also there is a 
memory of the suffering of the Son of God 
which he endured for them” (Dial, with 
Trypho, 117). Irenaeus and Tertullian both 
use it in the same way. But gradually the 
word came to be used chiefly of the Com¬ 
memoration of Christ’s Sacrifice, and by 
the end of the third century the Eucharist 
was commonly called “ The Sacrifice,” but 
always as a commemoration. Thu3 St. 
Chrysostom: “We offer, indeed, but mak¬ 
ing a remembrance of this death. . . . 
We offer not another sacrifice, like the High- 
Priest of old, but always the same,—or 
rather we perform a commemoration of a 
sacrifice.” (Scudamore, p. 16. The reader 
is referred to the word Priest for the view 
the Church holds.) 

(7) The Mass. —We have left this name for 
the last, because though now widely used, 
especially in the Roman Communion, it was 
the latest used of all, and there is less author¬ 
ity for it than for any of the others. The 
word is from the Latin missa, and simply 
means dismissal. It was used by the Dea¬ 
cons to announce the termination of certain 
portions of the service, and the release of 
those who were not entitled to remain for 
the Eucharistic service ; the Deacons pro¬ 
claiming to the catechumens and others, Ite; 
missa est ,—Depart; it is the dismissal. And 
as this was the signal for the beginning of 
the Liturgy proper, the name missa came 
to be applied to the office which followed it. 
St. Ambrose, 385 a.d., is said to be the first 
who soused it, but it did not come into gen¬ 
eral use until the end of the sixth century. 
(Scudamore, p. 1.) The English Church, on 
the final revision of the Pra} r er-Book, re¬ 
jected it because of many superstitions 
which had connected themselves with the 
word. Traces of its former use remain in 
such words as Christ-mas, Candle-mas, 
Lam-mas. 

Each of the names by which it has been 
called throws some light upon the history 
and meaning of this Holy Sacrament, viz. : 







LORD’S SUPPER 


441 


LORD’S SUPPER 


the first and fourth tell of its institution, 
the second, fifth, and sixth of its nature, 
Eucharistic and commemorative to God and 
man, the third of the union with Christ 
and through Him with one another, and the 
seventh of its being for believers only. 

(B) THE HISTORY. 

It was the night of the Passover, the 

Matt. xxvi. 26-28. Mark xiv. 22-24. 

And as they were eating, And as they did eat, Jesus 
Jesus took bread, and took bread, and blessed, and 
blessed it, and brake it, and brake it, and gave to them, 
gave it to the disciples, and and said, Take, eat: this is 
said, Take, eat; this is My My Body. 

Body. 


And He took the cup, and And He took the cup, and 
gave thanks, and gave it to when He had given thanks, 
them, saying, Drink ye all He gave it to them: and 
of it; they all drank of it. 

For this is my blood of And He said unto them, 
the new testament, which This is my blood of the new 
is 6hed for many for the testament, which is shed 
remission of sins. for many. 


night in which He was betrayed and given 
up to be the true Paschal Lamb, that our 
Blessed Lord instituted this Holy Sacra¬ 
ment. These facts are to be borne in mind 
when striving to obtain a true idea of 
its nature and object. We have in the 
New Testament four accounts of the in¬ 
stitution, which are here given in parallel 
columns: 

Luke xxii. 19,20. 1 Cor. xi. 23-29. 

And He took bread, and The Lord Jesus the same 
gave thanks, and brake it, night in which He was 
and gave unto them, saying, betrayed took bread: 

This is My Body, which is And when He had given 
given for you: this do in thanks, He brake it, and 
remembrance of Me. said, Take, eat: this is My 

Body, which is broken for 
you: this do in remem¬ 
brance of Me. 

Also the cup after supper, After the same manner 
saying, This cup is the new also He took the cup, when 
testament in my blood, He had supped, saying, This 
which is shed for you. cup is the new testament 

in my blood: this do ye, as 
oft as ye drink it, in re¬ 
membrance of Me. 

For as oft as ye eat this 
bread, and drink this cup, 
ye do shew the Lord’s 
death till He come. 

Wherefore whosoever 
shall eat this bread, and 
drink this cup unworthily, 
shall be guilty of the body 
and blood of the Lord. . . 

For he that eateth and 
drinketh unworthily, eat¬ 
eth and drinketh damna¬ 
tion (or rather condemna¬ 
tion) to himself, not discern¬ 
ing the Lord’s body. 


Add these following, and we have all the 
direct references to the Eucharist to be found 
in the New Testament: 

The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the Com¬ 
munion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we 
break, is it not the Communion of the body of Christ ? 
(1 Cor. x. 16.) 

Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us; therefore let 
us keep the feast. (1 Cor. v. 7.) 

We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat 
which serve the tabernacle. (Heb. xiii. 10.) 

From these words of Holy Scripture we 
gather the following regarding the Sacra¬ 
ment: (1) Its Institution. It was insti¬ 
tuted while our Lord and His disciples were 
eating the Passover, with materials then 
upon the table, viz., bread, probably un¬ 
leavened, and wine, probably mingled with 
water. That Passover, as all others had 
been, was a type of Him, and His disciples 
in future instead of feeding on the lamb, 
etc., were to feed on that which He then 
gave them, the bread which was the Com¬ 
munion of the Body of Christ, the cup 
which was the Communion of His blood. 
This was to be for a remembrance of Him ; 
and was for the remission of sin, for the 
showing forth His death, and they who re¬ 
ceived unworthily condemned themselves, 
because failing to discriminate the Lord’s 
body. Also that this is to be partaken as a 
feeding on the Peace-offering of the.Chris¬ 
tian Church. (2) Its Administration. This 
consisted of the taking of the bread ; the 


blessing and giving thanks ; the breaking, 
the distribution, the command to eat; the 
calling it His body. The taking the cup ; 
the giving thanks ; the giving to drink; 
the calling it His blood. The command to 
continue to do all this, in remembrance of 
Him. It must be noticed that the eating 
and drinking are just as essential parts of 
the Institution as the breaking and thanks¬ 
giving. 

These simple rites have ever since been 
considered essential to the due administra¬ 
tion of the Lord’s Supper. And however 
after-ages in love and devotion, and some¬ 
times perhaps in superstition, may have 
added to them adornments of music and 
pomp of ceremonies, these have ever re¬ 
mained the great central and unchanged 
features of the consecration. It was con¬ 
tinued in the first ages in its beautiful sim¬ 
plicity just as Christ instituted it. Justin 
Martyr’s account describing it to the Em¬ 
peror Antoninus Pius, the earliest we have, 
shows how it was administered about 150 
a.d. He says that “on the day called Sun¬ 
day” they meet together, and instruction in 
Scripture is given and prayer offered. Then 
“ when our prayer is ended, bread and wine 
and water are brought, and the president in 
like manner offers prayers and thanksgiv¬ 
ings according to his ability, and the people 
assent, saying Amen; and there is a distri¬ 
bution to each, and a participation of that 






LORD’S SUPPER 


442 


LORD’S SUPPER 


over which thanks have been given, and to 
those who are absent a portion is sent by the 
Deacons” (Apol., Book 1, lxvii.). “ This food 
is called among us Eucharistia.” This is 
not the place to trace the ritual additions 
which later ages made to the simple rite of 
Christ’s institution. They will be found 
under the head of Liturgies. 

(C) THE NATURE OF THE SACRAMENT. 

It is unnecessary to dwell upon the out¬ 
ward visible sign; that has been already 
sufficiently shown to be, as the Catechism 
declares, “ Bread and wine which the Lord 
hath commanded to be received.” We there¬ 
fore proceed at once to a consideration of 
the “ inward part, or thing signified.” This 
we are taught is “ The Body and Blood of 
Christ, which are spiritually taken and re¬ 
ceived by the faithful in the Lord’s Sup¬ 
per” (the English Catechism has, “ verily 
taken and received”). And we are also 
taught that the benefits we receive thereby 
are “The strengthening and refreshing of 
our souls by the Body and Blood of Christ, 
as our bodies are by the bread and wine.” 
Thus the Church teaches that the grace of 
the Sacrament, i.e., that which we receive 
by its means, and of which it is a pledge, is 
the body and blood of Christ, spiritually 
taken and received, and it is for “ the 
strengthening and refreshing of our souls.” 

We shall understand this better if we 
refer to the saying of our Lord to the Jews 
in Capernaum, when they sought Him after 
the miracle of the loaves and fishes (St. John 
vi. 26, etc.). In the discourse to Nicode- 
mus ( vide Baptismal Regeneration), our 
Lord foretells of entering the new life by 
the birth of water and of the Spirit, and af¬ 
terwards appoints Baptism as the Sacrament 
of this new birth ; so here He tells the Jews 
of the necessity of heavenly food to keep 
alive and nourish this new life, even as their 
Fathers were received out of Egypt, bap¬ 
tized “ in the cloud and in the sea,” and then 
sustained in the wilderness by miraculous 
food and drink, viz., the manna, the bread 
from heaven, and the water from the rock. 
And when they ask, “ Lord, evermore give 
us this bread,” He declares Himself to be 
the bread of life, and proclaims, “ the bread 
that I will give is my flesh, w'hich I will 
give for the life of the world.” And when 
the Jews murmured, “saying, How can 
this man give us His flesh to eat,” He ex¬ 
plains not, but declares even more emphat¬ 
ically, “ Except ye eat the flesh of the Son 
of Man, and drink His blood, ye have no 
life in you.” “ He that eateth my flesh, and 
drinketh my blood, hath eternal life, . . . 
dwelleth in me, and I in him.” These 
words must have made a deep impression on 
the disciples ; they could not understand 
them and “ said, This is an hard saying; who 
can hear it?” and though He gives some 
clue to His deep spiritual meaning by add¬ 
ing, “ It is the Spirit that quickeneth ; the 
flesh profiteth nothing,” showing that His 


words were to be taken not of that carnal 
body then with them ; still we read that in 
consequence “ many of His disciples went 
back and walked no more with Him.” The 
strong faith of Peter and his companions 
retained them in their allegiance to Him as 
the Messiah, but we can well understand 
that the question must often have been in 
their minds, if not privately discussed among 
themselves: “How can this man give us 
His flesh to eat?” Now, in less than a year 
comes the last Passover, with the institution 
we have described. When the Lord gave 
them the bread broken and the cup filled, 
saying, “ Take, eat; this is my body, which is 
given for you.” “ Drink ye all of it; this is 
my blood which is shed for you,” their minds 
must have gone back to that discourse at 
Capernaum; to the promise of eternal life 
through eating and drinking the flesh and 
blood of the Son of Man, and they would 
immediately have thought, Here in His 
mercy the Master gives us the means of do¬ 
ing that which to us seemed impossible ; He 
must mean that by eating this bread and 
drinking this wine we in some mysterious 
manner become partakers of Himself. 

Of course they could not understand how 
it was ; the Spiritual Body was not yet re¬ 
vealed. But in faith they accepted, and in 
the discourse recorded by St. John which 
followed, the Lord told them of His pres¬ 
ence with them in the Holy Ghost, who 
would teach them all it was needed they 
should know. And so they came to know 
and believe, as St. Paul was taught by reve¬ 
lation. The bread which we break is the 
Communion of the Body of Christ. The 
cup of blessing which we bless is the Com¬ 
munion of the Blood of Christ. After¬ 
ages bringing the wit of man to the attempt 
to explain divine mysteries, argued about the 
how and the when, and the nature, still ask¬ 
ing and puzzling themselves with the old 
question, “ How can this man give us His 
flesh to eat?” and so fell into various errors 
and superstitions in the attempt to explain 
the inexplicable. The simple childlike faith 
of the Apostles and earliest Christians was 
satisfied with the Divine Word, and “not 
intruding into those things which they had 
not seen,” “ thankfully received that His in¬ 
estimable benefit.” It is wise to follow their 
example, and in the words of one who long 
years after has inherited their spirit say, 
“ What the word doth make it, that I be¬ 
lieve and take it.” 

But there is yet another point to be con¬ 
sidered before we can rightly understand 
the full nature and purpose of this Sacra¬ 
ment. It was instituted during the Paschal 
Feast, that was a commemoration of the de¬ 
liverance from Egypt. The Paschal lamb, 
by whose blood they were marked as God’s 
people, was then being consumed. When 
Christ said, “Take, eat; this is my Body 
which is given for you; this do in remem¬ 
brance of me;” “This is my Blood which 
is shed for the remission of sins;” they 





LORD’S SUPPER 


443 


LORD’S SUPPER 


could not fail to perceive the connection be¬ 
tween the two. They must have under¬ 
stood that as the lamb and unleavened 
bread were offered in remembrance of their 
deliverance from slavery and their union 
under the Old Covenant, as God’s people, so 
this rite of the New Covenant, this taking, 
blessing, and eating of the Bread and Wine 
was to be in place of the former, as a per¬ 
petual showing forth of their deliverance 
through Christ from bondage to sin and 
their union together as Christ’s Body. 
Not that at the time they clearly saw all 
this, but it must have come to their minds 
as they reflected upon it, and it was revealed 
to them afterwards by the Holy Spirit. 
Even as St. Paul was taught to say, 
“ Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us, 
therefore let us keep the feast;” and St. 
Peter writes, that we are redeemed “ with 
the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb 
without blemish and without spot” (1 Pet. 
i.' 19). 

There is one more thought that must have 
presented itself to the minds of the better 
instructed of the Apostles, viz., the analogy 
between this new rite and the peace-offering 
of the Old Covenant. That, as is shown in 
another place (vide Priest), was a thank- 
offering, and a feeding on that offering, so the 
great feature of the act of Christ, in taking 
the bread and cup, was the blessing, the 
giving thanks, and the distributing for feast¬ 
ing. It was of a sacrificial nature. The 
bread and wine taken in the hands of Him 
the great High-Priest, and by Him blessed, 
broken, and given for feasting, was to take 
the place of that sacrifice, and be so con¬ 
tinued by His Priests until He should come 
again. It was to be in reality that which 
the other was only in type, a lasting, solemn 
thank-offering to God, and a feeding none 
the less real, because spiritual, on that offer¬ 
ing. Not, again, that we need think that 
all this occurred at the time clearly to the 
minds of the Apostles ; they came afterwards 
to see it as the true nature of the feast was 
revealed to them. To this the Apostle doubt¬ 
less alludes when he writes, “ We have an 
altar, whereof they have no right to eat 
which serve the tabernacle” (Heb. xiii. 
10 ). 

Thus we .find set forth in the Lord’s Sup¬ 
per, under th'e consecration and offering of 
the bread and wine, and the reception of 
them, the twofold meaning of the redemp¬ 
tion from sin through the death of Christ, 
and the union with Him by the reception of 
Himself into our souls, and through Him 
with God. There is, in the proper sense of 
the words, a sacrifice and a feeding on the 
sacrifice as truly as in the Passover and in 
the thank-offering. 

We have not space here to give quota¬ 
tions from the Fathers or from our own di¬ 
vines, and from the Liturgy of our Church 
in corroboration of what has been said. Such 
proof will be found under the words Priest 
and Real Presence. Let one suffice, taken 


from the Apology of Justin Martyr. We 
quote from him because he is one of the ear¬ 
liest writers, and because there is no dispute 
about the authenticity of his book, and also 
because he cannot be accused of putting 
forth what are called very high views of 
Church doctrine. Not being himself a 
Priest, he taught what was generally re¬ 
ceived among Christians. Writing of the 
Communion, he says, “This food is called 
among us Eucharistia. . . . For not as com¬ 
mon bread and common drink do we receive 
these ; but in like manner as Jesus Christ 
our Sayiour, having been made flesh by the 
word of God, had both flesh and blood for 
our salvation, so likewise have we been 
taught that the food which is blessed by 
the prayer of His word, and from which 
our blood and flesh by transmutation are 
nourished, is the flesh and blood of that 
Jesus -rvho was made flesh.” (1 Apol., 
lxvi.) 

Non-Communicating Attendance. — The 
Romish Church has made a separation be¬ 
tween the two features of the Eucharist, 
allowing that Christians may assist at the 
sacrifice, and receive the full benefit of it, 
for the remission of sins, without partaking 
of the Consecrated Elements, i.e., Commun¬ 
ing. And there has been a disposition 
shown of late among some of the Anglican 
Communion to teach the same thing. If 
what has been said above be correct as to 
the fulfillment in the Lord’s Supper of the 
discourse in Capernaum, and as to the anal¬ 
ogy between the Passover and the Thank- 
offerings in the Lord’s Supper,—and they 
who hold the above views will not be likely 
to deny this,—then it would seem that such 
a separation is untenable. The Passover 
required the eating of the lamb, the Peace- 
offering also must be eaten. The Scriptures 
are very plain on this point. So also of the 
Lord’s Supper : “Take, eat “ drink ye all 
of it,” said our Lord. “ As oft as ye eat this 
bread and drink this cup ye do show forth 
the Lord’s death till He Come.” The 
Altar is one whereof we eat. The early 
Church knew no such doctrine; many 
passages might be quoted to show this, did 
space permit; let these suffice. St. Chrys¬ 
ostom, who will not be considered as taking 
a low view of the Holy Sacrament, reproves 
those who are present without communi¬ 
cating in strong language. “ It was better 
that they should be absent, for they did 
but affront Him that invited them, whilst 
they stayed to sing the Hymn, professing 
themselves to be of the number of the 
worthy, whilst they did not recede with the 
unworthy. How could you stay and not 
partake of the table? I am unworthy, 
say you. If so, you are unworthy to com¬ 
municate in prayers also.” The Apostolic 
Canons, which are very early, command, 
“If any Bishop, Presbyter, or Deacon, or 
any other of the clergy, does not communi¬ 
cate when the oblation is offered, let him 
show cause why he does not.” (Bingham.) 





LOUISIANA 


444 


LOUISIANA 


COMMUNION IN BOTH KINDS. 

There is no dispute that this was the 
universal custom of the Early Church; 
following therein the Lord’s example, who 
gave both the Bread and the Cup to all 
present. It was not until the twelfth cen¬ 
tury that any mention can be found of the 
denial of the cup to the Laity. The reason 
given at first was the danger of spilling any 
of the consecrated wine. Afterwards, when 
the doctrine of Transubstantiation was 
taught, it was withheld as unnecessary, in¬ 
asmuch as each particle of the consecrated 
Bread contained the whole Christ, therefore 
the Blood as well as the Body. This was 
one of the grievances removed by the Ref¬ 
ormation, and the Church rightly orders 
that the elements in both kinds shall be 
given to each Communicant. In the Greek 
Church both are given, but at the same 
time, the elements being mingled, the bread 
steeped in the wine, and so together placed 
with a spoon in the mouth of the recipient. 
It is defended on the ground of greater 
reverence in handling the sacred elements. 
But it is not in accordance with the original 
institution, and with proper care there is no 
danger of spilling the consecrated wine. 

Re.v. E. B. Boggs, D.D. 

Louisiana, Diocese of. The history of 
the Church in the State of Louisiana pre¬ 
sents her very largely in those ways that 
mark her at once as the banner-bearer of 
Protestantism, and the comprehensive or¬ 
ganization of the Catholic Church must be 
of necessity. 

The territory of Louisiana was acquired 
from France in 1804 A.D., and the transfer 
of sovereignty meant freedom from the re¬ 
straint of public worship to the prescrip¬ 
tions of the Roman rite. 

The Protestants of New Orleans met for 
consultation and organization June 2, 1805 
a.d., at the boarding-house of Madame 
Fourage, on Bourbon Street. Among those 
resent were such noted men as Benjamin 
lorgan, James M. Bradford, Richard Relf, 
John McDonough, James Brown, and Ed¬ 
ward Livingston. On the 16th of June a 
vote was taken “ to determine the religious 
denomination of the clergyman to be in¬ 
vited,” and while forty-five votes were cast 
for an Episcopalian, only seven were given 
for a Presbyterian, and one for a Meth¬ 
odist. 

For many years a French-speaking con¬ 
gregation of Huguenot extraction was in 
union with the Diocese. 

The second Rector of Christ Church, 
New Orleans, was a Presbyterian minister 
when invited to that charge, and was or¬ 
dained a Deacon two years thereafter. 

Unfortunately, in after-years this im¬ 
portant position was lost,—what was con¬ 
sidered the inflexible rule of uniformity 
compelled the Bishop to permit the French 
congregation to drift away to the Presby¬ 
terians. The lack of sympathy in a period 
of distress on the part of more favored Dio¬ 


ceses turned the conflict from one of con¬ 
quest to a losing struggle for existence. 

Organization .—The Church in Louisiana, 
although planted as early as 1805 a d., was 
not fully organized in its Diocesan character 
until 1841 a.d. , or thirty-six years there¬ 
after. 

In this interval there was but small 
growth. Christ Church, New Orleans, was 
organized, as already stated, in 1805 a.d. 
Fifteen years later the Rev. William Bow¬ 
man organized Grace Church, St. Francis- 
ville. A parish, St. James’ Church, was in¬ 
corporated at Baton Rouge in 1820 a.d., but 
the congregation were without a rector until 
1839 a.d. "in 1838 a.d. St. Paul’s Church, 
New Orleans, was organized. These were 
the only churches, and they numbered to¬ 
gether but one hundred and fifty communi¬ 
cants. 

The first attempted Diocesan organization 
was in 1830 a.d., when a Convention was 
held for that purpose in New Orleans, under 
the presidency of the Rt. Rev. Dr. Brownell, 
Bishop of Connecticut. It was composed 
of the Rev. Messrs. Hull, Bowman, and 
Fox, and lay delegates from the churches in 
New Orleans and St. Francisville. 

Before the General Convention met, how¬ 
ever, in 1832. a.d. , the organization was 
abandoned, and no application for admis¬ 
sion was made. Provision for Episcopal 
government and services for the churches in 
Louisiana was, however, taken into consid¬ 
eration by that body, and a Canon enacted 
which authorized these churches to associate 
with the Dioceses of Mississippi and Ala¬ 
bama in the election of a Bishop. 

A Convention was held under this Canon 
in New Orleans, March 4 and 5, 1835 a.d., 
in which the Dioceses of Mississippi and 
Alabama were properly represented, but 
Louisiana sent only lay representatives from 
Christ Church, New Orleans. This Con¬ 
vention organized a “Southwestern Dio¬ 
cese,” and elected the Rev. Dr. Francis Lis¬ 
ter Hawks Bishop. 

The Bishop-elect declined, and no further 
Convention of this provincial organization 
was assembled. 

Prior to its meeting, however, a Conven¬ 
tion had met, January 20, 1835 a.d., com¬ 
posed of all the clergymen resident in 
Louisiana, and lay delegates from the 
churches in New Orleans and St. Francis¬ 
ville. This Convention organized a Diocese 
of Louisiana and made application for rec¬ 
ognition to the General Convention. This, 
however, that body saw proper to refuse on 
the score, as stated, of the “divided coun¬ 
sels” that prevailed. This reference was 
undoubtedly to the election by the vestry of 
Christ Church, New Orleans, of delegates 
to the Convention that organized the Dio¬ 
cese of Louisiana, and then subsequently of 
others to that of the Southwestern Diocese, 
and thus there was a danger in the admis¬ 
sion of Louisiana at that time of the presen¬ 
tation to the Church of two Bishops-elect 




LOUISIANA 


445 


LOUISIANA 


with largely identical jurisdiction, to wit, 
the State of Louisiana. 

Three years after this, April 28, 1838 
a.d., another Convention met in New Or¬ 
leans and organized a Diocese. This was 
the Primary Convention of the present Dio¬ 
cese. The members of it were the Rev. Dr. 
Wheaton, Rev. R. H.Ranney, Messrs. Rich¬ 
ard Relf, Lucius Campbell Duncan, Thomas 
Butler, William D. Boyle, and William F. 
Brand. 

The Diocese was admitted to union with the 
General Convention September 7, 1838 a.d. 

The Diocesan Convention of 1839 a.d. 
placed the Diocese under the Episcopal 
charge of the Rt. Rev. Dr. Polk, who had 
a few months previously been consecrated 
Missionary Bishop of Arkansas. 

The Diocese delegated to the General 
Convention of 1841 a.d. the election of a 
Diocesan, and that body thus empowered 
made choice of Bishop Polk. 

The Episcopate of Bishop Polk. —The next 
chapter would sketch the history of twenty 
years, the term of the Episcopate of the first 
Bishop. And yet it may not be written in 
the few words that the limits of this article 
demand. Let it, then, suflice to summarize 
some of the results that those twenty fruit¬ 
ful years produced. 

The Bishop found in Louisiana in 1841 
a.d. four clergymen, of whom one was an 
instructor of youth, and two hundred and 
twenty-two communicants. He left a Dio¬ 
cese of forty parishes, six mission stations, 
and upwards of twenty other congregations 
under the ministry of his clergy, thirty-one 
clergymen and eighteen hundred and sixty- 
nine communicants. 

During his Episcopate twenty-eight 
churches and a number of rectories were 
built, two thousand eight hundred and eigh¬ 
teen persons were baptized and three thousand 
one hundred and ninety-four confirmed, 
upwards of half a million dollars were con¬ 
tributed to Church purposes, and the ratio 
of communicants to total of population was 
raised from one in every fourteen hundred 
and eighty to one in every three hundred 
and seventy-nine. 

The days of prosperity had an end. In 
1861 a.d. the clouds of war lowered in all 
the heavens of the Southland, and' ominous 
sounds alarmed even the dullest ears. The 
call' that came to the Bishop of Louisiana 
seemed to him as the very voice of the Chief 
Shepherd of all summoning him to defend 
the flock, no longer by pen and voice, but 
by the strength of his arm,—a commis¬ 
sion in the army was tendered him, and he 
accepted it. Whatever opinion may be held 
by any one in respect to the propriety of 
such action, this much justice and a sense 
of right demand should be made of record, 
—in the acceptance of that commission 
Bishop Polk believed as firmly as he did of 
any other one act of his life that he was per¬ 
forming a solemn duty that he owed to his 
Diocese and to God. 


We would not here extenuate our or his 
reasonings, but let the curtain drop upon 
the dreary thoughts as abruptly as the life 
of the Bishop ended when the cannon-ball 
rent his breast at Lone Mountain, Georgia, 
June 14, 1864 a.d. 

We must, ere we close this chapter, how¬ 
ever, look but once upon the face of the 
stricken Diocese. All scarred and torn she 
lay,—the clergy exiled by military order, the 
temples in many, many instances desecrated 
or most wantonly destroyed. She lay all 
cold and almost dead. Five years passed, 
and no Convention met or could meet. But 
succor came; kindly and fraternal hands 
lifted her up ; aid came from those who had 
felt it a duty to crush her, as well as from 
those whose hearts had throbbed with her in 
a common cause, and she was bidden to live 
again. 

The Episcopate of the Second Bishop .— 
The Convention of 1866 a.d. met May 16. 
The report showed but twenty-two parishes 
maintaining regular services, twenty cler¬ 
gymen, and 1556 communicants. 

This Convention elected the Rev. Joseph 
Pere Bell Wilmer, D.D., Bishop, and he was 
consecrated the 7th of the following No¬ 
vember. 

Bishop Wilmer was the Diocesan for 
twelve years. During this time twenty- 
seven churches were built or purchased, five 
thousand persons were confirmed, twenty- 
one Deacons and twenty-two Priests were 
ordained, over nine thousand were baptized. 
The number of communicants was doubled, 
and upwards of eight hundred thousand dol¬ 
lars was given to Church purposes. 

All this was accomplished with a very in¬ 
adequate staff of clergy, and among a very 
poor people. Had the Bishop had his hands 
held up by a liberal support by the Church, 
there is little reason to doubt that the growth 
of the Diocese would have been phenome¬ 
nal. The good, the wise, the faithful Bishop 
rested from his labors December 2,1878 a.d. 

The third and Present Episcopate. —The 
Diocesan Council having chosen the Rev. 
John Nicholas Galleher, S.T.D., Bishop, he 
was consecrated February 5, 1880 a.d. The 
result’of his labors and that of his co-labor¬ 
ers may best be told in our concluding chap¬ 
ter, as that is to be of the present state of 
the Diocese. 

A General Summary. —From the organi¬ 
zation of the Diocese in 1838 a.d. to the 
meeting of the last Council, that of 1883 
a.d. , there have been reported 16,499 bap¬ 
tisms and 10,044 confirmations, and $1,676,- 
711.10 contributed. The ratio of commu¬ 
nicants to population was, in 1841 a.d., one 
to one thousand four hundred and eighty; 
in 1861 a.d. , one to three hundred and sev¬ 
enty-nine ; and in 1881 a.d., one to two 
hundred and sixty-four. 

Among the clergy who have labored in 
Louisiana as Priests have been Bishops 
Philander Chase, Young, Pearce, Beck¬ 
with, Adams, Galleher, Harris, and Thomp- 




LOUISIANA 


446 


LUKE (SAINT) 


son; the Rev. Drs. Wheaton, Hawks, Wm. 
R. Nicholson, Neville, Crane, Pulton, Cur¬ 
rie, and Lawson. 

Among the laity prominent in her Coun¬ 
cils have been many prominent in secular 
life,—John L. Lobdell, George S. Guion, 
William M. Goodrich, Dr. Wm. Newton 
Mercer, Dr. J. P. Davidson, James Saul 
(now a Priest), James Grimshaw, Henry 
Johnson, Lucius Campbell Duncan, Greer 
Brown Duncan, James McConnell, J. K. 
Dennett, Henry V. Ogden, General L. D. 
DeRussey, General Braxton Bragg, D. S. 
Cage, George Williamson, Jules A. Blanc, 
W. W. Howe, Robert Mott, Joseph P. Hor¬ 
ner, Carleton Hunt, and George W. Race. 

The Present State of the Diocese .—The 
Diocese now (1883 a.d.) has forty-three 
Parishes, seventeen Missions, and twelve 
Chapel congregations. There are fifty-one 
church edifices and sixteen rectories. There 
is an Orphans’ Home under a Sisterhood. 
The estimated value of church property is 
$624,250. 

There are thirty-four clergymen, one 
Bishop, thirty Priests, and three Deacons, 
of whom six are without cure. There are 
3946 communicants, and 2911 pupils in the 
Sunday-schools. 

The baptisms for the three years last 
past have averaged 609 ; the confirmations, 
399; the marriages, 164; the funerals, 309; 
and the contributions, $79,469.66. 

There is but one Diocesan eleemosynary 
institution, the Children’s Home of New 
Orleans. 

The principal of invested funds of the 
Diocese amounts on account of support of 
the Episcopate to $18,540; superannuated 
clergy, $6740; and a small sum for widows 
and orphans of clergjnnen. 

With the exception of four or five churches 
in New Orleans, that at Alexandria, and 
that at Shreveport, the Parishes are small, 
and most of them very feeble. 

Probably in no better way could the condi¬ 
tion of the Church in Louisiana be illustrated 
than by a reference to the average number 
of communicants, and the average amount 
of contributions for all purposes, and to 
clergy having cures in Louisiana and in the 
country at large respectively. In Louisiana 
there are on the average 146 communicants 
to each clergyman, and $2943.11 is contrib¬ 
uted; while in the country generally the 
average is 124 communicants and $7905.92. 

The clergy of Louisiana are noted, with 
very few exceptions, as earnest, faithful, suc¬ 
cessful men ; but their number is altogether 
inadequate to the work required to be done. 
The above statistics furnish a hint, and of the 
unequaled burden that is put on them, and 
the truth of the assertion that the Diocese 
is waging a losing fight is clearly proven by 
the large number of doors of our churches 
closed, and the still greater number of the 
suspended and abandoned Missions. Fifteen 
Parishes vacant, nine Missions suspended, 
and fully as many abandoned ! In the sugar- 


producing portion of the State the ground is 
being fairly well held for the Church, but not 
so in the pineries of the Florida Parishes, 
or in the territory north of the Red River. 

The constant gains of the Church in all 
those portions of the State where her serv¬ 
ices are maintained, and the ever-increasing 
ratio of communicants to population, are 
eloquent prophecies of the possibilities of 
tbe Diocese being some day comprehensive, 
not only as it once was in respect to Protest¬ 
antism, but also comprehensive in respect 
to those others who are now commonly 
called Catholics. 

But of the future those must write whose 
eloquence is inspiriting, and by those others 
who shall see the effects of the impetus that 
such cogent reasoning shall bring about. 

Rev. H. C. Duncan. 

Low Sunday. The second Sunday after 
Easter, properly the octave of the first Sun¬ 
day after Easter, is called Low Sunday, as 
it was an old custom to hold a second cele¬ 
bration of the solemnities of Easter-day. 
It was also called the Dominica in albis, for 
on this day those baptized on Easter-day 
laid aside their baptismal robes of white. 

Luke, St., the beloved physician, the 
Evangelist and historian of the Apostolic 
Church. What his personal history was 
apart from the slight notices in St. Paul’s 
Epistles and the inferences to be drawn from 
his own writings is wholly unknown. But 
what he has done for the Church in his 
Gospel and his book of the Acts is most inval¬ 
uable. Tradition says he was a native of 
Antioch. Study of his style has led a re¬ 
cent student of his works to infer that he 
was employed as ship surgeon on some of 
the crowded merchantmen of the Levant, 
from his accurate and yet unprofessional 
use of nautical terms. He seems to come 
forward suddenly in the history of St. 
Paul, in Acts xvi. 10, where he be¬ 
gins to use the pronoun “we”; of course 
this implies a previous acquaintance with 
St. Paul. He was (if the use of “ we” is a 
sure indication of it) with the Apostle at 
Troas, and passed with him into Macedonia. 
Here he was probably left behind, since 
onward the record of the remainder of St. 
Paul’s work in this journey is in the third 
person plural, “ they.” He rejoined him 
apparently at Philippi, where he had been 
left seven years before. Thenceforth he is 
the Apostle’s constant companion. Is he the 
brother whose praise is in the Gospel 
throughout all the Churches? If so, he is 
sent by St. Paul on an errand to Corinth 
with Titus, because he had already shown 
his ability in evangelizing work. He was 
most probably with the Apostle to the end. 
His skill as phj'sician was doubtless invalu¬ 
able to the wearied Paul, the aged. This is 
really all we know of the holy Evangelist. 
He does not name himself in either of his 
two works. It is only the Apostle who 
speaks of him, “Only Luke is with me,” 
“ Luke, the beloved physician.” 





LUKE (SAINT), GOSPEL OF 447 


MACCABEES, BOOKS OF 


Luke, St., Gospel of. This Gospel is un¬ 
doubtedly his, if any faith can be put in con¬ 
sentient tradition. It is beyond question that 
the author of the Acts must be the writer of 
the Gospel also. The connection between 
the two books, the Gospel beginning and 
the Acts continuing the history of what 
Jesus both began to do and to teach, the 
similarity of style, the accuracy and sim¬ 
plicity, and purity of diction all prove this. 
The Gospel is first certainly quoted by 
Justin Martyr (before 168 a.d.) in the 
Muratorian Fragment on the Canon (170 
a.d.). It was used and mutilated by Mar- 
cion (140 a.d. ). Later references to it need 
not be referred to. “ St. Luke wrote in 
Greece for the Hellenic world. In style 
this Gospel is the purest, in order the most 
artistic and historical. It forms the first 
half of a great narrative, which traced the 
advance of Christianity from Jerusalem 
to Antioch, to Macedonia, to Achaia, to 
Ephesus, to Kome. Hence it neither leans 
to the learnings of the past, nor is it ab¬ 
sorbed in the glories of the present, but is 
written with special reference to the aspira¬ 
tions of the future. It sets forth Jesus to 
us neither as the Messiah of the Jews only 
nor as the Universal Ruler, but as the 
Saviour of sinners. It is a Gospel not na¬ 
tional but cosmopolitan, not regal but 
human. It is the Gospel for the world : it 
connects Christianity with man. Hence 
the genealogy of Jesus is traced not only 
to David and to Abraham, but to Adam 
and to God.” (Farrar’s St. Luke, Cam. 
Bible for Schools.) It is the first Christian 


hymnology , for it contains the Gloria in 
Excelsis , the Benedictus , the Magnificat , the 
Nunc Dimittis. It is the Gospel of Thanks- 
giving , seven times is “glorifying God” 
mentioned. It is the Gospel of Prayer , 
not only the Lord’s Prayer, but six occa¬ 
sions on which He prayed are recorded, and 
the words in three cases,—in the Garden, 
when nailed to the Cross, upon the Cross. 
It is the Gospel of the Good Tidings of pity, 

1 and pardon, and grace. It is the Gospel of 
the outcast , the publican, harlot, prodigal, 
and Samaritan. It is the Gospel of toler¬ 
ance. (Condensed from Farrar.) It contains 
much not found in the other Gospels, as six 
miracles and eleven parables, besides many 
slight but notable incidental remarks, and 
some facts in the history of our Lord’s 
Passion. It is an inspired record of facts, 
not of theories or tendencies. It was 
written before the destruction of Jerusa¬ 
lem, and before the Acts also, which prob¬ 
ably were composed while St. Luke was 
with St. Paul in his own hired house in 
Rome. If any interval lies between the 
dates of the two writings, then it is prob¬ 
able that the Gospel was written at Caesarea 
during St. Paul’s imprisonment there (58- 
60 a.d. ), and then the old tradition that it 
was written for the use of the converts 
St. Paul made has much truth in it. The 
Evangelist describes things and places in 
Judaea which a Gentile could not well 
know about. And too, the universality 
of the Gospel would come well from one 
who was St. Paul’s attendant and com¬ 
panion. 




M. 


Maccabees, Books of. The record of 
the noble defense which the great-grand¬ 
sons of Chasmon, of the noble priestly 
family of Jehoiarib, maintained against the 
Seleucidae. It began in a resistance made 
by Mattathias to the effort of Antiochus 
Epiphanes to force idolatrous sacrifices upon 
the Jews. Mattathias slew two men who 
consented to sacrifice, fled to the mountains, 
and from thence began a successful guerrilla 
warfare. The struggle was taken up on a 
larger scale by his sons, who in this order took 
the leadership: Judas, his third son, “ The 
Maccabee,” who so extended his resources 
and won such important victories that 
finally he was able to strengthen himself 
with an alliance with the Romans. He fell 
in the passes of Eleasa, and Jonathan, the 
fifth son, took the command. His wary 
conduct, and skill and diplomacy, gave him 
the title of Apphaes (wary), but he too fell, 


but by treachery, and after imprisonment. 
Simon, the second son, placed himself at the 
head of the patriot party. He was able 
by allying himself to Demetrius II. to gain 
the recognition of the independence of the 
Jews, which led to his full occupation of 
Jerusalem. His death was through treach¬ 
ery, but his son, Johannes Hyrcanus, dis¬ 
played the shme genius for government his 
father possessed, and maintained the kingly 
power the father had won. They began 
with a handful of patriots, they left a nation 
welded together by bitter reverse and by 
glorious victory. They gave that form and 
character to the Jewish people that they 
showed in our Lord’s day. Their work in 
relation to the later form of Jewish polity 
was as important as the work of Samuel, of 
Saul, and of David. The Books which are 
almost our sole record for this noble achieve¬ 
ment are, chronologically, the III., II., 








MACEDONIANS 


448 


MAINE 


IV., I. But they frequently are imperfect 
in details and incorrect in formal facts, and 
the third book is most probably a rhetorical 
“adaptation” of some fact. It is hardly 
historical. But despite these drawbacks the 
books are very valuable for the Jewish his¬ 
tory after Malachi. The Books are not can¬ 
onical, though the first two being in the 
Vulgate are so received by the Eoman 
Church. But if the test of absolute literal 
accuracy be applied to them as to the in¬ 
spired books, they must be rejected. 

Macedonians. A heretical party which 
denied the divinity of the Holy Ghost. It 
was propagated by Macedonius, who had 
been violently placed in the See of Constan¬ 
tinople. Macedonius was a semi-Arian, and 
so rejected by the Church, but the Emperor 
Constantine placed him in the office (343 
a d.), but (in 350 a.d.) Macedonius seemed 
willing to accept the Nicene definition, but 
started the error of denying the Divine 
Nature of the Holy Ghost. It was to 
meet this heresy that the latter clauses were 
added to the Nicene Creed, after the words 
and I believe in the Holy Ghost, “ the 
Lord and Giver of life, who proceedeth from 
the Father, who with the Father and the 
Son together is worshiped and glorified, 
who spake by the prophets.” They had 
been already in local use, but were now 
added to the Creed (381 a.d.). The denial 
that the Holy Ghost was of the Divine 
Substance, and therefore Very God, was held 
with many varying shades of opinion, but 
however that might be among themselves, 
the Macedonians, holding to their error, 
went out of the Church. 

Magi. The wise men who appeared at 
Jerusalem at the birth of our Lord (St. 
Matt. ii. 1). It was the name given by the 
Greeks to the priests of the Zoroastrian doc¬ 
trine, which taught a pure Monotheism. It 
occurs as a word in the name Bab -mag in 
the Old Testament, and it was of probably 
the order of men who bore it that Daniel 
was made a fellow and afterwards the mas¬ 
ter (Dan. ii. 2, 13, 48), though the word is 
not applied to them. They could not have 
been teachers of directly false doctrine, or 
Daniel would not have interceded for them, 
nor would he have consented to become a 
member of their body. The straightfor¬ 
ward simplicity and directness of the narra¬ 
tive in St. Matthew stamps it with the 
truthfulness that must belong to the in¬ 
spired narrative. The representatives of 
the ancient Monotheism of the Gentiles 
come to do homage to the Son of God, born 
king of the Jews. It may be that there 
was also a survival among them of the 
prophecy of Balaam : “ There shall come a 
star out of Jacob, and a sceptre shall rise 
out of Israel.” A loving study of the sym¬ 
bolism of the threefold gifts these wise men 
presented finds in the offering of gold the 
acknowledgment of His Royalty; in that of 
frankincense, the acknowledgment of His 
Divine Nature; and in that of myrrh, so 


often used at funerals, the type of the bitter¬ 
ness of human life, and the acknowledgment 
that He is as yet born a mortal. They 
stand forth for the Gentiles in owning Him 
as their King, and as suddenly vanish as 
Melchisedec emerges, the Gentile Priest and 
king before God, who as suddenly sinks 
back into the silence of Scripture. When 
the Magi made their visit—whether, as the 
narrative in St. Matthew naturally leads us 
to believe, immediately after His birth or 
later—we cannot certainly know. 

Magnificat. The Hymn of the Blessed 
Virgin (St. Luke i. 46) upon the occasion of 
her visit to her cousin Elizabeth. It is ap¬ 
pointed to be sung as the alternate anthem 
after the Second Lesson at Evening Prayer 
in the English Prayer-Book, and is allowed 
as an anthem for our own American Service. 

Maine. The first service of the Church 
of England in what is now the State of 
Maine was celebrated on St. George’s Isl¬ 
and in the Kennebec, on Sunday, August 
9, 1607 (O.S.), by the Kev. Kichard Sey¬ 
mour, Chaplain of the Popham Colony of 
that year.* In October following, a church 
was built on the mainland near by ; but all 
ended with the failure of the colony in the 
following year. 

With the Proprietary Government of Sir 
Ferdinando Gorges in 1636 a.d., at Winter 
Harbor on the Saco River, came the second 
Church clergyman, the Kev. Kichard Gib¬ 
son, who fixed his residence at Richmondi 
Island, off Cape Elizabeth, but officiated also 
at Saco, and Portsmouth, N. H. A church 
was built in each of these placSs, and that on 
Richmondi Island was supplied with altar- 
plate and other requisites by the proprietor, 
Robert Trelawny, of Plymouth, England. 
At Saco the “minister’s rates” amounted to 
£31 15s. quarterly, or nearly $600 a year, a 
large sum for the time and place. Mr. Gib¬ 
son, who is described as “a good scholar,! 
and highly esteemed as a minister,” fell 
under the censure of Puritan Massachusetts 
in 1642 a.d. , for officiating within her pre¬ 
tended jurisdiction ; as did his successor, the 
Rev. Robert Jordan, who from 1640 a.d. 
till his death, in 1679 a.d., contended nearly 
single-handed against the growing power of 
that colony, officiating at Saco, Scarboro’, 
and Falmouth (now Portland), in all which 
places the early colonists were Churchmen ; 
and three times at least committed to prison 
for baptizing and marrying without Puritan 
license.j; From his time, under Massachu¬ 
setts rule, the services of the Church were sus¬ 
pended for eighty years, except that we find 


* Strachey, “ Historie of Travaile into Virginia,” c. ix., 
Maine Hist. Coll., iii. 297. Weymouth erected a cross at 
this same place in 1605 a.d., and held some religious ser¬ 
vice, but of what kind does not appear. The Sieur du 
Mont, under Henri IV. of France, built a chapel pn 
Neutral Island in the St. Croix in 1604 a.d. 
f He was of Magdalen College, Oxford, 1636 a.d. 
j His curious baptismal font of brass has been pre¬ 
sented by his descendants to the Maine Historical So¬ 
ciety. 






MAINE 


449 


MAINE 


a lay-reader at the garrison at Pemaquid in 
1683-88 a.d. 

In 1756 a.d. the Society for the Propaga¬ 
tion of the Gospel in Foreign Parts sent out 
their first missionary, the Rev. Mr. Mac- 
Clenachan, to Fort Richmond on the Kenne¬ 
bec. He remained hut two years, and was 
succeeded 1 in 1760 a.d. by the Rev. Jacob 
Bailey (of Harvard, 1755 a.d.), who ten 
years later had a church and parsonage built 
at Pownalboro’, but officiated from the first 
not only there, but at Sheepscot, Harpswell, 
Damariscotta, and Georgetown, until re¬ 
lieved of part of his wide field by the Rev. 
Millard Wheeler, appointed Jo Georgetown 
in 1768 a.d. Churches were built at this 
place (now Bath) and Kittery, and, it is said, 
at Gardiner. A number of the inhabitants of 
Falmouth had meanwhile, in 1764 a.d., or¬ 
ganized St. Paul’s Church, whose first min¬ 
ister, the Rev. John Niswall (Harvard, 
1749 a.d.), received an aid of £20 from the 
S. P. G. The Revolution drove away all these 
missionaries, and it was not until 1793 a.d. 
that services were resumed in Gardiner by 
the Rev. Joseph Warren, succeeded in 1796 
a.d. by the Rev. James Bowers, in 1803 
a.d. by the Rev. Samuel Haskell, and in 
1817 a.d. , after eight years’ vacancy, by 
the Rev. Gideon W. Olney. At Portland, 
Edward Oxuard was lay-reader for some 
years; Mr. Warren took charge in 1796 
a.d. , removing from Gardiner; the Rev. 
Timothy Hilliard in 1803 a.d., for three 
years, and the Rev. Petrus S. Ten Broeck in 
1819 a d. Maine was included in the Dio¬ 
cese of Massachusetts at its organization in 
1790 a.d. , and represented in its Convention 
in 1791 and 1796 a.d., but had no Episcopal 
visitation earlier than about 1814 a.d., and 
no officiating clergyman for some years be¬ 
fore 1817 A.D. 

In 1820 a.d. the “ District of Maine” be¬ 
came a State, and immediate steps were 
taken by Bishop Griswold to organize the 
present Diocese, whose first Convention of 
two clergymen and lay deputies from two 
Parishes met at Brunswick, May 3, 1820 
a.d. Simon Greenleaf, Robert H. Gardiner, 
and Dr. John Merrill were the leading mem¬ 
bers of this Convention, and for many years 
the leading laymen of the Diocese ; the two 
former, with the Rev. Messrs. Olney and 
Ten Broeck, were the first Standing Com¬ 
mittee, and Dr. Merrill the first Secretary. 
Maine remained a part of the New England 
Confederation known as “the Eastern Dio¬ 
cese” until Bishop Griswold’s death, in 1843 
a.d. , from which time to 1847 a.d. it was 
under the jurisdiction of Bishop Henshaw, 
of Rhode Island. At the organization the 
State had a population of 298,335, of whom 
there were probably not one hundred com¬ 
municants of the Church. 

In 1824 a.d. was formed the “ Maine 
Episcopal Missionary Society,” which, in¬ 
corporated in 1835 a.d. and 1875 a.d., has 
directed all the missionary work of the 
Diocese to this time. Its first effort was the* 

29 


founding of Trinity Church, Saco, in 
1827 a.d., the third Parish in the State ; 
and its first missionary was the late Rev. 
Dr. E. M. P. Wells, of Boston, “ at a sti¬ 
pend not exceeding eight dollars a week.” 
But the first “settled minister” of Saco was 
the present Bishop of New York, Horatio 
Potter, 1827-28 a.d. St. Mark’s Church, 
Augusta, and St. John’s, Bangor, were or¬ 
ganized in 1834 a.d.; St. Paul’s, Brunswick, 
in 1844 a.d.; and St. James’, Oldtown, in 
1847 A.D.; and these, with St. Paul’s (and 
organized in 1839 a.d. as St. Stephen’s), 
Portland, Christ Church, Gardiner,* and 
Trinity, Saco, were the seven parishes 
which, with their seven Priests and a Deacon 
residing in Massachusetts, met and unani¬ 
mously elected George Burgess, then Rector 
of Christ Church, Hartford, Conn., as the 
first Bishop of Maine. 

With his consecration, October 31, 
1847 a.d., began a new era for the Diocese. 
Bishop Burgess was a man of rare intel¬ 
lectual and spiritual gifts ; and in energy, 
patience, prudence, and gentleness singu¬ 
larly adapted to the great work of his 
Episcopate, the removal of the wall of 
prejudice with which centuries of Puritan¬ 
ism had hedged round the Church, and the 
making an opening for its entrance and 
growth where it had been up to this time 
utterly unknown. Under his leadership 
the parishes of the Diocese increased to 19, 
the clergy to 17, communicants to 1600, 
missionary offerings to $1571 ; and through¬ 
out the State the Church had become more 
or less known, and respected wherever it 
was known. In the small band of able 
and faithful clergymen who shared his 
labors were such as Bishops Southgate, 
Paddock, Armitage, Perry, Niles, and 
Alexander Burgess, Drs. Gardiner, Good¬ 
win, Haskins, Cotton Smith, D. C. Weston, 
R. S. and H. R. Howard, and Ballard. 

Bishop Burgess died April 23, 1866 a.d., 
and the Diocese elected as his successor the 
Rev. Henry Adams Neely, D.D., of New 
York (b. 1830 a.d.; Hobart College; 1849 
a.d.), who was consecrated in Trinity 
Chapel, January 25, 1867 A.D., and took up 
his residence at Portland, becoming Rector 
of St. Luke’s Church. In the same year the 
corner-stone of a Cathedral church was laid 
(August 15); the nave, aisles, and chan¬ 
cel, of stone, 130 feet by 60, were completed 
and occupied on Christmas-dav, 1868 a.d. ; 
and on St. Luke’s day, 1877 a.d., the whole 
cost of the structure thus far ($125,000) 
having been paid by the congregation, 
largely aided by Churchmen in other Dio¬ 
ceses, the Cathedral was consecrated with 
imposing services, in which nine Bishops and 
clergymen from twenty-five Dioceses took 


* Whose fine old stone church was erected by Robert 
H. Gardiner in 1820 a.d. Bishop Burgess was rector of 
this parish during his Episcopate. There was no fund 
for the support of a Bishop, and his nominal salary from 
the Diocese ($200) was bequeathed by him, with an addi¬ 
tional sum, making $7000 in all, for this purpose. 







MAINE 


450 


MAN 


part. The church, one of the noblest and 
most substantial in New England, is the 
property of the Diocese, held by the “ Ca¬ 
thedral Chapter,” incorporated by the Legis¬ 
lature ; forever free, with daily service and 
weekly communion, and a simple but digni¬ 
fied and impressive ritual; the Bishop being 
ex-officio Rector and Dean, assisted by resi¬ 
dent Canons* elected by the people, and 
honorary Canons chosen by the Diocese, both 
on his nomination. It is yearly more and 
more a centre for all Diocesan work, and a 
most important instrument in the extension 
of the Church throughout the State. A 
substantial Bishop’s House, also the property 
of the Diocese and adjoining the Cathedral, 
was erected in 1869 a.d., and there is also 
an Episcopate fund of about $16,000. 

Bishop Neely’s Episcopate has been noted 
thus far, first, for the extension of the 
Church in the vast thinly settled northern 
and eastern parts of the State, by means of 
missions with a simple organization, but not 
incorporated as Parishes, being thus wholly 
under the control of the Diocese. These 
now constitute nearly one-half of the con¬ 
gregations, and have much more than 
doubled the places of regular or frequent 
services. A remarkable infirmary work has 
been done in Aroostook (a county nearly as 
large as Massachusetts) by the Rev. W. H. 
Washburn, who has since built a noble stone 
church at the great manufacturing centre of 
Lewiston. Like all poor and frontier Dio¬ 
ceses, Maine suffers from constant changes 
among its clergy; but one now antedating 
Bishop Neety’s time, Mr. Dalton, of Port¬ 
land, and three others (Canons Washburn, 
Leffingwell, and Pyne) of ten years’ resi¬ 
dence. The Diocese now numbers 26 clergy, 
37 Parishes and missions, and about 2200 
communicants, having gained in these last 
twelvefold on the population of the State 
since 1820 a.d. Growth is and must always 
be 6low ; but it has maintained an honorable 
record under its present Bishop in the zeal, 
unity, and efficiency of its clergy,f and the 
earnestness and liberality of many of its 
laity. For many years a nominally “ Low- 
Church” Diocese, it became strong in 
Church principles before Bishop Burgess’s 
death, and has grown since in every element 
of Churchly character. 

The second notable feature of Bishop 
Neely’s Episcopate is the successful estab¬ 
lishment of an excellent Diocesan school 
for girls, St. Catharine’s Hall, Augusta, in 
1868 a.d. , which has done a great work 
already in spreading a knowledge and love 
of Church teaching and services in many 
parts of the State. A second Church school 
with a good property and large promise of 


* The Rev. Charles W. Hayes, 1867-80 a.d. ; the Rev. 
Charles M. Sills from 1880 a.d. 

f Among whom Canons Upjohn (1868-83 a.d.), Alger 
(1866-80 A.D.) and Leffingweli (1869 a.d.) and the Rev. H. 
P. Nichols (1877-83 a.d ), are entitled to special mention; 
only one of the four now remaining in the Diocese, 
Canon Root, and the Rev. Messrs. Price and Marsden, 
died in the Diocese after long and faithful service. 


efficiency is about beginning in Aroostook 
County. r Rev. C. W. Hayes. 

Malachi. The Prophet whose book closes 
the Canon of the Old Testament. Since his 
name means “ My Messenger,” some emi¬ 
nent later commentators have doubted 
whether there was any man who bore this 
name, and translate, “ The burden of the 
word of the Lord to Israel by My Messen¬ 
ger” (cf. ch. iii. 1), since there is no men¬ 
tion of his father’s name. But this mode of 
giving only the name occurs also in the case 
of Obadiah. Some early commentators, as 
well as the Septuagint translators, have sup¬ 
posed that it was a record by an angel; and 
some Jewish writers, admitting that Mala¬ 
chi was not a name, but should be translated 
My Messenger, claimed the work for Ezra. 
But these assertions are worthless, and arise 
from pushing the allegorizing of Holy 
Scripture to extremity. The contents of the 
book show that it was the work of a prophet 
whose mission was to aid in the reforms of 
the second governorship of Nehemiah (Neh. 
xiii. 15; 29 ; cf. Mai. ii. 8, and Neh. xiii. 23- 
27; Mai. ii. 10, and Neh. xiii. 10; Mai. iii. 
7—10, the subjects being identical). 

It is a short prophecy of only four sec¬ 
tions, the first section extending from i. 1 to 
vs. 5 ; the second from i. 6 to ii. 9 ; the third 
from ii. 10 to vs. 16; the fourth, ii. 17 to 
end. Its form is peculiar, each section be¬ 
ing opened with an assertion of a claim by 
God through His Prophet and a reply: How 
have we refused this claim? with the Proph¬ 
et’s answer. It contains one of the most 
distinct Messianic prophecies in ch. iii. 1, 
and in. ch. iv. 2, and a prophecy of St. John 
Baptist in ch. iii. 1, and in ch. iv. 5. The 
book closes with this prophecy of the Fore¬ 
runner of Christ. 

Man. The peculiar constitution of man 
as the only member of the animal creation 
endowed with religious sense and moral re¬ 
sponsibility, his unique and complex rela¬ 
tions on the one hand to God and on the 
other to the lower animals, and the over¬ 
whelming importance of the mere fact of 
his being combine to make the study of all 
that pertains to him a matter of the most 
absorbing interest. That he is the head and 
crown of a regular series of life-possessing 
and sentient creatures, rising in a steadily 
developing ascent from the simplest con¬ 
ceivable forms, is clearly evident; but it is 
equally evident that he is something more, 
since however nearly he is approached in 
physical and mental constitution by the 
higher groups of this series, he exhibits, even 
in his lowest developments, the evidences 
of a totally different nature of which they 
show no trace. The recognition of this fact 
and its significance is the simple solution of 
all the difficulties surrounding the subject. 
Possessing this dual nature, and bearing a 
double relationship to the life of this world 
and to another life beyond it, we cannot ex¬ 
pect either nature or revelation alone to 
’ open to us his whole history, for nature can 







MAN 


451 


MAN 


teach us only that part of it which belongs 
to nature, and revelation treats only of those 
facts and truths which nature cannot possi¬ 
bly make known. The scientist who refuses 
to study revelation must of necessity know 
man only as a higher animal, while the be¬ 
liever who seeks all his knowledge from the 
Bible must also reach only partial results. 
From these mistakes have arisen all the con¬ 
fusion and mutual misunderstanding, deep¬ 
ened by the frequent confounding of Mil¬ 
tonic fancies with Bible teachings and by 
interpretations of Scriptural statements 
equally unwarrantable and untenable. A 
brief examination and summing up of these 
two lines of investigation is all that can be 
given here. Science discovers that all ver¬ 
tebrate animals are constructed physically 
upon the same model, every part being rep¬ 
resented and performing an analogous func¬ 
tion in each, but better adapted to the needs 
of the creature as the scale rises, until in 
man the nearest approach to perfection is 
reached. Every organ, tissue, function, and 
appetite has its analogue throughout the 
series, and these analogies are traceable to a 
great extent even far into the vegetable 
kingdom. 

The same progressive series is observable 
in mental constitution, certain instincts 
being always present, as, e.g ., self-preserva¬ 
tion, self-nourishment, and reproduction. 
In the higher anthropoid apes the resem¬ 
blance to man in these particulars is start¬ 
ling, and yet between the highest of these 
forms and the lowest development of hu¬ 
manity the differences are so essential that 
no bone of a chimpanzee could possibly be 
mistaken for that of a man, while no lower 
animal has ever articulated language or used 
fire. Still, the approach is so suggestive 
that geological researches have been prose¬ 
cuted with a special view to discovering a 
missing link between the brute and human 
forms. This search has at length been un¬ 
doubtedly rewarded by the recent discovery 
of fossil human remains at Abbeville and 
Mentone in France, the bone-caves of Eng¬ 
land and elsewhere. Flint implements and 
weapons have also been found belonging, 
probably, to the quaternary period. But all 
with this remarkable result, that the man 
who was contemporary with the mammoth 
and other long extinct creatures in Europe 
was even more human in his type than the 
man of to-day. Thus the skeleton discov¬ 
ered at Mentone exhibits more distinctive 
human characteristics than the bones of 
modern man. There were gigantic and di¬ 
minutive tribes exactly as now, and under 
similar circumstances. Thus the four-feet 
skeletons found in France are associated 
with remains of the reindeer, just as the 
dwarfish Lapps are to-day. Man then also 
practiced rude arts and used fire, imple¬ 
ments and charred bones being found. This 
is absolutely all that science has discovered. 
Man was undoubtedly on earth long before 
the beginning assigned him by the accepted 


Bible chronology, and the earliest man was 
a higher type, physically and intellectually, 
than the Bushman or Papuan of to-day. 
Now let us look at the Scripture record. In 
the first chapter of Genesis we find a general 
statement of the fact of the creation by God 
of the earth and all that live upon it, in¬ 
cluding man. It is a brief and condensed 
but complete record, with no hint even as to 
chronology, or as to the method of creation. 

In reference to all the lower animals, 
“ Let the earth bring forth” is the formula. 
The only fact insisted on is the creation by 
God. But in the case of man there is a sig¬ 
nificant difference. The formula is omitted. 
He is created by special purpose and “ in 
the image of God,” and he is created “ male 
and female.” He is also invested with 
controlling power and authority. All this 
is conjoined and much light cast on it by 
the above-mentioned scientific discoveries. In 
the second chapter we are told how something 
was superadded to his mere animal nature,—• 
i.e.., “the breath of life,” and he “ became a 
living soul.” Then follows a condensed his¬ 
tory, to be gathered out of the Scripture 
narrative, wonderfully according with scien¬ 
tific discovery and historic observation, of 
his progressive development. Language 
begins as with the child, by naming objects. 
The institution of Marriage originates the 
Family. Man first appears naked, and 
clothes himself as his mind develops; his 
first religious ideas are anthropomorphic. 
Animal sacrifice and the use (apparently) 
of fire come only with the second genera¬ 
tion. So with building. Prayer is men¬ 
tioned (Seth) still farther on. In the second 
chapter man eats what the earth naturally 
produces; in the third chapter he tills the 
ground'; in the fourth chapter he adopts the 
pastoral life and becomes a rude artificer ; in 
the sixth chapter the deluge develops rude 
but efficient ideas of navigation, and religion 
has assumed a very high form ; in the ninth 
chapter man becomes a skilled husbandman, 
cultivates the vine and discovers the use of 
wine; in the tenth and eleventh chapters he 
becomes a hunter, language differentiates 
and nations begin to organize. Thence on 
we learn all of his religious life, his immortal 
nature and destiny. St. Paul (1 Thess. v. 
23) alludes to man’s tripartite constitution,— 
“pneuma,” life or spirit; “psyche,” soul; 
“soma,” body. He is the highest of the 
animal kingdom, with “soul,” the “ breath 
of God,” superadded. He is the last and 
best of the earthly series of living crea¬ 
tures, and as such only can science deal with 
him. But he is the first and lowest of a 
heavenly series, and as such we must study 
him by the light of God’s word. But there 
is more even than this. His lower nature, 
that of body and spirit, was made from the 
dust of the earth which “ brought forth,” at 
God’s command, all his earthly fellow-crea¬ 
tures; but his higher nature is of Divine 
origin, “the breath of life” breathed into 
his bodily frame by God Himself. Thus 





MAN ASS EH 


452 MARK (SAINT), GOSPEL OF 


early was his being differentiated from all 
the lower orders of creation, and later on the 
Divine character of that higher nature was 
made complete by its indissoluble union 
with God in the Incarnation of the Christ. 
No one who believes this has ever ques¬ 
tioned its retroactive efficacy. “ For as 
in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all 
be made alive.” So would it be, then, with 
the inbreathing of the breath of life, if 
man had existed for a time as a living, but 
soulless creature. 

We have thus briefly seen how the dual 
revelation of nature and Holy Scripture is at 
harmony in itself. It is but one Truth of 
God, the parts of which cannot antagonize 
each other. The history of man as given 
in the Bible must be studied with the help 
of all practicable scientific investigation, 
and the discoveries of science must be sup¬ 
plemented by the teaching of God’s word, 
and thus alone can be obtained a full, accu¬ 
rate, and complete knowledge of the origin, 
history, nature, and destiny of man and 
his status in the scale of God’s creation. 

Rev. Robert Wilson, D.D. 

Manasseh, Prayer of. In the Apocrypha 
there is a short composition of fifteen verses 
called by the name of the evil king of Judah, 
whose prayer on his repentance is referred to 
in 2 Chron. xxxiii. 11-13: “ Wherefore 
the Lord brought upon them the captains 
of the Host of the King of Assyria, which 
took Manasseh among the thorns, and bound 
him with fetters, and carried him to Babylon. 
And when he was in affliction, he besought 
the Lord his God, and humbled himself 
greatly before the God of his fathers, and 
prayed unto Him ; and He was entreated of 
him, and heard his supplication, and brought 
him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. 
Then Manasseh knew that the Lord He was 
God.” The prayer in the Apocrypha is of 
course spurious, though it is itself filled with 
a touching supplicatory tone. The deep re¬ 
pentance in it implies a knowledge of the 
true spirit of sorrow that worketh life. It 
was probably the work of some devout Al¬ 
exandrian Jew of the same school with the 
son of Sirach,—though probably living 
nearer the time of Philo. 

Maniple. Properly, a handkerchief. It 
was hung upon the left arm of the priest, and 
used to wipe away the perspiration from his 
face. But it soon began to be enriched with 
bordery and a fringe which unfitted it for its 
true purpose and made it a mere ornament. 

Manse. The old name for the ecclesiasti¬ 
cal residence ( mansio ). It is still retained 
in Scotland and in some places in this coun¬ 
try as the name for the rectory. 

Maranatha. A word added by St. Paul 
(1 Cor. xvi. 22) to the word Anathema. It 
means the “ Lord cometh,” and makes the 
preceding word anathema emphatic. The 
word has been, however, disconnected from 
the adjoining phrase by some, and made to 
have the force of a watch-word that St. Paul 
gave the Corinthians. 


Mark, St., the Evangelist. His mother’s 
name was Mary, who had a house in Jeru¬ 
salem (Acts xii. 12). He was cousin to St. 
Barnabas, and was probably from the first 
intimate with St. Peter (Acts xii. 12). 
The next notice of him is (Acts xii. 25) 
where he is the companion of SS. Barnabas 
and Paul, in their return from Jerusalem 
to Antioch. He was their attendant on 
their first missionary journey (48 A.D.),was 
present at the conversion of Paulus Sergius, 
and went with the Apostles as far as Perga 
in Pamphylia (Acts xiii. 13), but shrunk 
from the further perils of their journey. His 
shrinking, from whatever cause, led after¬ 
wards (51 a.d.), to the sharp contention be¬ 
tween the two Apostles, and Barnabas took 
Mark with him to Cyprus, while St. Paul 
went with Silas on his visit to the Churches 
of Syria and Cilicia (Acts xv. 39-41). But 
the Apostle’s harsh judgment of him was 
softened, for we find him mentioned thrice 
by St. Paul. He was one of the few fellow- 
workers unto the Kingdom of God who had 
been a comfort to the Apostle,—and he was 
now with him in his first imprisonment (61- 
63 a.d.). He is mentioned twice again by 
the Apostle, once in his letter to Philemon, 
and in the Second Epistle to Timothy, where 
St. Paul says that he was “ profitable to him 
for the ministry” (2 Tim. iv. 11). In the 
interval between these two notices St. Mark 
had probably joined St. Peter in his work 
at Babylon. ( Vide St. Peter.) In 1 Pet. v. 
13, St. Peter writes, “ The Church which 
is at Babylon, elected together with you, 
saluteth you ; and so doth Marcus my son.” 
These are the only notices we can gather 
from Holy Scripture. The tradition of the 
Church affirms that St. Mark visited Egypt 
and founded the Church at Alexandria, 
where he was martyred. All other notices 
are untrustworthy, and often mutually de¬ 
structive. 

Mark, St., Gospel of. St. Mark’s Gospel 
has been the field for much singular specu¬ 
lation. St. Matthew’s and St. Luke’s Gos¬ 
pels are, like this, more rigidly narratives. 
The three have many points, both of facts 
and in language, in common, while there are 
also marked dissimilarities. It has, there¬ 
fore, been claimed that one, and most prob¬ 
ably St. Mark’s Gospel, was the original, and 
that the others followed it, and broidered 
upon it such other facts as they witnessed or 
were accurately cognizant of. An attempt 
has been made even to reconstruct the orig¬ 
inal (?) Gospel, which refutes itself by its 
absurdity. But a short statement of the 
contents of this Gospel will best show its 
real independence. The date is uncertain, 
but probably not before 63 a d., and, since 
it predicts the fall of Jerusalem, not later 
than 70 a.d. The tradition of the Church 
and the contents of the Gospel show that it 
was intended for Roman Gentile converts, 
for it does not quote the Jewish Law ; it 
explains Syrian and Hebrew words and 
Jewish usages, and it uses Grecized Latin 




MARK (SAINT), GOSPEL OF 453 


MARTYR 


terms. It would, therefore, be most natu¬ 
rally written in Greek, as the most univer¬ 
sally known language. As the kinsman of 
St. Barnabas, and the son of that Mary to 
whose Jiouse St. Peter went as to an accus¬ 
tomed home, when delivered from prison by 
the Angel, St. Mark was naturally in the 
reach of authentic information ; but, besides, 
he seems to have been an eye-witness, not 
merely the recorder or amanuensis for St. 
Peter, as has been inferred from the tradi¬ 
tion that he was the interpreter for St. 
Peter. Doubtless some of the vivid descrip¬ 
tions came from the Apostle, but there are 
phrases used which imply a personal knowl¬ 
edge. The Evangelist strikes at once and 
boldly the opening chord, “ The beginning 
of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of 
God.” No genealogy, no details of His hu-" 
man birth. The next verse binds the Gos¬ 
pel, as the fulfilled conclusion, to the proph¬ 
ecy of eight full centuries before. It 
begins then to bring forward repentance, 
baptism, and daily trial, culminating in the 
Passion, and then the Immortal life of the 
Eternal Son of God. It is characteristic of 
St. Mark that he brings forward the true 
manliness of our Lord. Not that the other 
Evangelists do not do it also, but hardly in 
so prominent a way ; for it is true that each 
presents all the traits of the wonderful Life, 
but selects naturally those by which he 
would himself be attracted. Our Lord’s 
love, pity, compassion, wonder, anger, in¬ 
dignation, St. Mark dwells upon in his own 
emphatic way. So, too, he brings our 
Lord’s person vividly before us in His look¬ 
ing round upon the multitude, His taking 
little children in His arms, putting His 
hands upon them and blessing them. He 
goes before the disciples, and they follow in 
amazement. His very words, as, for exam¬ 
ple, Boanerges, Talitha-cumi, Ephphatha, 
are recorded in special cases. St. Mark, 
too, notes the awe and the wonder of both 
multitudes and disciples, and their eagerness 
to be about their Lord. He is minute in 
noting time, place, person, and number. 
His details are those that would come from 
a person who was on the spot. He mentions 
the hired servants in Zebedee’s employ; the 
Lord’s resting asleep on a pillow in the 
storm ; the green grass whereon the multi¬ 
tude sat; the running of the rich young 
man ; the name of the blind Bartimseus ; the 
place where the two disciples who were sent 
found the colt tied ; the young man in the 
garden at the arrest. These things, and 
they might be largely increased, not only 
show how minute and accurate, but how in¬ 
dependent a writer St. Mark was, though he 
often reproduces the same language that St. 
Matthew used. That he repeated what others 
had said is not against his own veracity or 
real independence. “ Repetition is by no 
means derogatory to the dignity of the Holy 
Spirit. On the contrary, it is one of the 
characteristics of inspiration.” (Words¬ 
worth, Intro. St. Mark.) The last verses of 


the Gospel (ch. xvi. 9-19) have been rejected 
recently by many scholars, chiefly because 
they are wanting in the Vatican and the 
Sinaitic MSS. But they are found in three 
of the four Uncial MSS. (A, C, D), and are 
quoted without suspicion by Irenaeus. Their 
genuineness is defended by many equally 
skilled scholars and cannot be reasonably 
doubted, since the weight of evidence is in 
their favor. 

Marriage. Vide Matrimony. 

Martinmas. A festival in honor of the 
famous Martin, Bishop of Tours. He was 
a native of Pannonia and bred a soldier, but 
entering the Church, he was made Bishop 
374 a.d., and after a very active and munifi¬ 
cent Episcopate, distinguished for his zeal in 
destroying the heathen altars still remain¬ 
ing, he died 400 a.d. His name was held 
in great reverence in France. The feast 
was appointed upon the 11th of November. 
(See the Calendar of the English Prayer- 
Book.) 

Martyr. A witness; then a witness to 
the Christian faith, and then one who seals 
his faith with his death. This witness was 
in a sense official, as every one who bears the 
Christian name ought to bear witness to the 
truth of the Faith he professes. It at first 
did not necessarily imply that death was a 
part of this act, but soon this distinction 
was drawn between the Martyr and the 
Confessor; but the mode or the circum¬ 
stances of this suffering did not affect the 
title,— e.g ., whether the Martyr suffered in 
a riot or by form of heathen Law. From 
this generally admitted rule was derived an¬ 
other claim to the name of Martyr for those 
who died from the indirect consequences of 
Persecution. The Church did not at all en¬ 
courage the headlong zeal of those who 
would rush into danger, and looked with 
kindness on those who justly and fairly 
avoided martyrdom, proving their constancy 
in other ways. So St. Cyprian retired from 
Carthage in two Persecutions, for the 
Church needed him, but at a third Perse¬ 
cution he surrendered himself, and the 
Church has always commended his conduct. 
Hence those who sought martyrdom, or 
who rashly incurred danger, as by breaking 
idols or by vehement conduct, were refused 
the name, though they may have suffered 
bravely. The Church was exceedingly care¬ 
ful that the honor of martyrdom should not 
be carelessly attributed to those whose con¬ 
duct was in any way blamable. There were 
dangers enough without adding this peril, 
since the Christian religion was legally for¬ 
bidden. 

It may be well to add that in its essential 
point of bearing witness, Martyrdom can 
never cease so long as evil exists and there 
are men to mock, sneer, and flout at things 
sacred. Not only is Augustine’s sentence 
true, “You will go hence a Martyr if you 
have overcome all temptations of the devil” 
(Serm. iv., c. 4), but there is a patient 
courage, a readiness to bear our witness 





MARTYROLOGY 


454 


MARY 


against evil, and for the truth and the whole 
truth needed, which is as truly a martyrdom 
as though it were borne amid bodily tortures, 
and one which demands a yet finer and more 
enduring courage. 

Martyrology. The List containing the 
names of the Martyrs, whether of a city or 
of a Diocese. The earliest traces of such lists 
are found in allusions to them in Tertullian 
(De Corona, g 13), in Cyprian (Ep. 39, al. 
34). A century later we find a singular 
Calendar which contains the Dominical 
and Nundinal letters, a cycle for Easter, 
and, among other matter of a pagan and sec¬ 
ular character, a List of the funeral days 
of the Popes of the past century, and a List 
of the funeral days of the Martyrs. Its date 
is 354 a.d. The study of the various Martyr- 
ologies (which differed in the several locali¬ 
ties to which they belonged) is of consider¬ 
able interest and value for determining dates 
of lesser importance. The more valuable 
Martyrologies were The Syriac, which was 
dated as early as 412 a.d. ; The Hierony- 
mian, attributed to St. Jerome, and certainly 
earlier than 596 a.d., but most probably 
founded upon other and widely differing 
materials ; The Lesser Roman Martyrology, 
which probably belonged to about 700 a.d., 
and was found in Ravenna 850 a.d. Later 
works than these Martyrologies are not so 
trustworthy (and in fact these have many 
interpolations), but become more numerous 
as the calendars of the Churches were 
changed or reformed. Besides, there are 
several metrical Martyrologies in imitation 
of the Greek menologies. The English 
Church while it has noble martyrs has no 
Martyrology. Bede’s Calendar is the basis, 
with many modifications, of what scanty re¬ 
mains of Black-letter Saints’ days the Re-- 
formers chose to retain of the fuller and not 
always authentic festivals of the Pre-refor¬ 
mation period. 

Mary. A name borne by five women in 
the New Testament,— i.e., Mary (the wife 
of) Cleophas, Mary Magdalene, Mary the 
mother of Mark, Mary a helper of St. Paul 
(Rom. xvi. 6), and the Blessed Virgin Mary, 
or as she is called in the Prayer-Book, St. 
Mary the Virgin. The name is the same as 
the Hebrew Miriam. The only authentic 
notices of her are those in the New Testa¬ 
ment, all beside is purely legendary. She 
appears suddenly without any previous hint 
about her in the Gospels. Whether she was 
a cousin of her husband Joseph, and her gen¬ 
ealogy that given by St. Luke, as has been 
conjectured with but little ground for cre¬ 
dence, cannot be proven. We know that she 
was of the tribe of Judah, and that she was 
a cousin of Elizabeth, the mother of St. 
John the Baptist, and was a resident at Naz¬ 
areth, when she was the betrothed of St. 
Joseph. 

It was in the year 5 B.c. (according to un¬ 
doubted correction of the current date) that 
the Angel Gabriel appeared before her, and 
with a salutation akin to the salutation given 


to holy women before, but which had a far 
deeper meaning for the whole human race, 
he announced to her the glorious grace re¬ 
served for her,—to become the Mother of 
the Messiah. Her humble reverent ac¬ 
ceptance, “ Behold the hand-maiden of the 
Lord, be it unto me according to thy 
word,” is a key to her whole character. She 
visited her cousin Elizabeth soon after, and 
upon that occasion uttered the beautiful 
hymn—the Magnificat—which, whether ut¬ 
tered without premeditation or precomposed, 
shows an intimate knowledge of the sacred 
writings of the Old Testament, for some of 
its phrases, and its tone certainly, are drawn 
from the older historical books, and in form, 
rhythm, and phrase it is founded upon the 
Psalms. Suspected of unchastity, but de¬ 
fended by the Vision to St. Joseph, she is 
taken by her husband to Bethlehem, the seat 
of the House of David, when he went up to 
be taxed. There she bore, in the stable of an 
inn, the Saviour of the world and laid 
Him in a manger. The visit of the shep¬ 
herds; the circumcision; adoration of the 
Wise men ; the Presentation of the Holy In¬ 
fant in the Temple ; the touching poverty of 
her offering for her Son the Lord of the 
world; the flight into Egypt,—all these 
bring her forward, and yet so modestly and 
simply. 

She next appears as sorrowfully looking 
for her Son and finding Him in the Temple. 
When our Lord’s ministry begins she is al¬ 
most wholly withdrawn. She is with Him 
at the marriage in Cana. More than 
eighteen months after, she with His brethren 
seek to see Him, to persuade Him to relax 
His ministerial work, when He gave the 
reply to the messenger, “ Who is my mother, 
and who are my brethren? And He 
stretched forth His hand towards His dis¬ 
ciples and said, Behold my mother and 
my brethren! For whosoever shall do 
the will of my Father which is in 
heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, 
and mother.” She is at the foot of the cross 
suffering the fullest fulfillment of the aged 
Simeon’s words, “ And a sword shall pass 
through thine own soul also.” There is 
something sublime in the words, u Woman, 
behold thy Son !” when He gave her into the 
care of His beloved disciple. St. Ambrose 
considers that He lovingly put away from 
Himself all human ties when He was about 
to complete our Redemption. He needed no 
aider for the redemption of all, He received 
the love of His mother, but He sought no 
help of man. Nothing is told us of her 
hopes, fears, faith, and sorrow, and joy. 
She is simply counted among the women 
who were with the Apostles after the As¬ 
cension in that upper room. And so she 
disappears from the sacred history. It is in 
thorough accord with the lofty aim of the 
sacred narrative. Her work, for which all 
rise up to call her blessed, was to bear for us 
in the Flesh truly man of body and soul 
subsisting, the eternal Son of God. When 





MARYLAND 


455 


MARYLAND 


this was accomplished and her care and love 
must not interfere with His work, she is 
gently put aside by our Lord with words im¬ 
plying slight reproof whenever she endeav¬ 
ors to come forward. “ Woman, what have I 
to do with thee ?” and, “ Who is my mother, 
and who are my brethren?” have the tone 
of a separation in purpose and in work from 
His past life at Nazareth. Her perpetual 
virginity, a devout suggestion, can be urged 
on no historical grounds, however much we 
may hold it. The early Church was singu¬ 
larly silent about her, and treated her name 
as it did those of the holiest of the older 
Saints of the Old Testament, commemorat¬ 
ing her as it did them in the Holy Commun¬ 
ion. So, too, we find in one of the beautiful 
prefaces of the Mozarabic Liturgy a singu¬ 
larly beautiful contrast between the Virgin 
as the Mother of our Lord’s human nature 
and the glorious work in us of our Mother 
the Church ; one which draws sharply the 
distinction, while it gives her all due honor. 
The worship now paid her by the Roman 
Church is not earlier than the sixth cen¬ 
tury. Earlier, worship was offered by the 
Collyridian heretics. 

Maryland, Diocese of. Maryland, one 
of the thirteen original States of the Union, 
lies south of Pennsylvania, from which it is 
separated by Mason and Dixon’s Line, so 
famous in American politics. Its total area is 
about twelve thousand square miles, of which 
about two thousand three hundred are cov¬ 
ered by water. The most notable geograph¬ 
ical feature (which has had its decided influ¬ 
ence on the diocesan , as well as on the polit¬ 
ical, history of Maryland) is the Chesapeake 
Bay, the largest inlet in the United States, 
which divides the entire State into two por¬ 
tions, known as the Eastern and Western 
Shores. These two divisions are unequal in 
extent, and very dissimilar in their physical 
characteristics. The Eastern Shore is the 
smaller and is very level, while large parts 
of the other side of the bay are hilly and 
mountainous. Maryland is now divided into 
twenty-three counties and the corporation 
of Baltimore City. Of these counties, nine, 
viz : Cecil, Kent, Queen Anne, Talbot, 
Caroline, Dorchester, Wicomico, Somerset, 
and Worcester, lie east of the Chesapeake 
Bay, and in the year 1868 a.d. were organ¬ 
ized into a new Diocese, by the name of 
the Diocese of Easton. The Western Shore, 
together with the District of Columbia, is 
now known as the Diocese of Maryland. 
The population of the Diocese, including, 
of course, the District of Columbia, is esti¬ 
mated at about 755,502; the total popula¬ 
tion of the State, without the District, was, 
in 1880 a.d. , 934,943, and of these no less 
than 210,250 were colored people. 

The charter of Maryland was granted by 
King Charles I., on June 20, 1632, to Cecil- 
ius Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, and 
the colony was named in honor of Queen 
Henrietta Maria. In the following year 
Lord Baltimore dispatched a company un¬ 


der command of his brother, Leonard Cal¬ 
vert, to colonize the new territory; they 
landed at St. Mary’s on the 27th of March, 
1634 a.d. 

Before this, however, in 1629 a.d., under 
the authority of Virginia, which colony 
claimed the territory under a previous grant, 
a trading station had been established on 
Kent Island in the Chesapeake by William 
Claiborne, or Clayborn, whose name figures 
frequently in early contests and disturbances, 
until he was finally expelled by the follow¬ 
ers of Lord Baltimore. Among Claiborne’s 
associates and settlers was a clergyman of 
the English Church, the Rev. Richard James, 
who deserves mention as the first Christian 
minister who set foot on the territory of 
Maryland. Passing by the ecclesiastical his¬ 
tory of the colonial period, we can barely 
mention that after the revolution of 1688 
a.d. the Church of England was “estab¬ 
lished” in Maryland, and disabilities were 
imposed upon Roman Catholics and dissent¬ 
ers. The counties were divided into parishes, 
with metes and bounds after the English 
custom, and under names which remain to 
this day and attest the history of their forma¬ 
tion. In 1779 a.d. the Legislature passed 
an act to establish Vestries, and vested in 
them, as trustees, all the property that had 
belonged to their respective parishes while 
they were part of the “ Church of England.” 
This elaborate act, as somewhat modified in 
1798 a.d. and subsequent years, is still in 
force in the Dioceses of Maryland and Easton, 
and it puts the relations between Church and 
State and the tenure of religious property 
on a somewhat different footing from that 
which prevails in most other States and Dio¬ 
ceses of the Union. 

The Diocese of Maryland, as distinguished 
from the Church of the colonial period, dates 
from the year 1783 a.d. On the 13th of 
Augustin that year a Convention was held 
at Annapolis, in which was adopted an im¬ 
portant document entitled “A Declaration 
of certain fundamental Rights and Liberties 
of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Mary¬ 
land.” “ This,” says Bishop Whittingliam 
in the margin of his copy of Dr. Hawks’s 
Narrative, “ is, so far as I can discover, the 
first time that title is used.” The Declara¬ 
tion furnishes conclusive evidence, says Dr. 
Hawks, that the Church of Maryland, like 
that of Virginia, claimed to have a distinct, 
independent existence, without reference to 
any connection with the Church in any other 
colony. The most serious need was that of 
a Bishop, for the Declaration of Rights had 
declared that an Episcopal ordination and 
commission were necessary to the valid ad¬ 
ministration of the Sacraments and the “ due 
exercise of the ministerial functions in the 
said Church.” This need was supplied .by 
the consecration, on the 17th of September, 
1792 a.d., in Trinity Church, New York, 
of the Rev. Thomas John Clagett, D.D., 
who had been chosen unanimously by both 
orders of clergy and laity to be Bishop of 






MARYLAND 


456 


MARYLAND 


Maryland. All the four American Bishops, 
Seabury, Provoost, White, and Madison, 
united in this first consecration in America. 
Bishop Provoost, of New York, contrary to 
the wish of Maryland, insisted upon acting 
as Presiding Bishop on the occasion in place 
of Bishop Seabury, who by seniority of con¬ 
secration should rightfully have officiated 
in that capacity. 

Bishop Clagett , 1792-1816 a.d.— The Dio¬ 
cese, which had before been without a head, 
prospered under its new Bishop, though 
there was unfortunately considerable strife 
between the so-called Evangelical, or Low- 
Church party, and those who were called 
High-Churchmen. This culminated in 1814 
a.d. , when the Rev. James Kemp, D.D., 
was elected Suffragan Bishop of Maryland, 
—the Eastern Shore being assigned as his 
special jurisdiction. The leader of the Evan¬ 
gelical party, the Rev. G. J. Dashiell, Rec¬ 
tor of St. Peter’s, Baltimore, caused Bishop 
Clagett and the Church no little trouble by 
his turbulent conduct. Chagrined, as Dr. 
Hawks thinks, that the choice of the Dio¬ 
cese for Bishop had not fallen upon himself 
in place of Dr. Kemp, he finally seceded 
from the Church and attempted to establish 
a sect and schism of his own. After having 
greatly disturbed the peace of the Diocese, he 
was at length deposed from the sacred min¬ 
istry by Bishop Clagett. 

Bishop Kemp , 1816-1827 a.d.— Upon 

the death of Bishop Clagett in 1816 a d., 
Bishop Kemp succeeded to the full Episco¬ 
pate. His character was amiable without 
being weak, and his administration was 
earnest and vigorous. He lived down the 
ill feeling which party spirit had aroused at 
the time of his consecration, and died, much 
beloved and lamented, from the upsetting of 
a stage-coach in the year 1827 a.d. 

Bishop Stone, 1830-1838 a.d. —It is pain¬ 
ful to record that for nearly three years after 
the death of Bishop Kemp, Maryland was 
again the scene of discord and strife, so vio¬ 
lent that the Diocese obtained an unenviable 
notoriety in the Church at large. At length 
the Convention united in electing the Rev. 
William Murray Stone, D.D., a man of 
amiable temper, and not very closely allied 
to either of the parties which still divided 
the Diocese. After a quiet and peaceful 
Episcopate of eight years he died on the 26th 
of February, 1838 a.d. 

Bishop Whitting ham, 1840-1879 a.d.— 
Again there was serious difficulty in choos¬ 
ing a Bishop. Neither the Rev. Dr. W. E. 
Wyatt nor the Rev. Dr. John Johns, each 
of whom had a nearly equal following, could 
obtain a constitutional majority (which in 
Maryland was, and still is, two-thirds of each 
order). The Rev. Dr. Eastburn, the Rt. Rev. 
Bishop Kemper, and the Rev. Dr. Dorr were 
each successively elected, and each declined 
to accept the office. Finally the Rev. Dr. 
William Rollinson Whittingham, Professor 
of Ecclesiastical History in the General The¬ 
ological Seminary in New York, was elected, 


and consecrated in St. Paul’s Church, Balti¬ 
more, on the 17th of September, 1840 a.d. 
The Convention Journal of 1841 a.d. gives 
the following statistics, which furnish some 
idea of the condition of the Diocese at the 
beginning of Bishop Whittingham’s Episco¬ 
pate : Clergy, 75; parishes, 58; separate Con¬ 
gregations^ 20 ; places of worship, 106; com¬ 
municants, 3881; baptisms, 1293 ; confirmed, 
337 ; contributions, $15,402.07. In 1837 a.d., 
the last Convention at which Bishop Stone 
was present, the confirmations were reported 
67, and the contributions $6837.63. Bishop 
Whittingham was well known as one of the 
most learned and vigorous of American Bish¬ 
ops, and during his long and stirring Epis¬ 
copate the Church made much progress and 
Maryland became a strong Diocese Many 
new r churches were built in Baltimore and 
Washington, and also in the rural districts. 
The College of St. James, under the Rev. 
Dr. Kerfort, and other schools of learning 
were founded, and did good service in the 
cause of education. In 1868 a.d., the year in 
which the Diocese was divided, and the coun¬ 
ties of the Eastern Shore organized as the 
Diocese of Easton, Maryland contained 162 
clergy, and 139 parishes and congregations. 
The communicants were 12,269; contribu¬ 
tions ( not including salaries of clergymen), 
$145,348. In 1870 a.d., the Bishop’s in¬ 
creasing infirmities caused him to apply for 
an assistant Bishop, and the Rev. William 
Pinkney, D.D., was elected by a large ma¬ 
jority on the second ballot. The election 
was notable as indicating an entire subsi¬ 
dence of the old party contentions. Dr. 
Pinkney was consecrated in the city of 
Washington on October 6, 1870 a.d. Bishop 
Whittingham’s health becoming more and 
more feeble, the visitation of the parishes 
devolved almost entirely upon the assistant 
Bishop, who became very dear both to clergy 
and laity. But the labors of Bishop Whit¬ 
tingham in his study, and in all busi¬ 
ness which did not require locomotion, were 
still, as always, most assiduous. In 1879 
a.d. he transmitted to the Convention from 
his sick-chamber a copy of his official jour¬ 
nal, which showed that, ill as he had been, 
he had given to his Diocese from five to fif¬ 
teen hours of work per diem. Bishop Whit¬ 
tingham died in Orange, N. J., on the 17th 
of October, 1879 a.d., having bequeathed to 
his Diocese his most valuable property, the 
large theological library which he had 
been all his life accumulating. He was 
buried from St. Mark’s Church, Orange, of 
which in early life he had been rector, his 
funeral being attended by a large concourse 
of Bishops, clergy, and laity. 

Bishop Pinkney , 1879-1883 a.d. —Under 
Bishop Pinkney the progress of the Diocese 
continued, and the Bishop was, as he had 
always been, indefatigable in his labors. 
With characteristic generosity he requested 
the family of Bishop Whittingham to con¬ 
tinue to occupy the Episcopal residence in 
Baltimore, and with his approbation the 




MASORAH 


457 


MASSACHUSETTS 


Bishop’s daughter was made Librarian and 
custodian of the literary treasures which it 
had been her father’s joy and pride to collect. 
In 1883 a.d., the one hundredth anniversary 
of the founding of the Diocese was celebrated 
in Baltimore, the Diocese of Easton joining 
with Maryland in brotherly commemoration 
of an event in which they were equally in¬ 
terested, and in which, one hundred years 
ago, their ancestors had had so large and 
so distinguished a share. The various pro¬ 
ceedings were published in a pamphlet, which 
is an interesting memorial of the occasion. 
Shortly after participating in this joyous 
celebration Bishop Pinkney died suddenly, 
on the 4th of July, 1883 a.d., while holding 
a visitation in Sherwood Parish, Baltimore 
County. The feelings of the bereaved Dio¬ 
cese are well expressed on the last page of 
the Centennial Pamphlet, above mentioned, 
which was passing through the press when 
the Bishop suddenly ended his earthly 
career. “The loving heart which ever 
warmed to others, but never spared itself, 
grew still while the voice of its last earnest 
message was yet lingering in our ears. 
Zealous and brave, and true to the high trust 
committed to him, he died as such soldiers 
of the Great Captain ever wish to die,—at 
the front, and in the very act'of duty.” 

Authorities: Dr. Hawks’s Narrative of 
Events connected with the Rise and Progress 
of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Mary¬ 
land, New York, 1839 a.d. ; Bishop Wil- 
berforce’s History of the American Church, 
London, 1846 a.d. ; Centenary Commemo¬ 
ration of Diocese of Maryland, Baltimore, 
1883 a.d. ; and above all, the valuable and 
complete Life of Bishop Whittingham, by 
'William Francis Brand, 2 vols. 8vo, New 
York, 1883 a.d. Rey. H.* Harrison. 

Masorah. The Masorah is the arrange¬ 
ment and proper preservation of the text of 
Holy Scripture by Jewish Doctors, which 
they gathered from tradition, both the oral 
and that in the Talmud. It was busied 
with the verses, words, and letters of the 
sacred text. The Masoretic Doctors of the 
school at Tiberias were the great masters of 
this department of Biblical research, and, 
which was their most generally useful inven¬ 
tion, probably arranged the vowel points and 
pauses, which later developed into the sys¬ 
tem now in use. But the Masorah, “ The Tra¬ 
dition,” was the result of their and others’ 
labors. Not merely the verses, words, and 
letters were noted, but they recorded the 
various readings,—the K’ri, what should be 
read for the Chetheb, also the actual word 
in the text; and words interpolated. Their 
minute records of such apparently trilling 
details were of use in settling the value of 
various readings, though of little real use, as 
amid the multiplicity of various families of 
manuscripts the text would vary, and the 
number of letters or words or verses would 
be uncertain,— e. g., theBomberg Bible, 1518 
a.d., contains 1171, and the Plantin, 1566 
A.D., only 793 K’ris, while Elias Levita 


could reckon but 848, after twenty years’ 
study of the Masorah. Nearly every He¬ 
brew Bible contains not only the different 
readings at the foot of the page, but also 
some Masoretic technical notes and remarks 
at the end of the volume. 

Mass. The ordinary name for the Com¬ 
munion Service or Liturgy of the Latin 
Churches. It is a corruption of the words 
of dismissal: “ Ite, missa est . ” The name 
appears also in the First Book of King Ed¬ 
ward VI. in the heading over the Commu¬ 
nion Service: “The Supper of the Lord 
and the Holy Communion commonly called 
the Mass.” But this was dropped, and it is 
no proper term for the Liturgy of the Eng¬ 
lish Church. It is divided into two principal 
parts, the Ordinary of the Mass and the 
Canon of the Mass, which latter begins with 
the intercessions preceding the words of 
Consecration. 

Mass, Sacrifice of. Vide Sacrifice. 

Massachusetts, The Diocese of. The 

popular impression is that the Pilgrims at 
Plymouth and the Puritans of the Massa¬ 
chusetts Bay Colony were the first to cele¬ 
brate the worship of God on the New Eng¬ 
land shores. The truth is that over forty 
years before the Pilgrims landed the voice 
of a clergyman of the Church of England 
had been heard along the shores of Maine 
and the Provinces, celebrating the rites of 
religion with the voyagers of Frobisher’s ex¬ 
pedition, which he accompanied as chaplain, 
in 1577 a.d. 

In 1605 a.d. an English expedition, in 
search of a Northwest passage, sailed up the 
Penobscot River, in Maine, and planted a 
cross on its banks. 

In 1607 a.d. a settlement was made on the 
coast of Maine by a company made up 
principally of members of the Church of 
England, who brought with them a Church 
clergyman, the Rev. Richard Seymour. The 
colony, in that year, built fifty houses and a 
church, and observed with great regularity 
the ordinances of religion according to the 
usages of the mother-Church. It was not a 
successful colony, however, and was finally 
abandoned on account of the severity of the 
climate and their inexperience of the condi¬ 
tions of the new land. This settlement is 
usually known as “ Popham’s Colony,” after 
the name of its first president. The royal 
letters of instruction directed that the 
religion of the Church of England should be 
established, and it is certain that thirteen 
years before the coming of the Pilgrims to 
Plymouth the hallowed ritual of the 
Church was heard on the shores of Atkins’ 
Bay. 

The settlement at Saco, in Maine, was the 
first permanent English colony in this region 
in which the rites of the English Church 
were celebrated. 

In 1636 a.d. William Gorges came out as 
Governor of the territory out of which the 
present State of Maine has been formed. 
The patent of this territory established the 





MASSACHUSETTS 


458 


MASSACHUSETTS 


Church of England as the religion of the 
colony, and gave the right of nominating 
clergymen to the patentee. 

The first regularly settled clergyman was 
the Rev. Richard Gibson, who came in 1637 
a.d., and spent about seven years in Saco. 
He extended his labors to the settlers at 
Richmond Island, the Isle of Shoals, and 
Portsmouth. He was a good scholar, a 
popular speaker, and highly esteemed. 

The Rev. Robert Jordan was one of the 
earliest of the Church clergymen, serving 
as an itinerant whenever he had opportunity. 
He sometimes held the position of judge in 
the Province, but never laid aside his min¬ 
isterial character. He died at New Castle, 
in Maine, in 1679 a.d., being sixty-eight 
years old. 

In 1641 a.d. a report was made to Gov¬ 
ernor Winthrop, of Massachusetts, that the 
people of Saco, in Maine, “ were much ad¬ 
dicted to Episcopacy.” In fact, a large pro¬ 
portion of the settlers in Maine were Church 
people. What would have been the result had 
not these early settlements been disturbed by 
the strong hand of the rising power of the 
Massachusetts colony we can only conjecture. 
The territory of Maine passed by purchase 
into the possession of Massachusetts in 1677 
a.d. , and thenceforth the religious teachers 
encouraged in the Province were Puritans. 
Notwithstanding all that was done to crush 
out Episcopacy it continued, and some exist¬ 
ing parishes trace tlieir history back to those 
trying days. 

It was a difficult matter to plant the 
Church in any place over which the Puritan 
held rule. In fact, he had come here to avoid 
the Church, and to set up one of his own. 
He was unwilling to tolerate any rival, and 
especially to permit the English Church to 
gain any foothold. 

The first English Church clergyman to set¬ 
tle in the bounds of Massachusetts was the 
Rev. William Blackstone, who established 
himself on the promontory on which Boston 
was subsequently built. He came here before 
the Puritans, and shortly after the Pilgrims 
reached Plymouth. He was a man of means, 
and managed a large farm, on which he 
built a substantial house and other build¬ 
ings. The Puritans went first to Dorches¬ 
ter and to Charlestown, and were in these 
places a year before they concluded to move 
to the edge of the bay, where they founded 
Boston. They had numerous interviews of 
an unsatisfactory character with Blackstone, 
but they finally bought his buildings and 
lands, and he gladly moved away to Rhode 
Island. It is not known that he ever pub¬ 
licly officiated here, except to a congrega¬ 
tion made up of his family and servants. 

The Church clergyman who appears next 
in the annals of Massachusetts is the Rev. 
William Morrell, who came with Gorges in 
1623 a D., having a commission from the 
English Church to exercise a kind of super¬ 
intendence over the parishes which might 
be established in New England. 


Morrell collected some information, but 
was regarded as an intruder, and finally went 
back to England baffled and discouraged. 

“Thus,” as one says, “ the Church of 
England found herself shorn of her strength 
at the very moment when a door seemed 
opened for her extension in the New World. 
Her children, whom she had thrust out, 
stood with scowling brows and sturdy arms 
ready to repel her from the shores which 
they had made their refuge.” 

It must not be thought, however, that 
there were no friends of the old Church 
among the Puritan colonists, for in Salem 
there were at least three whose good deeds L 
make them worthy of special honor. They 
were Prancis Higginson, John and Samuel 
Brown. It was expected that they would 
stand high in the colony, but their love for 
the old Church brought them into sorrows. 
They were denounced as ringleaders of a 
faction, and were sent off home. When 
Charles II. was restored to the throne of 
England an order was issued “that such as 
desired to use the Common Prayer should 
do so, without incurring any penalty, re¬ 
proach, or disadvantage.” 

In 1688 a.d. the Rev. Robert Ratcliffe 
came over, and held services in the town- 
house in Boston. He struggled against 
many difficulties for two years, but before 
he returned to England he secured the erec¬ 
tion of a place of worship where King’s 
Chapel was subsequently built. 

About this time there - was considerable 
earnestness in forming parishes. The work 
was greatly aided by the Missionary Society 
formed in England in 1649 a.d., whose 
scope was enlarged in 1661 a.d., and which 
in 1701 a.d. was incorporated as “ The So¬ 
ciety for the Propagation of the Gospel in 
Foreign Parts.” They sent out chaplains, 
missionaries, and schoolmasters for the con¬ 
version of the Indians and for the welfare 
of the white settlers. 

There were not many favorable openings 
for the agents of this Societj^, but they did 
their work with courage and vigor, and 
were rewarded in the growth of parishes, 
mission stations, and schools. The wonder 
grows as we look at these efforts that oppo¬ 
sition could be so bitter, and that their cour¬ 
age to meet it was so great. In no section 
of the country did the Church find so hard 
a field as in Massachusetts. 

Some of the early proposals to secure the 
Episcopate were met here by ridicule and in¬ 
vective. A Bishop was to many of the Puri¬ 
tans the symbol of all that was hateful. 
Caricatures are preserved to this day which 
show how antagonistic was the popular 
feeling towards Episcopacy, especially as 
the colonial troubles grew. The two causes 
which led to this feeling were their inherited 
hatred of the Church of England, and their 
fear that the introduction of Episcopacy 
would overturn what was really the State 
religion of Massachusetts, and which con¬ 
tinued until as late as 1830 a.d. It was in- 




MASSACHUSETTS 


459 


MASSACHUSETTS 


deed only in this year that Congregational¬ 
ism ceased to be the religion established by 
law in this State. 

The history of some of the old parishes in 
this State is full of interest, particularly in 
such parishes as Marblehead, Newburyport, 
King’s Chapel, and others, but they cannot 
be given here. 

The position of the Massachusetts clergy 
during the events leading up to the Revolu¬ 
tion and during that long period was par¬ 
ticularly trying. They had never been in 
much favor here, and when the Revolution 
was inaugurated they were almost all sub¬ 
jected to severe penalties or to popular cen¬ 
sure, which cost them friends and positions. 
Some of them, however, cast themselves into 
the movement for breaking loose from Eng¬ 
land, others tried to maintain a neutral po¬ 
sition, but many relinquished their parishes 
and moved away or were driven away. 

We can hardly understand the peculiar 
hardships of many of the most kindly spirits 
who lived in those times. Loyal to the 
Church of England, loving peace, deprecat¬ 
ing the wrongs visited upon this country, 
hoping redress by means other than armed 
revolt, they waited in agony some settle¬ 
ment of the difficulties, and when war ac¬ 
tually came, found themselves treated as ene¬ 
mies and scorned by the people in general. 
Some of them waiting until they saw no 
hope of England’s doing justice to her colo¬ 
nies, and still others looking ahead with the 
forecast of patriots, joined in the movement. 
It was a dreary period for the Church here 
for many years. 

When the independence of this country 
was established, a meeting of the clergy of 
Massachusetts was held in Boston, in 1784 
a.d., at which resolutions were passed em¬ 
bodying the principles deemed proper to be 
made prominent in organizing the Church 
in this country. 

In 1789 a.d. the clergy of Massachusetts 
met again, and concluded to elect a Bishop 
of their own. Accordingly, on the 4th of 
June, 1789 a.d., they elected Edward Bass, 
of Newburyport, Bishop of Massachusetts 
and New Hampshire ; but there were diffi¬ 
culties in the way of his consecration, mainly 
the unwillingness of some to have Bishop 
Seaburj’-, who had been consecrated by the 
Scotch Bishops, take part in the perpetua¬ 
tion of the Episcopate in America. 

The consecration of Bishop Seabury was 
declared valid by our General Convention, 
but in the mean time Dr. Bass resigned his 
election In 1796 a.d. he was re-elected, 
and on the 7th of May, 1797 a.d., was con¬ 
secrated in Philadelphia. In May, 1798 a.d., 
he met the Massachusetts Convention in old 
Trinity Church, Boston, and presided over 
its deliberations as its Bishop. It was a 
small body then. There were only five 
clerical and seven lay deputies present. The 
clergy were Drs. Walker and Parker, the 
Rev. Messrs. Montague, Harris, and Bur- 
haus. 


Trinity and Christ Churches were tho 
only two parishes in Boston in 1797 a.d. 
King’s Chapel had been appropriated by the 
Unitarians shortly after the Revolution. 

Bishop Bass continued to perform the 
duties of Rector of St. Paul’s Church, New¬ 
buryport, after he became Bishop, the de¬ 
mands for Episcopal services not being very 
great in that time of the Church’s weak¬ 
ness. He was a courteous, dignified gen¬ 
tleman, amiable and benevolent; his relig¬ 
ious character was serious, practical, and 
stable. He discharged his duties with great 
fidelity. He died September 13, 1803 a.d. 
Massachusetts has had five Bishops,—Bass, 
Parker, Griswold, Eastburn, and Paddock. 

In May, 1810 a.d., a Convention of the 
clergy and representatives of the New Eng¬ 
land States, except Connecticut, was held in 
Boston to form a union under the title of 
The Eastern Diocese. 

The territory was a large one, but the 
Church was weak. In 1811 a.d. there were 
in all this territory only twenty-two par¬ 
ishes and sixteen officiating clergymen. Of 
these parishes only a few had any numerical 
or financial strength ; in fact, but three, 
Trinity, Boston; St. John’s, Providence; 
and Trinity, Newport, could be called 
strong parishes. At this Convention in 
1810 a.d. the Rev. A. V. Griswold, of 
Bristol, R. I., was elected Bishop. He was 
consecrated in May, 1811 a.d., in New 
York. 

He was born April 22, 1766 a.d., and died 
February 15, 1843 a.d., being seventy-seven 
years old, and having been a Bishop for 
thirty-two years. Part of the time he served 
as Rector of St. Peter’s Church, Salem. The 
thirty-two years of his Episcopate witnessed 
marvelous growth of the Church in New 
England, so much so that one by one the 
associated Dioceses became strong enough 
to have a Bishop each for itself, and five 
Bishops were selected to take charge of the 
work which was originally placed in one 
man’s hands. 

Bishop Griswold’s increasing infirmities 
compelled him to ask for an assistant, and 
Dr. Manton Eastburn, a native of England, 
but a resident of this country from child¬ 
hood, and at the time of his election rector 
of the Church of the Ascension, New York, 
was elected in 1842 a.d., and was consecrated 
in December of that year. Bishop Gris¬ 
wold died the February following, and 
Bishop Eastburn became Bishop. The 
Diocese increased at first slowly, but yet 
surely, in strength and in numbers. The 
clergy were active, energetic, filled with a 
missionary zeal, and faithfully sowed the 
sacred seed of Church doctrine which is 
now yielding a most abundant harvest. 
The Bishop repeatedly recorded in his sev¬ 
eral reports, both to the Diocese and to the 
General Convention, a description of the 
peculiar difficulties under which the Church 
toiled. 

“ Planted amidst untractable elements,— 




MASSACHUSETTS 


460 


MATRIMONY 


by the side of institutions which are, on 
system, impatient of all distinctive claims,— 
and obliged either to use, or to oppose, traits 
of character which, though venerable and 
pious, are not of her own producing, our 
Church yet holds her difficult progress;” 
and later, “ We wait for the salvation of the 
Lord, and have the most decided tokens that 
we shall not wait in vain.” Later statistics 
show that this confident faith was fully 
justified. 

In 1843 a.d., when the Bishop had fairly 
taken possession of his See, the clergy num¬ 
bered 52 ; in 1872 a.d. they were 121; in 
1883 a.d. they were 168. In 1843 a.d. there 
were 4118 communicants ; in 1872 a.d. there 
were 11,706; in 1883 a.d. there were 18,582. 
In 1843 a.d. the contributions were $22,847 ; 
in 1872 a.d. they amounted to $330,381.67 ; 
in 1883 a.d. they reached $518,665.86. The 
Bishop, after thirty years of earnest and 
faithful toil throughout a large and rapidly 
increasing Diocese, passed to his rest Sep¬ 
tember 12, 1872 a.d. 

His successor, the Rt. Rev. Benjamin II. 
Paddock, S.T.D., a native of Norwich, 
Conn., born February 29, 1828 a.d., was 
elected by the Annual Convention May 6, 
and was consecrated the following 17th of 
September, 1873 a d. The Diocese had 
emerged from its earlier difficulties and had 
now become a power in that Commonwealth 
which had once made it almost a crime to 
belong to her Communion. 

Its great size, numerous parishes, and 
rapidly widening work, which would require 
all the energies and tax the strength of any 
man, receive from him earnest, watchful, 
fostering care. This is well shown by the 
carefully-drawn and wisely-planned Canon 
on Deaconesses and Sisterhoods, which was 
offered by him and passed the House of 
Bishops in 1880 a.d. It was too late in the 
session to obtain the passage of it in the 
House of Deputies, and being laid over to the 
last General Convention, the consideration 
of it was necessarily deferred there from the 
pressure of other business. A comparison 
of the statistics given above shows how the 
Diocese has grown under his Episcopal over¬ 
sight. 

The following statistics are taken from 
the Convention Journal of 1883 a.d. They 
are made up from the Parochial Reports, 
and inasmuch as some six or more parishes 
failed to report, and a number of others 
made defective reports, it is safe to assume 
that the correct totals are really larger than 
are here given.' 

Contributions for purposes outside the Par¬ 
ishes. $78,774.42 

Contributions for purposes within the Par¬ 
ishes. 439,891.44 

Total. $518,665.86 

Baptisms. 2,261 

Confirmed. 1,055 

Communicants.18,582 

Teachers in Sunday-schools. 1,229 

Pupils “ “ “ 16,848 


The following are taken from the Bishop’s 
Address for 1883 a.d. : 


Lay-Readers licensed from Advent to Advent. 46 

Candidates for Priest’s Order. 29 

Ordinations, Deacons 6, Priests 4... 10 

Present number of Clergymen.168 


Rev. G. W. Shinn. 

Master. A title or designation for the 
heads of various Guilds, Orders, Institutions, 
Colleges, or Hospitals. 

Matins. The ancient name for the day¬ 
break service of the reformation offices of 
the English Church. This Matin service, 
together with that of Prime and Tierce, was 
compressed into our present Morning Prayer. 
In it are remnants of the very ancient Gal- 
lican system of daily prayer, which con¬ 
tains elements which are probably Eastern 
in their origin. Indeed, of our services it 
may be said that there are embedded in 
them in versicle, rubric, or prayer, phrases 
or ritual directions which belong to a very 
early Eastern system of daily services. 

Matrimony (Latin, matrimonium), or 
marriage, signifies the nuptial state, that is, 
the relation of husband and wife, a relation 
which imposes obligations and creates rights, 
which are regulated by divine, and also, as 
to many details, by human law. “Mar¬ 
riage” (says Hugh Davey Evans, in his work 
on “The Christian Doctrine of Marriage”) 
“ is a civil contract, and as such subject to 
the jurisdiction of the State and the law of 
the land; but it is also a divine institution, 
and as such, not under their authority. God 
Himself instituted the appropriation of one 
woman to one man, and subjected it to cer¬ 
tain laws, which the State ought to enforce, 
but which she may at her peril refuse to en¬ 
force. If she refuse, there are no means of 
compelling her, for she has no human su¬ 
perior; but the divine laws are not less bind¬ 
ing. The State ought to enforce the divine 
laws, because they would promote the tem¬ 
poral welfare of her citizens ; but if she be of 
a different opinion, it only remains that 
Christians should obey them, and endure 
whatever inconveniences may arise from 
their not being enforced upon others. In 
this country the State declines to enforce 
them, and it is the more necessary that 
Christian men and women should be famil¬ 
iar with them” (p. 91). In this article mar¬ 
riage will be treated chiefly as a divine in¬ 
stitution, subject to the regulation of the 
Church, which is guided in this, as in all 
matters, by what she believes to be the 
“ Word of God.” The best account of the 
character and objects of Christian marriage 
is to be found in the Service of the English 
Church. The passage is worthy of being 
quoted here, because it was unaccountably 
omitted by the American revisers of the 
Prayer-Book in 1789 a.d. In the face of 
the admitted looseness of doctrine and prac¬ 
tice prevalent in our country in regard to 
marriage, it can hardly be maintained that 
we have gained anything by the omission 
of this plain-spoken, admirable exhorta- 

















MATRIMONY 


461 


MATRIMONY 


• 

tion. In the English Church, every married 
couple and the assembled congregation are 
solemnly informed that holy matrimony “ is 
an honorable estate, instituted of God in 
the time of man’s innocency, signifying unto 
us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ 
and His Church; which holy estate Christ 
adorned and beautified with His presence, 
and first miracle that He wrought in Cana 
of Galilee ; and is commended of Saint Paul 
to be honorable among all men ; and there¬ 
fore is not by any to be enterprised nor 
taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or won- 
tonly to satisfy man’s carnal lusts and appe¬ 
tites, like brute beasts that have no under¬ 
standing ; but reverently, discreetly, ad¬ 
visedly, soberly, and in the fear of God ; duly 
considering the causes for which Matrimony 
was ordained. 

“ First, It was ordained for the procreation 
of children, to be brought up in the fear and 
nurture of the Lord, and to praise His Holy 
Name. 

“ Secondly, It was ordained for a remedy 
against sin, and to avoid fornication ; that 
such persons as have not the gift of conti- 
nency might marry, and keep themselves 
undefiled members of Christ’s body. 

“ Thirdly, It was ordained for the mutual 
society, help, and comfort, that the one 
ought to have of the other, both in prosper¬ 
ity and adversity.” 

The persons to be married are then charged 
both in the English service and in our own, 
that “ if either of them know any impediment 
why they may not lawfully be joined to¬ 
gether in matrimony, they should confess it 
for if any persons are joined together other¬ 
wise than as God’s Word doth allow, their 
marriage is not lawful.” 

This is a plain intimation, in the very ser¬ 
vice itself, that whenever, as in this country 
the State refuses to be guided and bound in 
its legislation by God’s Word, Christian men 
and women cannot be content with simply 
obeying the State. In other words, the State 
may and does allow some marriages to be 
contracted which the Church deems unlaw¬ 
ful, and permits others to be dissolved for 
causes which the Church cannot allow to be 
valid. Difficult questions and troublesome 
cases of conscience may arise, but collisions 
between Church and State in this country are 
not very likely to occur. The State may 
ermit what the Church forbids, but mem- 
ers of the Church are not forced by the 
State to avail themselves of the permission 
which is given. A correct understanding of 
the relations of Church and State, and of the 
duties that Christian men and women owe 
to both of those divine institutions, lies at 
the bottom of this whole question. The 
subject has been so lucidly expounded by 
Hugh Davey Evans, in his elaborate “ Trea¬ 
tise on the Christian Doctrine of Marriage,” 
that the reader ,will pardon an extended quo¬ 
tation from that learned author. 

“ When a question arises whether the law 
of the land conflicts with the law of God, it 


cannot be decided by the law of the land, 
which is of inferior authority to the law of 
God. The law of God, which is the higher 
law, must be the rule, and conscience the 
judge to apply that rule. Every one who is 
called upon to act upon the question must 
decide it for himself, as every one who is 
called to act upon any question must decide 
it for himself. The private man must de¬ 
cide it according to his conscience. The 
officer of the Church who is called to ad¬ 
vise, direct, or judge the conduct of the pri¬ 
vate Christian must decide according to his 
private conscience, unless the Church has 
furnished him with a rule. The Church 
herself, in her legislative capacity, must be 
governed by what may be called her aggre¬ 
gate or public conscience. 

“ If the two laws do not conflict, every one, 
including the authorities of the Church, 
must obey both. If one permit what the 
other forbids, men should respect the prohi¬ 
bition. If one command what the other 
forbids, we must obey God rather than man. 
Suppose a man should apply to be received 
into the communion of the Church who had 
married after a civil divorce which was con¬ 
trary to God’s law. How ought the rector 
of the parish to act? Public opinion would 
perhaps say that the twice-married man 
should be received, because he had done 
nothing not allowed by the law of the land. 
But the true question is, Has he done an act 
contrary to the law of God ? The law of 
the land, which is, at best, an interpretation 
of the law of God, made by temporal rulers 
for temporal purposes, has nothing to do 
with spiritual questions” (pp. 33, 34). 

“ With respect to marriages which the law 
of the land allows, but which the law of God 
forbids, no one ought to enter into them or 
to continue in them. The parties to them 
have not been joined by God, and man ought 
to put them asunder. In some cases the 
civil courts undertake to dissolve marriages 
which were originally valid, for causes for 
which the law of God does not allow them 
to be dissolved. No Christian can consider 
a marriage which was once valid as dissolved 
by any power whatever, except only in the 
case in which our Lord has permitted such 
dissolution. No Christian can intermarry 
with any one who has been released from a 
valid marriage for a reason which was scrip- 
turally insufficient—for any cause ‘ saving 
the cause of fornication’—without being 
guilty of adultery. By following these few 
rules a private Christian may avoid being 
mixed up with the unchristian laws which 
have been adopted in America. He can 
thus keep a conscience void of offense in this 
matter before God and man. 

“ But the clergy may sometimes meet with 
embarrassing cases. They will come in one of 
two forms. A clergyman may be called on to 
solemnize a marriage which the law of the 
land allows, and the law of God forbids. 
There is no reason for believing that such a 
marriage can receive the Divine blessing, or 




MATRIMONY 


462 


MATRIMONY 


possess the sanctity and unity of marriage. A 
clergyman should refuse to solemnize such 
a marriage, at whatever cost or risk to him¬ 
self. Happily, an American clergyman can 
incur no danger from the State; for there 
is no law of the land which requires him to 
solemnize any marriage whatever. The 
only danger is that of giving offense to the 
public and to his parishioners. This is some¬ 
times an important consideration ; but we 
ought to obey God rather than men. At 
other times the question may present itself 
in the shape of a case of lay discipline, when 
a person who is living in a sinful marriage 
desires to be admitted to the Holy Commun¬ 
ion. In the Primitive Church, such a per¬ 
son would have been rejected until he or she 
separated from his or her partner in guilt. 
Whether a modern clergyman is called upon 
to revive this discipline by his own authority 
and upon his own responsibility is a grave 
and difficult question which every clergy¬ 
man must decide for himself, with the aid 
and counsel of his Bishop. It may be ob¬ 
served that the power of rejecting or sus¬ 
pending a communicant is very much limited 
b} T the first rubric of the Communion service. 
It seems to require that the evil life for 
which a communicant may be suspended or 
rejected should be such as to give offense to 
the congregation” (pp. 249, 250). 

What remains to be said may be arranged 
under three heads. I. Duties of husbands 
and wives. II. The “ impediments” which 
the Church service refers to, and which 
make the marriage unlawful. III. Divorce. 

I. Duties of Husbands and Wives. —What 
is usually called the marriage vow is the 
promise which the parties mutually make to 
each other. It is a promise of the most 
solemn character, witnessed before God and 
the congregation. Both husband and wife 
promise, each to the other, that the contract 
shall be life-long and indissoluble, each 
using the solemn words, “ till death us do 
part.” “The parties by this vow engage 
their personal fidelity, expressly and specific¬ 
ally ; they engage likewise to consult and 
promote each other’s happiness ; the wife, 
moreover, promises obedience to her husband. 
Nature may have made and left the sexes 
of the human species nearly equal in their 
faculties, and perfectly so in their rights; 
but to guard against those competitions 
which equality, or a contested superiority, 
is almost sure to produce, the Christian 
Scriptures enjoin upon the wife that obe¬ 
dience which she here promises, and in 
terms so peremptory and absolute that it 
seems to extend to everything not criminal, 
or not entirely inconsistent with the 
woman’s happiness. ‘ Let the wife,’ says 
St. Paul, ‘ be subject to her own husband in 
everything.’ ‘ The ornament of a meek and 
quiet spirit,’ says the Apostle Peter, speak¬ 
ing of the duty of wives, * is, in the sight 
of God, of great price ’ No words ever ex¬ 
pressed the true merit of the female charac¬ 
ter so well as these.” The above quotation 


• 

is from Paley, who adds, that “ the marriage 
vow is violated, 1, by adultery; 2, by any 
behavior which, knowingly, renders the life 
of the other miserable ; as desertion, neglect, 
prodigality, drunkenness, peevishness, pe¬ 
nuriousness, jealousy, or any levity of con¬ 
duct which administers occasion of jeal¬ 
ousy.” 

II. Impediments to Marriage. —The con¬ 
sent of the parties and the blessing of God 
are the formative elements of Christian mar¬ 
riage. “ But where no consent has been 
given, or where the marriage is in direct 
violation of a divine law, and the absence of 
the consent and the unlawfulness can be 
shown by provable facts, man may sepa¬ 
rate those whom God hath not joined. . . . 
There are, then, some things which make 
an outward marriage unlawful and void. 
They are called impediments to marriage, 
and are of two classes. The first are facts 
which prove that there has been no consent. 
The others are facts which prove that the 
marriage is of a class not allowed ‘ by God’s 
Word.’” (H. D. E., ch. xiii. \ 2.) The sub¬ 
ject is intricate, and the cases of conscience 
that arise are sometimes perplexing. Per¬ 
haps no recent writer has treated the mat¬ 
ter from a Christian stand-point more elab¬ 
orately and learnedly than Dr. Evans, and 
to his treatise and other works of the kind 
the reader is referred for more extended dis¬ 
cussion. Both the State and the Church 
have erred in creating impediments which 
are not really such. The State may forbid 
certain persons to intermarry, and the law 
would bind the consciences of her citizens. 
But if a really valid marriage took place, 
the State could not make it void, except so 
far as it relates to the civil effects of mar¬ 
riage. The Church, however, during the 
Middle Ages erred far more grievously than 
the State, by creating many frivolous canon¬ 
ical impediments. Among these was the 
rule which made marriage between a god¬ 
parent and his or her god-child unlawful. 
Still more curious and unreasonable was the 
prohibition of marriage between persons 
who had been sponsors for the same person, 
and who were regarded as spiritual brothers 
and sisters. The evils resulting were reme¬ 
died to some extent by a system of dispen¬ 
sations, which at the same time served to in¬ 
crease the revenue and the power of the 
Popes. The practical consequence was that 
the Divine law that marriage cannot be dis¬ 
solved was virtually made of none effect, 
and while divorce was not allowed, many 
valid marriages were annulled when money 
and other influences were brought to bear. 

The Roman casuists distinguish two kinds 
of impediments, impedimenta impedentia , 
and impedimenta dirimentia. Under the 
first class are included impediments which 
render the marriage illicit, aut impediunt 
usuyn, until the impediment be removed. 
Such, for example, according to their rules, 
would be a marriage at a forbidden time, as 
in Advent, or in Lent. In the other class 





MATRIMONY 


463 


MATRIMONY 


are comprised impediments which render the 
marriage absolutely null and void. These 
latter only require any particular mention, 
and by impediments, in the probable sense 
of the marriage service, must therefore 
be understood not considerations which 
might make a marriage undesirable or im¬ 
proper, but facts which, when proved, 
would justify the so-called marriage being 
pronounced by a court as null and void ab 
initio. 

Of these impediments it is sufficient to 
mention here the following : (1) Existing 
marriage of either party. (2) Bodily or 
mental impotence. (3) Tender age, be¬ 
low the period allowed by law, which makes 
consent doubtful or impossible. (4) Being 
within the forbidden degrees of consan¬ 
guinity and affinity. The last head in¬ 
volves many difficult questions, one of the 
most troublesome of which is the lawfulness 
of marriage with a deceased wife’s sister. All 
that can be said in this place on the subject 
is, that such marriages are contrary to the 
inherited traditions of the English Church, 
and the general sentiment of English-speak¬ 
ing people. This is plainly shown by the 
very word sister-in-^atc, which means that a 
woman who is not really a man’s sister is 
his sister in law , and therefore, like his own 
sister by blood, is to be regarded and treated 
as a woman whom he cannot marry. The 
term which embodies this tradition is still 
used in America, although in this country 
a wife’s sister is not the husband’s sister in 
law ) because according to the law of most or 
all of our States, he may marry her. The 
General Convention has not positively de¬ 
cided the question for Churchmen, though 
the House of Bishops, in 1808 a.i>., declared 
that in their opinion The Table of Degrees , 
appended to the English Prayer-Book, was 
binding in this Church. The subject is 
fully discussed, with his usual learning, 
by the author so often quoted in this article 
(ch. xiv., on the Doctrine of Incest). Dr. 
Evans approves the decision of the House 
of Bishops, and considers such marriages 
unlawful. It must, however, in fairness be 
added, that every part of this vexed ques¬ 
tion is involved in doubt and difficult}'. 
The meaning of the text (Levit. xviii. 18), 
and the bearing of verse 16 on this subject, 
are disputed by Hebrew scholars and emi¬ 
nent commentators, and whether or not the 
whole body of the Levitical prohibitions in 
regard to marriage forms part of the moral 
law, so as to be binding upon Christians, is 
a further question of no little intricacy. 
Notwithstanding Dr. Evans’s learned, pains¬ 
taking, and apparently impartial support of 
the traditional doctrine, candor requires the 
admission that the prevailing sentiment of 
American Churchmen and scholars is favor¬ 
able to marriage with a deceased wife’s 
sister, while the opposition of English di¬ 
vines and of English society to the validity of 
such a union (beginning with Archbishop 
Whateley in 1851 a.d.) is perceptibly weak¬ 


ening, and, as the recent debates in Parlia¬ 
ment have disclosed, is less and less based 
upon any Scriptural prohibition. It is 
proper to append, for reference, the table of 
which mention has been made. 

“ A TABLE OF KINDRED AND AFFINITY,, 

Wherein whosoever are related are forbidden 

in Scripture and our laws to marry to¬ 
gether. 

“ A man may not marry his grandmother, 
grandfather’s wife, wile’s grandmother, 
father’s sister, mother’s sister, father’s broth¬ 
er’s wife, mother’s brother’s wife, wife’s 
father’s sister, wife’s mother’s sister, mother, 
step-mother, wife’s mother, daughter, wife’s 
daughter, son’s wife, sister, wife’s sister, 
brother’s wife, son’s daughter, daughter’s 
daughter, son’s son’s wife, daughter’s son’s 
wife, wife’s son’s daughter, wife’s daughter’s 
daughter, brother’s daughter, sister’s daugh¬ 
ter, brother’s son’s wife, sister’s son’s wife, 
wife’s brother’s daughter, wife’s sister’s 
daughter. 

“ A woman may not marry with her grand¬ 
father, grandmother’s husband, husband’s 
grandfather, father’s brother, mother’s 
brothe” father’s sister’s husband, mother’s 
sister’s husband, husband’s father’s brother, 
husband’s mother’s brother, father, step¬ 
father, husband’s father, son, husband’s son, 
daughter’s husband, brother, husband’s 
brother, sister’s husband, son’s son, daugh¬ 
ter’s son, son’s daughter’s husband, daugh¬ 
ter’s daughter’s husband, husband’s son’s 
son, husband’s daughter’s son, brother’s son, 
sister’s son, brother’s daughter’s husband, 
sister’s daughter’s husband, husband’s broth¬ 
er’s son, husband’s sister’s son.” (Divorce, 

p. 18.) 

III. Divorce. —By divorce is properly un¬ 
derstood a dissolution of the marriage bond , 
so that one or both of the parties may law¬ 
fully contract a second marriage. Under 
certain circumstances it may be advisable or 
necessary that married persons should live 
apart, and that such separation should be 
protected by law. The practice is to call 
such legal separations divorces a mensa et 
toro (from bed and board), while the disso¬ 
lution of the bond itself is called divorce a 
vinculo matrimonii. It is only this latter 
species of divorce that calls for any discus¬ 
sion. 

Marriage, as has been said, is a life-long 
union between one man and one woman. 
Each promises to take the other “till death 
us do part, according to God’s holy ordi¬ 
nance,” and over the union are pronounced 
the solemn words of our Saviour, “Those 
whom God hath joined together, let no man 
put asunder.” Indissolubleness, therefore, 
is the rule of Christian marriage. The rule, 
however, is subject to one exception, stated 
by our Lord Himself in these words: 
“ Whosoever shall put away his wife, except 
it be for fornication, and shall marry an¬ 
other, committeth adultery ; and whoso 





MATRIMONY 


464 


MATRIMONY 


marrieth her which is put away, doth com¬ 
mit adultery” (St. Matt. xix. 9). 

The parallel passages in the Gospel are St. 
Matt. v. 82; St. Mark x. 11 ; St. Luke xvi. 18. 
The latter verse is as follows : “ Whosoever 
putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, 
committeth adultery ; and whosoever mar¬ 
rieth her that is put away from her husband 
committeth adultery.” 

In this passage in St. Luke, and also in 
St. Mark, the exception mentioned by St. 
Matthew is omitted, and an absolute pro¬ 
hibition to marry a divorced woman under 
any circumstances seems to be laid down. 
It is well known that there are not to be 
found in the whole New Testament any texts 
whose interpretation has been more earnestly 
disputed, even from early times, than these 
which touch upon divorce. It may be well 
to quote the cautious and modest opinion of 
Hugo Grotius, one of the greatest of modern 
expositors. He concludes his long and elab¬ 
orate note on St. Matt. v. 32, with the fol¬ 
lowing words: “Sed haec, quas de divortiis 
dixi, eo dixi animo, ut piis et eruditis occa- 
sionem darem rei diligentius excutiendae. 
Nihil definio, nihil certi pronuntio. Valeat 
in dubio ea sententia quae quam maxime 
sanctam et inconcussam vult esse matrimonii 
fidem ; ne temere rumpamus vinculum a 
Deo institutum.” That is to say, “ What I 
have said about divorce, I have said with 
the view of leading good and learned men 
to examine more carefully into the subject. 
I give no definite, positive opinion. I pro¬ 
nounce nothing as absolutely certain. In a 
doubtful case of conscience, it is best that 
that opinion should prevail which regards 
the marriage troth, as far as it is possible, as 
a thing holy and inviolable: lest, in our 
rashness, we should break a bond instituted 
by God Himself.” In a work like the pres¬ 
ent nothing can be done but to state fairly 
the conflicting opinions and authorities, and 
then to add the Canons and regulations 
which the Church has provided for the 
guidance of her clergy and laity. 

(1) The doctrine of the Church of Rome 
is that divorce a vinculo matrimonii is never, 
under any circumstances, lawful. That 
Church, therefore, holds that the exception 
mentioned by St. Matthew refers to divorce 
a mensa et toro , which gives no permission 
to either party to contract a second mar¬ 
riage while a husband or wife is still living. 
“ Hie est perpetuus ecclesiae usus, sensus et 
praxis,” says Cornelius a Lapide (Comment, 
on St. Matt., v. 32). This teaching, seem¬ 
ingly strict, became in practice very lax by 
reason of the doctrine of impediments 
already mentioned, of which her casuists 
mention no less than fifteen, some of which 
are of the most frivolous character. (See 
Alphonsus de Ligorio, Homo Apostolicus, 
Tract xviii., $ 60, De Impedimentis Diri- 
mentibus, tom. ii. p. 229, Paris, 1834.) 

The same doctrine of absolute indissolu¬ 
bility has been held by a large body of 
learned English divines, among whom may 


be mentioned Bishop Andrewes, Keble, 
Canon Liddon. 

Canon Liddon also maintains the opin¬ 
ion of the eminent Dr. Dollinger, that the 
word rendered fornication in St. Matt. v. 
32, and xix. 9, does not mean adultery, but 
that our Lord was referring to Deut. xxii. 
13-21, and was speaking of ante-nuptial sins, 
which, as implying fraud on the part of the 
woman, freed the husband without, however, 
giving the guilty woman liberty to marry 
again. He further holds that our Lord 
meant this teaching (though found in the 
Sermon on the Mount) to apply to the Jews 
only. (See Liddon’s University Sermons, 
2d series, Sermon xvi., “ Christ and Human 
Law.”) 

(2) Bishop Wordsworth, of Lincoln, 
Alford, and the majority of modern com¬ 
mentators (not Roman Catholic) hold that 
our Lord’s exception, recorded in two places 
in St. Matthew, must be understood in St. 
Mark and St. Luke also; and that the effect 
of the exception is to permit the innocent 
party to remarry. A wife divorced for 
adultery, they hold, cannot marry again ac¬ 
cording to the Gospels. This interpretation 
makes the bond— vinculum —binding upon 
one partner and not upon the other. 

(3) Dr. Hugh Davey Evans, whose exam¬ 
ination of this difficult question is more 
elaborate and exhaustive than any other 
part of his treatise, holds that the adultery 
of the wife is the one exception made by our 
blessed Lord Himself, to the rule of the in¬ 
dissolubleness of marriage, and that when 
a legitimate divorce has been obtained, both 
parties are absolutely at liberty, and may 
marry. 

Whether the privilege allowed to the 
husband in the saving clause extends to the 
wife— i.e., whether a marriage can be 
divorced for the adultery of the husband— 
Dr. Evans considers a doubtful and difficult 
question. “ English divines,” he says, 
“ have generally taken the negative side of 
the question ; in this country their view is 
sometimes spoken of as absurd. It may be 
erroneous, but it is not absurd. It may not 
be easy to show that it is erroneous” (p. 
240). . . . “ Upon the whole it may be said 
that the one text on the subject (St. Mark 
x. 11, 12) is plain against a woman putting 
away her husband and being married to 
another. The exception is not plain. It is 
therefore safest for all Christians to act as 
though divorce for the adultery of the hus¬ 
band were not lawful” (p. 243). 

With regard to the great question whether 
the exception, “saving for the cause of for¬ 
nication,” found in St. Matthew, is to be 
understood and read into St. Mark and St. 
Luke, the conclusion which Hugh Davey 
Evans arrives at, and the reasons for it, can¬ 
not be more concisely expressed than in the 
words of Archbishop Manners Sutton, of 
Canterbury, in the British House of Lords, 
in 1820 a.d. The Archbishop said, “ I ad¬ 
mit that the passages in Matthew are not in 






MATRIMONY 


465 


MATRIMONY 


Mark, nor in Luke ; but in Matthew the 
exception is given, and Mark and Luke have 
the general institution without the excep¬ 
tion. Now, I conceive that the passages in 
which the exception is omitted ought to be 
measured by the passage in which it is ex¬ 
pressed ; for it is impossible to believe that 
that was not intended which was expressed, 
though that which was not actually ex- 
ressed might yet be intended.” (Quoted 
y H. D. E., p. 193, from Jebb “ On Adul¬ 
tery and Divorce,” pp. Ill, 112.) 

The opinion of Hugh Davey Evans (which 
has been severely condemned, though 
never yet refuted) receives confirmation of 
no little value from one of the latest and 
best known of English Commentaries 
(Bishop Ellicott’s New Testament Com¬ 
mentary for English Readers). The author 
of the Commentary on the first three Gospels 
in that work, who is the well-known Dean 
of Wells, Dr. Plumptre, writes as follows 
on St. Matt. v. 32 : 

“ Whosoever shall marry her that is di¬ 
vorced. The Greek is less definite, and may 
be rendered either ‘ a woman who has been 
put away,’ or better, ‘ her when she has 
been put away.’ Those who take the for¬ 
mer construction, infer from it the absolute 
unlawfulness of marriage with a divorced 
woman under any circumstances whatever ; 
some holding that the husband is under 
the same restrictions, i.e., that the vincu¬ 
lum matrimonii is absolutely indissoluble; 
while others teach that in the excepted case, 
both the husband and the wife gain the 
right to contract a second marriage. The 
Romish Church, in theory, takes the for¬ 
mer view, the Greek and most Reformed 
Churches the latter; while some codes 
of law, like that now recognized in Eng¬ 
land, go back to the looser interpretation 
of Deut. xxiv. 1, and allow the divorce 
a vinculo for many lesser causes than in¬ 
continence. Of these contending views, 
that which is intermediate between the 
two extremes seems to be most in harmony 
with the true meaning of our Lord’s words. 
The words ‘put away’ would necessarily ( 
convey to His Jewish hearers the idea of 
an entire dissolution of the marriage 
union, leaving both parties free to con¬ 
tract a fresh marriage; and if it were not 
so, then the case in which He specially per¬ 
mits that dissolution would stand on the 
same level as the others. The injured 
husband would still be bound to the wife 
who had broken the vow which was of 
the essence of the marriage-contract. But 
if he was free to marry again, then the guilt 
of adultery could not possibly attach to her 
subseqiJent marriage with another. The 
context, therefore, requires us to restrict 
that guilt to the case of a wife divorced for 
other reasons. The injured husband would 
still be bound to the unfaithful wife. This, 
then, seems the true law of divorce for the 
Church of Christ as such to recognize. 
The question how far national legislation 

30 


may permit divorce for other causes, such 
as cruelty or desertion, seems to stand 
on a different footing, and must be dis¬ 
cussed on different grounds. In proportion 
as the ‘ hardness of heart,’ which made 
the wider license the least of two evils, 
prevails now, it may be not only expe¬ 
dient, but right and necessary, though it 
implies a standard of morals lower than the 
law of Christ, to meet it, as it was met of 
old, by a like reluctant permission.” 

It is not, of course, denied that the Church 
or the State has the right to inflict a pen¬ 
alty upon the guilty party, and this penalty 
might take the form of a prohibition to 
marry again. This view of the case may 
have influenced the General Convention, as 
we know it did influence some members 
of it, in passing the present Canon (see be¬ 
low), which permits marriage only to the 
innocent party in such a divorce. The real 
question is the more difficult one, whether, 
if such a marriage were contracted irregu¬ 
larly, and contrary to the Church’s prohi¬ 
bition, the Church would have the right to 
declare such marriage void. Dr. Evans, fol¬ 
lowing the most widely accepted interpreta¬ 
tion of our Lord’s words in St. Matthew, 
maintains that the effect of the exception is 
to make such a marriage valid. He argues 
that the Church, in permitting the innocent 
party to marry, must thereby logically hold 
that the marriage has been dissolved ; other¬ 
wise marrying the woman would not be 
“adultery,” and the innocent man who re¬ 
married would also become an adulterer, 
because be would still have a wife living,— 
an adulterous wife, it is true,—but still his 
wife , unless the vinculum matrimonii has 
been dissolved. 

In the face of this diversity of opinion 
among such noted Biblical scholars, the fol¬ 
lowing propositions will hardly be disputed : 

(1) That any one contemplating a second 
marriage with a divorced wife or husband, 
while the other partner is still living, has a 
difficult question of conscience to decide, 
and is treading upon dangerous ground, in 
which the lax laws of the State are no suffi¬ 
cient guide to those “ who profess and call 
themselves Christians.” 

(2) That no clergyman can be forced to 
solemnize any marriage which he honestly 
believes to be forbidden by “God’s Word,” 
even if he feels bound to take the strictest 
and narrowest of the above interpretations. 

(3) That no clergyman, on the other 
hand, is justified in questions of discipline 
and admission to the Sacraments of the 
Church, in going beyond the precise direc¬ 
tions which the Church, whereof he is a 
minister, has chosen to give him in the 
premises. 

(4) That it is the duty of the Church to 
give by Canon explicit directions, so far 
as may be necessary, to her Bishops and 
other clergy, in a matter which so deeply 
concerns morality and religion. 

The only rule which the Protestant Epis- 






MATRIMONY 


466 MATTHEW (SAINT), GOSPEL OF 


copal Church has given upon the matter 
will be found in the Canon passed by the 
General Convention of 1877 a.d., which is 
added here for convenience of reference, as 
well as to complete such treatment of this 
difficult topic as seemed suitable for a work 
like the present one. 

“CANON XIII. 

“ OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 

“ Marriage , except as God’s Word doth 
allow , not lawful. (Digest, Title ii.) 

“ Section 1. If any persons be joined to¬ 
gether otherwise than as God’s Word does 
allow, their marriage is not lawful. 

“No Minister shall unite in marriage those 
divorced , save for the cause of adultery. 
“Sec. 2: No Minister, knowingly, after 
due inquiry, shall solemnize the marriage 
of any person who has a divorced husband 
or wife still living, if such husband or 
wife has been put away for any cause aris¬ 
ing after marriage; but this Canon shall 
not be held to apply to the innocent party 
in a divorce for the cause of adultery, or to 
parties once divorced seeking to be united 
again. 

“ The Sacraments to be withheld from per¬ 
sons married otherwise than as God’s Word 
doth allow , save to a penitent per son in dan¬ 
ger of death. 

“Sec. 3. If any Minister of this Church 
shall have reasonable cause to doubt whether 
a person desirous of being admitted to Holy 
Baptism, or to Confirmation, or to the Holy 
Communion, has been married otherwise 
than as the Word of God and discipline of 
this .Church allow, such Minister, before re¬ 
ceiving such person to these ordinances, 
shall refer the case to the Bishop for his 
godly judgment thereupon. Provided , how¬ 
ever, That no Minister shall, in any case, 
refuse the Sacraments to a penitent person 
in imminent danger of death. 

“ Questions to be referred to the Bishop. 
“Sec. 4. Questions touching the facts of 
any case arising under Section 2 of this 
Canon shall be referred to the Bishop of 
the Diocese or Missionary Jurisdiction in 
which the same may occur; or, if there be 
no Bishop of such Diocese or Missionary 
Jurisdiction, then to some Bishop to be 
designated by the Standing Committee; 
and the Bishop to whom such questions 
have been so referred shall thereupon make 
inquiry in such manner as he shall deem 
expedient, and shall deliver his judgment 
in the premises. 

“ The Penalties under this Canon limited. 
“Sec. 5. This Canon, so far as it affixes 
penalties, does not apply to cases occurring 
before it takes effect, according to Canon iv., 
Title iv.” 

(In the above article, though many books 
have been consulted, Hugh Davey Evans has 


been closely followed, even in parts where 
quotation marks were not inserted. The 
full title of his invaluable work is as fol¬ 
lows: “ A Treatise on the Christian Doc¬ 
trine of Marriage,” by Hugh Davey Evans, 
LL.D., with a biographical sketch of the 
author, and an appendix containing Bishop 
Andrewes’s “ Discourse Against Second 
Marriage,” etc., New York, Hurd & Hough¬ 
ton, 1870 a.d. Out of the vast literature on 
the subject the following may be named as 
specially interesting to Churchmen, and 
easy to be obtained : “ The Laws of Mar¬ 

riage,” by John Fulton, D.D., LL.D., New 
York, 1883 a.d. This work treats specially 
of impediments and of divorce, and presents 
a mass of useful material. “ Liddon’s Uni¬ 
versity Sermons,” second series, New York, 
1880 a.d. ; “ Keble’s Argument against Re¬ 
pealing the Law r s which treat Marriage as 
Indissoluble,” Oxford, 1857 a.d. ; Words- 
w r orth, “Occasional Sermons in Westmin¬ 
ster Abbey;” an article in the Quarterly 
Review in the- year 1857 a.d., by the Rt. 
Hon. W. E. Gladstone, reprinted in the 
sixth volume of his “ Gleanings of Past 
Years;” Wolsey, “Divorce and Divorce 
Legislation,” New York, 1882 a.d. (second 
edition); Baum, “ The Rights and Duties 
of Rectors, Church-wardens, and Vestry¬ 
men,” Philadelphia, 1879 a.d.) 

Rev. H. Harrison. 

Matthew, St. The Apostle and Evangel¬ 
ist, also called Levi, the son of Alphseus. 
Of the details of his life we are wholly ig¬ 
norant. He must have had some property, 
as he gave a feast at his own house on the 
occasion of his call. He was a publican, a 
person who either farmed the public taxes, 
or an inferior officer who attended to the 
collection of them. Probably St. Matthew 
was of this order, since he was sitting at the 
receipt of custom when our Lord was pass¬ 
ing by and called him. His prompt obedi¬ 
ence shows that he had already a devout 
character, and was looking for the Hope of 
Israel, and further, that he, too, had heard 
of Jesus with the spiritual ear. The feast 
, which he gave led to the lessons on humil¬ 
ity which our Lord gave, while He prac¬ 
tically illustrated them. These St. Matthew 
never forgot, for in his Gospel he gives him¬ 
self the hated name of “the publican,” a 
name the other two Evangelists never apply 
to him. What became of him after our 
Lord’s Ascension, where he wrote his Gos¬ 
pel, and what were the special circumstances 
that led him to do this work, we cannot 
now know. The sublime reticence of Holy 
Scripture, the Divine parsimony that wastes 
no words, records no needless facts, but 
teaches us that God’s servants only need to 
be remembered by their Master when and as 
He wills. He is commemorated upon the 
21st of September. 

Matthew, St., Gospel of. The witness of 
all Christian antiquity is unvarying in at¬ 
tributing this Gospel to the Apostle and 
Evangelist. We cannot ascertain the pre- 






MATTHEW (SAINT), GOSPEL OF 467 


MEDIATOR 


cise date when the Gospel was written, hut 
we can reach an approximate date. It was the 
first written, and could only have been writ¬ 
ten within a few years after the Ascension. 
It was written for Jewish converts. Since 
general tradition states that the Apostles 
were in Jerusalem, as a centre of work for 
some years, preaching at the Passover to the 
multitudes who gathered there, the Gospel 
may well have been written for the use of 
those who were converted there and who 
needed such a record for their instruction. 
Be that as it may, the Gospel is distinctively 
Hebrew in cast. It is national, retrospec¬ 
tive, and through those very facts which 
might make it seem narrow, its intensity 
makes it most universal. It quotes prophecy 
freely. It appeals to the fulfillment of his¬ 
tory in Christ. It speaks most sharply of 
the sins of the Jews and their rulers. It 
refers to the Law, as in the Sermon on the 
Mount. It traces our Lord’s descent 
through David to Abraham. It brings out 
the spiritual turn to the intensely Jewish hope 
of a restored kingdom,—a heavenly kingdom. 
He brings out this at many points of the 
narrative, in the parables he records, in the 
declarations of our Lord at His Passion. In 
these we seethe earnest, hopeful Jew, whose 
national longings found their truest realiza¬ 
tion in the spiritual kingdom of His Master, 
and the eye-witness who writes in sober 
honesty those things of which he was per¬ 
sonally cognizant. Whether he wrote in 
Hebrew (Aramaic) or in Greek is a question 
which may be probably answered in the af¬ 
firmative, but cannot now be settled. At 
any rate the Greek must be attributed to 
him, and must be equally authentic as any 
Hebrew form of it could possibly be. He 
preserves for us two miracles,—healing of two 
blind men and the tribute money,—ten para¬ 
bles, nine discourses, and some fourteen in¬ 
cidents—these last chiefly in connection 
with our Lord’s Passion—which are not re¬ 
corded by the other three Evangelists. The 
contents of this Gospel may be classified in 
seven parts : I. The birth and childhood of 
Jesus the King of Israel. II. The founding 
of the kingdom, beginning with the herald¬ 
ing by His forerunner and His first victory 
in the temptation. III. The works and 
signs of the kingdom, in His declaration 
of its fundamental Laws, in His royal power 
shown in miracles, in His teaching about 
His kingdom. IV. Preparations for the 
final conflict, by the confession of St. Peter, 
by predicting His Passion, by His parables. 
V. The triumphs of the King, His entry into 
Jerusalem. VI. His final warfare, in His 
Passion and death. VII. The perfected vic¬ 
tory, in His Resurrection. 

Though St. Matthew does not follow strict¬ 
ly the chronological order in his Gospel, yet 
he does not violate the proper sequence of 
the main events, and there is an internal 
coherence of thought and a grouping to¬ 
gether of facts which have a subtle inter¬ 
connection, which is of more importance to 


us than the historical order, where it has 
been broken. To St. Matthew’s purpose 
it was essential to set forth the Son of God 
as the looked-for Messiah, the King of both 
the historical and the spiritual Israel, and 
as the perfect Man. 

Matthias, St. The Apostle who was 
elected to take the place of the traitor Judas. 
It is a probable conjecture that he was one 
of the seventy disciples. “ Different opin¬ 
ions have prevailed as to the manner of the 
election of Matthias ; the most natural con¬ 
struction of the words of Scripture seems to 
be this. After the address of St. Peter the 
whole assembled body of the brethren, 
amounting in number to about one hundred 
and twenty, proceeded to nominate two, 
namely, Joseph surnamed Barsabas and 
Matthias, who answered the requirements of 
the Apostle; the subsequent selection be¬ 
tween the two was referred in prayer to 
Him who, knowing the hearts of men, knew 
which of them was the fitter to be His wit¬ 
ness and Apostle. The brethren then, under 
the heavenly guidance which they had in¬ 
voked, proceeded to give forth their lots, 
probably each by writing the name of one 
of the candidates on a tablet and casting it 
into an urn. The urn was then shaken, and 
the name that first came out decided the 
election.” (Smith’s Diet, of the Bible, sub 
voe., p. 1889.) It was a solemn act of re¬ 
ferring the decision to God alone. 

The Apostle is commemorated upon the 
25th of February. 

Maunday-Thursday. Thursday in Holy 
Week. It derives its name from the anti¬ 
phon sung at the service, “ Mandatum 
novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem” (St. 
John xiii. 34),—“ A new commandment 
give I unto you, That ye should love one an¬ 
other.” But this day, long before it received 
this name of Maunday, had many important 
services celebrated upon it. On it the cate¬ 
chumens who were ready for baptism were 
taught the Creed. On it penitents who had 
passed their probation were publicly absolved 
and restored. On it the chrism, the conse¬ 
crated oil for anointing the newly baptized, 
was consecrated. On it, at least in the - 
African Church, the Holy Communion was 
celebrated at night. It was excepted from 
the general rule which was enforced early 
after persecution ceased. But this practice 
was looked upon with disfavor and it gradu¬ 
ally fell into disuse. As a day of prepara¬ 
tion for the fast of Good-Friday, and in 
view of our Lord’s acts upon this day, it 
has always held a very important position 
in the holy services of Passion-week. 

Mediation. Vide Mediator. 

Mediator. Bishop Butler in his Analogy 
draws attention to the fact that living creat¬ 
ures are brought into the world and pre¬ 
served by the instrumentality of others as 
mediators, and hence to the fact that a “ Me¬ 
diator between God and man” is accordant 
with nature (1 Tim. ii. 5). He also speaks 
of the bad consequences of our follies being 





MEDIATOR 


468 


MENDICANCY 


prevented by the assistance of others, as being 
analogous to the act of God in giving His 
only-begotten Son for wicked men (St. John 
iii. 16), and of Christ being the author of 
eternal salvation to the obedient, after His 
suffering (Heb. v. 8, 9). We see a human 
mediator in Moses, refraining from his food 
in a long fast because of the sin of the peo¬ 
ple (Deut. ix. 18), in his prayer for Aaron 
(v. 20), and for his people (v. 26). The 
Jewish writer Philo describes the Word as 
“ an intercessor for mortal man to the im¬ 
mortal God, and an ambassador from the 
King to His subjects.” The sacrifice of 
Christ is intended to deliver man both 
from the power and the punishment of sin. 
Abraham, as a relative mediator, pleading 
for Sodom (Gen. xviii. 23-32), points to 
Christ as the absolute Mediator. Noah 
with his family in the ark, and Lot with 
his household, spared from Sodom, may 
represent Christ as the Saviour of His 
Church. The Jews called the Messiah the 
Middle One, as standing between God and 
man. Job longed for a daysman, that is, an 
arbitrator on the day of trial (Job ix. 33). 
This umpire who lays his hand on the God¬ 
head and on manhood is found in Jesus 
Christ. Heathen mythology groped after 
this truth ; Christianity declares it in giving 
the only Name whereby we may be saved 
(Acts iv. 12), and by which we may come 
unto the Father (St. John xiv. 6). Those 
who were enemies of God are reconciled by 
Christ's death (Col. i. 21, 22). Christ 
by obeying the law of God and satisfying 
justice brought His people into the favor of 
God (Eph. ii. 18). As Man, He was re¬ 
lated to the sinner, and in human nature 
could make the reconciliation and obey the 
law (Gal. iv. 4; Rom. v. 19). As Man, 
Christ could shed His blood for man (Heb. 
ii. 10, 15, and vii. 3-5). As Man, He be¬ 
came a sympathizing High-Priest (Heb. ii. 
17, 18, and iv. 15). The Mediator must be 
holy and without spot (Heb. vii. 26, and 
ix. 14, and 1 John iii..v.). He must be God 
to perform a work which men and angels 
could not do. As GoD-man we hope in 
Christ. His Manhood brings Him near to 
our affections. “ Mercy and truth are met 
together; righteousness and peace have 
kissed each other” (Ps. lxxxv. 10). Christ 
is the only Mediator (1 Tim. ii. 5), to the 
exclusion of saints and angels. He is Medi¬ 
ator for Jews and Gentiles, and of saints in 
the Old and New Testaments (Eph. ii. 11-22). 
He is the Propitiation for the sins of “ the 
.whole world” (1 John ii. 2). “He is a 
suitable, constant, willing, and prevalent 
Mediator; and His mediation always suc¬ 
ceeds, and is infallible.” “He is able also 
to save them to the uttermost that come 
unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth 
to make intercession for them” (Heb. vii. 
25). May all thus come to Him and find 
eternal salvation. He who rejects the king’s 
son slights the king. 

Authorities: Buck’s Theological Diction¬ 


ary, Whitby on 1 Tim. ii. 5, McKnight on 
the Epistles, Essay vii., Lange’s Genesis. 

Rev. S. F. Hotciikin. 

Means of Grace. Since “ Grace” has as 
its root idea the free gift out of good will, 
the means of grace are all those instru¬ 
ments for our growth in holiness which God 
of His love has given to each of us to use. 
From the Sacraments, in their place, down to 
the ordinary and usual Christian graces of a 
daily holy life, every part and act has its place 
under the collective title of the means of 
grace. In whatever channel He conveys 
graces to us, and in whatever degree He 
intrusts us with a share of that holiness 
without which no man can see God, so far 
we receive and use the means of grace. 
The Sacraments do ordinarily convey grace 
to us, in the limited sense we now use that 
word, and they are essential to our salva¬ 
tion because they are “ the means." But, 
since our Lord by His ascension has given 
gifts to men, we may, nay, must, include all 
the instruments whereby He choose to con¬ 
vey hoth the results of His atonement and 
strength for our spiritual growth. Every 
gift of spiritual grace is a proof that He 
knows that His grace is sufficient for us. 
In this would be included, as indeed St. 
Paul does (Eph. iv. 7-16), the Apostolic 
office and the assisting officers. The peace 
and harmony of the Church, the steadfast¬ 
ness in the Faith, the growth in nearness to 
our Lord, to whom all grace was given 
without measure, and who divides through 
the Holy Ghost severally to every man as 
He wills. In this sense the largeness of 
that thanksgiving for our redemption and 
for the means of grace and for the hope of 
glory come out prominently. It is in no 
narrow application to merely the Sacra¬ 
ments, principal means as they are, but in 
a breadth, fullness of appreciation of the fact 
that she is the appointed visible conveyer of 
these gifts, and the guide of the soul to Him 
who can bestow abundantly the more secret 
and special graces we each need according 
to our station. The Church uses this won¬ 
derfully pregnant phrase, “ for the means of 
grace,” in the prayer of thanksgiving she 
gives her children. 

Menaia. These are the office-books of 
the Greek Church, which contain the vari¬ 
able parts of the offices for fixed festivals. 

Mendicancy. A danger in the dispensa¬ 
tion of Church charities is the encourage¬ 
ment of those who would idly live on the 
charity of others,—a danger which needs to 
be guarded against, and which has led to 
various organizations and methods by which 
such impostors may be detected and re¬ 
jected. While this can never be wholly 
checked, and much must be given to unde¬ 
serving objects,—and let us remember that 
so our Lord must have bestowed His gra¬ 
cious aid,—yet the principle of requiring 
every applicant for aid to do something in 
return, and if possible to fairly earn it, is 
the best way, both of bestowing charity and 




MERCY 


469 


MICHIGAN 


of detecting those who would live upon 
others’ bounty. To this end, Guilds and 
Brotherhoods in the Church or Parish could 
very well aid in organizing work and in 
distributing it properly and equitably. But 
the danger is greater in large cities than in 
small towns or villages. Still, the duty of 
giving involves the duty also of giving, 
or rather of distributing, the alms, relief, or 
aid to those who really deserve it, and 
therefore of administering the alms with 
Christian justice and charity, and so some 
recognized arrangement, even if informal, 
should exist in every parish, by which the 
rector could be aided in distinguishing the 
deserving poor from the mere mendicant. 

Mercy. The act of God towards the sin¬ 
ner, whereby He offers His forgiveness and 
forbearance and the atonement of His Son. 
His mercy, is also a term gathering into one 
the facts of His love as well as His forbear¬ 
ance, His gracious gifts of life and abundant 
love and protection, as well as His forgive¬ 
ness. “ His tender mercies are over all His 
works,” includes all creation. “ God who 
is rich in mercy, for His great love, where¬ 
with He hath loved us, even when we were 
dead in sins, hath quickened us together with 
Christ,” declares His life-giving love and 
mercy towards us. Therefore practically 
our Lord teaches, “ Blessed are the merci¬ 
ful, for they shall obtain mercy.” 

Messiah. Vide Titles of our Lord. 

Metaphors. A form of expression that 
spiritualizes what is tangible, as, “ Ye are the 
salt of the earth,” is a metaphor, a substi¬ 
tution of one expression for another. Meta¬ 
phors of this sort are frequent. “I am the 
light of the world,” and, “ I am the bread 
which came down from heaven,” are meta¬ 
phors our Lord uses, descriptive of Him¬ 
self, so “ I am the Good Shepherd,” I am the 
Vine,” “ lam the Door.” St. Paul uses such 
metaphors with great effect. 

Metropolitan. The Bishop of the See in 
the metropolis of a Province. The title in¬ 
dicating a rank in the Episcopate is first 
found in the Nicene Canons. The Metro¬ 
politan was the Chief Bishop in the Province, 
holding the See of the capital of the Prov¬ 
ince, and so is identical with the Archbishop. 
A Metropolitan was not to have less than 
three Bishops under him. It is his duty to 
ordain the Bishops of his Province, to con¬ 
voke Provincial Councils, to exercise a gen¬ 
eral disciplinary power over the Bishops; and 
clergy within the Province can appeal to him 
against their Bishops if aggrieved. 

Micah (Who as Jehovah?), the Mo- 
rasthite, stands the sixth in the order of the 
Minor Prophets as they are arranged in our 
Bibles. He was cotemporary with Hosea 
and Amos and Isaiah (Jer. xxvi. 18; 
Micah i. 1). His prophecies may be grouped 
into three sections. The first, which is in 
the first two chapters, recites in splendid 
language the coming of Jehovah to judge 
His people and His sore chastisements, but 
it closes the promise of restoration with a 


verse which the Fathers often applied to the 
Resurrection: “The Breaker is come up 
before them : they have broken up, and have 
passed through the gate, and are gone out by 
it: and their King shall pass before them, 
and the Lord on the head of them;” the 
second section begins with the third and 
ends with the close of the fifth chapter. 
Again the judgments and chastisements of 
the Lord are foretold, but now they are tem¬ 
pered with the promise of the ingathering 
of the heathen and of the birth of the “ King 
of the Jews” (Matt. ii. 1-6). The last two 
chapters form the third portion. They are 
filled with God’s visitation for the sins of 
the people, and yet in the midst of threat¬ 
ening, mercy and love and forgiveness are 
promised. Its last verse is taken up as ful¬ 
filled triumphantly in the birth of Christ. 
“ Thou will perform the truth to Jacob and 
the mercy to Abraham which Thou hast 
sworn unto our fathers from the days of 
old,” was incorporated by Zacharias into his 
hymn upon the birth of his son, St. John. 
The love of his people and his grief at what 
will befall them, his energetic warnings 
of the sins of Judah and of Israel, and above 
all his clear prophecies upon our Lord, 
which the chief priests and the scribes them¬ 
selves quoted, make him one of the most 
notable of the Minor Prophets. 

Michael, St. The name of one of the 
Archangels. In Daniel (x. and xii. 1) he is 
called a chief prince of the people. In Jude 
he is called the Archangel. He is the war¬ 
rior prince of the heavenly host; the 
prince warring for the people of God ; the 
caster out of Satan and his angels from 
heaven, yet not arrogating any power to 
himself. When contending with the devil 
he disputed about the body of Moses, durst 
not bring against him a railing accusation, 
but said, “ The Lord rebuke thee” (compare 
the passage in Zechariah (iii. 1), where the 
“ Angel of Jehovah” said unto Satan, “Je¬ 
hovah rebuke thee, O Satan”). The Rabbins 
invented many tales about tne Archangel, 
which, however, are but capricious inven¬ 
tions built on perhaps single words in Holy 
Scripture, and frequently not even on so 
slight a foundation. God’s use, in His pur¬ 
poses, of angelic ministrations in their won¬ 
drous orders is commemorated in the festival 
of St. Michael and all angels on Septem¬ 
ber 29. 

Michigan. As Michigan was originally 
a part of the French province of Canada, 
there were no English settlers before the 
conquest of 1765 a.d. Even after that date 
English inhabitants were few, and many of 
them married into French families. Church 
of England services were held in the Brit¬ 
ish garrison, but so far as certain knowledge 
extends, only one regular chaplain visited 
Detroit during the British rule. “ It ap¬ 
pears that the Rev. Chaplain Turring, of 
the Fifty-third Regiment, performed the 
marriage ceremony for Dr. George Chris¬ 
tian Anthon in 1770 a.d., the father of the 




MICHIGAN 


470 


MICHIGAN 


distinguished brothers, Henry, John, and 
Charles.” 

The commanding officer and the surgeon 
acted as chaplains when there was no clergy¬ 
man. During the British occupation, which 
ended in 1796 a.d., the services were mostly 
by lay-readers, who were officers. Towards 
the end of the Revolutionary war the excel¬ 
lent David Zeisberger and other Moravian 
clergy established a colony about twenty-five 
miles from Detroit, near Mount Clemens, 
“ and Zeisberger officiated occasionally at 
Detroit. They left Michigan in 1785 a.d. 
Thereafter there was no resident Episcopal 
clergyman for a long time, but Rev. Rich¬ 
ard Pollard, an English missionary of the 
venerable Society for the Propagation of 
the Gospel in Foreign Parts, came to West¬ 
ern Canada, and frequently officiated in De¬ 
troit. Lay-reading seems to have been con¬ 
ducted with some regularity, chiefly by Dr. 
Wm. McDowell Scott, up to the war of 
1812 a.d. In 1821 a.d. , Rev. Alanson W. 
Welton, who had been a missionary in 
Western New York under Bishop Hobart, 
came to Detroit as a teacher, and officiated 
for a time. He died within a year of his 
arrival. At this time Michigan included 
Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota.” 

Through the instrumentality of Bishop 
Hobart, the Church Missionary Society ap¬ 
pointed Rev. Richard F. Cadle to the work 
in Detroit. He was a man of learning and 
piety and meekness, and of a conciliating 
temper. He at once drew to him the sym¬ 
pathies of “ the feeble band of Church¬ 
men.” He was twelve days in going from 
New York to Detroit. He found three or 
four communicants and about forty persons 
inclined towards the Church. A small stone 
building, used as an Indian council-house, 
and for the courts and public meetings, was 
the place of service, being cleaned up on 
Saturday nights. Here was the germ of the 
Church in Michigan from which so many 
strong parishes have sprifng. Now there 
are six Dioceses in the Territory then known 
as Michigan. Mr. Cadle’s first missionary 
report was made in July, 1824 a.d. In De¬ 
cember of that year the three communicants 
had increased to nine. In November of 
this year St. Paul’s Parish was organized, 
and Mr. Cadle was chosen rector ; the salary 
was one hundred and fifty dollars,—the Mis¬ 
sionary Board added the same sum. In 
1826 a.d. the worshipers had grown in num¬ 
bers to sixty, and the communicants to 
twenty. In 1827 a.d. there is a notice of a 
Sunday-school with three teachers and 
twenty pupils. It was determined to build 
a church, and aid was asked from the East. 
A brick building, forty by sixty feet, “ was, 
after much tribulation, completed.” The 
building was afterwards improved in 1834 
a.d., under the supervision of Judge Elliott, 
and an addition was made to it, and a tower 
built. Bishop Hobart, in 1827 a.d., laid the 
corner-stone and confirmed a large class. 
The next year he consecrated the building. 


The history of one such parish is the his¬ 
tory of many. The early missionaries in 
Michigan lacked the aids to travel which 
now abound. St. Andrew’s, Ann Arbor, 
was incorporated in 1824 a.d. by Rev. Mr. 
Cadle. The point is now important as the 
seat of a University. St. John’s, Troy, was 
incorporated in 1829 a.d. by Mr. Cadle, 
also the Church in Green Bay, Wisconsin, 
where he had an Indian Mission. We can¬ 
not leave this pioneer missionary without a 
further notice. He toiled faithfully to the 
last. He died in 1858 a.d., while rector of 
St. Luke’s Church, Seaford, Delaware, hav¬ 
ing worked on in illness. Bishop Lee styles 
him “the beloved and venerated Cadle,” 
and “ an earnest minister of Christ.” 

St. Luke’s, Ypsilanti, was incorporated in 
1830 a.d. , by Rev. Silas C. Freeman ; Trin¬ 
ity, Monroe, in 1831 a.d., by Rev. Richard 
Bury ; and St. Peter’s, Tecumseh, in 1832 
a.d., by Rev. Silas C. Freeman. 

On September 10, 1832 a.d., delegates met 
at Detroit from Detroit, Monroe, Dexter, 
Ypsilanti, Tecumseh, and Troy, and organ¬ 
ized a Diocese. Michigan Territory then 
extended from the Canada line to the Mis¬ 
sissippi River. Rev. Richard Bury, rector 
of St. Paul’s, Detroit, was one of the lead¬ 
ers in this action. He lived long to see the 
fruit of his work. At the time of this Con¬ 
vention, Bishop P. Chase lived in the south¬ 
ern part ofMichigan Territory, and “atand 
near Green Bay were Rev. Mr. Cadle, Rev. 
Daniel L. Brown, and Rev. Eleazer Wil¬ 
liams. Mr. Cadle endeavored to get dele¬ 
gates sent by his vestry, but the time was 
too short to convene them before the steamer 
left.” Mr. Bury was a delegate to the Gen¬ 
eral Convention, and was instrumental in 
securing the admission of the Diocese of 
Michigan. The Constitution provided, at 
that time, only for State Conventions. As 
Michigan was a Territory, one committee 
disagreed as to its admission, a second 
viewed the matter more favorably. Of this 
subject Judge Campbell gives the following 
explanation : “ The treaty being within the 
articles of compact contained in the ordi¬ 
nance of 1787 a.d. (passed before the adop¬ 
tion of the United States Constitution) was 
considered by jurists as having an absolute 
right to become a State on attaining a cer¬ 
tain amount of population, and the analogy 
was therefore closer than it might have been 
otherwise to a State of the Union.” 

A Standing Committee was elected. The 
Rev. Mr. Bury, Rev. Silas C. Freeman, and 
Rev. John O’Brien were the clerical mem¬ 
bers ; and Messrs. Henry Whiting, Elon 
Farnsworth, Henry M. Campbell, Charles 
C. Trowbridge, and Seneca Allen the lay 
members. Mr. Trowbridge, the last sur¬ 
vivor, was re-elected every year until 1883 
a.d. , when he died. 

The Diocese the year after its formation 
placed itself under the spiritual jurisdiction 
of Bishop Mcllvaine, of Ohio, and in May 
1834 a.d., he made visitations in Detroit 




MICHIGAN 


471 


MICHIGAN 


Tecumseh, and Monroe, “confirming the 
churches.” Sickness prevented him from 
visiting Green Bay (now in Wisconsin), as 
he had intended. He presided in the Con¬ 
vention at Monroe, and urged the Diocese 
to choose a Bishop. In the next year the 
Convention at Tecumseh elected Rev. Dr. 
H. J. Whitehouse, of Rochester, N. Y. 
(afterward Bishop of Illinois). He declined 
to accept the election. At the election there 
were but six Presbyters in the Diocese, the 
minimum number for such a purpose; one 
afterward withdrew ; but the General Con¬ 
vention, by a Canon, authorized the House 
of Bishops, in such an emergency, to elect a 
Bishop upon the request of a Diocese. In 
1836 a.d., by this arrangement, Rev. Samuel 
A. McCoskry, D.D., was consecrated as 
Bishop. The election of Bishop McCoskry 
was Bishop White’s last official act. It was 
understood that the Bishop could be sup¬ 
ported only by being rector of St. Paul’s, 
Detroit, but neither parish nor Diocese nom¬ 
inated or suggested who should be Bishop. 

The new Bishop entered on his work at a 
period when fearful financial difficulties were 
about to afflict the country at large. Specu¬ 
lation had affected even the wise men and 
professional and business leaders. Western 
land ventures were rife, and New York and 
New England were interested in them. The 
Michigan people felt wealthy, but it was a 
paper wealth, and would soon flee away. 
St. Paul’s Parish relied on annual subscrip¬ 
tions. The Bishop arrived in 1836 a.d. He 
brought with him two missionaries, Rev. 
Samuel Marks and Rev. Henry F. White- 
side. The Bishop, accompanied by Mr. 
Trowbridge, a lay member of the Standing 
Committee, and warden of St. Paul’s, De¬ 
troit, visited the populated part of his Diocese, 
“traveling about five hundred miles, over 
horrid roads, passing several weeks, preach¬ 
ing every day or evening, in the small 
school-houses, reading prayers by the light 
of a tallow dip, sometimes held by a village 
magnate.” 

An Episcopal Fund was begun, founded 
on profits of uncertain ventures. 

In 1837 a.d. the revulsion came. Fail¬ 
ures were incessant throughout the whole 
country. Specie payments were suspended ; 
distress followed and continued till 1844 
a.d. It was feared that the clergy would 
be forced to give up their work, but their 
“ courage and devotion” endured the test, 
and the noble men remained, though it was 
nearly ten years before there was any con¬ 
siderable addition to the number of the 
clergy. All Church enterprises languished. 
An effort to establish a Diocesan paper 
failed. 

The Episcopal Fund, valued at $8000 in 
1838 a.d. , came to nothing. 

A charter was, at a later period, obtained 
ty Rev. Dr. F. H. Cuming for a Church 
college to be located at Grand Rapids, and 
to be called St. Mark’s. In 1850 a.d. it 
was opened under the presidency of Rev. 


Charles C. Taylor, and one hundred and 
ninety pupils attended, but the effort was 
abandoned. There were other similar at¬ 
tempts and similar failures. 

In 1874 a.d. the division of the Diocese 
was effected, and the once feeble Church be¬ 
came two bands. 

The indefatigable labors of the clergy re¬ 
sulted in gradual Church growth. The com¬ 
municants increased one-third, the Sunday- 
schools four-tenths. 

In 1878 a.d. , Bishop McCoskry resigned 
his jurisdiction. 

In 1879 a.d. , Rev. Dr. Samuel Smith Har¬ 
ris, Rector of St. James’ Church, Chicago, 
was elected Bishop. His acceptance was re¬ 
ceived with joy, and his work has been suc¬ 
cessful. Among the foreign population pour¬ 
ing into his Diocese “ he has found a goodly 
portion who are attached to this household of 
faith.” New churches and chapels have 
been consecrated, and others are being 
erected; from the older parishes the stigma 
of Church debt has been removed ; every¬ 
thing betokens thorough work.” The Epis¬ 
copal Fund has been increased from $32,000 
to $86,500, “ besides the Episcopal residence, 
valued at $20,000. Three years were allotted 
to the committee in which to obtain this in¬ 
crease. It was perfected in six weeks.” 

Diocesan Missions early engaged the at¬ 
tention of the Diocese. In 1850 a.d. the 
system of annual pledges from parishes and 
individuals was adopted. The collections 
for Diocesan Missions under this system, 
“ from 1851 to 1874 a.d. inclusive, the year 
of the division, amounted to $64,103.82 ; 
from 1874 to 1883 a.d. inclusive, $31,217.47 ; 
for Domestic and Foreign Missions, 1857 to 
1874 a.d. , $37,157.84 ; 1875 to 1883 a.d. in¬ 
clusive, $28,766.78.” 

From 1861 to 1883 a.d. inclusive, “ the 
contributions for church building, aid to 
feeble churches, alms for the poor, help to 
aged and infirm clergymen, St. Luke’s Hos¬ 
pital and Church Home, Society for the In¬ 
crease of the Ministry, Indian and Freed- 
men’s Missions, excluding missions and 
parish expenses, were $1,930,771.02.” The 
clergy in 1883 a.d. numbered 66, lay-read¬ 
ers 25, communicants 8472, Sunday-school 
teachers and officers 943, scholars 8249; 
value of church property, $1,230,000; total 
number of church sittings, 23,000, about 
one-half of which are free. There are com¬ 
pleted edifices at seventy-nine points, with 
appended chapels to several of them. There 
are twenty-three rectories.” 

“ The revenue from the Episcopal Funds is 
supplemented by annual assessments upon 
the parishes to make up the yearly expenses 
of the Diocese. Annual collections are made 
for the Fund for the Relief of Aged and 
Infirm Clergymen, and the Widows of De¬ 
ceased Clergymen. This fund, in the old 
Diocese, is now $7000, and is constantly in¬ 
creasing.” 

The principal Diocesan institution is the 
Church Association, a corporation including 




MILITANT 


472 


MILLENNIUM 


leading laymen of different parishes. It 
holds and executes trusts, titles to land, for 
church sites and bequests. It had excellent 
legal aid in its formation, and has received 
grants of land, and been nominated trustee 
in wills. “It has been instrumental in 
building several churches and chapels.” “ It 
acts from love to souls. No salaries or fees 
are paid to any of its officers.” 

St. Luke’s Hospital and Church Home, 
Detroit, is supported by the Detroit parishes. 
It is not a Diocesan institution. It can 
accommodate forty patients and aged infirm 
people; but large additions are in con¬ 
templation in the near future. It owns ten 
acres of ground. “ A chapel on the grounds 
in memory of Mrs. Catherine W. S. Trow¬ 
bridge, was consecrated on the 27th of Feb¬ 
ruary, 1881 a.d.” Mr. Trowbridge closes the 
sketch, from which these details are drawn, 
in these words : “ Summing up the facts here 
briefly related, and looking back to July, 
1824 a.d. , when the meek Cadle gave the 
bread of life to three or four communicants; 
to the little flock of forty hearers, some of 
whom probably were curious to know ‘ what 
this babbler would say;’ to the dirty little 
Indian council-house; to the salary of one 
hundred and fifty dollars ; to 1827 a.d., and 
the Sunday-school of three teachers and 
twenty pupils, ought not the members of 
this branch of Christ’s earthly kingdom 
to bow with humble gratitude, and to show 
forth their thankfulness by renewed efforts 
to extend that kingdom ?” The faithful lay¬ 
man who wrote these words, and the devoted 
clergyman whom he describes, rest together 
in the Paradise of Cod, and rejoice together 
that they were permitted to work for Christ 
in the wilds of Michigan. 

The sketch of Michigan owes its value 
to the pamphlet history of the Diocese, pre¬ 
pared by the late Hon. C. C. Trowbridge 
for the Michigan Pioneer Collection, vol. 
iii., with'annotations kindly furnished by 
Judge Campbell. 

Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Militant. The Church as the army of 
Christ here on earth is called the Church 
Militant. Its true mission is to be aggres¬ 
sive, or rather progressive in fulfilling the 
work committed to it. Its members must 
not only war against the world, the flesh, 
and the devil for their own spiritual life, 
but they must contend earnestly for the 
faith once committed to the saints, speaking 
the truth in love, pushing on all organized 
labor, aiding in sustaining Mission work, 
whenever possible sharing in the active 
work, as in Vestries, in Guilds, Brother¬ 
hoods, Sunday-schools, and other such works. 
Each member of the Church is able to take 
his place in the ranks as a faithful soldier, 
and is vowed to do all this faithfully, with¬ 
out fear, without shame. But as a body 
the Church must be Militant or it is dead. 
It must use the whole armor of God, and 
every weapon of holy warfare which the 
Captain has furnished that he may fulfill 


His commission. To keep this important 
fact ever before us is a chief use of the 
bidding sentence at the head of that Prayer 
in the Communion Service. 

Millennium. The thousand years’ reign 
of Christ upon the earth (Rev. xx. 6, 7). 
The views and interpretations upon this 
most difficult prophecy are as various and 
numerous as there are commentators to pen 
them. It is an intricate and obscure pas¬ 
sage, and while it is revealed for a purpose, it 
will be for the greater confirmation of the 
Faithful in the time of future trial than for 
any present use, but it will be ever a subject 
of deepest interest, as all prophecy must be, 
and especially that which relates to the future 
of the Christian religion. In the special 
interpretation of the prophecy we find that 
there are two schools, the one accepting lit¬ 
erally the Presence of our Lord, however 
obscured, the other giving it a mystical in¬ 
terpretation. The first class of interpreters 
also receive literally the preceding “first 
resurrection.” The second class apply this to 
the spiritual resurrection (St. John v. 24, 25). 

Vagaries which sprang up in the Church 
from the introduction of Judaic notions, led 
to a misapplication of the passage in the Rev¬ 
elation, and so to a depreciation of the book 
itself, and for a while it was undeservedly 
classed among the doubtful books. But 
when the grotesque notions of the Chiliasts 
lost their influence in the Church the Reve¬ 
lation was restored to its true place in the as 
yet undefined Canon. ( Vide Canon of Scrip¬ 
ture.) These gross views passed into the 
doctrinal schemes of several heretical bodies, 
as the Montanists or Marcionites, but a far 
more refined and intellectual view was cur¬ 
rent among some of the Fathers of the 
earlier Church. Still, it did not come promi¬ 
nently forward in public instruction, though 
there were always many earnest men who 
held and often urged a realistic explanation, 
without countenancing any of the whimsi¬ 
cal deductions formerly attached to it. But 
the Anabaptists (1530 a.d.) by their vile and 
abominable excesses prevented any cool dis¬ 
cussions upon the doctrine. They produced 
such a reaction that the Augustan Confes¬ 
sion contained an Anathema against it. 
It, however, appears in the Catechism Ed¬ 
ward VI. (Liturgies, Parker Society) pub¬ 
lished in 1553 a.d. The doctrine was put 
forward a few years ago in this country 
and gained at one time a large adherence, 
since its propagators set a time for its fulfill¬ 
ment, which date is now past. But it is 
fading away, and those who hold it do so 
rather as adhering to the organization than 
from the cause which first gathered them 
together, the certainty of a fixed date for its 
fulfillment. The late Dean Alford, in his Com¬ 
mentary, records his deliberate acceptance 
of a literal fulfillment. “If the first resur¬ 
rection is spiritual then so is the second; . . . 
but if the second be literal then so is the 
first, which in common with the whole 
Primitive Church, and many of the best 







MINNESOTA 


473 


MINNESOTA 


modern expositors, I do maintain and re¬ 
ceive as an article of faith and hope.” 
(Note to Rev. xx. 4-6.) 

Minnesota, History of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church in. The territory in¬ 
cluded in the Diocese of Minnesota origi¬ 
nally formed a part of the missionary juris¬ 
diction of the Rt. Rev. Jackson Kemper, 
D.D., Missionary Bishop of the Northwest. 
In the year 1859 a.d. the present Bishop, 
the Rt. Rev. Henry Benjamin Whipple, 
D.D., was elected and entered upon the 
duties of his office. 

The first clergyman of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church in Minnesota of whom 
we have any record was the Rev. E. G. 
Gear, D.D., who was appointed Chaplain at 
Fort Snelling in 1839 a.d. He also estab¬ 
lished the services of the Episcopal Church 
in St. Paul at an early day. 

In 1850 a.d. the Rev. Messrs. J. Lloyd 
Breck, Timothy Wilcoxson, and J. Austen 
Merrick established an Associate Mission 
at St. Paul for missionary and educational 
work. The Mission opened a school and 
had in training one candidate for the minis¬ 
try. The clergy held services in the differ¬ 
ent settlements of the Territory, extending 
their labors as far as La Crosse in Wis¬ 
consin. 

Soon after their arrival the corner-stone 
of Christ Church, St. Paul, was laid, and 
before the close of the year another church 
edifice was begun at the Falls of St. An¬ 
thony. The Mission had in view theological 
training, church building, the endowment 
of the Episcopate, the purchase of land for 
parish glebes, and mission buildings wher¬ 
ever needed. The same year the lands now 
held in trust by the corporation organized 
in 1857 a.d., and known as the Minnesota 
Church Foundation, were purchased. The 
present value of this property is $50,000. 

The record of the first year’s work shows 
60 baptisms and 8000 miles traveled by the 
clergy, mostly on foot. Bishop Kemper 
visited 14 stations in charge of the Mission 
and consecrated Christ Church, St. Paul. 
Thirteen persons were confirmed at this 
visitation. The number of communicants 
in St. Paul in 1852 a.d. was 26. Offerings 
the first year, $600. At the close of the year 
1852 a.d. there were three churches,—one 
at St. Paul, and one at St. Anthony Falls 
and Stillwater. 

In the year 1852 a.d., application having 
been made by the Chippewas for a teacher, 
a mission was established by Dr. Breck at 
Gull Lake, which was also greatly aided by 
the Rev. Solon W. Manney, who had lately 
been appointed Chaplain at Fort Ripley. 
A church was soon built, and the Indians 
began to adopt the habits of civilized life. 
In 1853 a.d. another mission was begun at 
Leech Lake. In 1854 a.d. over 30 Indians 
had been received into the Christian fold. 
Three Indians and one white youth were 
in training for the ministry. The work 
continued to prosper until the middle of 


1857 a.d. , when the Indians at Leech Lake, 
in consequence of the sale of whisky, became 
hostile, and the missionaries were obliged to 
flee for safety. For a time the work was 
abandoned. More than 100 Indians had 
been baptized and 22 prepared for confirma¬ 
tion, 400 were working during some part of 
the year, and an offering had been made by 
them for theological training at Nashota, 
Wis., of $59.90. Dr. Breck had received 
application for a teacher from seven differ¬ 
ent stations. 

The discouraging aspect of the Indian 
field turned the attention of Dr. Breck to 
the educational work, for which more es¬ 
pecially he had come to Minnesota. His 
associate, however, the Rev. E. Steele Peake, 
and Enmegahbowh resumed the work under 
great discouragements. After his consecra¬ 
tion in 1859 a.d., Bishop Whipple became 
warmly interested in the welfare of the In¬ 
dians. By his untiring efforts the work re¬ 
vived. At present (1883 a.d.) there are 1500 
Indians at White Earth living as civilized 
men ; a beautiful church has been erected 
this year with 600 sittings, and over 200 
communicants in charge of two Indian 
clergymen. There are two Indian churches 
at White Rice River, two at Red Lake, one 
at Leech Lake, in charge of native pastors, 
with from 20 to 60 communicants each. 
There is a hospital with 20 beds in charge 
of a government physician. The entire 
work is under the superintendence of Rev. 
J. A. Gilfillan. 

In 1856 a.d. the Rev. D. B. Knicker- 
backer, D.D., began to hold services in Min¬ 
neapolis, in Gethsemane, the mother-parish 
of the city. By his labors, aided by the 
generous gifts and co-operation of the laity, 
the Church has rapidly increased in num¬ 
bers. In 1883 a.d. there were nine church 
edifices. 

In 1857 a.d., Messrs. Breck and Manney 
selected Faribault as the location of a school, 
which was opened the following year by Dr. 
Breck and the Rev. D. P. Sanford, D.D. 
Three candidates for the ministry and three 
postulants were connected with the Mission. 
This was a continuation of the Associate 
Mission founded by Dr. Breck at St. Paul 
in 1850 a.d., and included the mission to 
the Chippewas. It was supported by con¬ 
tributions through the correspondence of 
Dr. Breck. 

In 1857 a.d. a Primary Convention was 
held in St. Paul, at which a Constitution 
and Canons were adopted. Fifteen clergy 
besides Bishop Kemper were present. 

At the First Annual Convention, in 1858 
a.d., the number of clergy belonging to the 
Diocese was 22. There were 12 parishes, be¬ 
sides mission stations. This year St. Paul’s 
Parish began to worship in their new church. 
This parish was founded by Rev. A. B. 
Paterson, D.D., and has been distinguished 
for its large charities. 

In 1859 a.d. the Rev. H. B. Whipple was 
elected Bishop of the Diocese, and conse- 





MINNESOTA 


474 


MIRACLES 


crated at Richmond, Va., October 13, follow¬ 
ing. In the spring of 1860 a.d. he decided 
to make Faribault the Episcopal residence, 
where Drs. Breck and Manney were in 
charge of the work of the Associate Mis- 
sion. 

The following decade saw a large growth 
in Church work in the rural districts. In 
1867 a. i). there were 37 clergy, 17 candi¬ 
dates for holy orders, 1720 communicants, 
and 396 confirmations. A large number of 
stations were cared for. The parishes in St. 
Paul, Minneapolis, and Red Wing were cen¬ 
tres of wide influence. The latter, under the 
charge of Rev. E. R. Welles, D.D., the pres¬ 
ent Bishop ot Wisconsin, had one Deacon 
besides lay-helpers, a parish school, and 
several stations in the country, where 
regular services were maintained by the 
Rector and his assistants. 

In the year 1860 a.d. a Mission was begun 
by the Rev. S. D. Hinman at the Red 
Wood Agency, among the Sioux, which 
prospered until the outbreak in 1862 a.d. 
Numbers of the Christian Indians were 
loyal to the whites. This Mission was re¬ 
moved in 1867 a.d. to the missionary juris¬ 
diction of Nebraska. 

In the second decade of Bishop Whipple’s 
Episcopate the schools at Faribault reached 
their present flourishing condition. By his 
efforts Shattuck School, named in honor of 
Dr. George C. Shattuck, of Boston, the 
Seabury Divinity School, and St. Mary’s 
Hall have been provided with commodious 
buildings. The Divinity School has 8 pro¬ 
fessors, 25 students, 56 Alumni, and a library 
of 5000 volumes. Shattuck School, a mili¬ 
tary school for boys, is the outgrowth of the 
Parish School opened by Dr. Breck in 1858 
a.d. It has accommodations for one hun¬ 
dred and twelve boarding pupils, with nine 
teachers.. The present Rector, Rev. James 
Dobbin, succeeded Dr. Breck on his retiring 
from the Mission in 1867 a.d. St. Mary’s 
Hall, a boarding-school for young ladies, 
was opened by the Bishop in 1866 a.d. It 
has accommodations for one hundred board¬ 
ers. The first principal was Miss S. P. Dar¬ 
lington. The Cathedral at Faribault has 
seven hundred sittings, and is held in trust by 
the Bishop. Seabury Mission, incorporated 
in 1860 a.d. , is under the care of the Bishop, 
and is occupied by the schools and parish 
for divine service. 

Other schools under the auspices of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church are the Bishop 
Whipple School at Moorhead, founded by 
the Rev. T. E. Dickey in 1882 a.d., with 
accommodations for ninety boarders, and 
St. Catherine’s School, for young ladies, at 
St. Paul, of which Rev. E. S. Thomas is 
Rector. 

Eleemosynary institutions are located as 
follows: St. Barnabas’ Hospital at Minne¬ 
apolis, with accommodations for fifty pa¬ 
tients ; the Sheltering Arms, an orphanage, 
with accommodations for fifty children, 
also in Minneapolis; there is a hospital in 


St. Paul, and also one at Duluth, with fifty 
beds. 


Table showing the Growth of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church in Minnesota. 


Date. 


S> 


1850.... 

ISfiO 

17 

y 500 

4 

20 

1 

5 

3 . 

583 . 


1870. 

.... 45 


4i 

12 

2,533 7,575 

$65,709 

1880.... 

. 85 

13,412 

73 

12 

4,836 14,165 

80,149 

1883. 


14,000 

79 

11 

5,021 16,379 

137,558 



Rev. George C. Tanner. 


Miracles. The Almighty, in His dealings 
with men, has usually chosen to act through 
certain agencies, and upon certain princi¬ 
ples which He has laid down. When these 
have been inadequate to produce special 
desired results, He has brought in, for the 
occasion, some power or agency, unexerted, 
and, in His ordinary government of us, 
needless, and yet perfectly in harmony with 
all previously ordained laws. A miracle is 
not a violation of nature ; it its a special ex¬ 
ercise of power above and beyond nature. 
If God controls the world at all, He can, as 
in the whole history of the Jewish nation, 
bring in any number of agencies otherwise 
unknown to His creatures, whenever He 
judges best. But revelation does not de¬ 
mand of us belief of Divine interposition in 
every strange circumstance. Misunder¬ 
standing of Scripture has resulted from 
magnifying into miracles many events 
only a little out of the order of daily 
occurrence. But it is weak to underrate 
miracles because of such mistaken zeal ; be¬ 
cause we cannot comprehend them ; or be¬ 
cause they are not accomplished under those 
laws which, on account of their regularity, 
we claim to understand. What we call the 
laws of nature are, for us, only our deduc¬ 
tions from our observations of the regularity 
with which the God of nature continues 
His unwearied support of what He has 
made. And until we know all of those 
laws, and comprehend them fully, we can¬ 
not assume that that which occurs occasion¬ 
ally is any contradiction of what occurs 
every day. The Supreme Maker has aright 
to exert special powers, at times, in His own 
world; and why should He not alter what 
we call the course of nature, or intensify the 
power which He usually exerts, as well as 
retain His power always in equal measure? 
And as He rules the moral as well as the 
physical world, and cares more for its moral 
good than for its mere physical order, it is 
certain that the laws of nature may well 
yield occasionally, at His will, to laws 
governing the moral world. So far from 
there being anything contradictory in this, 
with a God so accurate and beneficent, ex¬ 
traordinary Divine interpositions are only 
what a reasonable mind might expect ; and 
none should be so credulous as to suppose 
that the vast universe could go on without 
the intervention of its all-wise Creator, or 
















MIRACLES 


475 


MIRACLES 


be so foolish as to attempt to explain mir¬ 
acles, so as to make them comprehensible by 
such limited capacities as ours, or corre¬ 
spondent with ordinary laws ; for this virtu¬ 
ally disposes of the miracle altogether. 
Miracles have been accorded to us to solve 
all doubts respecting the authority of the 
Bible. They prove its inspiration. “ As 
the existence of power is demonstrated by 
its operations, so the possession of surpernat- 
ural knowledge is proved by supernatural 
works , or miracles.” 

Dr. Kitto distinguishes the Old Testament 
miracles as of three classes : 1. Miracles of 
Fact , events different from the ordinary 
course of nature, as dividing the sea, raising 
the dead, and causing the shadow to go 
back. 2. Miracles of Time , or Prophecy- 
Miracles , events foretold as to occur at a 
particular time, and which did accordingly 
occur. 3. Miracles of Circumstance , or the 
application of ordinary circumstances to 
bring about ends so special and determinate 
as to manifest Divine interposition. In the 
Old Testament we may recognize as mir¬ 
acles all those wonders wherein the circum¬ 
stances clearly indicate that a miracle was 
necessary,— i.e., when natural agencies, 
through which God generally chooses to 
act, were inadequate to produce His special 
required* end. Many were wrought to 
typify the miraculous advent of the promised 
Redeemer, or some circumstance connected 
with it. The magicians of Egypt wrought 
“ enchantments,” but with the bold design 
of retarding truth ; and these bore the same 
relation to miracles as does the counterfeit 
to the coin. . Their only value is to prove 
the fact that there were real miracles, which 
otherwise they could not have attempted to 
counterfeit. 

In the New Testament we are distinctly 
told that Christ wrought miracles and gave 
His disciples power to do so. Their design 
was both to mark Divine interposition in 
the affairs of men, and, among extraordi¬ 
nary difficulties, to establish the all-essential 
claims of the world’s Redeemer. Possessing 
requisite characters to indicate their truth, 
we accept them as manifesting Him as in¬ 
deed the long prophesied Messiah. The 
six criteria of Horne (Introduction, ch. iv. 
sec. 2) to test a miracle apply to His. 
These, condensed, are: 1. A fact given as 
miraculous should have an important de¬ 
sign worthy of its author. 2. It must be 
instantaneously and publicly performed. 3. 
It must be such that men can judge of it. 

4. It must be independent of second causes. 

5. Memorials and observances must be per¬ 
formed in memory of it. 6. These must 
have been instituted at the time when it 
took place, and never have been interrupted. 
The miracles of Christ and of those whom 
He empowered combined all these criteria, 
and were all wrought with one kind, noble 
design. Unlike the imitations of Simon 
Magus, to deceive, or those of pagan pre¬ 
tenders, merely to astonish or uphold super¬ 


stition, they were all to urge a helpful and 
elevating doctrine. Each was “in small, 
and upon one side or another, a partial and 
transient realization of the great work for 
which He came, that in the end He might 
accomplish it perfectly and forever.” Each 
was part of His redemptive work, not a 
“ gratuitous and barren wonder,” but at 
once an illustration and argument to receive 
that spiritual benefit of which the outward 
kind act was but a figure. Leprosy was the 
type of sin, and His miraculous cure of it 
taught Christ’s power and readiness to 
cleanse from sin. Restored eyesight en¬ 
forced the need of help from Him who 
“ lighteth every man that cometh into the 
world,” if they would see God. Raising 
from the dead taught a great spiritual and 
bodily redemption. And so each miracle 
was both a temporal mercy and an illustra¬ 
tion of spiritual succor. 

Even the Jews of His time, or the heathen, 
never denied the reality of Christ’s mira¬ 
cles. Jews, in malignity, attributed them 
to the supernatural power of the evil one, 
and reproached Him with inability to save 
Himself although confessing that He had 
power to save others. And the heathen at¬ 
tributed them to magic, but freely admitted 
their reality. But, no matter to what cause 
all might assign them, their consent to their 
reality was the involuntary confession of 
enemies of their supernatural origin. 

The crowning miracle of all was Christ’s 
Resurrection. Upon the truth of that de¬ 
pends the whole Christian faith, with all its 
hopes, and promises. The Christian who 
questions miracles casts a doubt upon this 
miracle ; and if he have a flaw in his faith in 
this, he surrenders all hope of rescue from 
the condition of condemnation into which 
his natural birth brought him. * 1 If Christ 
be not raised, ... ye are yet in yo.ur sins” 
(1 Cor. xv. 17). And the reason is, that 
Christ founded everything upon this. 
Upon no prediction did he lay such stress. 
Disciples and enemies alike were told to 
look for it. It was as if He had said, “ I 
am the long-promised Divine Messiah. I 
will pay the price of men’s sins with my 
life and save them ; and, if I am what I 
claim to be, then look, upon the third day 
after my death, and you will see that I have 
done what I say that I can and will do, and 
will raise myself from death ; and this will 
be to you my overwhelming proof of the 
truth of all that I have promised, for only 
God could work such a miracle, and if I am 
God, then it must be beyond all question 
that everything that I have told you that I 
would do for you can only he truth.” So 
apprehensive were His enemies lest men be 
persuaded that He would accomplish this 
most important and conclusive miracle, 
which would be indeed the utter conquest 
over them, that they used every possible 
means to prevent it, and even prepared a 
falsehood beforehand to hinder men from 
giving credit to it when it should take place. 





MIRACLES 


476 


MISSION 


And so necessary was this miracle for the 
salvation of men, that ten times did Jesus 
supply evidence of its achievement, five 
hundred persons at one time seeing Him, of 
whom the greater number were alive to cor¬ 
roborate the accounts of it when published 
to the world, or deny or question it, had it 
not taken place. 

And this Resurrection-miracle bears the 
six tests proposed to prove all miracles : 1. 
Its important design—our eternal happi¬ 
ness and the praise of the Eternal Trinity— 
is worthy of its merciful and loving Author. 
2. It was instantaneously performed, and 
was publicly proved. 3. Men—even a 
doubting Apostle and enemies—had ample 
opportunities to judge of it; and confessed, 
or dared not attempt to controvert it. 4. It 
was wholly independent of second causes, as 
He had power not only to lay down His life, 
but proved His own power to take it again 
(St. John x. 18). 5. Memorials and observ¬ 

ances of it have been continued to the present 
day. 6. And these were instituted at the 
very time, Easter becoming early an impor¬ 
tant day in the Church, which has continued 
to regard the day as “the queen of festivals,” 
the Resurrection being the corner-stone of 
the whole edifice, nations and generations 
hanging, as for life, upon that as their one 
hope of their own resurrection ; their only 
hope of rescue from death eternal; their one, 
only hope that soul and body may be re¬ 
deemed in heaven. 

If any is tempted from his steadfast faith 
in miracles by the subtle, plausible, stealthy 
propensity of the day to explain away # GoD’s 
power and His gracious will to interpose 
kindly in men’s affairs for their good, or 
would endeavor to drag these supernatural 
works within the little circle of weak human 
comprehension, let him remember that he 
belittles them to his peril. For, if there be 
an Almighty, He can work miracles ; if He 
be “ Love,” He will work them readily for 
those whom He loves ; if He has devised an 
all-wise plan for saving men, and gives proof 
to convince and win them, even such as the 
Resurrection of the Son of God, telling us 
that this is part, and the consummating part, 
of that plan, and as the first-fruits, the 
pledge of our eternal garnering, then woe to 
him who, Pharisee-like, is willing enough 
to be saved by a greater than his own human 
strength, but regards himself superior to all 
that is amazing in the amazing scheme, and 
keeps himself down within the government 
of mere nature’s laws, laws under which he 
was only born in sin and weakness, and 
which can do nothing to deliver him from 
death. Evil, brought into the world by a 
supernatural seducer, has been met by an 
infinite supernatural Power, and miracu¬ 
lously conquered. 

And, beyond the advantage to us, God 
may have many unknown designs for other 
portions of His great universe, in the mar¬ 
velous wonders which He has performed, 
and is daily performing. 


Authorities : Goodhugh and Taylor’s Pic¬ 
torial Dictionary of the Bible, Trench on 
Miracles, Kitto’s Palestine, Smith’s Dic¬ 
tionary of the Bible, Horne’s Introduction, 
Calmet’s Dictionary, etc. 

Rev. T. Gardiner Littell. 

Mission. The sending forth to preach 
the Gospel. As our Lord at the first sent 
forth the Apostles and the seventy, and dis¬ 
tinctly declared that His sending gave them 
power, and then after His resurrection gave 
them their commission as based on His own 
(“ As my Father hath sent Me, even so send 
I you”), the mission or the authority to 
preach, properly given, is essential to the 
validity of a ministry. It involves the right 
as well as the power. Power (or ability) to 
exercise Priestly duties and functions is in¬ 
herent in the office, but the field in which 
this power is to be wielded constitutes mis¬ 
sion. Our Lord sent the Apostles into all 
the world, but they parted the field between 
themselves at first on the broadest lines, as 
when St. Peter and St. Paul divided their 
jurisdictions into preaching, the one to the 
Circumcision, the other to the Uncircumcis¬ 
ion. And then St. Paul exercised his Apos¬ 
tolic authority by sending Titus to Crete, 
Timothy to Ephesus, and others of his com¬ 
panions on separate missionary expeditions, 
as Cresens to Galatia. When our present 
diocesan system was developed (Vide Dio¬ 
cese), mission meant jurisdiction over and 
in only that Diocese, and any Bishop who 
intruded became thereby, and so far, guilty 
of schismatical acts, for he had no mission 
therein. In a certain sense as depending 
upon Church enactment, mission is an eccle¬ 
siastical arrangement, but it really is much 
more than that, for it is based upon the Di¬ 
vine Law of order and harmonious work¬ 
ing in the Church ; “ for God is not the 
author of confusion, but of peace, as in all 
Churches of the Saints” (1 Cor. xiv. 33). 
For this reason no Bishop can be conse¬ 
crated as Bishop at large, as it were. He 
must have a field assigned him, and that 
field he must retain till wholly disabled 
or removed. Therefore the resignation of 
a Bishop must be reluctantly accepted, and 
only for good cause. From this it follows 
that mission cannot be conferred at will, but 
according to the fundamental law of the 
Church, and in consonance with Ecclesiasti¬ 
cal and Canon law. A consecration or an 
ordination, therefore, which does not include 
also a mission, must be irregular, though it 
may be in itself a valid consecration. But 
it is conferring a power and granting a com¬ 
mission without also granting the jurisdic¬ 
tion in which to use it, and therefore it con¬ 
tains an element of discord and so of schism. 

The recognition of this principle is con¬ 
tained clearly in five several places in the 
Gospels: (a) The appointed chief of the 
nation had a right to ask of St. John Bap¬ 
tist, “ Who art thou ? Art thou Elias ? Art 
thou that prophet ?” and in reply he gave 
his mission, “ I am the Voice of one crying 







MISSIONARY 


477 


MISSIONS 


in the wilderness.” His mission had been 
determined for him by the Holy Ghost 
speaking by Isaiah, (ft) Nicodemus acknowl¬ 
edged Christ's mission: “ Rabbi, we know 
that thou art a teacher come from Gob, for 
no man can do these miracles that thou doest 
except God be with him.” (c) The chief 
Priests had a right to ask Him, “ By what 
anthority doest thou these things, and who 
gave Thee this authority?” only they for¬ 
feited the right to a reply by the spirit in 
which they asked it. ( d ) Our Lord twice 
enforces this, first, “ Ye have not chosen Me, 
but I have chosen you, and ordained you that 
ye should go and bring forth fruit ;” (e) and, 
secondly, after the Resurrection it was form¬ 
ally conferred: “As My Father hath 
sent Me, even so send I you.” The Apos¬ 
tles recognized it by sending SS. Peter and 
John on a special mission to Samaria, and 
in the cases of SS. Paul and Barnabas. 

With reverence be it said, but Holy Scrip¬ 
ture shows to us these principles of mission 
and jurisdiction in the eternal counsels of 
the Trinity. Our Lord is the Apostle, 
sent with a special mission and a universal 
jurisdiction. The Holy Ghost is sent by 
our Lord, and is the ever-present Apostle, 
conferring Apostolic grace and mission upon 
His visible agents, and so for us having a 
special jurisdiction in the work of our sal¬ 
vation. 

Missionary. One sent upon a mission; 
a clergyman who is doing the work of an 
Evangelist in preaching the Gospel to men, 
whether in missionary work at home or 
abroad. 

Missions. The Church has never for¬ 
gotten her missionary character, but has at 
all times, with varying Zealand energy, car¬ 
ried on her work. From the first she has 
been mindful of her Lord’s command, and 
has gone out into all lands, so that now there 
are few places on the face of the earth where 
the Gospel either has not been preached or 
whither efforts are not in preparation to carry 
it. The following very compressed outline 
of her work from the earliest time can give 
but a faint idea of what has been done. 

From Jerusalem her work was borne 
to Samaria, and then the centre of mission¬ 
ary activity was transferred to Antioch. 
From this point the fervid zeal of St. Paul 
carried the Gospel into Asia Minor, and 
over into Macedonia, Thessaly, and Greece. 
The Gospel was preached and the Church 
established from Babylon on the Euphrates 
to Spain by the time of his martyrdom, and 
by that time, or very soon after, Africa, Gaul, 
and Britain had been pressed by the feet of 
Apostolic missionaries, or rather of Chris¬ 
tians who made this a necessary duty, for as 
yet there were no organized missionary 
efforts in the modern sense of the word, and 
indeed persecution would seriously interfere 
with the success of any such combined 
efforts. But even before peace came to the 
Church we find that Pantsenus-had been 
sent on a mission to India. Origen had 


done some mission work in Arabia. Fru- 
mentius was doing good work in Abyssinia. 
But soon after the Council of Nicsea, Ulphi- 
las, himself a Goth, set himself to work 
among his countrymen, translating the Gos¬ 
pels into their tongue, so that his praise is 
literally in the Gospels. Eusebius of Yer- 
celli, 370 a.d., made his Cathedral the centre 
of a wide mission work. But to St. Chrys¬ 
ostom is due the honor of organizing such 
work by starting a training school for Gothic 
missionaries, and, when in exile, soliciting 
funds for mission work. The example was 
not immediately followed, but the monastic 
institutions which were becoming popular 
were to become, after a season, centres of 
missionary work. The wars with the bar¬ 
baric invaders destroyed very much of the 
power to conduct mission work, and only 
here and there was it kept up. From the 
islet of Lerins (410 a.d.), in the roadstead of 
Toulon, the work went forth into southern 
Gaul. But the distractions of the succeed¬ 
ing age hindered again the work. It was 
taken up by strange hands. From the almost 
forgotten isle of Britain and Ireland there 
went forth men who had been providentially 
trained for the task. St. Patrick had estab¬ 
lished Christianity in Ireland and had given 
it an impulse which lasted for ages after. 
This zeal had produced many monks and 
ascetics, such as Columba, the Apostle to the 
Scots and Piets, Aidan, the Apostle to the 
Northumbrian Saxons, Columbanus, the 
Apostle to the Burgundians, Gallus to the 
Swiss, Killian to the Thuringians, Virgilius 
to the Carinthians, and many more, who 
flung themselves into the struggle with in¬ 
spired zeal and faith. But during the 
greater part of this era the Saxons were 
conquering England, and they at the first 
received the light of the Gospel, not from 
the British Christians they had cooped up 
in Wales, but from Augustine, the monk 
sent by Gregory the Great. His chief 
work, and that of his Latin followers, was 
to break the way, for nearly all the perma¬ 
nent work was accomplished by the Celtic 
and Welsh missionaries working from the 
north and west. The two lines of author- 
it} r met in the gentle St. Chad. But the 
Anglo-Saxons were themselves ready to 
plunge into the strife as soon as they had 
received the faith. Christianity, though 
dominant, had not fairly exterminated pa¬ 
ganism out of England before Wilfrid of 
York, wrecked on Friesland coasts, began 
to teach the men on the sea-coast. This 
was taken up by Willibrod. The brothers 
Hewald sealed their mission to the conti¬ 
nental Saxons with their blood. Swithbert 
and a goodly company toiled on the shores 
of the German Ocean and the Baltic, while 
soon after Winfrith, or Boniface, led the 
way for the conversion of the Germans. 
With only the barest necessaries, a staff, a 
scrip, and a leathern bottle, a case for his 
service books and vessels, ready to build a 
booth and sleep on the ground under it, 





MISSIONS 


478 


MISSIONS 


the Celtic monk laid the foundations of an 
enduring work, for it was built upon Faith. 
Rigid in discipline, self-denying, and eager 
to proclaim his message, he made a deep 
impression on the heathen, who listened to 
him under their forest oaks. His chapel 
was rudely built, and his hut was a poor 
protection. To him succeeded the Bene¬ 
dictine monk, who changed the active 
guerrilla mode of warfare into the well- 
planned system of centrally placed monas¬ 
teries. A grant of wild waste wood or fell 
from the overlord was the first step, and 
from that, as the monks proved worthy by 
their earnestness, gifts, aid, additional mem¬ 
bers flowed in, till the monasteries became 
centres of education, and sometimes were 
turned into influential Sees. As rapidly as 
possible a native clergy was gathered and 
trained. It was the generosity of Charle¬ 
magne and of his sons that laid most se¬ 
curely the power of these already established 
centres. It was a long toil, but the labor¬ 
ers were ready to bear the burden and heat 
of the day. As yet (826 a.d.) the Northman 
had not been reached. Ebbo, the versatile 
Archbishop of Rheims, planned a mission to 
the Swedes, which fell to the lot of Ansgar 
to execute. His work was nearly lost, 
when the Danish King Canute, of England, 
sent missionaries thither. And later, Olaf 
the king, himself a convert, established 
Christianity there. The Peninsula owes its 
Faith to Englishmen. There came a pause 
in aggressive work, which was not broken, 
save by a few futile efforts of single enthu¬ 
siasts among the Moors of Africa and the 
Saracens of the East, till the discovery of 
America. In the carrying the witness of 
Christianity to the Indians of this country 
the Roman Church took the lead, organiz¬ 
ing missions, erecting sees, establishing 
churches; but its work has been ever a 
shifting one, wherever the Spaniard or the 
Fi’enchman did not also establish a state. 
Most noted were the French missions in Can¬ 
ada, and adown the Mississippi River. The 
ruthless conduct of the Spaniards in Mexico 
and South America forced a Christianity 
upon the southern Indian, which he can 
hardly understand to this day. These efforts 
led to the establishment and proper equip¬ 
ment of the Congregation of the Propa¬ 
ganda at Rome. While the work of the first 
missions in this country was germinating, the 
romantic mission of the famous St. Francis 
Xavier (1542-1551 a.d.) in India, Ceylon, 
and Japan was executed. The establishment 
of the English Church here will be found 
recounted in the sketch of the American 
Church. After the Revolution and the gift 
of the Episcopate to the Churchmen in these 
United States, Mr. Pitt consented to erect a 
See in Nova Scotia, and Dr. Inglis was con¬ 
secrated to it in 1787 a.d. Six years later 
Quebec was made a Bishopric, and since 
that time the miss-ionary efforts of the 
Church of England have never relaxed. To 
Dr. Bray’s efforts, after his residence as 


Commissary for the Bishop of London in 
this country, are due two of the English 
organizations, the Christian Knowledge So¬ 
ciety and the Society for the Propagation 
of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. By the aid 
of these and of their offshoot, the Church 
Missionary Society, the English missions 
have deepened and widened, till now the 
world is girded round with more than an 
hundred and twenty Bishoprics, which owe 
their mission to the Mother-Church of 
England, and all have been established 
within a century. 

Missions of the American Church. The 
planting of the Church in America and its 
maintenance for nearly two centuries, feebly 
and grudgingly as the work was done, was 
genuine missionary work. The Church here 
was a mission of the Church of England. 
After the establishment of the Society for the 
Propagation of the Gospel in 1704 a.d., the 
Church acted more understand!ngly in her 
missionary character, and, outside of Mary¬ 
land and Virginia, the clergy were sup¬ 
ported by that society. The Revolutionary 
war deprived them of this source of revenue, 
and from that time down to, say 1820 a.d., 
the American Church was engaged in the 
struggle for existence. That question once 
settled, in the face of a bitter and persistent 
opposition, another came up for its answer, 
—whether the Church which had been 
adapted to England was adapted to America, 
whether this Church of Bishops and Liturgy, 
which suited the cultivated few, could adapt 
itself to the new forms of rude and fast West¬ 
ern life, and whether it had the heart in it to 
go down and out to meet the wants of the 
poor, the ignorant, the degraded of this and 
of other lands. And this is the question which 
has been getting its answer from that time. 
The earliest action of the Church on the sub¬ 
ject of missions of which we have notice was 
taken at the General Convention of 1792 a.d., 
when the Church counted some two hundred 
clergy. At that time a joint committee 
was appointed “ for preparing a plan of sup¬ 
porting missionaries to preach the Gospel on 
the frontiers of the United States,” who 
reported an “ Act” accordingly, in which it 
was recommended that every minister preach 
a sermon and take a collection on the first 
Sunday in September of each year for this 
purpose. But in 1811 a.d. the effort to ob¬ 
tain funds for the support of a Missionary 
Bishop had proved so far a failure. At the 
Convention of 1820 a.d. the formation of a 
Missionary Society of the Church was at¬ 
tempted, but in such a way that the scheme 
came to naught.” It was not till 1821 a.d. 
that the Constitution of the Missionary 
Society of the Church was perfected. 

In the address prepared by Bishop White 
after the organization of the Domestic and 
Foreign Missionary Society in 1821 a.d., he 
appeals to the good work done in this 
country by the Church of England through 
the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. 
“ We stand in a relation to our brethren in 





MISSIONS 


479 


MISSIONS 


the new States not unlike to that which be¬ 
fore the Revolution the Episcopal population 
in the Atlantic provinces stood to their 
parent Church in England. Then she ex¬ 
tended her fostering care to her sons, and 
organized a society in which the prelates 
took the lead, without whose aid all traces 
of our Apostolic Church in many of the 
provinces would have been lost. The time is 
come for us to repay the benefit, not to them, 
but to those who migrated from us, as our 
fathers did from the land of their nativity.” 
Bishop Griswold, in 1815 a.d., had already 
called the attention of the Church to the duty 
of those who “professed a purer faith and a 
more ardent zeal for the Gospel of Christ, not 
to deserve the reproach of indifference to 
missionary labors.” 

Two missionary societies had been already 
formed in Philadelphia, one in 1812 a.d., for 
work within the borders of Pennsylvania, and 
the other (1816 a.d.) for work beyond the 
borders. In 1820 a.d. this last society issued 
a report, which was credited to the Rev. 
Messrs. Kemper, Muhlenberg, and Boyd, in 
which they urge the formation of a general 
missionary society of the American Episco¬ 
pal Church, to labor in the two fields of 
Foreign and .Domestic Missions. And at 
the General Convention of 1820 a.d. an ef¬ 
fort was made, which failed through misman¬ 
agement, to form such a society. In 1821 
a.d. , however, the Committee adopted “the 
Constitution of the Domestic and Foreign 
Missionary Society of the Protestant Epis¬ 
copal Church,” composed of the Bishops and 
Deputies of General Convention, represented 
by a Board of Directors, and working by 
an Executive Committee of eight. An ad¬ 
dress was prepared by Bishop White, the 
president, which has been already quoted, 
which also sets forth the claims of the 
Foreign Missionary work. It dwells upon 
the successful efforts made in early times to 
preach the Gospel to the heathen, and also 
more recently in Asia and Africa and among 
the savage inhabitants of our Western wil¬ 
derness. “ There has lately appeared in vari¬ 
ous countries a zeal for missionary labors 
beyond anything of the same spirit since the 
age of the first preaching of the Gospel.” At 
their meeting in 1822 a.d. the Executive 
Committee report the formation of eleven 
auxiliary societies, of which eight were Fe¬ 
male Auxiliary Missionary Societies, and of 
the whole eleven, eight were in Pennsylva¬ 
nia. Others were formed in other Dioceses in 
the following years, so that in 1826 a.d. there 
were thirty-two auxiliaries reported. It is 
to be noticed by the way that the limits of 
the two fields were not defined as they are 
at present, for at that time by “ Foreign” 
missions were meant all missions to the 
heathen, including the aborigines of our own 
country, whereas now the “Domestic” field 
covers all our country, and includes these 
and other heathen in its limits. These were 
in the eyes of our fathers those in whom 
they “ took a more immediate interest,” and 


the mission at Green Bay is named in the 
report of 1826 a.d. as one of peculiar prom¬ 
ise. Before the next General Convention, 
owing to wild mismanagement, that mission 
had proved a mortifying failure. In 1827 a.d. 
the Board resolved that they would always 
feel themselves bound to give a preference to 
domestic demands, but that at the same time 
they welcomed benefactions for foreign mis¬ 
sions, and especially on the western coast 
of Africa, and among the aborigines. In 
1828 a.d. , on motion of Bishop Hobart, it 
was “ resolved, that the Bishops and the ec¬ 
clesiastical authorities be requested to recom¬ 
mend to the clergy and congregations to 
make an annual collection in favor of this 
society.” 

In 1829 a.d., Dr. Wainwright told them 
that “Domestic and Foreign Missions, 
though they may be distinct in name, yet 
the cause itself is one and indivisible. That 
which makes them Foreign and Domestic is 
the difference of our civil relations, but what 
has the Gospel of Christ to do with bound¬ 
aries of kingdoms ?” “ As we are a Church 

professing primitive faith and Apostolic dis¬ 
cipline, let us also exhibit primitive zeal 
and Apostolic devotion. He has promised 
to be with us ‘ to the end of the world,’—pro¬ 
vided we preach the Gospel to every crea¬ 
ture.” 

In 1830 a.d. , while the Board of Directors 
were not assured of the expediency of extend¬ 
ing their foreign operations, they listened 
with deep interest to Bishop Brownell’s re¬ 
port of his journey in the West, and were 
“ deeply impressed with the wants of the 
immense population which is filling up the 
Valley of the Mississippi and which make a 
powerful appeal to the sympathy and be¬ 
neficence of the Church.” “ Up to this 
moment,” says a writer in 1829 a.d., “we 
have but one small infant station among the 
heathen, and that chiefly for the purposes of 
education, and not a single foreign mission¬ 
ary on any distant shore.” In the Green 
Bay Mission the Rev. Eleazer Williams had 
been employed as Missionary to the Orieidas 
at Fox River, and later the Rev. Richard 
Cadle had been appointed Missionary and 
Superintendent. The Rev. Mr. Oson, ap¬ 
pointed to Liberia, died before he was able 
to sail for Africa. The Rev. Lot Jones, ap¬ 
pointed to Buenos Ayres, was delayed,. and 
“ made other arrangements.” When this 
pamphlet was written Messrs. Robertson 
and Hill had not sailed for their field of 
labor. 

' In 1833 a.d. the Board were greatly en¬ 
couraged with the prospect, and recom¬ 
mended the appointment of twenty addi¬ 
tional missionaries in the domestic field, and 
of two to Africa as soon as suitable persons 
could be found. 

In 1835 a.d. the Board was reorganized, 
to include henceforth the Bishops and thirty 
elected members, working through two com¬ 
mittees, for Domestic and Foreign Missions 
respectively. In connection with this re- 







MISSIONS 


480 


MISSIONS 


arrangement the committees, of which 
Bishop Doane was chairman, in their report 
lay down certain general principles for 
the future direction of the Board, that the 
missionary field is always to be regarded as 
one,— the world, —the terms Domestic 
and Foreign being understood as terms of 
locality, adopted for convenience. The ap¬ 
peal of the Church is made expressly to all 
baptized persons as such, and on the ground 
of their baptismal vows, and to each parish 
as a missionary association. 

It has been said already that up to at 
least 1820 a.d. the Church was engaged 
in the struggle for existence. It was not 
till this action of 1835 a.d. that she form¬ 
ally took action in her missionary capacity, 
but it would be grossly unjust to ignore the 
fact that every new Diocese “ organized” 
and admitted into Convention—and in 1830 
a.d. there were twenty such organiza¬ 
tions—meant a distinct advance of the 
Church into new fields and of the same 
kind, with the addition of Missionary 
Bishoprics in later times. In one respect 
the later times have the advantage,—the 
Missionary Bishop goes out with encourage¬ 
ment and an assured living. The Bishop of a 
new Diocese depended on his rectorship for 
his living, or perhaps on his farm or his 
* school. Bishop Chase, at the end of his first 
five years in Illinois, declared that neither 
as Bishop, Rector, nor Missionary had he 
received but twenty dollars. 

The work of missions,—that is, the work 
of preaching the Gospel and making disci¬ 
ples of all nations,—as to any Church of 
any nation, naturally divides itself into two 
parts, which may for convenience be very 
well designated by the terms “ Domestic” 
and “Foreign,” meaning those people who 
are near and those who are farther off*. At 
first, as has been noticed, the Church’s 
“ Foreign missions” included missions to 
the aborigines of our own country, but after 
a few years the more convenient distinction 
became common between those who were 
within and those without the limits of the 
United States. Taking this last division as 
accurate, and looking out from the ground 
which was occupied by the Church in 
America in 1821 a.d. or in 1883 a.d., here 
is a very large field included under the 
term Domestic. Here is a territory of more 
than twice the extent of the Roman Empire 
at its period of greatest extent, inhabited 
and being rapidly filled up with portions of 
all the nations of Europe, having in its 
southern portions several millions of the 
African race, on its western coast a large 
number of Chinese, and in its western por¬ 
tion the remnants of the aborigines, and 
each portion bringing with it its own form 
of religion or of unbelief. In this wilder¬ 
ness of nations and tongues and languages 
and creeds and sects and unbeliefs the Voice 
that cries before the coming Lord would 
seem to have a mission and a work to do 
without going very far from home. And 


the Church which occupies such a field to 
the extent of preaching the Gospel, even to 
a very limited extent, has its hands full. 
If to preach the Gospel of Christ means 
something more than to kindle an unregu¬ 
lated blaze, and if the Church of Christ is 
something more than a cold form, even the 
embodied Gospel, and if to preach the Gos¬ 
pel and to extend the Church are one and 
the same thing, then the special mission of 
this Church of ours is set for her as plainly 
as was the mission of the Church of the Ro¬ 
man Empire when the flood of the barba¬ 
rians poured over it. The indications of 
Providence may point and lead to this or 
that special distant “ foreign” field, but it is 
not necessary for us to fly to the ends of the 
earth for a field. Until we have made a 
strong “ beginning at Jerusalem,” to seek 
a foreign field is to pass by our wounded 
neighbor. 

The work of “ Domestic Missions” com¬ 
prises work not only among all varieties of 
a foreign population speaking all the lan¬ 
guages of Europe, but also among the In¬ 
dians, among the negroes, and among the 
Chinese of our Western coast. And all this 
must be understood as included when we 
speak of our “Domestic Missions.” Some 
of our Western Bishops include in their 
jurisdiction Indian missions, others Chi¬ 
nese missions, one lives among the Mor¬ 
mons, and all the Southern Bishops are en¬ 
gaged in African missions, while in many 
Eastern Dioceses services are held in the 
different languages of Europe. 

The missionary work of the Church in 
the United States, even if there were no 
other reasons for standing by it, has proved 
its worthiness by its fruits. The mission¬ 
aries have been the pioneers of the Church, 
the Missionary Jurisdictions have developed 
into Dioceses, and the whole Church has 
reason to be grateful and proud of the work 
which they have done. But neither that 
work nor its fruits, nor its needs and claims, 
can be understood by any one who does not 
understand very distinctly that the work of 
the Church in the new parts of our country 
is a purely missionary work, as the work in 
Africa or China. In the new West it is a 
rare thing to find Churchmen where there 
is no church,—a seeming paradox which is 
easily explained. Any Churchman moving 
into a new country with a choice of locations 
before him, inquires, the very first thing, 
where there is a church, and selects accord¬ 
ingly. The missionary and the church 
must go first, therefore, and must be planted 
and sustained independently, until other 
Churchmen come in, and until he has had 
time to extend his influence and gather in 
the people. To ask or expect a missionary 
to be supported at the outset of his work bv 
the restless, shifting people of our new Ter¬ 
ritories, and people, besides, to whom, even 
if they have time for any attention to re¬ 
ligion, the Church is a novelty, is as absurd 
as it would be to expect the natives of Africa 





MISSIONS 


481 


MISSIONS 


to do the same thing. It is to impose a task 
on those who are working not for them¬ 
selves, but as the agents of the whole 
Church., which is as much ours as theirs, 
and when they fail the failure is ours, who 
have not held up their hands. 

In one respect our Episcopal system com¬ 
pels us to follow the dictates of sound wis¬ 
dom. We choose good strong men as 
Bishops of the new jurisdictions, they un¬ 
derstand that they are to be chief mission¬ 
aries, and we give them, if not a liberal, at 
least a sufficient salary. Every missionary 
jurisdiction is sure of having one strong 
and settled missionary, and he gives the 
Church a position at once in the eyes of the 
people which the ordinary starveling de- 
endent missionary could only secure for it 
y long years of labor and sacrifice, if he 
ever did. And neither they nor the Church 
lose anything in the eyes of the people by 
the fact that such men devote time and 
talents to the traveling and preaching and 
teaching and other labors which occupy the 
time and abilities of a Missionary Bishop, or 
by the fact that they are decently supported. 

The story of the missions of the Church 
is in fact best told by a list of names and 
dates. They belong together, “ Domestic” 
and “Foreign.” And it is only to be un¬ 
derstood when we read it, not as a list of 
Bishops, but as a list of chief missionaries, 
of men who were taken from prominent 
and honorable positions in the Church and 
sent out to preach in school-houses, and 
teach schools, and travel from place to 
place among scattered families, and do 
work that when it is told of seems very petty 
drudgery for such men to be engaged in. 
But such is all missionary work. 

Kemper, 1835 a.d., Missouri and Indiana ; 
1854, Wisconsin. Boone, 1844 a.d., China. 
Freeman, 1844 a.d., Arkansas. South- 
gate, 1844 a.d., Turkey; resigned, 1850 a.d. 
Payne, 1851 a.d., Africa; resigned, 1871 
a.d., Kip, 1853 a.d., California. Lay, 1859 
A.d., Arkansas; 1869 a.d., Easton. Talbot, 
1860 a.d., Northwest; 1865 a.d., Indiana. 
Clarkson, 1865 a.d., Nebraska and Da¬ 
kota. Kandall, 1865 a.d. , Colorado. Wil¬ 
liams, 1866 a.d. , China and Japan. Tut¬ 
tle, 1867 a.d. , Montana and Utah. Mor¬ 
ris, 1868 a.d. , Oregon and Washington. 
Whitaker, 1869 a.d., Nevada and Ari¬ 
zona. Pierce, 1870 a.d., Arkansas and 
Indian Territory. Hare, 1873 a.d., Nio¬ 
brara. Auer, 1873 a.d , Africa. Spalding, 
1873 a.d. , Colorado. Elliott, 1874 a.d., 
Western Texas. Wingfield, 1874 a.d., 
Northern California. Garrett, 1874 a.d., 
Northern Texas. Adams, 1875 a.d., New 
Mexico ; resigned, 1875 a d. Penick, 1877 
a.d., Africa; resigned, 1883 a.d. Schere- 
schewsky, 1877 a.d., Shanghai. Dunlop, 
1880 a.d., New Mexico. Brewer, 1880 
a.d. , Montana. Paddock, 1880 a.d., Wash¬ 
ington. Walker, 1883 a.d., Dakota. 

Besides these Bishops and the clergy 
working under them, it must be remem¬ 

31 


bered that in a number of the Dioceses are 
missionaries at work, and by them and the 
Bishops much purely missionary work is 
done. It would not be possible, for instance, 
to pass over the work which has been done 
among the Indians by Bishops and clergy 
of the Church, and yet when we have 
named Hobart and Williams, Breck and 
Whipple and Hare, we have done all that 
our space and the line which we have indi¬ 
cated for ourselves permits. 

From this list and from the reports of 
General Convention and other, it appears 
that though efforts were made previously to 
send out Missionary Bishops, it was not till 
1835 a d. that one was actually sent. At 
that most important Convention the lead¬ 
ing spirit was Bishop Doane, and it was 
largely owing to him that the new Consti¬ 
tution of the Board was established, based 
on the principle that every baptized person 
was bj r the fact of his baptism a member of 
the missionary organization, and pledging 
the Church as a Missionary Church. Two 
Missionary Bishops were elected, but Dr. 
Hawks was not consecrated. The man who 
was made Bishop was a host in himself, and 
the field of “the Northwest” was not too 
large for him,—a man of tact and energy, 
pure, loving, and holy, a true saint and apos¬ 
tle of the Church. In the mean time, be¬ 
sides the election of Bishops Freeman for 
Arkansas and Kip for California, a number 
of “ Dioceses” had been organized, which 
were little more than missionary jurisdic¬ 
tions, and in 1859 a.d., by the election of 
Bishop Talbot for Nebraska and the North¬ 
west, and Bishop Lay for Arkansas and the 
Southwest, it might be said with some truth 
that the “Episcopate of the American Church 
was at length co-extensive with the bound¬ 
aries of the United States.” As an evidence 
that the hand of God had been with the 
Church, and that the Church was at least and 
at last recognizing her duty and her right to 
occupy the whole land, the occasion was one 
tojustify the “Gloriain Excelsis” with which 
the Convention received the announcement. 
It falls strictly into line under this subject 
to notice the action of the General Conven¬ 
tion of 1865 a.d. in accepting the resolutions 
of the Committee of Missions, “that there 
never was a time when the demand for mis¬ 
sionary effort was so great, and calling upon 
the ecclesiastical authorities to institute a 
system of itineracy, and urging the appoint¬ 
ment of lay-readers, and the maintenance of 
family worship and home instruction in the 
Catechism and offices of the Church by those 
who are cut off from stated worship.” In 
1865 a.d. the Secretaries of the two Houses 
were selected on the spot for Colorado and 
Nebraska and Dakota. Bishop Randall 
died in 1873 a.d. Bishop Clarkson lived to 
make Nebraska an independent Diocese, 
while he resigned and handed over Dakota 
to two successors. In 1867 a.d., Bishop Tut¬ 
tle was elected to Montana, Idaho, and Utah, 
which jurisdiction was divided in 1880 a.d., 




MISSIONS 


482 


MISSIONS 


and Montana given to Bishop Brewer, 
while Bishop Tuttle’s work goes nobly on 
in the midst of “ the ignorance and error of 
the odious heresy of Mormonism.” 

In 1868 a.d., Bishop Morris was elected 
to Oregon and Washington, which latter 
Territory he handed over in 1880 a.d. to 
Bishop Paddock. Other changes are indi¬ 
cated by the list-divisions which are multi¬ 
plications in Texas and California, as well 
as in those that have been named, and 
which indicate a much greater growth in 
actual numbers and influence, so that there 
are some six Bishops at work within what 
was included in Bishop Talbot’s jurisdiction 
of “ the Northwest” in 1859 a.d. It would 
require a larger number to include the suc¬ 
cessors of Bishop Kemper in his field of “ the 
Northwest” in 1835 a.d. Avery important 
action was taken at the Convention of 1877 
a.d., in amending and enlarging the Consti¬ 
tution of the Domestic and Foreign Mis¬ 
sionary Society, so that the General Conven¬ 
tion is made for the time being the Board 
of Missions, representing the whole Church, 
every member of which is a member of the 
Missionary Society, and meeting during the 
session of the General Convention, so that 
the General Convention is henceforth the 
great missionary meeting of the Church. 
The consequence of this action was seen in 
the Conventions of 1880 and 1883 a.d., when 
the subject of Missions was beyond all 
others the subject of the occasion, and in 
1880 a.d. three new Missionary Bishops 
were elected, and one in 1883 a.d. 

The interest in Domestic Missions for the 
last twenty years has been largely owing to 
the zeal and tact of one man, the Rev. Alvi 
T. Twing, D.D., who, after having acted for 
several years as “General Agent” of the 
Board, from 1866 to 1882 a.d., the year of 
his death, was “ Secretary” of the Board. 
The change is manifest by a comparison of 
the receipts. In 1863 a.d. the gross receipts 
for Domestic Missions were $37,458, in 1882 
a.d. $228,375. When he became Secre¬ 
tary there were but four Missionary Bishops 
and ninety-nine Missionaries in the Domes¬ 
tic field. At the date of his death the corps 
had increased to thirteen Missionary Bishops 
and three hundred and forty-six clergymen. 

The growth of both the country and the 
Church is well set forth in Bishop Morris’s 
address in 1863 a.d. “ Chicago with half 
a million of people occupies the site of 
what was in 1812 a.d. an abandoned mili¬ 
tary post, and Illinois has a population 
of three millions, and contains the Sees of 
three Bishops and the cures of a hundred 
and forty clergymen. When the Bishop of 
Nebraska was ordained in 1847 a.d., Ne¬ 
braska was an unknown region. When 
the Bishop of Colorado was ordained in 1857 
a.d. , Colorado was the home of the buffalo. 
When the Bishop of California was ordained 
in 1835 a.d., San Francisco was a small 
trading-post. The year that the Bishop of 
Oregon was ordained Oregon and Wash¬ 


ington passed by treaty into the hands of 
the United States. Where in 1856 a.d. 
there was not a white settler, now four Bish¬ 
ops and over fifty clergymen are laboring.” 
The country has grown enormously, and the 
Church has also extended her work in pro¬ 
portion. There is nothing to boast of in 
such a retrospect, but enough to show us 
that, in her special field of the United States 
at least, this Church of ours has not alto¬ 
gether neglected her duty as a Missionary- 
Church. 

In 1829 a.d. the resolution was adopted 
to add to the missionary stations “ some suit¬ 
able place or places in Greece.” The world 
was filled with the story of the noble 
struggle of the Greeks for independence, and 
this country was wild with sympathy for 
them. The Rev. Mr. Robertson first went 
out to Greece, and at his second departure 
in 1830 a.d., the Rev. John H. Hill accom¬ 
panied him. As these were the first “ for¬ 
eign missionaries” who were ever sent out 
by the American Church, it will accord 
with our purpose to trace at this point a 
brief outline of the history of their mission. 

The party consisted of the two mission¬ 
aries, their wives, and Mr. Solomon Bing¬ 
ham. Their “instructions” indicate “ their 
schools and their press” as the effective 
agencies through which they are to conciliate 
the favor of the people, and while they are 
to do nothing which may cause the impres¬ 
sion that they are endeavoring “ to estab¬ 
lish another Church,” but instead to make 
known the many points of agreement be¬ 
tween the two sister Churches, and avoid 
making even errors “ matters of direct 
attack or sweeping censure,” to direct their 
attention to the education of the people in 
the truths of the Gospel, and their restora¬ 
tion to its holy simplicity and glorious 
purity. The missionaries were men com¬ 
petent to carry out these singularly wise in¬ 
structions. They established themselves as 
soon as possible in Athens. Mr. Robertson 
took charge especially of the printing and 
publishing work, while Mr. Hill devoted 
himself to the work of education. The fruits 
of their persevering and self-sacrificing 
labors among the priesthood and the people 
generally were abundant, but no part of 
their work has been in apparent results 
equal to the girls’ school which Mrs. Hill 
took in hand, aided by her sister, Miss Mulli¬ 
gan, and succeeded by Miss Muir. In the 
words of a Greek, that school has been “a 
central university shedding forth the light 
of education through the whole of free 
Greece, and beyond its borders.” When, 
in 1882 a.d., the venerable missionary died 
at the age of ninety-one, his funeral was at¬ 
tended by great numbers and with all honor. 

In 1835 a.d. the Rev. George Benton, 
then a student in the General Theological 
Seminary, offered himself for the mission 
work, and in 1836 a.d. was sent to Crete, 
where he established two schools, which were 
kept in successful operation till 1844 a.d., 




MISSIONS 


483 


MISSIONS 


when the mission was abandoned and he 
returned to the United States. 

The first who offered himself for the For¬ 
eign missionary work of the Church was the 
Rev. Joseph R. Andrews of the Eastern Dio¬ 
cese, who went out, in 1820 a.d., “ as a mis¬ 
sionary and agent of the Colonization Soci¬ 
ety” to Liberia, but died the next year. The 
Executive Committee in 1828 a.d. made men¬ 
tion of the “ unanimous voice of the Gen¬ 
eral Convention of 1826 a.d., that measures 
should be taken for establishing missions at 
Liberia and at Buenos Ayres,” and report 
that they had since then nominated Mr. 
Jacob Oson, a man of color, a missionary 
for Africa, so soon as he should obtain holy 
orders, and also that Mr. Oson had been re¬ 
cently ordained bv Bishop Brownell, and was 
ready to sail for Liberia as soon as a passage 
could be procured for him. But the message 
that the vessel was about to sail found Mr. 
Oson on his death-bed. The same report 
of 1829 a.d. which announces Mr. Oson’s 
death mentions an “ African Mission School 
which had been established the previous 
year at Hartford, Conn., to prepare young 
men of color for usefulness in the Colony of 
Liberia,” and the Convention repeated their 
former action of “ advising the sending of 
a missionary to Liberia.” 

It was not, however, till 1836 a.d. that 
the first white missionaries landed, viz., the 
Rev. Messrs. Savage, Payne, and Minor. 
In 1841 A.D.,Dr. Vaughan w r as elected Bishop 
at Cape Palmas, but declined. In 1844 a.d. 
the Rev. Alexander Glennis was elected, but 
declined. In 1850 a.d. the Rev. John 
Payne was elected, and consecrated in 
1851 a.d. After his resignation, in 1872 a.d., 
the Rev. Jacob Auer was made Bishop, and 
after his death the Rev. Clifton Penick, who 
resigned his jurisdiction at the Convention 
of 1883 a.d. on the ground of ill health. 
At that time there were reported in the 
African Mission thirty-four stations, twelve 
clergymen (of whom one is white and eight 
Liberians and three natives), five foreign 
ladies, four lay-readers, two business agents, 
and sixteen catechists and teachers. The 
report for 1881-82 a.d. gives as the “ average 
attendance upon public worship 1036; bap¬ 
tisms, adults, 30, infants, 53 ; confirmations, 
46 ; and communicants, 567.” The reports of 
the Bishop and missionaries tell us of the 
special difficulties in the African climate 
and the African character, which encompass 
the steps of the missionary in Africa, and 
which account for the slow progress of the 
Church. 

The mission to China owes its begin¬ 
ning to the devotion of Augustus Foster 
Lyde, a youth who died in 1834 a.d. at the 
age of twenty-one. “It was in his heart to 
preach the Gospel to the Chinese, and for 
this service he had offered himself to God 
and the Church, but it pleased his Heavenly 
Father to call him early home.” So reads 
the slab in St. Peter’s Church-yard in Phila¬ 
delphia. In 1835 a.d. the necessary funds 


were obtained, and the Rev. Messrs. Hanson 
and Lockwood sailed for China. The be¬ 
ginning of teaching Chinese children was 
made in Java, and the missionaries “ moved 
up the coast until they reached Shanghai, in 
1845 a.d. , where the station and missionary 
jurisdiction was founded. Bishop Boone 
was consecrated in 1844 a.d. and died in 
1864 a.d. From that time to 1877 a.d. the 
China Mission was included in the jurisdic¬ 
tion of Bishop Williams. In 1877 a.d., 
Bishop Schereschewsky was consecrated, but 
was compelled by ill health to resign in 
1883 a.d. The purpose of Bishop Boone 
was to establish schools of a high order for 
both boys and girls, in which he was ably 
seconded by the clergy and teachers, both 
foreign and native, but the work was inter¬ 
rupted by the American civil war, in the 
midst of which Bishop Boone died. Mr. 
Schereschewsky went out to China in 
1859 a.d. , and at Pekin undertook and ac¬ 
complished the work—aided of course by 
others, but himself the principal—of trans¬ 
lating the Prayer-Book and the whole 
Scriptures into the mandarin dialect. “ The 
greatness of this work in itself, and the toil 
and study which it required, are beyond our 
ability to understand. The importance of 
it is beyond our arithmetic to compute.” 
His efforts were mainly directed to carry on 
and enlarge the scheme of Bishop Boone, by 
establishing a Missionary College which 
should give native young men the highest 
education and train up a native ministry. 
It is a large and noble undertaking to es¬ 
tablish an agency for reaching such a people. 
China is destined to play a great part in the 
world. The question is whether it shall 
play that part as a heathen or a Christian 
nation. There are at this time in China 
seventeen clergymen, three missionary 
physicians, eleven foreign teachers, one 
trained nurse, and fifty-nine catechists, 
teachers, and Bible-readers. The number 
of communicants is two hundred and sixty- 
seven, of whom all but twenty are natives. 
Besides the station at Shanghai, the princi¬ 
pal missionary stations are the Wu-Chang 
and Hankow Stations, six hundred miles up 
the Yang-tze-Kiang. 

Both in China and in Japan one very im¬ 
portant branch of the missionary work is the 
work of the medical missionaries. The phy¬ 
sicians of China and Japan are ignorant of 
anatomy and physiology, and know com¬ 
paratively little of the nature of disease. 
The field for the educated Christian physi¬ 
cian is a very wide one, and the reports show 
how much is being done. The cases of all 
kinds treated at the different points in China 
and Japan during one year, by the four mis¬ 
sionary physicians and their assistants, num¬ 
bered many thousand. The mission to Japan 
dates from 1859 a.d., and is an off-hoot of the 
China Mission. Since the persecution of 
Christians, which culminated in the dreadful 
massacre of 1636 a.d., when it was said that 
more than two hundred thousand were put to 





MISSIONS 


484 


MISSIONS 


death, the Christian religion had been pro¬ 
scribed, and no Christian permitted to set 
foot within the Empire. But the opening of 
the two ports in 1854 a.d. made it possible to 
build churches and teach Christian doctrine. 
And in 1859 a.d. the Rev. John Liggins, of 
the China Mission, and the Rev. Channing 
Moore Williams were appointed missionaries 
to Japan. The return of those who had been 
associated with him left JVD'- Williams for 
some time alone, and in 1865 a.d., when he 
was made Bishop to succeed Bishop Boone 
as Missionary Bishop to China and Japan, 
he for a time resided in China. Butin 1869 
a.d. he returned to Japan, where the perse¬ 
cution of native converts still continued, and 
which did not cease until 1872 a.d. That 
year and the following year several additions 
were made to the missionary force, the school 
at Osaka numbered some fifty pupils, and 
the little chapel was enlarged. In 1874 a.d. 
the Bishop removed to Tokio, and twenty 
converts were baptized and confirmed. The 
year 1876 a.d. was marked by a serious dis¬ 
aster, the burning of the mission chapel and 
school-room and the Bishop’s house in a 
great fire which destroyed some ten thousand 
houses. In 1877 a.d. the first native of 
Japan was ordained,—Mr. Isaac K. Yoko- 
yama. In 1878 a.d. the Divinity Training 
School at Tokio contained thirteen students, 
and encouraging reports are made of the 
other schools at Osaka and Tokio. But in 
1880 a.d. , Mr. Yokoyama was deposed at his 
own request, and the same year the Bishop’s 
house was again consumed in a great fire. 
The schools, however, continued to do good 
work. In 1882 a.d. there were seven chapels 
in Tokio. In 1883 a.d. there were, besides 
the Bishop (who since 1877 a.d. had been 
relieved of the Chinese Mission by the ap¬ 
pointment of Bishop Schereschewsky), eight 
clergymen, one missionary physician, nine 
foreign lay-workers, and twenty-five cate¬ 
chists, preachers, lay-readers, and Bible- 
readers. The number of native communi¬ 
cants is eighty-four. The population of 
Japan is estimated at some thirty-five mil¬ 
lions, intelligent and impressionable, who 
have cast off their old religion, and are in 
danger of drifting into atheism, and who 
cannot understand how there can be differ¬ 
ent and hostile kinds of Christianity. Be¬ 
tween such a mass and the less than a cor¬ 
poral’s guard of missionaries the dispro¬ 
portion is very great, and it is not to be 
wondered at that the devoted few have not 
accomplished more. 

The mission in Haiti was undertaken in 
1861 a.d. Mr. James Theodore Holly, a 
young man of African descent, who had vis¬ 
ited Haiti in 1855 a.d., as the agent of the 
Eoreign Committee, sailed in 1861 a.d. with 
a missionary colony numbering one hundred 
and eleven persons, chiefly from Connecti¬ 
cut. The colony was greatly weakened by 
removal and death, but the Rev. Mr. Holly 
remained. In 1863 a.d., Bishop Lee visited 
the island, and administered the rite of 


confirmation. In 1866 a.d., Bishop Burgess 
made a visitation, and ordained one Deacon 
and one Priest, and administered confirma¬ 
tion. He died suddenly on the return voy¬ 
age, and the church which he promised was 
sent as a memorial of him. In 1873 a.d , 
Bishop Coxe made a visitation to the 
churches on the island, and acting on his 
advice and report, Mr. Holly was elected and 
consecrated Bishop of the Haitian Church in 
1874 a.d. There are reported at present 
“ in the Haitian Church,” besides the Bishop, 
twelve clergymen, twenty-seven lay-readers, 
catechists, "and teachers, and four hundred 
and one communicants. 

The Mexican Mission must be mentioned, 
but it can only be mentioned, with sorrow 
and shame. Bishop Riley was consecrated 
in 1879 a.d., and requested to resign in 1883 
a.d. -There are reported eleven clergymen, 
three foreign lay-workers, forty-one native 
workers, fourteen hundred and eighty com¬ 
municants. It is believed that in the mission 
schools, and perhaps elsewhere, good work 
has been done. It is a pity that our sum¬ 
mary of missions, bald as it is, must close 
with such an instance of incompetence and 
failure, for even this summary is enough to 
show us that missionary work has been and 
is, even under all disadvantages of weakness 
and error, the very opposite of failure. 

But while there is enough to encourage 
every Christian man in the story of mis¬ 
sionary work, there is another side to the 
picture. Our advances have been late and 
slow. We have missed a thousand opportu¬ 
nities. The real work has been done by a 
few. If it had been done earlier, or if there 
had been more hands at work, hew much 
more might have been done ! Why has it 
not been done ? Our missionaries have been 
very few, and they have been miserably 
supported. As a rule, among our Domestic 
Missionaries, the Bishops have been the only 
ones who have had a decent living support. 
The income which would fairly support one 
has been divided among three or four, and 
with the natural consequences. The ex¬ 
cuse for this course is the lack of means. 
There is a feeling that the work ought to be 
done, and at whatever cost. But at such 
cost it is doubtful whether it is not too costly. 
Certainly we have no right to demand such 
sacrifices. If men are willing to go as our 
representatives into the mission field, the least 
that we can do is to insure them a decent 
support, and not to look on them as beggars 
when they ask us for money to build churches 
in which they have no more interest than we 
have. This is a matter which is coming 
more and more before the laity, and which 
depends on them. If they can be roused up 
and will give the money, then the more mis¬ 
sionaries the better, and the higher salaries 
they can have the better,—there is no danger 
of their getting too much. But there are 
those who have had experience in the field 
who believe that it would be better policy, 
as it would certainly be the more honorable 






MISSISSIPPI 


4S5 


MISSISSIPPI 


coarse towards our missionaries, to send out 
only one-third of the number and give that 
third a reasonable support. Said one, “ No¬ 
body will believe what our missionaries en¬ 
dure until one of them starves to death.” 
Our Church in the West has been planted by 
such laborers, and the story is not an honor¬ 
able one for the laity of the Church. Before 
we congratulate ourselves on the “ rapid 
growth of the Church” let each one ask him¬ 
self, What has been my part in the work ? 
What will be my sentence in the day when 
the Lord shall say, “ I was an hungered” ? 
Are we among those who “ did it to Him,” 
or among those who “ did it not” ? For 
with money and means the growth would be 
more rapid, and the cost would be distrib¬ 
uted and not all laid on the few, whom we 
selfish idlers blame because they have not 
done more. Rev. L. W. Gibson. 

Mississippi. “ On the 17th of May, 
1826 a.d., clergy and lay delegates met in 
Trinity Church, Natchez, for the purpose 
of organizing a Diocese of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church in the State of Mississippi. 
The Rev. James Pilmore preached the open¬ 
ing sermon. The Rev. Albert A. Muller 
was chosen President. Besides these clergy¬ 
men there were present the Rev. James A. 
Fox and the Rev. John W. Cloud. The 
Rev. Adam Cloud, residing in the State, 
did not attend. Delegates, eleven in num¬ 
ber and representing four Parishes,—those 
at Natchez, Woodville, Port Gibson, and 
Christ Church, Jefferson County,—were 
present, one of them being the Hon. Joshua 
G. Clarke, the Chancellor of the State. The 
Convention formally acceded to the Consti¬ 
tution and Canons of the Church in the 
United States. A Constitution and Canons 
were adopted. The Committee on the State 
of the Church reported the details of indi¬ 
vidual parochial work in the various Par¬ 
ishes. A committee was appointed to cor¬ 
respond with the Domestic and Foreign 
Missionary Society ‘on subjects concerning 
the present state of the Church in this Dio¬ 
cese.’ The clergy were earnestly requested 
to visit the Parishes destitute of ministers. 
Two hundred and fifty copies of the journal 
were ordered to be printed. Diocesan officers 
and delegates to the General Convention 
were appointed. Thus was inaugurated the 
Diocese of Mississippi.” 

The Diocese was for a time in charge of 
the Rt. Rev. Leonidas Polk, D.D., as Mis¬ 
sionary Bishop. He and the Rt. Rev. James 
Hervey Otey, D.D., Bishop of Tennessee, 
were Provisional Bishops. The Rt. Rev. 
William Mercer Green, D.D., LL.D., was 
consecrated as Bishop of Mississippi in St. 
Andrew’s Church, Jackson, February 24, 
1850 a.d., by Bishops Otey, Polk, Cobbs, 
and Freeman. Bishop Green was “born in 
Wilmington, N. C., May 2, 1798 a.d. Grad¬ 
uated at the University of North Carolina, 
Chapel Hill, 1818 a.d. Ordered Deacon 
April 29, 1821 a.d. Ordained Priest April 
20, 1823 a.d. Rector of St. John’s, Wil- 


liamsboro’, N. C., four years. Then became 
Rector of St. Matthew’s, Hillsboro’, where he 
remained until 1837 a.d., when he was made 
Professor of Belles-Lettres and Rhetoric in 
the University, Chapel Hill, which position 
he occupied until his elevation to the Epis¬ 
copate. Received degree of D.D. from 
University of Pennsylvania, 1845 a.d.” 

“ The forty-second Annual Convention 
met in St. Peter’s Church, Oxford, on the 
28th of April, 1869 a.d. The Bishop’s 
address reported more ordinations to the 
Diaconate and Priesthood than for several 
previous years, and noticed that there were 
now eleven candidates for holy orders, 
several of them men of age and experience. 
The name ‘ Convention’ was changed to 
‘Council.’ The establishment of Convoca¬ 
tions was approved, and serious considera¬ 
tion was given to the revival of the Primi¬ 
tive Diaconate.” 

“ The forty-third Annual Council met in 
St. Andrew’s Parish, Jackson, on the 27th 
and 29th of April, 1870 a.d. The Parish 
of the Holy Trinity, Vicksburg, was ad¬ 
mitted into union. The Bishop in his ad¬ 
dress reported the ordination of three to the 
Diaconate, and the same number to the 
Priesthood. One church had been conse¬ 
crated and five parishes organized. There 
were eleven candidates for Orders. The 
number of clergy was twenty-eight. The 
University of the South, the system of Con¬ 
vocations, the Church Calendar newspa¬ 
per, the Society for the Increase of the 
•Ministry, and the Domestic Missionary 
Committee received the commendation of 
the Bishop. The Treasurer of the Episco¬ 
pal Fund reported the fund' as amounting 
to $8271.64, and advised the sale of the 
Church property for the purpose of dis¬ 
charging the diocesan indebtedness, and the 
provision of a permanent residence for the 
Bishop of the Diocese. A resolution re¬ 
ported by the Committee on the State of the 
Church, advising the election of an assist¬ 
ant Bishop, was, after discussion, laid on the 
table.” 

“ The clergy, through the senior Presby¬ 
ter, the Rev. James A. Fox, presented the 
Bishop with ‘a pastoral staff’ as an em¬ 
blem of his office, and as a token of their 
affection and confidence. The Committee 
on the State of the Church reported ‘ the 
Church in this Diocese largely on the in¬ 
crease, true, not only of ‘ outward material 
growth, but of a deep, spiritual interest.’ 
Bishop Green, in his report to the General 
Convention of 1874 a.d., speaks of the pov¬ 
erty of his Diocese and the depression of 
the Church in outward things at least, as 
corresponding with that of the country. 
Promising fields were uncared for, as fit la¬ 
borers could not be supported, hence useful 
clergy had removed from long established 
Parishes. Notwithstanding the ordinations, 
the clergy list was below that of former per¬ 
iods.” “ Notwithstanding this, it is believed 
that there are signs of increased fervor and 





MISSISSIPPI 


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MISSOURI 


spirituality, and an increased devotion of 
the substance to the Lord, which, when He 
shall send us again prosperity, will exhibit 
the glad fruit of many good works.” In 
several Parishes there had been efforts made 
to recover the hold of the Church on the 
African race. “ In St. Andrew’s, Jackson, 
a very large colored Sunday-school has been 
for some years successfully kept up, super¬ 
intended, and great part instructed by the 
zealous wife of the rector. In the Church 
of the Good Shepherd, Terry, the school 
under the care of Miss Wharton has had 
eminent success. At Dry Grove a colored 
candidate for orders has been educated, and 
is now at work as a Deacon, while a large 
school is instructed by the candidates for 
orders at that place. A number of other Sun¬ 
day-schools are maintained at no little self- 
sacrifice by loving members of the Church 
living at points distant from organized par¬ 
ishes. The efficiency of these is somewhat 
impaired by the inability to supply them 
with books and other aids to instruction.” 

To assist in providing clergy a Mission 
Training School had been organized at Dry 
Grove. There were six candidates and post¬ 
ulants residing there, while two Priests and 
the colored Deacon named above were “la¬ 
boring in their stations as the first fruits of 
this enterprise.” Experience had shown the 
necessity of “a home training” for at least 
a part of the candidates for orders. Lay co¬ 
operation was “ receiving much attention.” 
In St. Andrew’s, Jackson, a Guild of young 
men had labored earnestly and successfully’ 
in the public institutions of the State capital, 
and the Daughters of St. Andrew had “ de¬ 
voted themselves with equally blessed re¬ 
sults to ‘ Woman’s Work.’” The Bishop 
closes his report thus : “ May our weary and 
ainful passage through the wilderness 
ring us, in God’s good time, to the joyful 
feast of fat things, when the ransomed of 
the Lord shall return, and come to Zion 
with songs and everlasting joy upon their 
heads, when they shall obtain joy and glad¬ 
ness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee 
away.” In the report of the Committee on 
the State of the Church to the General Con¬ 
vention of 1883 a.d., by the Rev. Dr. 
George M. Hills, Chairman, the following 
well-merited tribute occurs: “ Perhaps the 
most touching incident in the sessions of 
this body was the appearance in the House 
of Deputies, on the 15th day of its delibera¬ 
tions, of the Rt. Rev. Dr. William Mercer 
Green, the venerable Bishop of Mississippi, 

‘ whose praise is in all the Churches,’ who 
came to say ‘farewell,’ and to tell us with 
deep emotion, that he was the sole survivor, 
clerical or lay, of the General Convention 
of 1823 a.d. , just sixty years ago, and that 
when he took Holy Orders there were but 
nine Bishops in the United States of Amer¬ 
ica.” In 1883 a.d. the Rev. Hugh Miller 
Thompson, D.D., was consecrated as Assist¬ 
ant Bishop in Trinity Church, New Orleans. 
He was born in County Londonderry, Ire¬ 


land, and graduated at Nashotah, where he 
served in after-years as Professor of Eccles¬ 
iastical History. He was at one time rector 
of St. James’ Church, Chicago, and also of 
Christ Church, New York. At the time of 
his election he was rector of Trinity Church, 
New Orleans. He is the author of “First 
Principles,” “Copy,” and of various tracts 
and pamphlets. Bishop Adams, having re¬ 
signed the jurisdiction of New Mexico, is 
Rector of Holy Trinity Church, Vicksburg. 
He is one of the examining chaplains, being 
associated with Rev. Drs. Sansom and Har¬ 
ris, and Rev. Alex. Marks. Statistics from 
“ Living Church Annual” of 1884 a.d. : 
Clergy, 27 ; parishes and missions, 65; bap¬ 
tisms, 262 ; confirmations, 180; communi¬ 
cants, 2401; Sunday-school teachers, 262 ; 
scholars, 2047 ; contributions, $33,890.49. 

Authorities: Bishop Perry’s Church¬ 
man’s Year-Book, 1870 and 1871 a.d., and 
Living Church Annual, 1884 a.d. 

Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Missouri, History of the Diocese of. 
The earliest settlers of the State came largely 
from Kentucky and Tennessee, where the 
most of them had for a time lived ; they or 
their ancestors having previously emigrated 
from Virginia and Maryland. It was from 
these States that most of the earlier Church 
people came, and the first ministrations were 
secured. The first parish west of the Mis¬ 
sissippi River was established in St. Louis 
by the Rev. John Ward, of Lexington, 
Ky., in the autumn of 1819 a.d. The first 
regular service was held on October 24, in 
a one-story frame building, occasionally 
used as a court-house and a dancing-hall. 
Six persons composed the congregation. 
This was the first public service by a clergy¬ 
man of the Episcopal Church west of the 
Mississippi, of which we have any record. 
Christ Church, St. Louis, was organized 
November 1, 1819 a.d. There were long in¬ 
tervals during which no services were held, 
and the first building was not completed for 
use until November 10, 1829 a.d., and con¬ 
secrated May 25,1884 a.d., by Bishop Smith, 
of Kentucky. He also at the same time ad¬ 
ministered the first confirmation. 

So soon as Bishop Kemper was, in Sep¬ 
tember, 1835 a.d., consecrated Missionary 
Bishop of the Northwest, he was called to 
the rectorship of Christ Church. At his 
coming began the growth of the Church 
in the State outside of St. Louis. The 
time at his disposal for explorations in the 
State, and for the establishing of churches, 
was restricted, from the fact that for nearly 
five years he held the rectorship of Christ 
Church, St. Louis, the only organized par¬ 
ish at the time of his coming; and that his 
duties included Indiana, and subsequently, 
as the country filled up, Wisconsin, Iowa, 
Kansas, and Minnesota. 

The settlements were mainly along the 
rivers, and here the first parishes were 
formed. The Bishop soon saw that one of 
the great needs for his work was a better 




MISSOURI 


487 


MISSOURI 


supply of clergymen. In 1836 a.d. he started 
the plan of Kemper College, and in twenty 
working days secured in the East $20,000 
for the project. One hundred and twenty- 
five acres were bought within five miles of 
the city limits of St. Louis, buildings were 
erected, and very soon a considerable num¬ 
ber of boys and young men were gathered, 
from among whom several clergymen were 
afterwards ordained. 

In the latter part of 1836 a.d. and the 
beginning of 1837 a.d. services were begun 
at St. Charles, Boonville, and Fayette, on or 
near the Missouri River, and at Palmyra, near 
the Mississippi River. Shortly after this, in 
1840 a.d., the parish at Jefferson City, the 
capital of the State, was organized. It was 
not until 1844 a.d. that the work was car¬ 
ried farther up the Missouri River, and ser¬ 
vices held in Brunswick, Lexington, and 
Independence. At this time the Indians 
were yet in the newly-acquired Platte Pur¬ 
chase in the western part of the State, and 
Independence was within fourteen miles of 
the Indian Territory. 

In the mean time, on the 16th of Novem¬ 
ber, 1840 a.d., the Diocese of Missouri was 
organized, there being at that time eight 
clergymen in the Diocese, and four parishes 
represented. The Diocese placed itself under 
the Episcopal supervision of Bishop Kemper, 
and was received into union with the Gen¬ 
eral Convention in 1841 a.d. Bishop Kem¬ 
per found very great difficulty in keeping 
the missions that he had established supplied 
with ministers. He could persuade but few 
to come west of the Mississippi River, and 
many of those who came seemed to be ill 
adapted to the hard conditions of the work, 
and did not remain long. In 1835 a.d., 
when he first came West, the Bishop wrote 
to his friend, Bishop Chase, of Illinois, in 
view of the possibilities, that he was afraid 
he had come too late to that fair inheritance 
of the Lord. In 1843 a.d. he says that, 
while he does not despair, a number of places 
in which work had started had to be aban¬ 
doned because of the lack of ministers, and 
the impossibility of inducing them to go be¬ 
yond the Mississippi. 

In 1843 a.d. , Bishop Kemper resigned his 
jurisdiction in Missouri and removed to 
Wisconsin. The Diocese in Convention, 
September 23, 1843 a.d., nominated to the 
General Convention the Rev. Cicero S. 
Hawks, Rector of Trinity Church, Buffalo, 
N. Y., as Bishop, he having also been elec¬ 
ted Rector of Christ Church, St. Louis. 
There were at that time but seven clergy¬ 
men in the Diocese, of whom two had no 
parochial charge, and there were but three 
parishes represented in Convention, two 
clergymen engaged in duty outside of St. 
Louis. The only support to which the 
Bishop could look was that which he would 
receive as Rector of Christ Church. Mr. 
Hawks was at this time only thirty-one 
years of age. He assumed the rectorship of 
Christ Church January 1, 1844 a.d., and 


was consecrated to the Episcopate in New 
York on the 20th of October following. 

The young Bishop found on his accession 
to office that all of the churches were in 
debt, his own parish church owing $17,000, 
and that Kemper College was in desperate 
straits with a debt of $16,000 incurred in 
the erection of buildings. The Bishop went 
East in- the summer of 1845 a.d., to endeavor 
to secure means with which to save the prop¬ 
erty, but in vain, and in November, 1845 
a.d., a property belonging to the Church, 
which Bishop Kemper had secured with the 
most anxious effort, and intended to be the 
best monument of his Episcopate, was sold 
for a debt of $16,000. It is now within the 
city, and is worth nearly half a million dol¬ 
lars. This was one of the greatest calami¬ 
ties which the Church in the West has ever 
received, and Bishop Kemper to the end of 
his life could never speak of its loss without 
tears in his eyes. 

The Bishop’s opportunities for more gen¬ 
eral work throughout the Diocese were re¬ 
stricted by his rectorship in St. Louis, which 
he held until February 1, 1854 a.d., when 
the parish pledged itself to contribute a suf¬ 
ficient sum annually for five years to secure 
him a salary of $2500. The Church’s work 
was extended farther up the Missouri River, 
to Weston and St. Joseph ; but it was not until 
1857 a.d. that the first services were held 
in Kansas City, which is now the second 
city in the Diocese, with seventy-five thou¬ 
sand inhabitants. One of the missionaries 
writing in 1843 a.d., declares his belief that 
Missouri had then proved the hardest soil 
in the United States to plant the Church 
upon. He finds the reason of this in the ad¬ 
verse antecedents of the most of those who 
had come to the State, and the relative ab¬ 
sence of the English element, which in many 
places forms a nucleus for the Church. He 
thinks, therefore, that the whole of that 
generation must pass away before Church 
institutions could make much impression on 
the popular mind. 

At first, outside of the travel by steamboat, 
the Bishop had to take long journeys on land 
by stage-coach and otherwise in his vast 
Diocese. 

The growth of the Diocese, which had been 
steady, received a severe shock during the 
period of the civil war. Being one of the 
border States, it was successively overrun 
by both of the opposing armies. Outside of 
St. Louis religious services for three or four 
years were almost entirely suspended; and 
for some time after the people could do little 
lor religion because of the impoverishment 
and desolation caused by the war. Immi¬ 
gration, however, soon began to pour into 
the State, and its rate of increase has since 
been very great. 

In 1867 a.d., Bishop Hawks began to 
show signs of the disease which, on the 19th 
of April of the next year, caused his death. 
At this time there were 24 clergymen and 
32 parishes in the Diocese, 18 church build- 





MISSOURI 


488 


MONTANA 


ings, and about 2100 communicants re¬ 
ported. 

At the Convention, May 29, 1868 a.d., 
the Rt. Rev. D. S. Tuttle, D.D., Missionary 
Bishop of Montana and Utah, was elected 
Bishop of the Diocese. He declined the 
duty, and at an adjourned Convention, 
September 3, 1868 a.d., the Rev. Charles F. 
Robertson, D.D., Rector of St. ' James’ 
Church, Batavia, Western New York, was 
elected. He was born in New York City in 
1835 a.d. , and was thus in his thirty-fourth 
year. He was consecrated October 25, 1868 
a.d. , in Grace Church, New York, and 
took up his abode soon after in the Epis¬ 
copal residence, which had just been pur¬ 
chased. 

The growth of the State and of the Diocese 
has of late years been rapid. There are 
now (1883 a.d.) 62 clergymen and 5385. 
communicants reported in the Diocese. 
There are 73 churches, 12 chapels, and 12 
rectories. The estimated value of the 
church property is $1,154,375, on which 
there is indebtedness only to the amount of 
$39,500. The amount raised during the last 
year for Church purposes was $132,662.36, 
and for the past three years $362,742.77. 

In 1846 a.d. the institution that subse¬ 
quently became St. Paul’s College, Palmyra, 
was begun under the care of the Rev. Dr. 
Corbyn. It prospered very greatly until 
the time of the civil war, when it became 
involved in debt and was sold. It was 
purchased by the Diocese again in 1869 
a.d., but did not attain the numbers which 
it previously had, and suspended its opera¬ 
tions in 1882 a.d. ; its location, in the 
changes of population and communication, 
not being any longer sufficiently central. 

In 1867 a.d. St. James’ Academy, Macon 
City, was established by the Rev. E. Talbot. 
It has secured a fine property, and has now 
six teachers and over one hundred pupils. 

In 1871 a.d. the Sisterhood of the Good 
Shepherd transferred its work from Balti¬ 
more to St. Louis, and at first took charge 
of the internal management of the Orphans’ 
Home and St. Luke’s Hospital. Two years 
after, however, they relinquished the former 
duty, in order to begin a school for girls, 
which has had each year increasing numbers 
and good results. 

In 1848 a.d. the Orphans’ Home was 
established in St. Louis, at first as a part of 
the work of St. John’s Church. Shortly 
after it came under the care of all the St. 
Louis parishes. The present building was 
erected in 1873 a.d., at a cost of $40,000,, 
exclusive of the land. During the last 
year it has taken care of 108 children, with 
an income of $6239.80. It has an endow¬ 
ment amounting to $37,360. 

In 1866 a.d. St. Luke’s Hospital was 
established in St. Louis. Its building, on 
the corner of Washington Avenue and 
Twenty-third Street, was finished in 1882 
a.d., at a cost of $43,000, exclusive of the 
cost of the land. It gave its care last year 


to 350 patients, beside its dispensary work, 
and had an income, beside the amount 
derived from patients, of $5729.32. Its 
internal care is in the hands of the Sister¬ 
hood of the Good Shepherd. 

In 1882 a.d. All-Saints’ Hospital, Kan¬ 
sas City, was organized, and its building 
begun. 

The Diocese has in it 67,380 square miles, 
and, according to the census of 1880 a.d., a 
population of 2,168,804 inhabitants. It is 
as large in area as the five New liork and 
five of the New England Dioceses, and has 
a larger population than any other Diocese. 
There is a likelihood of its being divided 
within a few years. 

Rt. Rev. C. F. Robertson, D.D., 

Bishop of Missouri. 

Mitre. Vide Vestments. 

Monarchia. It is the statement of the 
true interrelation of the Three Persons in 
the Unity of the Blessed Trinity. The 
self-existent nature of God demands our 
faith in His Unity. But He has also re¬ 
vealed to us the Trinity in this Unity. ( Vide 
Trinity.) But since by Eternal Genera¬ 
tion for the Son and by ‘Eternal Procession 
for the Holy Ghost there is a subordina¬ 
tion in authority and in order, there comes 
out the monarchia of the Father as the 
Fount or Source in the Trinity. The 
Son is subordinate to the Father, but not 
in His nature, being God of God, for He 
is God and Lord equally with the Father, 
and therefore very God of very God. So, 
too, the Holy Ghost proceedeth from the 
Father, and is sent by the Son, showing a 
coequality in origin and rank, but a subor¬ 
dination relatively in the work of the Ever- 
Blessed Trinity. 

Monophysites. Vide Councils, (Ecu¬ 
menical. 

Monothelites. Vide Councils, (Ecu¬ 
menical. 

Montana. The House of Bishops, in 
special session, on October 4, 1866 a.d., in 
rearranging the missionary field in the 
Northwest, constituted the Territories of 
Montana, Utah, and Idaho the jurisdiction 
of a Missionary Bishop. Previously, Mon¬ 
tana and Idaho had been attached to the 
missionary jurisdiction of Colorado, and 
Utah to that of Nevada. The Bishop of 
the new missionary jurisdiction was desig¬ 
nated the Missionary Bishop of Montana, 
with jurisdiction in Utah and Idaho. On 
October 5 the Rev. D. S. Tuttle was accord¬ 
ingly elected Missionary Bishop of Mon¬ 
tana. For fourteen years this arrangement 
continued, until, on the 9th of October, 1880 
a.d., the House of Bishops divided the Mis¬ 
sionary District of Montana, Idaho, and 
Utah into two Missionary Districts, Utah 
and Idaho to constitute one, and Montana 
the other. The missionary jurisdiction (or 
District) of Montana consists of the Terri¬ 
tory of Montana. Its area is nearly 146,000 
(145,776) square miles, divided by natural 
landmarks into three sections, Eastern, Mid- 






MONTANA 


489 


MORAL PHILOSOPHY 


die, and Western. The Eastern section is 
the Valley of the Yellowstone River; the 
Middle, the Valley of the Upper Missouri 
and its tributaries; the Western, on the 
Pacific side of the Rocky Mountains, the 
valley of the head-waters of Clark’s Fork of 
the Columbia River. The Territory is trav¬ 
ersed by the main range of the Rocky Moun¬ 
tains, running irregularly from southwest 
to northwest, and by numerous subordinate 
ranges. It is thus cut up into many com¬ 
paratively small valleys, isolated in differing 
degrees by intervening mountains. It is 
crossed from east to west by the Northern 
Pacific Railway, while the Utah and North¬ 
ern Branch of the Union Pacific enters at 
the southwest and runs northeasterly to a 
junction with the Northern Pacific. 

The population of Montana in 1880 a.d. 
was 39,157 ; it is now (January, 1884 a.d.) 
nearly double. It is attractive to immi¬ 
grants by reason of two prominent indus¬ 
tries, mining and agriculture. The many 
mountain ranges by which it is cut up 
abound in the precious metals, while the 
numerous valleys are very fertile, well 
watered, and fitted for the growth of the 
cereals especially. 

Its history as connected with the Protest¬ 
ant Episcopal Church in the United States 
perhaps begins with Christmas, 1865 a.d., 
when lay-services were begun at Virginia 
City, in the southwestern part of the Terri¬ 
tory, and continued for a lew weeks. These 
services were conducted by Professor T. J. 
Dimsdale, an Englishman residing in the 
place, and were the first services according 
to the Book of Common Prayer in the present 
District of Montana. But its ecclesiastical 
history proper begins with the action of the 
House of Bishops in 1866 a.d. Being before 
that time attached to Colorado, one thousand 
miles away, it was necessarily outside the 
sphere of that Church’s active work. Bishop 
Tuttle was consecrated May, 1867 a.d., and 
reached Montana in July of the same year, 
accompanied by the Rev. E. N. Goddard. 
An organization had been made at Virginia 
City the March preceding, under the name 
of !5t. Paul’s Church. In August a mission 
was organized in Helena, now the capital 
of the Territory, when the Bishop returned 
to Virginia City and assumed pastoral 
charge, Mr. Goddard remaining in charge 
of St. Peter’s Mission, Helena. The Bishop 
urchascd at Virginia City an unfinished 
uilding, begun by the Methodists, re¬ 
modeled and completed it, and it was 
opened for services on the Sunday after As¬ 
cension, May 24, 1868 a.d. For several years 
it was the only church building we had in 
Montana. The third mission organized was 
St. James’, Deer Lodge, of which the Rev. 
W. H. Stoy was the first minister. In 1876 
a.d. another organization was effected at 
Bozeman ; a building erected by the Good 
Templars was purchased and refitted for 
Church uses during 1876-77 a.d., which was 
named St. James’ Church, the second of our 


churches in the Territory. In 1877 a.d. the 
Mission of St. James, Deer Lodge, began the 
erection of a stone church, and the Mission 
of the Holy Spirit was organized at Mis¬ 
soula, the Rev. Geo. Stewart taking charge 
of it. In 1878 a.d. the church at Deer 
Lodge was completed and consecrated, and 
St. Peter’s Church, Helena, of stone was 
begun, being completed the year following. 
In 1879 a.d. resident ministers were placed 
at Butte and Fort Benton. St. Paul’s 
Church, Fort Benton, of brick, was built 
during the years 1880-81 a.d. ; St. John’s, 
Butte, a stone edifice, in 1881 a.d. ; St. 
James’, Dillon, of wood, 1881-82 a.d.; St. 
Paul’s Chapel, Miles City, of wood, in 1883 
a.d. ; and the church of the Holy Spirit, 
Missoula, of brick, is now (1884 a.d.) in pro¬ 
cess of erection. Numerous outlying mis¬ 
sions attached to the larger ones have been 
established from time to time, and worked 
according to the available force. There is 
one Parish, organized as such, St. Peter’s, 
Helena ; the parochial organization having 
been effected in 1880 a.d. All other sta¬ 
tions are missions, the minister and other 
officers being appointed by the Bishop. 
Clergy in the District: Bishop, 1; Priests, 
9 ; Deacons, 2 (one not at work); Church 
buildings, 8 ; Rectories, 3 ; Communicants 
(August 1, 1883 a.d.), 686. 

Rev. E. Gregory Prout. 

Moral Philosophy is the Philosophy of 
Moral Action. In it we treat more of ra¬ 
tional and accountable beings. 

We shall get our best idea of moral ac¬ 
tion by first considering the nature of 
physical or natural action. 

Throughout nature there is a regularity, 
a conformity, and a certainty of action that 
we do not find in human conduct. Mere 
matter is inert, while in man there is a 
power of spontaneity, or a freedom of choice 
and origination of action. 

The inertia of matter we express in the 
following principles or laws : (1) Any mass 
or particle of matter being in a state of rest 
or of inactivity cannot, of itself , change 
from that state ; but in order to a change 
from it, the matter, whether particle or mass, 
must be acted on by something else to set in 
motion or put it into a state of activity. 
(2) The second law is, that whenever any 
piece of matter is in motion, or action, it 
cannot, of itself , change the intensity or rate 
of action,—but it must keep on forever, un¬ 
less it is acted upon by something else be¬ 
sides, and outside of itself. Thus, if a stone 
is lying on the ground before me, it will lie 
there forever unless something acts upon it 
to move it, whereas a human being can 
start and move on at will or as he chooses 
to do. And if I pick up the stone and throw 
it into the air, it moves on until the attrac¬ 
tion of the earth brings it down. If, how¬ 
ever, there were nothing else acting upon it 
except the impulse which I gave it, it would 
move on in a straight line forever. But 
when a man is in motion, he can walk on or 




MORAL PHILOSOPHY 


490 


MORAL PHILOSOPHY 


stop as he pleases. He can also slacken his 



chooses. 

This is enough to show that man is, in 
part of his activity at least, totally different 
from mere inanimate or lifeless matter. And 
this part of man forms so large an element 
in his constitution, as to make it necessary 
that Moral Philosophy should be a science 
totally distinct from Natural Philosophy. 

There are, indeed, those who deny this 
difference and hold, that as the material ob¬ 
jects around us by the forces of nature, so 
man is moved by his “ emotionsalways 
acting in accordance with the strongest mo¬ 
tive. But the difficulty arises, How will we 
decide wffiich motive is the strongest ? Do 
we say, “ by the result” ? this is begging the 
whole question. You say a man is moved 
by the strongest motives, and then we de¬ 
cide that a certain motive is the strongest 
because he is moved by it or acts in accord¬ 
ance with it. 

A very simple illustration will show the 
fallacy of this argument. Suppose there is 
something on the floor that ought not to be 
there, and is offensive to me. This fact pro¬ 
duces in me a motive to pick it up and toss 
it out of the window ; I stoop to do so, sup¬ 
posing it to be very light,—to weigh perhaps 
an ounce or so,—but it is much heavier than 
I had supposed, and does not come with the 
first effort 1 make; I increase the effort, and 
continue to do so until I accomplish my 
object. But meanwhile the object has be¬ 
come no more offensive than it was before, 
and consequently the motive has grown no 
stronger. But I have increased the effort. 
Now this is just what no inanimate object, 
no piece of mere matter, can do. And it 
shows, too, the essential difference between 
the forces which act in nature and upon 
mere matter and the motives by which man 
is supposed to be actuated. 

Motives, like the forces in nature, are of 
two kinds in reference to their influence 
upon our actions. The one class act sud¬ 
denly and on the impulses of the moment, 
and the other act with less intensity at any 
given moment; but they continue to act for 
a long time, perhaps forever. And on this 
difference we find an illustration and an ex¬ 
planation of some of the most important 
phenomena and laws of moral action. 

We have a good illustration of this differ¬ 
ence in the forces of nature in the case of a 
stone thrown upwards into the air. The 
hand that throws it is the stronger force for 
the moment, for if it were not the stone 
would not go up. But gravity is a con¬ 
tinuous force and acts always, and will prove 
itself the stronger in the end; so that how¬ 
ever fast the stone may move at first, it 
will soon come back to the earth. 

Now this illustrates the difference be¬ 
tween the two classes of human motives 
upon which so much of our experience in life, 
and so many of the principles of moral 


philosophy, and, we may add, so many of 
the precepts of Christianity depend. All 
the appetites, or “ lusts of the flesh,” are of 
the impulsive kind. Many of the affections, 
such as anger, hate, etc., are also of this 
kind; they are strong at first, and in many 
cases they are exhausted by indulgence,— 
exhausted for the moment at least. No man 
is hungry after he has “eaten enough.” 
But the higher principles of morality, those 
of conscience and religion, are ot the other 
kind. They seldom or never become “ pas¬ 
sions,” they are not apt to be so strong for 
the moment as the appetites and passions. 
And herein is temptation and the danger of 
temptation. We yield and sin and forever 
after suffer remorse, shame, and self-re¬ 
proach for the act. 

I have thus pointed out one great differ¬ 
ence between us and the object in nature 
constituting the difference between natural 
and moral philosophy. This, however, is 
but the beginning and starting-point of 
other and broader differences. 

(1) Man suffers in consequence of his 
actions as the object in nature cannot. If 
a piece of matter is dropped it may be 
broken and spoiled, but it suffers no pain. 
But if a man falls* and breaks a limb he is 
disabled for a time and suffers great pain in 
consequence. And so with every wrong 
action that man performs, or can perform. 
He is liable to pain of some kind as a con¬ 
sequence of his act. 

(2) The second great difference is that man 
can understand the laws of nature, and, 
to some extent, foresee the consequence of 
his acts, and vary his actions accordingly. 
Here comes in the exercise of his moral free¬ 
dom or power of device. Philosophers have 
speculated a great deal about the nature of 
this power, and some of them have denied 
the reality of its existence. But no one of 
them has ever acted as though he did not 
believe in its reality. Of themselves they 
forecast the consequences of their acts, and 
avoid, as far as they can, those that will 
produce undesirable results, and in reference 
to others they blame them for what they 
consider wrong-doing, or though they fully 
believed that they were capable of choosing 
and doing differently. 

(3) The third point of difference is more 
important, though it cannot exist without 
the other two: it is the power which man 
has, by the formation of habits, himself to 
change his own character. In fact, every 
act we perform does something towards 
making us either better or worse. As we 
know very well, a strong man may corrupt 
and debase his nature by sensual indulgence, 
and produce and develop in himself appe¬ 
tites and passions that had no previous ex¬ 
istence, which, however, may become so 
strong as to be nearly if not quite uncon¬ 
trollable. Perhaps the most frequent case 
of this kind is the appetite for intoxicating 
drinks, which is the cause of ruin to so many 
young persons. But in the other direction 





MORAL PHILOSOPHY 


491 


MORAL PHILOSOPHY 


every good act performed is one step to¬ 
wards a habit of performing such acts,—the 
habit may be persevered in until it comes to 
be an instinct, a sort of second nature. I 
am inclined to think that this is what Holy 
Scripture refers to when it speaks of the 
laws of God being in the hearts of men (Jer. 
xxxi. 31, 32; Het>. viii. 10). 

Now it is the business of the writer on 
Moral Philosophy to describe the various 
classes of motives and the rules of action that 
man ought to follow, with the consequences 
to himself of his keeping or violating these 
rules. The best that can come as a result is 
the eradication of evil passions, propensities, 
and appetites, and the formation of a charac¬ 
ter conformed to the highest ideal we can 
form ; and the worst that can come is the 
complete enslavement of the man, soul and 
body, to the appetites of the lower or animal 
nature, making man in that respect worse 
than the beasts, for with them lust and fero¬ 
city are passing emotions, and not, as with 
debased man, a perpetual state or condition. 
Moral Philosophy can, of course, look for no 
help to man outside of himself in the 
transformation of his nature for the better. 
The help must all come from within, from 
conviction and force of will. Or, if there 
is anything in addition to this, it is the in¬ 
fluence of friends and external surroundings. 
It is the characteristic excellence of Chris¬ 
tianity that it offers Divine aid,—a super¬ 
natural help. The belief in the existence 
of God, of a righteous moral government 
in this world, and of a state of final rewards 
and punishments in the world to come, is 
of itself a great stimulus and a powerful in¬ 
fluence. But Christianity proffers something 
more. And I think we may regard it as 
one of the items of proof of the truth and 
supernatural origin of Christianity, that it 
has never failed to accomplish what it 
thus promises when its precepts are complied 
with. 

The rules of morality are derived from 
these subjects of consideration : (1) In the 
first place, man’s actions and the motives or 
feelings he indulges always have an effect on 
himself. Not only do they make or mar his 
happiness, they do something for him by 
way of changing his character and his in¬ 
ward self. They make him either better or 
worse. Voluntary actions become by repe¬ 
tition habits, and habits are of the nature 
of instincts,—a kind of second or acquired 
nature. Hence any motive indulged, or any 
action performed which tends to debase a 
man or make him worse, is wrong and con¬ 
trary to the principles of morality, no mat¬ 
ter how much pleasure the act may bring 
him. Morality regards moral excellencies 
as far superior to mere enjoyment,—any en¬ 
joyment, or any kind or form of happiness 
which can come from any act or form of in¬ 
dulgence that tends to degrade him in the 
scale of moral excellencies. 

(2) In the second place, man is a social 
being. He is born into society,—the society 


t--—--—- 

of parents and friends at least,—and he must 
live in society as long as he lives. But so¬ 
ciety is made up of human beings like him¬ 
self, and of persons who have the same right 
to whatever belongs to humanity in general 
as he has ; their influence on him is very 
great for good or for evil. And this influ¬ 
ence upon each in promoting the happiness 
and higher moral or spiritual welfare on 
both is very great. Sometimes their entire 
happiness is dependent on him. Hence he 
can have no right to act towards them in 
such a way as to make them unhappy, unless 
and except as they have done wrong or are 
in the wrong to such an extent that he can¬ 
not enjoy or pursue his natural rights with¬ 
out constraining their wishes. It then be¬ 
comes a question of casuistry how far one is 
bound in duty to forego his rights and 
pleasures out of regard to the happiness and 
welfare or wishes of others. 

And here Christianity comes in with a 
light which mere reason and morality could 
never supply, although they may approve it. 
It not only teaches us in the golden rule to 
love others as we love ourselves, and to do 
to others all things that we would have them 
do unto us, but it teaches that in yielding to 
others so far as we can without doing wrong 
to ourselves we are doing the very best 
thing we can do for ourselves in a spiritual 
point of view : we are losing our life that we 
may gain it. It teaches that every sacrifice 
we can make, without violating some prin¬ 
ciple of faith or of duty, for the sake of 
peace and the happiness of others will turn 
finally to our gain. 

(3) We must not only consider what man 
is and what are the several relations and 
circumstances by which he is surrounded. 
We must also consider what he ought to be. 
We must have our ideal standard at which 
each one should be among, and with which 
we must compare him. This ideal standard 
for man is, in the estimation of moral phi¬ 
losophy, the highest good at which he can 
aim or which he can hope to realize. Not 
only is it a character of moral excellence, 
but it is supposed to imply in its possession 
the highest happiness that man can have. If 
it does not include all forms of enjoyment, 
it does imply so much enjoyment of other 
and higher kinds that the want of the lower 
pleasures will not be felt. On the contrary, 
it will be regarded as a blessedness not to 
wish for them. 

Many questions of duty and the right or 
wrong of actions can be determined only by 
reference to the standard, what the perfect 
man 'will not do, and will not wish to do, 
the imperfect man ought not to be willing to 
do. Moral philosophy, then, tries to discover 
and develop the rules of right and wrong 
action merely from the light of nature, from 
such objects and sources as each one may see, 
consult, and study for himself. These are 
moral law. It sets before us also higher 
motives to action, but law is a rule which 
we must strive to conform to by force of 






MORTAL SIN 


492 


MOSES 


conviction and will. The appetites are 
often at variance with the laws of duty, and 
urge us with all their force in their own di¬ 
rection. When we resist them we do it by 
will force, a force of our own, in which we 
are unaided, and can look for no aid outside 
of ourselves, so far as mere moral philos¬ 
ophy can teach us, and so far as can be cer¬ 
tainly known by any mere light of nature 
and without a revelation from God. This 
is also true of all forms of heathen and nat¬ 
ural religion. They teach a sort of belief 
in God and prayer, but it is for material de¬ 
liverance, seldom or never to overcome sin¬ 
ful passions. Nor do they attempt to reveal 
the help sinful man needs. What St. Paul 
says privately of the Jewish law holds good 
with mere moral law. “What the Law 
could not do in that it was weak through 
the flesh, God, sending His own Son in the 
likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, con¬ 
demned sin in the flesh that the righteous¬ 
ness of the Law might be fulfilled in us,” 
and did accomplish, or has enabled us, 
“ who walk not after the flesh but after the 
Spirit,” to accomplish in the communion 
and fellowship of His Church. 

Rev. Prof. W. D. Wilson, D.D. 

Mortal Sin. The early Fathers, Tertul- 
lian, Cyprian, and after them Augustine 
and others, made a distinction between mor¬ 
tal and venial sin. While all sin is deadly 
to the soul, some sins are, to use St. Augus¬ 
tine’s phrase, fatal “by reason of their num¬ 
ber” (c/. Ps. xl. 12), others are so grievous 
that they kill the soul, as the sin against the 
Holy Ghost. All sin is of its own nature 
fatal to spiritual life, but there must be dis¬ 
tinctions in degree, distinctions which lie in 
the fact of our complex relations to God, 
to our neighbor, to ourselves. It is evident 
that an angry word may not have the same 
guilt attached to it, nor the same conse¬ 
quences, as an angry blow, and this too may 
not have the same consequences as a fatal 
stab, though the angry word may be in 
intimate connection with the fatal stab. 
Those sins which are prohibited by positive 
enactment must be considered more heinous 
than those fretting carelessnesses which in¬ 
deed eat into the soul life as moths fretting 
a garment, but which are incident to our 
daily life. Idolatry in any form, the gross 
idolatry of the heathen, or the subtle idola¬ 
try of self-murder, adultery, lying, theft, 
covetousness, pollution of the Lord’s day, 
the dishonor of parents, the hatred of one’s 
brother, all are deadly sins. “Venial sin is 
a transgression against the end of some 
divine law through inadvertence or care¬ 
lessness or indulgence.” The mortal sins are 
usually reckoned seven in number,—Pride, 
Envy, Sloth, Luxury, Covetousness, Anger, 
Gluttony; but it is evident that these are 
general terms for many fatal forms of sin 
that may be traced to their sources, as 
covetousness, which may show itself not 
only in an open coveting, but in withholding 
alms from God’s messengers for them, in a 


pitiless temper, in discontent. So anger may 
hold murder (St. Matt. v. 21, 22). So our 
Lord sanctions this form of classifying sins 
(c/. 1 John iii. 14-17). All sin is hateful to 
God and must be hateful to us (Ps. cxxxix. 
21-24). It is liable to His penalties each in 
its degree, and so must receive forgiveness 
only by His mercy. But some require direct 
and avowed confession. Others are of in¬ 
firmity and are unwittingly done, and since 
we know them not, for these a general ac¬ 
knowledgment and a prayer for better self- 
knowledge, and a deeper love, and more 
watchfulness is needful, and a supplication 
for renewed grace. 

Mortification. Positive teaching upon 
it is in Holy Scripture, but the word “ to 
mortify” occurs only twice in our transla¬ 
tion (Rom. viii. 13 ; Col. iii. 5). It is a 
strong word, setting forth the death unto 
sin and the life unto righteousness which 
forms the Christian’s struggle. A practice 
of mortification must form some part of 
every Christian life. It is a part of that 
self-mastery which is beyond mere self-con¬ 
trol or temperance, and it must take a very 
prominent place in the inner Christ life of 
the soul. It is the crucifixion to the world 
that we must make of self. But the very 
force of the term has always imported into 
it ascetic ideas, and the general conception 
of ordinary acts of mortification includes 
extraordinary practices. It does imply 
earnest self-examination, a strict carrying 
out of any rule of self-discipline without 
shrinking from publicity if that should 
follow. It does mean true fasting and 
prayer, and a putting aside of everything 
but the proper necessaries of life. Such a 
mortification is within the reach of any one 
who would, for the love of Christ and for 
his own soul’s sake, mortify the lusts which 
reign in our “ members which are upon the 
earth.” Were it practiced more generally it 
would give strength, and teach a sympathy 
with others who do not have force of will 
enough to withstand the general laxness of 
spiritual training so common. 

Mortuaries. Payments, whether by gift 
by way of fee or by custom made, in be¬ 
half of a dead person for recompense of 
personal tithes omitted during his lifetime. 
It seems to have been originally an oblation 
made at a person’s death, at first voluntary, 
then often by will. 

Moses. Of all those who were in their 
life or office types of Christ, no one is 
more remarkable than Moses, the Lawgiver, 
the Leader, to whom it was given to receive 
charge of a tribe and to discipline it into 
a nation. A faithful servant, a patient, 
thoughtful, provident ruler, modest, self- 
sacrificing, bearing his people’s burden 
with utter trust in God, none of mortal 
men can compare with him before the 
coming of his Master. The youngest of the 
three children of Amram, the grandson of 
Levi, he was a goodly child, a proper 
child, a child fair to God (Acts vii. 20, 




MOSES 


493 


MOSES 


margin), so that liis mother made every effort 
to conceal him, and successfully so for three 
months ; then when he could no longer be 
hidden, she made the ark of bulrushes and 
laid him in it and hid him in the flags on 
the river-brink. The touching story of 
Pharaoh’s daughter finding him is told with 
such lovely simplicity. The cry of the babe 
stirred her pity, and by the same feeling she 
committed it to its mother to nurse for her. 
The adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter, he 
was* trained in all the learning of the 
Egyptians, and was mighty in words and 
deeds. His subsequent ability as an organ¬ 
izer and administrator shows that he had 
received a training fitting him for the office 
he was afterwards to fill. No Egyptian 
training, however, destroyed his love for 
his own people. “ Moses, when he was 
come to years, refused to be called the son 
of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to 
suffer affliction with the people of God 
than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a 
season; esteeming the reproach of Christ 
greater riches than the treasures of Egypt” 
(Heb. xi. 24-26). It was this love for 
his oppressed people that led him to slay 
the Egyptian maltreating a Hebrew, and 
that afterwards made him a peace-maker 
among them. Their rejection of his appeal, 
and their accusing him of the homicide, 
showed him his danger, and he fled to 
Arabia, there for forty years to be a silent, 
patient shepherd. There ho married Zip- 
porah, the daughter of Jethro, the Priest of 
Midian, who had hospitably received him. 
It has been conjectured, but it is little more 
than conjecture, that during the latter part 
of his sojourn Moses was concerting a joint 
uprising of the Hebrews and of the recently 
expelled shepherd tribes of Arabs. But the 
narrative that Moses has left is too meagre to 
lend any proof or disproof of such a conj ecture. 
At the close of the forty years he was 
commissioned to his future work by the 
Voice speaking from the Burning Bush, 
despite his plea to be released from it. 
His diffidence led to putting his brother 
forward as chief speaker, but the final 
authority remained with him. So close 
the two periods of his trial and training. 
Meek, ready to withdraw from view, he is 
yet equal to the vast burden laid upon him, 
for he knew in whom he trusted. Hence¬ 
forth he belongs to the spiritual history of 
the world. He is commissioned with power 
to work signs and wonders. The shepherd’s 
rod becomes mightier than the imperial 
sceptre. His word effects wonders no other 
human speech has ever wrought. He stands 
before the Pharaoh,—the scattered dust 
becomes lice when smiten by Aaron’s rod; 
the ashes scattered by Moses and Aaron 
become boils. He spake the word for 
Jehovah, and all manner of flies and frogs 
appeared over the land. Moses stands forth 
the wonderful man of God. 

It is not necessary to dwell upon the his¬ 
tory of the Ten Plagues ; but these remarks 


may not be amiss. The first three wonders 
were imitated, evidently by sleight of hand, 
by the magicians, nor was it impossible to do 
so on a very small scale, while those which 
Moses wrought affected the whole land. But 
when the plague of lice smote them they con¬ 
fessed that this (the third plague) was of 
God. Then natural phenomena, supernatu- 
rally used and combined, marked the next 
six plagues. They were miraculous because 
ot their vastness, their completeness, their 
falling in rapid succession, out of all depend¬ 
ence upon seasons, upon the whole land, 
the field of Zoan,— i.e ., the Delta,—while yet 
the land of Goshen was exempted. The last 
final terrible stroke fell from the scourge of 
the Lord Himself. They were warnings, 
disciplines, and then judgments upon Pha¬ 
raoh and his people. At last Moses led the 
people out,—a hurried, anxious multitude, 
guarded by the six hundred thousand men 
at arms, who were apparently in a state of 
efficient discipline. So far in Moses’ career 
we have seen a developed ability, patriotism, 
and a modest, retiring character that yet 
showed courage and constancy, and through 
it all unshaken faith. But he was to be 
yet more sorely tried. His faith obeyed the 
command to go down the banks of the Bed 
Sea, and there his rod wrought God’s deliv¬ 
erance. But now his patience, his ability 
as an organizer, his love for a stiff-necked, 
undisciplined multitude, his constant inter¬ 
cession, his untiring toil, all were to be de¬ 
veloped in the wanderings in the wilderness. 
No less courage was needed then than be¬ 
fore in this man of eighty, who was to spend 
the next forty years in disciplining a conge¬ 
ries of tribes into a nation fit to take posses¬ 
sion of the land God would give them. He 
needed all the converse, all the revelations, 
all the directions he received, and yet he 
nearly sank under the burden. Their idol¬ 
atries, their rebellious temper, their disobe¬ 
dience, must have sorely grieved him, yet he 
never swerved in his love, not when God 
offered to replace them with his own family. 
And in this connection it may be noted 
that his sons Gershom and Eliezer scarcely 
appear in the sacred history at all. As gen¬ 
eral, he displayed a capacity for strategy in 
the two chief campaigns against Sihon and 
Og. So for forty years he led them, divinely 
guided and supported, yet himself nobly* 
equipped by capacity and education for the 
office. One other point in his character. 
He has been called the meekest man. If 
patient endurance shows it he truly was so. 
But he also showed a hasty temper under 
much provocation, but this meekness was 
more truly a sympathy for others, and an 
appreciation of their feelings and a desire to 
aid and to plead for them. But his hasty 
words deprived him of the right to enter the 
promised land. The details of the wander¬ 
ings in the wilderness can find no place here, 
for we must use the history mainly to show 
how he as the faithful servant in the house 
was a type of the Son, and he is of that 





MOSES 


494 


MUSIC 


house. In patience, forbearance, love for 
his people, and his self-restraint, his aban¬ 
doning all for their sakes, Moses becomes a 
type of our Lord, who became of none effect 
for us. 

Again, Moses, though a full-born Israelite, 
is an alien trained by a stranger, and an out¬ 
cast from his people. So in this he is a type of 
our Lord, trained in this world at the car¬ 
penter’s work-bench, and when he would 
come to them, rejected by His people. Again, 
Moses, as Leader and Lawgiver, is more 
directly the type of our Lord in His 
ascended work as the Captain of our salva¬ 
tion. As Leader he brings the people to 
the border of the Promised land, and leaves 
them there to enter in, being refused him¬ 
self for their sakes, and in this the type 
would seem to fail. Yet in a deeper sense 
was he the type of Christ in all that con¬ 
stitutes a Leader. Every quality he dis¬ 
played or developed, even to minute mat¬ 
ters, contains a reference to our Lord, —His 
foresight, His organization, His gracious 
love, as Lawgiver. Moses’Law was largely 
one of ritual, yet it was the shadow of good 
things to come, and so a revelation of what 
was the direction of God’s will. In many 
matters of internal economy it was what 
Christian States are now beginning to rec¬ 
ognize as truest law. Its basis, the Deca¬ 
logue, was re-enacted, developed, and sanc¬ 
tified by our Lord Himself in His Sermon 
on the Mount, and was presupposed by the 
Apostles as binding upon all men. Our 
Lord’s new commandment lay concealed 
in the old commandment if men would but 
see it. For love is the fulfilling of the Law. 
But in the highest office Moses held, as 
Prophet, was he specially the type of 
Christ. His actual predictions were but 
few, and the chiefest was that on the 
destruction of Jerusalem. But so it was 
with our Lord; He exercised the predictive 
part of the Prophetic office only in the like 
subject, transferring its terrors as a type to the 
still greater terrors of the Day of Judgment. 
It was in action, in the whole round of his 
life, that he was like his Lord, at that dis¬ 
tance which separates the servant from the 
master, in his life he exercised the highest 
predictive office. And again, as the messen¬ 
ger bearing the revelation of the loftiest title 
of God, Jehoyah, I am that I am, he did 
not so much teach an utterly new fact as 
bring forward and establish it forever, 
making it the corner-stone of Jewish polity. 
So our Lord, declaring the Doctrine of the 
Trinity, more indeed by the consequence of 
His teaching than by any direct assertion, 
forever made it the last and chiefest revela¬ 
tion, and built upon it the whole superstruc¬ 
ture of Christianity. Yet as in the name of 
Moses’ mother, Jochebed, lay the holy name 
Jah, and so showed it was not unknown to 
the tribes of Israel, so in the Old Testament 
lies embedded this doctrine of our Lord, 
which he brought forward, not as new, but 
as now to be chiefly taught. As Prophet, 


Leader, Lawgiver, as the creator of a nation, 
the founder of a theocracy, Moses is the type 
of our Lord, in some single points perhaps 
more brilliantly surpassed by others, but in 
the grandeur of his life, his faith, his work, 
the foremost man who has ever lived. And 
our Lord ever refers to him as the highest 
authority preceding Himself. Moses gave 
the Law and prepared the way for the Gospel. 

Motet. Vide Music. 

Movable Feasts. Those which depend 
upon Easter for the time of their celebration. 
The calendar in the Prayer-Book contains 
rules for finding Easter-day, but generally 
it lays down this rule: “ Easter-Day, on 
which the rest depend, is always the first 
Sunday after the Full Moon, which happens 
upon or next after the Twenty-first Day of 
March; and if the Full Moon happen upon 
a Sunday, Easter-Day is the Sunday after. 

“ Advent-Sunday is always the nearest 
Sunday to the Feast of St. Andrew, whether 
before or after. 


Septuagesima ) ® f Nine 

Sexagesima ( o J Eight v 

Quinquagesima j ?* ] Seven ( 

Quadragesima. } ST ( Six J 

Rogation-Sunday is Five Weeks 
Ascension-Day “ Forty Days 
Whit-Sunday “ Seven Weeks 
Trinity-Sunday “ Eight Weeks 


weeks before Easter. 


after Easter.” 


Music. The harp and the organ were in¬ 
vented by Jubal long before the Flood, and 
since then mankind has never been without 
musical instruments. It would seem from 
Gen. xxxi. 27, that family celebrations were 
gladdened “ with songs, with tabret, and 
with harp.” The religious use of music is 
first mentioned after the destruction of 
Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea, when 
Moses and the children of Israel sang unto 
the Lord that glorious song, which is men¬ 
tioned again in Rev. xv. 3: “the song of 
Moses the servant of God, and the song of 
the Lamb.” 

Not only did Moses and the men of Israel 
lead in this glorious song, but Miriam and 
all the women answered them, with timbrels 
and with dances, repeating the triumphant 
chorus probably many times over. There is 
no hint that this was now first invented or 
devised, but the mention of it looks rather 
like an outburst of that with which they 
were all familiar. We have, then, vocal and 
instrumental music, the men choir and the 
women choir, the recitative and the great 
chorus, all in full use already. When, 
under David and Solomon, the ritual of the 
Temple received its most splendid develop¬ 
ment, it seems to have exceeded anything 
else recorded in history in that line. Of 
the 38,000 Levites, 4000 were appointed 
to praise God with the instruments which 
David made; and it would seem that he 
wrote them certain tunes or chants, as well 
as the words of psalms, both of which were 
used for ages after. There was a further 
division among the singers, for greater 
variety and skill, and that the service should 





MUSIC 


495 


MUSIC 


not be too burdensome; for there were no 
less than twenty-four different courses, each 
containing twelve men; and under these 
288 the rest were trained, the great Festi¬ 
vals, it is probable, bringing all the 4000 
together. The three great families of the 
Levites all had part in this remarkable or¬ 
ganization,—Heman representing the Ko- 
hatliites, Asaph the Gershonites, and Ethan 
(or Jeduthun) the Merarites. The glory 
and beauty of this musical service seems to 
have been preserved and perpetuated through 
all the subsequent corruption of the Nation, 
and was famous through all the countries 
roundabout. Even in their captivity, those 
who had led them away captive required 
them to “ sing one of the songs of Zion.” At 
the restoration, the musical service and the 
courses of the singers were lovingly restored, 
and were mainfcwned—with few and brief 
interruptions—until the destruction of the 
cit} T by Titus. 

When we look at the Psalms, we find 
that almost every one of them has its proper 
musical inscription, showing that they were 
intended from the first to be sung, and 
with instrumental accompaniment besides. 
When we look a little further, we find that 
this wonderful system of music was, with 
singular tenacity, maintained on the Tem¬ 
ple site for more than a thousand years. 
We see how intensely the nation was at¬ 
tached to a musical inheritance, the like of 
which no other nation ever had. We know 
that the Psalter at least—to say nothing of 
other parts of Divine Service—has been sung 
in all ages, over all Christendom, as it was 
among the Jews. We know that the Jew¬ 
ish Church and the Christian Church over¬ 
lapped one another for forty years, the 
Christians in Jerusalem during all that time 
frequenting the Temple service, and contin¬ 
uing undiminished their familiarity with 
the Temple music. We find a peculiar 
kind of music— Chanting —everywhere used 
for the Psalter ; and all ecclesiastical tradi¬ 
tion tells us that it was derived from the 
East. Under these circumstances, the idea 
that the Temple music suddenly disappeared, 
—became absolutely unknown ; and that an 
entirely new system of music was with equal 
suddenness invented by nobody knows 
whom, and nobody knows where ; and that 
this new style should have had vitality 
enough to endure Jo our own day : this is 
inherently absurd. The only rational idea 
is, that the music traditionally derived from 
the East, and which has been as tenacious 
of its existence since as well as before, must 
be, in its main features at least, the old Tem¬ 
ple music. In the East, antiphonal chant¬ 
ing was already established, under St. Ig¬ 
natius of Antioch, within twenty years after 
the death of St. John. In the West, the an¬ 
cient chant was domiciled at Milan by the 
great St. Ambrose in the fifth century. The 
purity of his modes was restored by St. Gre¬ 
gory the Great, Bishop of Rome, in the sev¬ 
enth century ; and his arrangement has been 


so permanent that the name “ Gregorian” is 
attached to that entire style of music to this 
day. From time to time it has become 
grievously corrupted by ignorance, vanity, 
and bad taste. These caprices of musicians 
had so overloaded the sacred words at the 
time of the Reformation, that the Council 
of Trent actually had it under consideration 
to exclude music entirely from Divine Ser¬ 
vice. An exquisitely simple and dignified 
Mass by Palsestrina, which was composed for 
the purpose, and performed before the Coun¬ 
cil, alone prevented the entire banishment 
of music. No Liturgy has ever been set forth 
with any authorized music, other than the 
Gregorian ; and after all its periods of cor¬ 
ruption, it has had, like religion itself, its 
seasons of revival and a return to primitive 
purity. It is now more zealously cultivated, 
both in the Anglican and in the Roman 
Communion, than at any other time for the 
past five hundred years: having come up 
afresh in the great Catholic Revival of our 
own day. 

It is not easy to give any idea of the va¬ 
riety and richness and religious depth of 
Gregorian music to those who have been 
educated only in the mechanical shallow¬ 
ness of modern music. This modern music 
has only two modes, major and minor. The 
striking difference in character between 
these two is due to the fact that the two 
semitones occur in different places of the 
scale. In the major mode (ascending) the 
semitones occur between the third and 
fourth, and between the seventh and eighth 
notes of the scale; in the minor mode, be¬ 
tween the second and third, and between 
the fifth and sixth notes of the scale. But 
these are the only two varieties. No mat¬ 
ter what the key may be, major is major, 
and minor is minor: these are the only two 
modes. Moreover, these two modes know 
but one dominant , and that is a fifth above 
the tonic. Now, in the Church Modes, of 
which there are eight (some would make 
them fourteen ), there are no two of them in 
which the semitones occur in the same places 
of the scale ; or if any two scales are alike 
in that, the mode of harmonizing them 
makes them entirely different. The im¬ 
pression produced upon the ordinary mind 
is, that in Church music the major and 
minor seem to be mingled together in per¬ 
petually changing proportions and relations. 
There are four of these modes called “ au¬ 
thentic f and four “ plagal." To get the 
scale of the four authentic, the easiest way 
is to go to a piano-forte or organ, and use 
only the white keys, omitting the black 
altogether. Then the scale of an octave 
from D to D will give the scale of the Dorian 
mode ; that from E to E, the Phrygian ; that 
from F to F, the Lydian; that from G to G, 
the Mixolydian. All these have as their 
tonic the note on which their scale begins and 
ends. The four plagal modes are related to 
these four in the following way: For the 
scale of the Hypodorian , begin one-fourth 





MUSIC 


496 


MUSIC 


below the tonic of the Dorian, and close with 
the octave above the note on which you start, 
that is to say, from A to A; but this is to be 
harmonized so that the final chord is that 
of D,—the same as the Dorian. The other 
three plagal modes—the Hypophrygian , Hy- 
polydian , and Hypomixolydian —are formed 
in precisely the same manner from their 
corresponding authentic modes. 

The famous Gregorian Tones are eight in 
number, and are founded on these eight 
modes. The root principle of these glorious 
old Chants is, that the recitative note shall 
be the same note in each half of the Chant; 
and it must be taken at such a pitch as shall 
be easily sustained by all manner of voices 
in unison, say not lower than F natural 
nor higher than B flat. The Tonus Pere- 
grinus (irregular) is the only one where 
there is a different note for the recitative, 
and there the difference is only one tone. In 
the strictest notation, no one of the Gregor¬ 
ian tones extends its melody beyond a range 
of six consecutive notes of the scale. Within 
these narrow limits every voice can join, 
without straining, or fatigue, or danger of 
flatting; and when a whole congregation 
has been trained to take their part, the ma¬ 
jestic deep river of unison rolls onward with 
resistless strength, the organ accompaniment 
to this canto firmo varying with every verse, 
yet never for an instant confusing the solid 
power of the melody. Besides the variety 
of harmonic relations inseparable from the 
eight different modes, there is a further 
variety in the fact that the Gregorians have 
not—like the Anglican Chants—a fixed 
length and uniform rhythm. Sometimes 
there is one note, with one accent, in the 
mediation, sometimes more; and the ca¬ 
dences are even more varied than the medi¬ 
ations. Moreover, they may be used with 
the intonation (each Tone having its own 
characteristic intonation), or without it. 
And still further, each Tone has a festal form, 
as well as a ferial form. And nearly all 
the Tones have a great variety of endings, 
some complete, some incomplete: the former 
ending on the tonic of the Mode, the latter 
having some other final note in the melody. 
The Modes are also used for Hymn melodies 
and Anthems, as well as for Chants, though 
commonly with rather more freedom. Nor 
is Gregorian music ever written in strict 
time , like modern music. It has only three 
different notes, one of which is long, another 
short, and the third may be called medium : 
but their length is relative only, and not an 
exact double. The words used therewith 
regulate the actual length, so that the flexi¬ 
bility of Gregorian music is like the flexi¬ 
bility of the skin upon the living body. The 
spirit of Gregorian music is very strongly 
infused into the earlier German chorales , 
and the earlier Cathedral Music of the 
Church of England, but becomes less per¬ 
ceptible as we approach modern days. The 
English Cathedrals have kept up, with won¬ 
derful tenacity, through degenerate days, 


the grand old traditions of the Choral ser¬ 
vice. Anciently, the entire service was 
musically rendered, the Scriptures having 
their own peculiar intonation and inflections 
(as with the Jews when reading the Hebrew 
Scriptures) ; and the conversational or ordi¬ 
nary tone being excluded altogether. The 
Cantus Scripturarum , however, is now gen¬ 
erally disused. 

The chanting of the Psalms has always 
been maintained in Cathedrals and in many 
parish churches, and is becoming daily more 
and more common. Anthems (both word 
and thing having been developed, by free 
changes, from the old Antiphon) have al¬ 
ways been popular, and are authorized by 
the declaration of the House of Bishops in 
1814 a.d., that “ Anthems taken from Scrip¬ 
ture, and judiciously arranged, may, accord¬ 
ing to the known allowance of this Church, 
be sung in congregations, at the discretion 
of their respective Ministers.” Metrical 
hymns, however, are the most easily learned, 
and therefore the most popular kind of music 
in most of our congregations. Unfortunately, 
they are too largely, both in words and 
music, deficient in churchliness of tone, 
though there is a gradual and very percep¬ 
tible improvement slowly going on among 
us. The choral service, and surpliced choirs 
of male voices, are spreading from year to 
year, with general acceptance wherever they 
are tried. 

There are three parts of Church music, 
taking that term in its fullest sense : 1, that 
of the congregation; 2, that of the trained 
choir; 3, that of instruments. • As to the first, 
it must be confessed that general Church 
practice has rather discouraged the singing 
of-the entire congregation, and the most 
ancient Canon (Laodicea, xv.) on the subject 
provides expressly that “ No others shall 
sing in the church, save only the canonical 
singers, who go up into the Ambo and sing 
from a book.” But where musical education 
is becoming daily more general, there will 
be an increasing number of those who are 
able, and ought to be willing, to join in the 
simpler kinds of music. It should always 
be insisted on that some part of what is sung 
should be simple enough for all to join in. 
The Venite and Psalter (sung to Gregorians, 
in unison), and the Hymns, should be of this 
description, and also the versicles and re¬ 
sponses, the Litany, and. the Amens , to the 
prayers. But where there is a trained choir, 
a considerable portion of the music should 
be left to them. They have a right —as they 
spend so much of time, trouble, and musical 
skill in preparing for their public service— 
to offer to the Lord of their best: and their 
best will necessarily be too elaborate to per¬ 
mit the joining of those who do not practice 
at all. As to instrumental music, the sup¬ 
port of the organ is very valuable, in pre¬ 
venting the flatting of the singers, as well as 
in adding dignity, majesty, and power to 
the general effect. It is becoming more 
common, also, to reinforce the organ with 





MUSIC 


497 


MYSTERY 


one or more orchestral instruments, espe¬ 
cially on high festivals. 

At the beginning of this century and for 
some time after, it was taken for granted 
that furnishing the music in church was a 
wholly secular business, not needing that 
those who took part in it should be members 
of the Church. The organ-gallery was com¬ 
monly as far as possible from the chancel, 
high up above the body of the congregation, 
and with curtains drawn in front, behind 
which the choir might do as they pleased 
until the time came for them to sing. The 
abuses growing out of this state of things 
became intolerable. The other theory is 
now recognized as the true one, which 
makes those who lead the worship of the 
sanctuary to be a part of the ministry , and 
therefore clothes them in cassocks and sur¬ 
plices, gives them seats in the chancel (or as 
near it as may be), has them enter and de¬ 
part with the clergy, and inducts them into 
office with an appropriate special service, 
training them to that devoutness and rever¬ 
ence which ought to characterize such holy 
work. Of course none but baptized mem¬ 
bers of the Church should be admitted to 
this honorable service, and as many as are 
competent should be confirmed and com¬ 
municants also. The boy choir has several 
great advantages. It is composed of those 
who are yet “ under authority,” and there is 
far less likelihood of factious friction develop¬ 
ing “unpleasantnesses” in the choir. There 
is constant change in the -personnel , as the 
boys’ voices cannot last many years before 
“breaking.” This is troublesome, but it has 
its compensations. It prevents the settling 
down of dear old barnacles in the choir, 
who have served for so many years that 
nobody can think of hurting their feelings by 
telling them that they ought to retire. It is 
continually sending forth youths who have 
been well trained in Church music, and 
drawing in fresh subjects for the same train¬ 
ing, thus steadily adding to the numbers of 
those who are able to serve acceptably, 
whether in the choir or out of it. And last, 
not least, it is a valuable means of interesting 
the hearts of the young in the sacred beauty 
of God’s House, to such a degree that not a 
few of them eventually study for holy 
Orders. Moreover, such choirs are always 
more numerous than quartette choirs, and 
as each boy has his own circle of relatives and 
friends who take a deep interest in seeing him 


surpliced and hearing him sing, it furnishes 
a permanent element of attraction to the 
public services of the Church. It is no 
wonder, then, that, with some local excep¬ 
tions from accidental causes, the establish¬ 
ment of boy choirs, surpliced, has been 
almost uniformly successful, and is steadily 
and rapidly increasing in all* parts of the 
Church. And, with them, there always 
comes a more solid, substantial, and 
Churchly tone in the music of the Sanc¬ 
tuary. Rev. J. H. Hopkins, D.D. 

Mystery. Something into which one 
must be initiated. Some fact, principle, or 
doctrine, whether of the world, of nature, 
of intellect, or of religion, that is not yet 
understood, but can be, either by a future 
combination of what we now know, or by 
direct revelation. So our Lord, “ to you 
it is given to know the mysteries of the 
kingdom of heaven” (St. Matt. xiii. 11). 
Again, the mysteries of God are those 
things which the ministers of God have as 
stewards for Him to give to His people (1 
Cor. iv. 2). The Gospel is a mystery now 
revealed. The change that shall come upon 
our mortal bodies is a mystery (1 Cor. xv. 
51). The whole revelation of Christ is a 
mystery of Godliness (1 Tim. iii. 16). In 
Greek theology the term has always been 
used as the equivalent of the Latin Sacra- 
mentum. But both terms were in the ear¬ 
lier theology used with far more width of 
application than a later and more rigidly 
formulated theology would admit. They 
were used, as in the New Testament, to 
stand for anything relating to God, and to 
the Church, and to our Life which can be, 
though it may not yet be, within the scope 
of our knowledge. So the mystery of the 
Incarnation, not wholly explained yet, is 
far better understood than it could have 
been by the Jews, who only could have held 
it through revelation as a fact yet to be,— 
still, a mystery to be put within the range 
of our powers. Not perhaps here shall we 
be able to understand all mysteries; but we 
will hereafter, when we shall know even as 
we are known. Mysteries are an exercise 
of our faith, and we can accept and act 
upon them as we do accept and act upon as 
great mysteries in their kind in the world of 
physical nature, or in the sphere of human 
nature. They need give us no more trouble ; 
but the mysteries of our Christian faith de¬ 
mand an equal obedience and faithful use. 


32 





NAG’S HEAD 


498 


NARTHEX 


N. 


Nag’s Head Consecration Story. Mat¬ 
thew Parker, who in the reign of Queen 
Elizabeth succeeded Cardinal Pole as Arch¬ 
bishop of Canterbury, was duly consecrated 
in the chapel at Lambeth, December 17, 
1559 a.d. All the official documents, civil 
as well as ecclesiastical, relating to this con¬ 
secration *are on record. Forty-five years 
afterwards, viz., in 1604 a.d., a noted and 
unscrupulous controversialist, who, by order 
of James I., had been banished from Eng¬ 
land, Christopher Holywood, a Jesuit, pub¬ 
lished at Antwerp, in a violent book of his, 
the story of a mock consecration of Parker 
and other Bishops at the Nag’s Head tavern, 
Cheapside, London. This story, utterly 
without foundation, but intended to cast 
discredit upon the line of succession through 
Parker and his coadjutors, was eagerly 
seized upon by Romish polemical writers, 
and repeated by them with various addi¬ 
tions. Its first appearance in print nearly 
half a century after it was said to have oc¬ 
curred, when, had it had the slightest element 
of truth about it, it must have been known 
long before by the enemies of the Church 
of England, and would have been as gladly 
used by them then as it was subsequently, 
has not tended to its acceptance at the pres¬ 
ent day. Indeed, all fair-minded and intel¬ 
ligent writers of the Roman Obedience have 
long since abandoned this weak and vindic¬ 
tive invention of Holywood’s. A very 
thorough sifting of the story will be found 
in Haddan’s Apostolical Succession in the 
Church of England, and in the third volume 
of Archbishop Bramhall’s Works, Oxford, 
1844 a.d. Rev. T. C. Yarnall, D.D. 

Nahum. Nahum the Elkoshite is the 
seventh in order of the Minor Prophets. 
The epithet Elkoshite is thought to indicate 
the place of the prophet’s birth or residence 
rather than his descent, and for many cen¬ 
turies it was believed that he was a native 
of Elkosh, a village said to be in Galilee; 
but in modern times another tradition re¬ 
presents Nahum as a native of Alkush, 
near Mosul, on the Tigris, where a tomb is 
pointed out to this day as his. Very little 
authority is to be attached to either tradi¬ 
tion, or to the. statement that he was of 
the tribe of Simeon; but it is considered 
probable from expressions used by the 
prophet, that he was familiar with the scen¬ 
ery of Palestine, and most likely a resident 
of Judah, when his prophecy was delivered ; 
yet Ewald argues for the same reasons that 
Nahum must have been an eye-witness of 
the destruction of Nineveh. Nearly as 
much uncertainty exists about the prophet’s 
date as about his birth and residence. The 
date 713 b.c. is given in our Bibles, and 


with this the best critics agree, though some 
incline to an earlier one, while others would 
place Nahum nearly a hundred years later. 
The prevailing opinion is that he was a 
younger contemporary Of Isaiah, and possi¬ 
bly of Hosea and Micah. The Book of the 
Vision of Nahum the Elkoshite, is the Bur¬ 
den of Nineveh, and is wholly a prophecy 
of the destruction of that city. The three 
chapters into which it is divided form a 
continuous whole, in which, in lofty and 
poetical language, the prophet unfolds the 
woe denounced upon the chief city and mis¬ 
tress of the world. So literally was this pro¬ 
phecy fulfilled that for twenty centuries the 
very site of Nineveh was disputed, and only 
within the present generation has it been 
determined by discoveries which illustrate 
in the most remarkable manner the predic¬ 
tions of Nahum and his fellow-prophets. 
(Vide Nineveh in Smith’s Diet, of Bible.) 
The elevated style and poetical beauty of 
Nahum are evident to any reader ; and the 
opinion of Bishop Lowth, though spoken of 
the original, will readily be accepted by 
those who know the translation only : “ None 
of the Minor Prophets seem to equal Nahum 
in boldness, ardor, and sublimity. His 
prophecy forms a regular and perfect poem ; 
the exordium is not merely magnificent, it 
is truly majestic ; the preparation for the 
destruction of Nineveh, and the description 
of its downfall and desolation, are expressed 
in the most vivid colors, and are bold and 
luminous in the highest degree.” Nahum 
signifies Consolation. 

Authorities : Bible Commentary, Smith’s 
Bible Dictionary, Lowth, Gray. 

Name. The name; Christian name. 
The name is the most necessary of all words 
in a language. Adam received his name 
from God, and he in turn, in token of Lord- 
ship, named all living things. . It was the 
great and glorious name of Jehovah which 
was the subject of the most important rev¬ 
elation before the Incarnation, and it was 
the revelation of the names Father, Son, 
and Holy Ghost which was a part of His 
Gospel. We have these names pronounced 
upon us at our baptism, and are named 
thenceforth Christians, and we have our 
names written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. 
The name, then, which we bear is a most 
solemn reminder of our duty and our 
vows, which bind us to God and give us a 
brotherhood in Christ and a fellowship with 
the Saints. It is a badge or token to be 
highly esteemed, since we share the name of 
Him whose name is above every name, and 
at which every knee should bow. 

Narthex. . The long, narrow vestibule 
which ran across the front of the church. 




NATURAL RELIGION 


499 


NATURE, LAWS OF 


The term also included the outer porch, as 
well as the inner vestibule. It had two 
doors, and in it were placed those who were 
under discipline and the energumens. Near, 
but beyond it, in the body of the church, 
the mixed congregation of the hearers and 
the heathen were placed, while the faithful 
alone sat or stood farther within, and occu¬ 
pied the nave proper. 

Natural Religion. Whatever subordi¬ 
nate ideas maybe attached to the conception 
of Religion, yet, whether primal, natural, 
or based on revelation, religion includes the 
acknowledgment of some supreme power 
and of our relation to it as owing a duty 
and service in return for life and continu¬ 
ance, and is the debt of worship by some 
outward acts of reverence and prayer. A 
religion to be such must assume the existence 
of a God, so we are here precluded from dis¬ 
cussing whether the intuitions of our nature 
afford sufficient grounds for such a belief. 
It is enough for us to claim such a knowl¬ 
edge, no matter how crude or debasing, if it 
is distinctly a knowledgeof a Power outside 
the limits of our own human capacities. 
The Fetich of the Negro, the Good Spirit of 
the Indian, are the base of their ideas of 
God as much as our better knowledge from 
Revelation, and it is so far a religion. But 
does natural religion simply become the sum 
of those concepts which are left after we 
have carefully removed, if it be possible for 
us to do so, all that Revelation has imported 
into our knowledge? or is it not rather the 
sum of those and conceptions of the human 
mind which increase as observation, experi¬ 
ence, and religious emotions expand and re¬ 
act till at last their sum shapes itself almost, 
if not quite, into a system of religion ? This 
last appears to be the natural course which 
the religious ideas within the range of mere 
human capacity would take. 

There is, then, but developed in varying 
degrees, a natural religion. It is based upon 
the longings that belong to human nature. 
It seizes hold of any conception of a power 
that can give its helplessness aid. It ac¬ 
knowledges a dependence. It offers a pay¬ 
ment of duty, obedience, worship. This 
may be but slightly understood, but it is 
understood and yielded. Besides this, there 
appears another conception, itself a specula¬ 
tion, but subtly bound up in the first. It is 
that as the man owes a service to God, 
why should God so treat him ? Why 
should his soul perish, or where does God 
bestow it after death? There can be no 
clearer proof of the immortality of the soul 
than there can be of the existence of God. 
But as the conception of true religion devel¬ 
ops, so does the belief of immortality and 
future happiness of the soul develop. They 
are both parts of that natural religion which 
is implanted in our nature. What natural 
religion cannot do is, it cannot show to us 
the Resurrection. That is a distinct Rev¬ 
elation. It is on the truest instincts of such 
natural religion, and not in any conflict 


with them, that God’s revelation bases itself 
and claims our assent. But natural religion 
is not strong enough to put any restraints 
upon our passions. It is not able to give 
sufficient motives for self-control. It can¬ 
not supply the objective aims of religion 
vividly enough ; and its chief appeal is to 
the weaker side of a merely human moral 
law, based upon an undefined good,—unde¬ 
fined, that is, as sharply as the conscience 
recognizes it when presented through Rev¬ 
elation. For any man thus to rest only 
upon natural religion, though carried up to 
Theistic or Deistic notion, when he has the 
light of Revelation, is a mere subterfuge,— 
a paltering with his conscience in the en¬ 
deavor to avoid the responsibilities of the 
greater knowledge Revelation gives us. In 
a Christian land we may appeal to the dic¬ 
tates of natural religion, but as a proof that 
even in our human nature God has not left 
us without proofs of what is more clearly 
known to be His will, and to show that our 
Faith is in consonance with and glorifies 
the rudimentary ideas, which are really 
simply indications of our natural capacity 
for all the gifts He has given us in His Son. 
We have avoided complicating this state¬ 
ment with other subordinate ideas, or with 
any analysis of Fetichism Polytheistic no¬ 
tions, or with a nature-worship which has 
been carried out by some nations (as the 
Sabeans) into a system of some perfectness. 
But for us here in this Christian county, 
natural religion should hold the same rela¬ 
tion to our spiritual life that our elemental 
childish ideas on any secular subject hold 
to our better and riper knowledge. A sub¬ 
ject of inquiry as.helping us better to com¬ 
prehend the working of our minds. 

Nature. That which exists, whether it 
be self-existent, as in the Divine Nature, or 
derivative and dependent, as in all else 
which has being, whether visible to us or 
not. But existence implies some kind of 
organization, and organization implies Law ; 
for that chaos which can be conceived by us 
must be made up of nature, and it would be 
hard to conceive of the ultimate particles of 
matter without some organization, though 
the congeries of such matter might have 
no cohesion. This being true, we then 
can conceive of all nature whatever as 
governed by law and the expression of law. 

Nature, Divine. Vide God. 

Nature, Laws of. The modes by which 
the complex parts and elements of Nature 
work together, each having the modes of its 
existence, and so co-ordinated and so limited 
that they work together harmoniously, or 
whenever they clash there is a compensation 
offered in some way. It is not in the limits 
of this work to dwell upon these laws, but 
to rather point out the power that is given 
to man to use directly or to combine for his 
purposes the several laws of Nature. We 
are constantly doing this with each exten¬ 
sion of our knowledge of the working of, 
and results effected by, these laws. All arts 





NAVE 


500 


NEBRASKA 


and sciences, the conveniences of life, these 
all depend upon our combining with more 
or less skill the elemental laws of Nature 
which we'have discovered, and whenever we 
more perfectly understand the extent and 
the limits of each of these laws we apply 
them to new uses, and attain new and won¬ 
derful results with them. But it is well to 
point out, that man to effect his ends has to 
combine several of these natural laws, and 
to limit the one by the other, but the Divine 
wisdom in many ways reverses this; each 
one of His Laws is made to have multiform 
applications, and to effect His purposes with 
a simplicity and an ease that we do not 
perceive as we ought, living as we do in the 
midst of their operation. So silent, so sure, 
so perfect is their work, and their compen¬ 
sations in large results so complete, that men 
have been deceived and have said that Law 
was God, and we had no need of a Personal 
God, that the Universe was self-restoring. 
We can hut see His will behind ordering all 
things in a perfect constitution thoroughly 
harmonious with His own Perfections. 

Nave. Vide Architecture. 

Navicula. A ship or ark ; a vessel which 
was used to pour out the frankincense into 
the censer. It was used in Bishop Andrews’ 
Chapel and in Queen Elizabeth’s. 

Nazarenes. A name which Christians 
once bore because of their Lord. They 
were of the “ sect of the Nazarenes” (Acts 
xxiv. 25). But it was later the name for a 
sect of heretics who took up a mixture of 
both Christian and Jewish tenets. They 
used circumcision and kept the Sabbath, and 
observed the Mosaic Law, but also received 
Baptism and observed the- Christian Law. 
They could be traced back apparently to 
those Christians who retired from Jerusalem 
when the last siege was threatened, and who 
probably kept up observances which were 
elsewhere abandoned as soon as the Jewish 
nationality was destroyed. Possibly against 
the traditions they kept up were directed 
the Canons against the Judaizers in the 
Apostolical Canons. They kept up their 
organization for four hundred years or 
more. 

Nebraska and Dakota, Missionary Juris¬ 
diction of. The missionary jurisdiction of 
Nebraska and Dakota was erected by the 
House of Bishops in 1865 a.d. 

The Rev. Robert Harper Clarkson, D.D., 
Rector of St. James’ Church, Chicago, was 
elected the first Bishop of the jurisdiction 
by the General Convention of 1865 a.d. He 
was consecrated on the 15th day- of Novem¬ 
ber in the church of which he was Rector, 
in the city of Chicago, by Bishop Hopkins, 
who was then the Presiding Bishop of the 
Church. 

These two Territories, Nebraska and Da¬ 
kota, had previously been part of the great 
missionary jurisdiction of Bishop Talbot, 
which embraced nearly all of the country west 
of the Missouri River to the Rocky Moun- 
tai ns. Nebraska is twice the size of the State 


of New York, and Dakota is double the size 
of Nebraska. When Bishop Clarkson en¬ 
tered upon his work there were seven clergy 
connected with the jurisdiction and four small 
churches, located at Nebraska City, Omaha, 
Decatur, and Nemaha City. The white popu¬ 
lation of the entire jurisdiction was at this 
time (1865 a.d.) above 90,000, nearly seven- 
eighths of which was in the Territory of 
Nebraska. There were then above 30,000 
Indians in the jurisdiction, chiefly in the 
Territory of Dakota. Missions were estab¬ 
lished among these Indians in 1866 a.d. 

The Bishop took up his residence first at 
Nebraska City, and commenced a Boys’ 
School (Talbot Hall) there in 1866 a.d., 
which has since grown into Nebraska Col¬ 
lege, now under the charge of the Rev. Dr. 
McNamara. 

In 1867 a.d. the Bishop removed his resi¬ 
dence to Omaha, and about this time the 
present Brownell Hall building for the Dio¬ 
cesan Girls’School was erected in that town. 
The Institution had been organized a few 
years previously by Bishop Talbot, and was 
located in the country, three miles from 
Omaha. This excellent Institution, which 
has been doing a noble work in the educa¬ 
tion and teaching of young women for nearly 
twenty years, needs very much at this time 
(1884 a.d.) new and larger buildings. The 
Bishop is endeavoring now to raise a fund 
of $15,000 for the purpose, and he feels sure 
that the same amount of money cannot be 
more judiciously expended for Church work 
anywhere in the country. 

Very soon after Bishop Clarkson com¬ 
menced his duties in Nebraska and Dakota, 
the tide of population began to flow into 
these new Territories. New and large towns 
sprung up with great rapidity throughout 
the jurisdiction. The population at this 
time (1884 a.d.) cannot be less than 600,000 
in Nebraska and 300,000 in Dakota. In 1868 
a.d. Nebraska became a State, and was 
erected into a Diocese, and admitted into 
union with the General Convention. 

Among the first efforts of the new Diocese 
was. the commencement of an Episcopal 
Fund. An assessment for this purpose was 
made upon every parish and mission, and 
collected and invested every year. Other 
means were also taken to increase the fund, 
which was carefully managed, until now it 
amounts to $36,000. 

Bishop Clarkson was chosen unanimously 
the Diocesan of the new Diocese of Nebraska 
in 1870 a.d. , and accepted the same, retain¬ 
ing his charge of Dakota as Missionary 
Bishop. He declined to accept the salary 
offered to him by the Diocese of Nebraska 
as long as he remained Missionary Bishop, 
but allowed the amount to be added every 
year to the permanent Episcopal Fund of 
the Diocese. 

In 1871 a.d. the missionary jurisdiction 
of Niobrara was erected out of that of Ne¬ 
braska and Dakota, it being chiefly that por¬ 
tion which contained the Indian missions j 




NEBRASKA 


501 


NEHEMIAH 


and in 1872 a.d., Bishop Hare was called to 
the oversight of this new jurisdiction. 

In 1883 a.d. the missionary jurisdiction 
of North Dakota was erected out of Dakota, 
and the Rev. W. D. Walker consecrated as 
Bishop of the same. And at the same time 
the boundaries of the jurisdiction of Nio¬ 
brara were enlarged, and the name changed 
to South Dakota. So that there are now 
(in 1884 a.d.) three jurisdictions in the 
original one assigned to Bishop Clarkson in 
1865 a.d. , with 3 Bishops, 60 churches, 60 
clergy, and about 4500 communicants in 
them all. 

In 1872 a.d. the Bishop of Nebraska com¬ 
menced to collect funds in the city of Omaha 
for the erection of a Cathedral church in 
that city. In the spring of 1880 a.d. the 
corner-stone of the Cathedral was laid in the 
presence of six Bishops and thirty clergy 
and a very large concourse of people. The 
work went slowly onward as fast as the 
money could be procured for the purpose, no 
debt being allowed to be incurred in the 
erection of the edifice. 

On the 15th day of November, 1883 a.d., 
being the eighteenth anniversary of the 
consecration of the Bishop, the fine Cathe¬ 
dral was consecrated to the worship of 
Almighty God. The Rt. Rev. Dr. Garrett, 
the Bishop of Northern Texas, preached the 
sermon on the occasion, and the Lord Bishop 
of Toronto, the Rt. Rev. Dr. Sweatman, 
and the Rt. Rev. Bishop Burgess, of Quincy, 
were present and participated in the services 
of the consecration. The Cathedral is en¬ 
tirely finished except the tower and the 
chapter-house, and it cost as it stands, with 
its furniture and appointments, above $70,- 
000, the larger part of which was contributed 
by the Churchmen and citizens of Omaha. 

A noticeable feature of the Cathedral is its 
wealth of memorials. Every window and 
every article of furniture and adornment is 
a memorial gift. 

In connection with the Cathedral, and 
adjoining it, is an Episcopal residence built 
in 1881 a.d. , and a large and beautiful 
Childs’ Hospital and Home built in 1883 

A.D. 

Through the efforts of the Rev. Dr. Oliver 
a valuable property has been secured in 
Nebraska City, named Thoenberger Hall, 
originally designed for a Divinity school. 

It is now used for primary educational 
purposes. There is an endowment for a 
Theological Professorship, which is now util¬ 
ized for the support of a General Diocesan 
Missionary. 

A legacy of $5000 left to the Diocese by 
the late Mrs. Clarissa Cooke has been 
funded, and the interest is used every year, 
at the discretion of the Bishop, to aid strug¬ 
gling parishes in erecting churches. A 
church is built by the aid of this legacy every 
year. 

A legacy of $10,000 left to the Diocese by 
Mrs. Fiske, of Ithaca, New York, was added 
to the Episcopal Fund. It is the settled 


purpose of the Bishop and the trustees of 
the property of the Diocese to fund all lega¬ 
cies and use only the interest of the same.. 

Legacies are still needed for the endow¬ 
ment of the Diocesan schools. No Church 
schools can be considered as permanently 
established without at least a partial endow¬ 
ment. 

At the General Convention of 1883 A.D, 
the Bishop of Nebraska resigned his charge 
of Dakota, on the ground that Dakota needed 
a Bishop of its own, and that Nebraska alone 
was more than enough for any one Bishop 
properly to look after and care for. 

In doing so the Bishop used this lan¬ 
guage : “1 am happy to be able to report 
that Nebraska is able henceforth to support 
her own Bishop. She has now 36 clergy, 35 
churches, and 2200 communicants, two ex¬ 
cellent institutions of learning, a hospital, a 
Cathedral, a Bishop’s residence, a moderate 
Episcopal endowment, and, what is better 
than all, a body of as earnest, united, and 
taithful clergy as ever a Bishop was blessed 
with.” 

Statistics. —Clergy, 36 ; parishes and mis¬ 
sions, 118; families, 1230 ; individuals, 4920; 
baptisms, 286; adults, 80; total, 366 ; con¬ 
firmed, 187 ; communicants, 2200 ; mar¬ 
riages, 84; burials, 122; Sunday-schools, 
teachers, 177 ; scholars, 1793 ; contributions, 
$34,682.69. 

Rt. Rev. R. H. Clarkson, D.D., 
Bishop of Nebraska. 

Necessity. (Ne and cesso , that which 
cannot cease.) “ I have one thing to observe 
of the several kinds of necessity, that the 
idea of some sort of firm connection runs 
through them all; and that is the proper, 
general import of the name necessity. 
Connection of mental or verbal propositions, 
or of their respective parts, makes up the 
idea of logical necessity; connection of end 
and means makes up the idea of moral 
necessity ; connection of causes and effects 
is physical necessity; and connection of 
existence and essence is metaphysical neces¬ 
sity.” (Waterland, Works, vol. iv. p. 432, 
in Krauth’s Fleming’s Vocab. of Philos.) 

Nehemiah. The son of Halachiah, and 
chosen to be one of the cup-bearers before 
King Artaxerxes, who was divinely ap¬ 
pointed to administer the judicial authority 
in the restored nation. He found such favor 
in the sight of the King that he had his 
prayer for leave to go to Jerusalem granted, 
and received authority to procure all that 
was needful for the rebuilding of both the 
Temple and the walls of the Holy City. He 
set about this on the fourth day after his 
arrival, and the work was speedily pushed 
on amid many difficulties and much opposi¬ 
tion from Sanballat the Samaritan. He 
finished the building and aided in organ¬ 
izing the internal administration of the 
city, put down usury and its consequence,— 
slavery,—acted with Ezra in breaking up 
marriages with those without the people, 
and displayed a great administrative and 





NEOLOGY 


502 


NEVADA 


military capacity. His book is useful in 
giving invaluable details of the places in 
Jerusalem, and of the circuit of the walls, 
and it contains the first record of a written 
compact and covenant. 

A part of it has been supposed to be an 
interpolation by another hand, principally 
of genealogies, letters, and documents. But 
while this may be true of the genealogies, 
since Ezra arranged the Canon, it may well 
be that Nehemiah had placed them there 
himself as documents relative to the whole 
plan of restoration. 

Nehemiah was a patriot, willing to sacri¬ 
fice everything to the restoration of his 
people; disinterested, self-denying, with 
much political sagacity, and of so lofty a 
character that he was able to convince so 
suspicious a King as Artaxerxes of his 
perfect integrity and trustworthiness. He 
had, as indeed was a necessary part of one 
in his position, considerable skill in organ¬ 
izing and in obtaining the hearty co-opera¬ 
tion of those with whom he was joined in 
his work of restoration. 

Neology. The later deistical Theology 
which sprang up in Germany about ninety 
years ago. It was richer and in many re¬ 
spects higher than the Deism of the English 
Infidel school, from which it really was de¬ 
rived, and it also stood on a higher plane, 
in so far as it accepted somewhat more 
of the Scriptures. Though the neologians 
were at variance among themselves how far 
they should receive the Scripture, they re¬ 
jected at will whatever was at variance with 
their own theories, and kept whatever suited 
them with but little regard to the true 
nexus of the sacred text. A lower time- 
bounded view of the worth and work of 
religion and of morals seems to have per¬ 
vaded their writings. Whatever was utili¬ 
tarian, that they retained; whatever did 
not comport with their ideas of such 
utility they rejected. Upon such principles 
the most arbitrary canons of criticism 
were announced and ruthlessly applied 
to the Gospels and Epistles. To the 
neologic school we owe the fierce contro¬ 
versy about St. John’s Gospel and the de¬ 
structive criticism applied to St. Paul’s Epis¬ 
tles, and the theories about the prophet 
Isaiah and the attacks upon the Book of 
Daniel. Indirectly they have done much 
service, in helping to clear away much un¬ 
tenable matter that had gathered about 
the several books of the Bible, and in bring¬ 
ing forward defenders of the Book and in 
giving a great impetus to its study ; but 
it is rather the good that comes out of evil 
than the good that flows from another holy 
act. Their researches have brought out a 
vast amount of critical material which will 
be hereafter very useful. But they have 
succeeded in shipwrecking the faith of 
many. 

Neophyte. A new convert; a person 
newly baptized. St. Paul uses it in lim¬ 
iting the class of persons from whom a 


Bishop should be selected,—“ not a novice.” 
The margin reads, “not newly come to 
the faith.” But the full sense is “ one newly 
planted.” The limitation was perfectly 
correct. For one newly brought into the 
Faith needs the training of growing up 
into the holiness of the Faith and a fami¬ 
liarity with the facts of the Faith which 
one newly planted can scarcely claim. 

Nevada was erected into a Missionary Ju¬ 
risdiction at the General Convention of 1868 

A.D. 

The present jurisdiction embraced also at 
the date of its erection, and till 1874 a.d., 
the Territory of Arizona, when it was sep¬ 
arated. (Vide New Mexico and Ari¬ 
zona.) The first services of the Church in 
Nevada were held by the Rev. Mr. Smeath- 
man, of California, in the months from Au¬ 
gust to October, 1861 a.d., while officiating 
for the Territorial Legislature of Nevada 
as its Secretary in its sessions in Virginia 
City, and again from October to December 
31 at Carson, to which place the Legislature 
was removed. From this beginning, twenty- 
three years ago, the work has gone on 
slowly but surely. In 1863 a.d. the present 
Bishop went out immediately upon his ordi¬ 
nation, and took charge of St. John’s, Gold 
Hill. After nearly two years’ work he re¬ 
turned East, but was recalled in 1867 a.d. 
to St. Paul’s, Virginia City, elected Mis¬ 
sionary Bishop of Nevada by the General 
Convention in 1868 a.d., and consecrated to 
his office in St. George’s Church, New York 
(October 13, 1869 a.d.). The history of the 
Diocese is very largely the record of his per¬ 
sonal efforts. With one clergyman to aid 
him, he bravely began his work. Arizona 
could not be attended to at first without 
too much loss of valuable time, so he con¬ 
centrated his work upon Nevada. With 
one clergyman and with one hundred and 
sixty-nine communicants, scarce a fourth of 
which were males, he entered upon the toil¬ 
some Episcopal duty, which, from the very 
conditions of the Territory and the mode in 
which it was settled, was very discouraging. 
Mining towns are proverbially uncertain. 
A community gathered in a few months by 
the thousands over some rich deposit may 
upon the sudden failure of the mine as sud¬ 
denly disappear, scattered forever. Work 
done for such towns will bear fruit in indi¬ 
vidual lives, but cannot be proven to be ef¬ 
fective when measured by statistics. A 
floating, restless, adventurous population, 
ever seeking new scenes, careless of spirit¬ 
ual things, desecrating in utter heedlessness 
what should be held most sacred, needs con¬ 
stant, redoubled work, an itinerating minis¬ 
try which can follow from place to place 
with the least possible sacrifice of material, 
and with the greatest amount of adaptation 
to existing conditions. It was amidst such 
discouragements that the Bishop began his 
work. The clergy were increased to five by 
1871 a.d. The communicants were one 
hundred and ninety-four, and over $14,000 





NEVADA 


503 


NEW CREATION 


had been contributed. In 1874 a.d. the re¬ 
port showed eight clergy at work at nine 
parishes and two mission stations, and an 
aggregate of two hundred and sixty-nine 
communicants. The total of the contribu¬ 
tions for the three years was $43,000. It 
was at this time that the Bishop planned his 
girls’ school at Reno which, by help from 
Eastern funds, was gotten to work in 1876 
a.d. It had to incur a debt of about $8000, 
which has been steadily reduced, and is 
nearly, if not now quite, extinguished. The 
reports from year to year show great fluctua¬ 
tion, and the uncertainty of the work is shown 
by the fact that with all the immigration into 
the Territory, yet the confirmations (about 
six hundred) are nearly the whole number 
of the communicants, six hundred and 
eighty-six. The contributions rose at one 
triennial report to over $73,000, and then 
fell oft’ to $33,000 at the last report. 

Bishop Whitaker’s retrospect (Spirit of 
Missions, November-December 1880 a.d.) 
of ten years’ work is so pertinent that it is 
necessary to quote it here: 

“ In the good providence of God, I am 
permitted to see the end of ten years of mis¬ 
sionary work in Nevada. 

“ They have been years of almost unre¬ 
mitting labor, much of which has been at¬ 
tended with manifold discouragements and 
apparently meagre results. The continual 
change which is taking place in the popula¬ 
tion of our towns, and the almost universal 
disregard of Sunday as a day of rest and wor¬ 
ship have everywhere combined to retard the 
progress which it should seem the Church 
ought to have made during this time. If the 
people of Nevada were attached to the 
places in which they live, instead of con¬ 
stantly planning for a removal, it would be 
much easier for them to become identified 
with Church work ; and if they could be 
persuaded to relax their labors for one day 
of the week, a much larger attendance upon 
Sunday services could be easily secured. 
Whether this will ever be, in this genera¬ 
tion, is very doubtful. It is certain that but 
little progress has been made in this direc¬ 
tion in the last ten years. 

“ Still, with all these discouragements 
there has been much which should call forth 
my devoutest gratitude to God ; much 
which leads me to believe that this work has 
not been done in vain. 

“ Personally, I have had almost every¬ 
thing to be thankful for. No one could re¬ 
ceive kinder or more considerate treatment 
from any*people than I have uniformly re¬ 
ceived from the people of this State. I feel 
identified with them, and am entirely con¬ 
tent to labor with and for them so long as 
God gives me strength to labor in His 
servicp. 

“ And contrasting the present condition 
of the Church in Nevada with what it was 
ten years ago, there are to be found evi¬ 
dences not only of much work performed 
by the Clergy, but also of liberal giving by 


the people, and of substantial growth in all 
the elements of Church strength. 

“When I entered upon the performance 
of my duties as Missionary Bishop there was 
but one clergyman belonging to the Juris¬ 
diction ; now there are seven. There were 
then three churches ; now there are ten. 
There were then two rectories; now there 
are eight. There were then one hundred 
communicants; there are now three hun¬ 
dred and forty. There were then thirty Sun¬ 
day-school teachers and three hundred and 
twenty scholars; there are now ninety- 
three teachers and one thousand two hun¬ 
dred and forty-two scholars. 

“ During this time there have been one 
thousand one hundred and ninety-nine in¬ 
fants baptized, and one hundred and forty- 
five adults. Three hundred and sixty-eight 
persons have been confirmed; five hundred 
and eighty-nine marriages have been sol¬ 
emnized. The number of burials has been 
one thousand one hundred and twenty-nine. 

“ The total value of Church property in 
Nevada ten years ago was $36,400; it is now 
$125,000. In making up this valuation I 
have deducted $10,000 from the actual cost, 
on account of depreciation in the actual 
value. But were all the Church property 
to be destroyed it could not be restored to its 
present condition for less than $125,000.” 

The report to the past General Conven¬ 
tion showed that the condition of the Dio¬ 
cese, while not gaining very materially, cer¬ 
tainly held its own, and was deepening and 
strengthening what it had gained in the 
past. Six clergy have the care of fourteen 
parishes and chapels; the number of com¬ 
municants is three hundred and two ; the 
amount contributed for the year ending 
July, 1883 a.d. , $9659.15. 

It shows the fluctuation and uncertainty 
of permanent parochial work in a mining 
population like that in Nevada to note that 
the communicants are but three hundred 
and two, and yet a total of over seven hun¬ 
dred had been confirmed in the ten years of 
past work. 

New Creation. In Holy Scripture we 
meet constantly an assertion of a new 
creation, anew heavens, a new earth, a new 
order, the old to pass away, all things to 
become new (Is. lxv. 17; lxvi. 22; 1 Pet. 
iii. 10; Rev. xxi. 1, 5; 2 Cor. v. 17). And 
in these places it is evident that a material 
change in nature is taught as to take place, 
a renovation of the physical nature around 
us. There is a renewal, a restoration, a 
new creation of our spiritual life in the 
psychical nature, but this is to be also a 
material restoration. St. Paul points to 
the connection of the two natures in, “ For 
we know that the whole creation groaneth 
and travaileth in pain together until now. 
And not only the} T , but ourselves also, which 
have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we 
ourselves groan within ourselves waiting for 
the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our 
body” (Rom. viii. 22, 23). Then there is a 






NEW HAMPSHIRE 


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plain prophecy that there will be a new crea¬ 
tion of this earth, and it is to be symmetrical 
with the new creation of our souls, for he 
who is baptized is in Christ Jesus, and 
he who is in Christ Jesus is a new crea¬ 
ture, and he who is a new creature here is 
renewed by the Holy Ghost, and trans¬ 
formed (the same word in St. Luke is 
“transfigured”), and passes from glory to 
glory. The object is clear. It is to present 
us in His Church holy, spotless, unrebuk- 
able, that His Bride maybe in His universe, 
“ That He might present it to Himself 
a glorious Church, not having spot, or 
wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should 
be holy and without blemish” (Eph. v. 27). 
And in this we must have a share, therefore 
we are not to be unclothed, but clothed upon. 
We, as inheritors, will be changed and re¬ 
deemed and sanctified. We are to live on 
a sinless earth. We may not speculate fur¬ 
ther as to the conditions of our existence. 
Whether the Paradisaic state, as sketched 
for us in Genesis, will be restored, or 
whether lifted to heavenly places, seated in 
our Lord's Throne, made kings and priests 
unto God and His Father we shall be en¬ 
dued with faculties glorified ; or whether our 
rank in the scale of created beings there 
will not be beyond all Angelic essences. It 
is rash to intrude into the unseen. It is 
safe merely to say, how these things shall 
be we do not know ; when, in His good 
time ; where, as He may please; but this we 
do know, that all things in that New Crea¬ 
tion will be far more glorious than mortal 
eye now can look upon, mortal ear can now 
hear, mortal heart can now understand. 

New Hampshire, Diocese of. I. The 
history of the Church in New Hampshire 
begins with that of the colony itself, the first 
settlers (1623 a.d.) being Churchmen. By 
1638 a.d. a church and parsonage had been 
built in Portsmouth (then Passataquack), 
fifty acres of land given as endowment, and 
the Rev. Richard Gibson, a missionary in 
Maine, called as rector. In 1642 a.d., how¬ 
ever, when New Hampshire had fallen under 
the authority of Massachusetts, Mr. Gibson 
was banished by the Puritan authorities of 
Boston, having confessed the only offenses 
charged against him, that he had “defamed 
the government,”— i.e., protested against 
their usurpation,—and had performed mar¬ 
riages and baptisms at the Isles of Shoals. 
A Puritan congregation voted themselves 
the Church property, and for the next ninety 
years the Church had here no history. In 
1732 a.d. a parish was organized, and Queen’s 
Chapel begun. It took nearly three years 
to finish a small building, and two years of 
tedious correspondence (partly with officers 
of the S. P. G. in London) to secure a rector, 
ihe Rev. Arthur Browne. Of six hundred 
families in Portsmouth in 1741 a.d. less than 
sixty conformed to the Church, but all the 
Churchmen in New Hampshire were his 
parishioners, and he administered the charge 
with faithful diligence from 1736 a.d. till his 


death in 1773 a.d. He was helped in the 
itinerancy by his son Marmaduke (1755-62 
a.d.) and by the Rev. Moses Badger (1767— 
74 a.d. ), the latter reporting the number of 
souls under his care in 1768 a.d. as eleven 
hundred and thirty-two, “ which at his first 
coming did not exceed seven hundred and 
forty.” 

A second parish was organized in 1773 
a.d. at Claremont, settled by Churchmen 
from Connecticut. The building then begun 
still stands as Union Church, West Clare¬ 
mont. The Rev. Ranna Cossit was the first 
rector (1773-85 a.d.). 

The storm of the Revolution fell heavily 
upon the two parishes. Mr. Cossit nar¬ 
rowly escaped death at the hands of an armed 
mob in 1774 a.d., and was for several years 
a prisoner within the town limits. A 
British officer writing in 1778 a.d. says, 
“Rev. Dr. Wheelock (President of Dart¬ 
mouth College, in New Hampshire), in con¬ 
junction with Deacon Bayley, Mr. Morey, 
and Mr. Hurd, all justices of the peace, put 
an end to the Church of England in this 
State as early as 1775 a.d.” In April of 
that year Portsmouth had called the Rev. 
Matthew Byles from Boston. He could not 
go. In October, 1776 a.d., it was still “ut¬ 
terly impracticable,” and he wrote to the 
S. P. G., “if government should not be re¬ 
established, I am well convinced that no 
Episcopal Church will be tolerated in New 
England.” 

Nevertheless, the war-clouds broke, and 
the Church was seen to be stronger than be¬ 
fore. In Claremont, twenty-seven families 
became forty-three. The S. P. G. hears in 
1781 a.d. that “ the Episcopal congregations 
in Massachusetts and New Hampshire have 
greatly increased, even where they have had 
no ministry.” In Claremont, again, thirty 
families of the Congregational Society con¬ 
formed to the Church in a body in 1790 a.d. 
We hear much of hurt done to the Church 
by its tory clergy, but there are two sides 
even to that story. A letter to the S. P. G. in 
1778 a.d. shows that even “ rebels” could 
respect a clergy sensitively faithful to their 
peculiar obligations. “ The Church in 
Portsmouth is in a ruinous condition, the 
windows broken and many of the pews shat¬ 
tered. There are several good families 
which belong to the Church still. A clergy¬ 
man who was supposed to have abjured the 
king offered to preach there. The warden, 
who was a rebel general and commissary 
of the province, refused him, saying the 
doors of the church should never be opened 
till they could have somebody else to enter 
and officiate besides those perjured villains, 
who had broken their oaths of allegiance 
and their promises at ordination.” Again, 
the S. P. G. report of 1782-83 a.d. speaks of 
“ the clergy themselves increasing in esteem 
for their steady conduct, in diligently attend¬ 
ing to the duties of their calling, and 
preaching the Gospel, unmixed with the 
politics of the day.” 





NEW HAMPSHIRE 


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The war over, the need of organization 
began to be much felt. Valuable property 
was at stake, over forty thousand acres of 
land having been reserved for the endow¬ 
ment of future parishes and of the S. P. G. 
in the lay-out of towns by the elder Governor 
Wentworth. A small company met accord¬ 
ingly at Hanover, in August, 1785 A.D.,and 
signed the following Declaration: “We, 
Whose Names are hereafter subscribed, Do 
meet and form ourselves into an appiscopa- 
lian Body in order for a church with full 
power and authority to act as such.” Unfor¬ 
tunately, this bold assertion had no effect. It 
may be added here that the larger part of the 
land endowment was ultimately lost. A small 
amount has gone to help the Diocesan mis¬ 
sionary work, and something to the support 
of the Bishop, but most of that which was 
recovered fell into the hands of two of the 
lea%t needy parishes, being now partly repre¬ 
sented by specially heavy assessments paid 
by those parishes for Diocesan expenses. 

In 1789 a d. New Hampshire was repre¬ 
sented at a meeting of six clergymen in 
Salem, Mass., when Dr. (afterwards Bishop) 
Bass was elected Bishop of the two States, 
application being made to the General Con¬ 
vention for his consecration, 1789 a.d. Dep¬ 
uties of New Hampshire and Massachusetts 
signed the Constitution, October 2, when 
the matter seems to have dropped. 

Meanwhile, Portsmouth, for thirteen years 
without clerical services, had obtained a 
rector, the Rev. John C. Ogden (1786-93 
a.d. ) , and a third parish had been formed, 
at Holderness, in the centre of the State. 
Here again the Church was first in the field. 
Judge Livermore, the chief proprietor, was 
a Churchman, and the Rev. Robert Fowle, 
who held that charge for more than fifty- 
eight years (1789-1847 a.d.), shepherded the 
flock without a rival till 1814 a.d. A 
fourth parish sprang into being in 1793 a.d. 
in Cornish, near Claremont. Cornish con¬ 
tained no Churchmen, apparently, till Phi¬ 
lander Chase, a student in Dartmouth Col¬ 
lege, became one, and the carrying over of 
nearly a whole township to Episcopacy may 
probably be ascribed to the sole influence of 
the future Missionary Bishop. The meet¬ 
ing-house built by the town was voted an 
Episcopal Church, and Mr. Ogden minis¬ 
tered for a time as rector, though living in 
Hartland, Vermont, and supplying five 
towns with regular services, and ten or 
twelve others occasionally. In 1795 a.d. 
Cornish voted to purchase a Bible and a 
copy of Bishop Seabury’s Sermons, being 
evidently reduced to lay-reading, but the 
end of the century finds four parishes and 
three clergymen in the State. 

II. The Diocesan history proper begins 
with the meeting (in Concord, August 25, 
1802 a.d.) of the first Convention, the rec¬ 
tors of Portsmouth, Claremont, and Holder¬ 
ness, and two Lay Delegates each from 
Portsmouth, Holderness, and Cornish. The 
Rev. Joseph Willard, of Portsmouth, pre¬ 


siding, and the three clergymen being made 
a Committee to draw up a Constitution, re¬ 
ported one the same day, which was signed 
by all present except the Rev. Daniel Bar¬ 
ber, of Claremont. That remarkable man, 
able, ambitious, unwise, had already, a year 
before, accomplished the organization of 
another Convention, of the Churches in the 
Connecticut Valley (Western New Hamp¬ 
shire and Eastern Vermont), and having 
obtained from the General Convention a 
dispensation allowing such a union of parts 
of two States, he would not give up his 
scheme. He had brought to this Conven¬ 
tion a proposal from the Valley Convention 
looking to a union of all New Hampshire 
and Vermont in one Diocese, but the Con¬ 
cord gathering declared themselves not au¬ 
thorized to act on such a business, and 
Claremont held quite aloof till the General 
Convention of 1808 a.d., at the earnest re¬ 
quest of the Convention of New Hampshire, 
rescinded the harmful dispensation. The 
Valley Convention met no more after 1808 
a.d., and Mr. Barber appeared in the New 
Hampshire Convention of 1809 a.d. 

Meanwhile, the Diocese had been wholly 
without Episcopal care. Bishop Bass was 
invited to take charge of it in 1803 a.d., but 
died within a few weeks. In 1810 a.d. the 
Convention declines to take part in the 
election of a Bishop for Massachusetts, but 
promises to receive the person chosen, and 
accedes to the Constitution of the Eastern 
Diocese. In 1812 a.d. ( Bishop Griswold 
presided in the Convention for the first 
time, and began the first Episcopal visitation 
of this region. For thirty years the Church 
in New Hampshire enjoyed his superintend¬ 
ence, and made slow but fairly steady gains 
in numbers and in popular respect. Hop- 
kinton had been added to the number of 
parishes in 1803 a.d., and Plainfield in 1804 
a.d., and to these were now joined Drews- 
ville, Charlestown, Concord, Dover, and 
Manchester, besides the building of a church 
in the prosperous village of Claremont, far 
from the old church in the “ west part.” 
Parochial reports began to be made in 1810 
a.d. The number of communicants reported 
in that year was 151; in 1820 a.d., 198; in 
1840 a.d., 394. 

III. The need of a separate Bish'op had 
been suggested occasionally, but even after 
the death of Bishop Griswold the feeble, 
scattered churches of New Hampshire hesi¬ 
tated to undertake such a responsibility. At 
a special Convention, October 4, 1843 a.d., 
the motion to elect barely prevailed. But 
that pointsettled, the Convention was unan¬ 
imous in the choice of the Rev. Carlton 
Chase, of Bellows Falls, Vermont. He was 
consecrated in October, 1844 ad., and 
served the Diocese faithfully and wisely to 
his death, in January, 1870 a.d. He had to 
be rector of Trinity Church Claremont, till 
June, 1863 a.d., and when the Diocese did 
assume his support, his salary was $900, ill 
paid. But he left 23 parishes instead of 12, 






NEW HAMPSHIRE 


506 


NEW JERSEY 


21 clergymen for 11, and about 1350 com¬ 
municants for 500. Far greater was his 
work of making the Church respected in a 
community full of bitter prejudice. Of such 
work, sinking strong foundations through 
a quicksand till they reach a solid bed, 
Bishop Chase and his clergy did very much 
which cannot now be reckoned, but which 
makes possible the work of to-day. 

St. Paul’s School, Concord, also deserves 
honorable mention here. It gathers most 
of its pupils from other States ; but its high 
success has won honor for the Church which 
it represents, and in this way and by many 
gifts and helps, it has been a powerful pro¬ 
moter of the Church’s good in New Hamp¬ 
shire. It was begun in 1856 a.d. Located 
near St. Paul’s School, due to its rector, and 
greatly helped by it, the Diocesan Orphans’ 
Home is another blessing of this period. 

In May, 1870 a.d., the Convention elected 
as successor to Bishop Chase the Rev. Wm. 
W. Niles, Professor of Latin in Trinity 
College, Hartford, and he was consecrated 
at Concord, September 21. 

In twelve years since the Diocese has grown 
to have 22 parishes and 13 mission stations, 
including (most properly) the chapel of St. 
Paul’s School. In 1882 a.d. the number 
of clergy (besides the Bishop) was 31, com- 
. municants, 2062, this, a gain in a nearly 
stationary population. The contributions 
for all purposes, which in 1870 a.d. were 
under $10,000, were nearly $25,000 in 1882 

A.D. 

The “ Holderness School for Boys” was 
opened in 1879 a.d. as a Diocesan school in 
the old mansion of the Livermores, and the 
venerable church now serves as its chapel. 
Destroyed by fire in March, 1882 a.d., the 
historic homestead has given place to new 
buildings specially adapted to the school 
work. The number of pupils is about 50, 
and the school has prospered every way 
beyond hope. The charges—$200 a year 
for New Hampshire boys and $250 for all 
others—suggest what is aimed at, a school 
thoroughly good yet cheap. A committee 
is already considering the possibility of a 
similar school for girls. 

Another Orphanage, the “ Chase Home 
for Children,” was founded in 1879 a.d. in 
Portsmouth, and has now eighteen children 
in residence. 

This is a day of small things, but the future 
seems bright. A greatly loved and honored 
Bishop, a zealous, active, brotherly clergy, 
a population slow to receive new truth, but 
serious and tenacious withal when they do 
receive it, make up in part our promise for 
the coming years, while old systems are fail¬ 
ing and leaving an unfilled gap. 

Statistics. —Clergy, 33 ; parishes and mis¬ 
sions, 34; families, 1605 ; individuals, 8025 ; 
baptisms, infants, 131; adults, 48; total, 
179; confirmed, 140; communicants, 2173; 
marriages, 71 ; burials, 126; Sunday-schools, 
teachers, 163 ; scholars, 1177; contributions, 
$52,133.13. Rev. L. Waterman. 


New Jersey, Diocese of. New Jersey, 
in its early colonial days, was chiefly under 
Presbyterian and Quaker influence ; and its 
people were so nearly cut off from the minis¬ 
trations of the Church of England, that 
Bray, in his memorials, describes them as 
being “ wholly left to themselves, without 
priest or altar.” 

But in the reign of Queen Anne the pro¬ 
prietary government was resigned to the 
sovereign ; and the Good Queen was a 
“ nursing mother” to the Church, generously 
bestowing money grants and gifts of books, 
Communion silver and bells. In 1701 a d. 
the two Jerseys contained about 15,000 in¬ 
habitants, of which not above 600 frequented 
the Church, nor hardly more than 200 com¬ 
municants. 

George Keith, a convert from Quakerism, 
and John Talbot, were among the first and 
the most efficient missionaries of the vener¬ 
able Society for the Propagation of the Gos¬ 
pel (1702 a.d.). Talbot became Rector of 
St. Mary’s, Burlington, but continued to 
make extensive circuits. Dr. Hawks said of 
him, “ the society never had, at least in our 
view, a more honest, fearless, and laborious 
missionary.” In 1722 a.d. he received 
Episcopal orders at the hands of .non-juring 
Bishops in England, and was thereupon dis¬ 
missed from the society’s service. It is not 
known that he ever performed Episcopal 
acts. His death took place November 30, 
1727 a.d., at Burlington, and it is believed 
that he was buried under the old church. 
Keith returned to England in 1704 a.d. 
Vaughan and Chandler at Elizabethtown, 
and Beach at New Brunswick, were leading 
Presbyters, and these two towns, with Bur¬ 
lington and Shrewsbury, were strong Church 
centres before the Revolution. 

Several ecclesiastical movements, of na¬ 
tional importance, had their beginnings 
within the borders of New Jersey. The first 
memorial from American Churchmen, peti¬ 
tioning the English Archbishops and Bishops 
to send a Bishop to America, was signed in 
Burlington, November 2, 1705 a.d., the pe¬ 
titioners being fourteen clergymen of New 
York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. 

Of the four colonial Bishoprics proposed 
by the S. P. G., two for the islands, and two 
for the Continent of America, one was to 
have its See at Williamsburg, Va.^ another 
at Burlington. Mr. Talbot wrote, in 1709 
a.d. , “ I have got possession of the best house 
in America for a Bishop’s seat.” The house 
and land were long held for this purpose, but 
ultimately conveyed to the parish church of 
St. Mary’s. 

A more successful measure was begun 
eighty years later, and is thus described in 
Bishop White’s Memoirs: “The first step 
towards the forming of a collective body of 
the Episcopal Church in the United States 
was taken through the medium of the Rev. 
Abraham Beach, at a meeting of a few 
clergymen of New York, New Jersey, and 
Pennsylvania at New Brunswick, N. J., on 





NEW JERSEY 


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the 13th and 14th of May, 1784 a.d. The 
first day was chiefly taken up with discussing 
principles of ecclesiastical union. The next 
morning (in consequence of new information 
received) it was agreed that nothing should 
be urged further on the subject at present. 
But before the clergy parted it was deter¬ 
mined to procure a larger meeting on the 5th 
of the ensuing October, in New York, to 
confer and agree on some general principles 
of a union of the Episcopal Church through¬ 
out the States.” 

The Diocese was organized—so far as it 
could be without a Bishop—in 1785 a.d., 
the first session of its Convention being held 
in Christ Church, New Brunswick, July 6 
of that year ; when four clergymen and six 
laymen were elected to represent the Diocese 
at the General Convention, in Philadelphia, 
the following September. These delegates 
were empowered “ to accede, on the part of 
this Convention, to the fundamental princi¬ 
ples published by the Convention of the Prot¬ 
estant Episcopal Church held in New York 
on the 6th and 7th of October, 1784 a.d., 
and to adopt such measures as the said Gen¬ 
eral Convention may deem necessary for the 
utility of the said Church, not repugnant to 
the aforesaid principles.” 

But its adhesion was not without discrimi¬ 
nation. The next year it unanimously ap¬ 
proved the political alterations in the Prayer- 
Book, made by the General Convention, as 
well as the address to the Archbishops and 
Bishops ; and a Diocesan Committee was 
appointed to correspond with the English 
Bishops. But the “ further alterations” pro¬ 
posed and the proposed Constitution were 
not approved. Again, in 1787 a.d., it voted 
approval of the Old Liturgy. 

Some other of its early acts are worthy 
of notice.. In 1786 a.d. it was resolved to 
vote by congregations; clergy and laity to 
deliberate together, but to vote separately, 
a concurrence being necessary to give valid¬ 
ity to any measure. Every clergyman, of 
whatever order, duly settled in a congrega¬ 
tion, should be a member of Convention ex 
officio : when a Bishop should be regularly 
settled, he should be President ex officio. In 
1787 a.d. it resolved that no one should be 
a Church officer, or delegate to General or 
State Convention, who does not openly de¬ 
clare himself a member of the Church, and 
profess belief that the Ordinal and the three¬ 
fold ministry, as used in this Church, are most 
agreeable to the Word of God. In 1790 a.d. 
it appointed a Standing Committee, five 
clergymen and five laymen, “ for the recom¬ 
mendation of Candidates for Holy Orders ;” 
and for a number of years following this 
appears to be the only duty devolved upon 
the Standing Committee, that continued to 
be elected annually, with variations as to 
the numbers and constitution of its member¬ 
ship. In this year, 1790 a.d., it declared 
“ the Convention and Church in this State 
bound by the proceedings of the General 
Convention in establishing the Constitution, 


Canons, and Prayer-Book.” In 1794 a.d. 
it made Baptism and “ good character” 
necessary to office. It also directed its 
Treasurer to pay to the Treasurer of the 
General Convention certain contributions 
“ for supporting missionaries on the fron¬ 
tiers” of the United States. In 1795 a.d. 
it resolved, that this Convention agree to 
vest the House of Bishops with a full nega¬ 
tive on the proceedings of the House of 
Deputies in the General Convention. 

Bishops of the neighboring Dioceses, gen¬ 
erally Bishop White and Bishop Hobart, 
performed Episcopal acts in New Jersey, as 
they were requested by the Standing Com¬ 
mittee, until the consecration of Bishop 
Croes in 1815 a.d. 

In August, 1796 a.d., the Rev. Uzal 
Ogden, D.D., Rector of Trinity Church, 
Newark, was elected Bishop, but the Gen¬ 
eral Convention hesitated to confirm the 
election, on the ground of alleged irregular¬ 
ity. A special Convention, in October, 1799 
a.d. , resolved that the election had been 
“orderly,” and addressed the several Stand¬ 
ing Committees a circular asking their rati¬ 
fication. It was never given, and New Jer¬ 
sey probably had no reason to regret the 
denial. For, on May 9, 1805 a.d., its Stand¬ 
ing Committee, as authorized by a special 
Convention in the December preceding, 
“ and with the aid and consent of the Rt. 
Rev. Dr. Moore, Bishop of New York, 
unanimously resolved to suspend the Rev. 
Dr. Ogden from the exercise of any minis¬ 
terial duties within this State, and he is 
hereby suspended accordingly.” The retired 
Rector declared his withdrawal from the 
Protestant Episcopal Church, and his purpose 
to be Rector still, by virtue of his English 
orders and allegiance. 

There have been four Diocesan Bishops 
hitherto,’as follows: John Croes, conse¬ 
crated November 19, 1815 a.d., died July 
30, 1832 a.d. ; George Washington Doane, 
consecrated October 31, 1832 a.d., died 
April 27, 1859 a.d. ; William Henry Oden- 
heimer, consecrated October 13, 1859 a.d., 
elected to the new Diocese of Northern New 
Jersey November 12, 1874 a.d., died Au¬ 
gust 14, 1879 a.d. ; John Scarborough, con¬ 
secrated February 2, 1875 a.d. 

Bishop Croes was also Rector of Christ 
Church, New Brunswick, and there resided 
thoughout his Episcopate. 

Bishop Doane making Burlington his 
“ temporary residence,” and having actually 
accepted “ an invitation from the Rector, 
wardens, and vestry of Trinity Church, 
Newark, to establish himself in that place,” 
on terms of great generosity, leaving him 
“free from parochial responsibility,” the 
death of Dr. Wharton, Rector of St. Mary’s 
Church, and the peculiar circumstances 
of the parish, presented a conflicting duty. 
The result was that he remained perma¬ 
nently at Burlington, discharging the duties 
of Rector of St. Mary’s during all his Epis¬ 
copate. He occupied the old parsonage 




NEW JERSEY 


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NEW JERSEY 


until the erection of his own house, “ River¬ 
side,” which, by his deed of gift, became 
the property of the Diocese at his death. 

Bishop Odenbeimer lived at Riverside 
until his removal to the Northern Diocese, 
and by a gracious Providence it was again 
made his home during the year of great phys¬ 
ical suffering with which his life closed. 

Bishop Scarborough removed the See to 
Trenton, and in 1878 a.d. a property in that 
city was presented by Samuel K. Wilson, 
Esq., to the Diocese, and deeded to the Trus¬ 
tees of the Episcopal Fund to be the Epis¬ 
copal residence. 

Bishop Doane founded two Church 
schools, for girls and boys respectively, St. 
Mary’s Hall, in 1837 a.d., Burlington Col¬ 
lege, in 1846 a.d., placing them upon the 
Delaware, on the right and on the left of 
Riverside. Of these schools the Bishop of 
New Jersey is ex-officio president. Both are 
under one Board, the Trustees of Burling¬ 
ton College, which has a charter from the 
State. The Hall for nearly fifty years has 
sent forth annually a class of well-instructed 
Churchwomen, whose influence for good 
became, long since, a proverb in the Church 
and in the country. The success of this first 
venture induced - many to follow the example, 
till nearly every Diocese has its Hall, and 
St. Mary’s is the acknowledged and revered 
mother of Church schools for girls the land 
over. 

Burlington College, between 1850 and 
1860 a.d., graduated in Arts fen classes. 
After that date, there being no endowment, 
it was found necessary to suspend the Col¬ 
lege classes, and for the next sixteen years 
it was carried on in its Preparatory Depart¬ 
ment. Since 1879 a.d. it has been leased by 
the Trustees to the Rev. Messrs. Reilly, who 
have there the older boys of St. John’s 
Academy, Haddonfield. St. Agnes’ Hall is 
a Church school for girls, under the same 
management, at Haddonfield. 

Financial embarrassment and failure have 
been the penalty paid by several American 
Bishops, who, in advance of their age, 
with excess of zeal or lack of worldly pru¬ 
dence, heroically founded Christian schools. 
Bishop Doane’s case was not to be an ex¬ 
ception. Two sentences of his own will 
almost tell the story : “ A perfect confidence 
that continued success would insure ulti¬ 
mate relief encouraged exertion, and made 
trials tolerable, for the work’s sake, which 
no personal interest would have sustained 
one week.” “ The provision was made, 
and the children were collected. And he, 
who with God’s blessing had accomplished 
these things, after two most dangerous at¬ 
tacks of illness, which confined him for 
nearly five months, having exhausted, in 
his enterprise for Christian education, his 
means and his credit, was left with two 
most prosperous institutions, whose annual 
receipts were not less than $70,000, and with 
an unmanageable debt.” 

In March, 1849 a.d., the Bishop “ made 


an assignment of all his property for tho 
benefit of all his creditors,” and committed 
the business department of the schools to 
committees of trusted friends. Financial 
aid was now generously contributed in all 
parts of the Diocese, and there was no more 
pecuniary embarrassment. But the troubles 
were not over. Nearly three years elapsed, 
and then four laymen preferred charges of 
dishonesty, with numerous specifications ; 
and three Bishops were induced to make a 
presentment of the Bishop of New Jersey for 
trial by his peers. The Diocesan Conven¬ 
tion vindicated their Bishop, and claimed 
the primary right of presentment, and when 
the Court of Bishops met, in October, 
1852 a.d. , asked that Court to dismiss the 
case, pledging the readiness of the Diocese 
“to investigate any charges against its 
Bishop that may be presented from any re¬ 
sponsible source.” On the eighth day of 
the session, it was “ Ordered , that this Court, 
relying upon the said pledge, do not now 
proceed to any further action in the 
premises.” A second presentment was 
made notwithstanding, and a second Court 
summoned, in September, 1853 a.d. To a 
committee of this Court the Bishop re¬ 
spondent, while asserting perfect integrity 
of purpose, acknowledged “That, in the 
course of all these transactions, human in¬ 
firmity may have led him into many errors 
he deeply feels.” “ After prolonged consid¬ 
eration, and the utmost delicacy towards 
every one concerned, the Court came to the 
unanimous decision to dismiss the case. The 
decision has brought peace to a whole Dio¬ 
cese, and, we may add, peace to the Church.” 
(Extract from Rep. of Comm, to Dioc. 
Conv., May, 1854 a.d.) 

The missionary work of the Diocese is . 
carried on, under the Bishop, by the two 
Convocations of Burlington and New Bruns¬ 
wick, each Convocation having a Dean, 
Secretary, Treasurer, and Executive Com¬ 
mittee. 

The Convention elects a Registrar, to 
conserve its store of printed documents. 
The Bishop, with the concurrence of the 
Standing Committee, appoints a Chancellor 
of the Diocese, who is the legal adviser of 
the Bishop and Standing Committee. He 
has a seat and voice in the Convention, but 
no vote. In each Convocation three ex¬ 
amining Chaplains are appointed, yearly, 
by the Bishop. 

The Diocesan Institutions are The Cor¬ 
poration for the Relief of Widows and Or¬ 
phans of Deceased Clergymen , The Christian 
Knowledge Society , and The Trustees of the 
Episcopal Fund , empowered to hold prop¬ 
erty in trust for any ecclesiastical, charita¬ 
ble, or educational objects, under the con¬ 
trol of the Convention or other Diocesan 
authority. There are also a Fund for Aged 
and Infirm Clergymen , The Conover Fund , 
and The Bishop’s Trust Fund , wherewith “ to 
meet emergencies, and to confer benefits in 
a quiet way upon those who would not ask 




NEW MEXICO 


509 


NEW MEXICO 


alms of the Church.” The New Jersey 
Branch of the Woman’s Auxiliary and 
Board of Missions reported last year an 
aggregate amount, in money and work, of 
$13,845. 

The Episcopal Infant School for Orphans 
and Half Orphans of the Diocese , at South 
Amboy, founded and endowed by Mr. 
John Stevens, trains girls for service, and 
finds them homes in Christian families. 

A great deficiency in the Diocese is the 
want of parish schools. Burlington, Prince¬ 
ton, and South Amboy alone report them. 

The Choir Guild, composed of the men 
and boy choirs of the Diocese, was formed 
in 1880 a.d., to introduce a higher standard 
of Church music, and greater uniformity in 
its .selection and rendering. It includes 
now six choirs and one hundred and fifty 
singers. 

The following statistics will show the 
growth of the Diocese during the last six 
decades: 1823 a.d., 13 clergy, 25 churches, 
740 communicants ; 1832 a.d., 18 clergy, 
900 communicants ; 1843 a.d., 48 clergy, 45 
parishes, 2150 communicants; 1853 a.d., 67 
clergy, 64 parishes, 3570 communicants; 
1863 a.d. , 106 clergy, 107 parishes, 6376 
communicants; 1873 a.d., 142 clergy, 124 
parishes, 11,310 communicants. (In 1874 
the Diocese was divided, the seven northern 
counties being erected into the new Diocese 
of Northern New Jersey, with rather more 
than one-half the ecclesiastical strength of 
the entire State.) 1883 a.d., 97 clergy, 115 
congregations, and 8381 communicants ; can¬ 
didates and postulants for Holy Orders, 14; 
lay-readers, 41. 

All debts on church property, whether 
parochial or diocesan, are extinguished with 
two or three exceptions. 

The sea-side churches form a remarkable 
feature of the Diocese. From the mother- 
church at Shrewsbury to Cape May more 
than twenty churches and chapels line the 
Atlantic coast; some of them open only 
during “ the season,” but the larger number 
—and more each year—assuming the form 
of regular parishes. 

Authorities: Anderson’s History of the 
Colonial Church, Journals of the Diocese, 
Bishop Doane’s Addresses, on various occa¬ 
sions, and Memoir by the Bishop of Albany, 
Dr. Hill’s History of the Church in Bur¬ 
lington. Language as well as facts have 
been freely used, with this general acknowl¬ 
edgment. Key. Elyin K. Smith. 

New Mexico and Arizona, the Mission¬ 
ary Jurisdiction of, was created at the Gen¬ 
eral Convention of 1874 a.d., the Bishop 
of Colorado being relieved from the over¬ 
sight of New Mexico, and Arizona being 
separated from Nevada. 

The Kev. Wm. F. Adams, Kector of St. 
Paul’s Church, New Orleans, Louisiana, 
was elected first Bishop of the new Jurisdic¬ 
tion. He was consecrated in his Parish 
church, January, 17,1875 a.d., by the Bishop 
of Mississippi, the Rt. Rev. Wm. M. Green, 


D.D., LL.D., assisted by Bishop Wilmer, 
of Louisiana, and Bishop Beckwith, of 
Georgia. 

On Saturday, February 6, 1875 a.d., 
Bishop Adams, accompanied by the Rev. 
Henry Forrester, reached Santa Fe, New 
Mexico’s ancient capital, after a stage-ride 
of seventy-six hours from Pueblo, Colorado. 
He was very ill the next night from the fa¬ 
tigue of the journey, and for several days 
thereafter was confined to his room ; being 
unable to officiate in the Church services till 
Friday, the 12th inst. 

On the 1st day of March the Bishop 
started on a visitation of Southern New 
Mexico and Arizona. He was accompanied 
as far as Albuquerque by Mr. Forrester, and 
th,ere, on the 4th of the same month, the 
Hon. Hezekiah S. Johnson, Judge of the 
Second Judicial District of New Mexico, 
was ordained to the restricted Diaconate. 
Very few Americans were then in Albu¬ 
querque, and the Judge himself had a Mex¬ 
ican wife. The service was held in a room 
of the Exchange Hotel, and the congrega¬ 
tion consisted of only nine persons. This 
ordination gave the new Jurisdiction all the 
orders of the ministry,—one Bishop, one 
Priest, and one Deacon. There was another 
Priest somewhere in Arizona, but he was 
on his way out of the country, and there¬ 
fore could not be counted. The new Dea¬ 
con died in May, 1876 a.d., having been 
able to render but little service. 

Bishop Adams continued his journey by 
stage to Southern New Mexico, stopping at 
Fort Selden, Las Cruces, Mesilla, and, fin¬ 
ally, Silver City. From the last he started 
by backboard to Tucson, Arizona, two hun¬ 
dred miles distant, but became ill on the 
road and had to stop. He then returned to 
Silver City, and from there to Mesilla, and 
was then called to his family, which was 
still in New Orleans, on account of the seri¬ 
ous illness of two of his children. He went 
through Texas, staging several days and 
nights before reaching a railroad, and ar¬ 
rived at home utterly exhausted. He had 
a very severe attack of the illness that 
had twice prostrated him in New Mexico, 
and his physicians positively forbade his 
return until his strength should be entirely 
restored. 

Under these circumstances Mr. Forrester, 
who had removed his family to Santa Fe, 
and was temporarily in charge of the Parish 
there, took up the general missionary work, 
acting, as far as possible, as the Bishop’s 
representative. In the autumn of 1875 a.d. 
he visited Las Vegas, Cimarron, Socorro, 
the Magdalena mines, Las Cruces, Mesilla, 
Silver City, Georgetown, the Mimbres Re¬ 
duction Works, and Forts Craig, Selden, and 
Bayard. At Mesilla, which was then the 
principal place in Southern New Mexico, 
a large house, containing sufficient room 
for a residence and also a chapel, was se¬ 
cured for the Church at a very low price. 
The property was paid for by the Rev. Dr. 




NEW MEXICO 


510 


NEW MEXICO 


James Saul, of Philadelphia, and was deeded 
to him and the Rev. Dr. Twing, as Trustees 
for the Domestic and Foreign Missionary 
Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church. 

In the spring of 1876 a.d. nearly all the 
points in Southern New Mexico were visited 
again, the missionary residing still at Santa 
Fe, and officiating there when not traveling. 
At this time there was no railroad in the 
Jurisdiction, traveling being done by stage, 
or by buckboard, or by private conveyance. 
It took three days and nights to go from 
Santa Fe to Mesilla, stopping only long 
enough to change horses and get meals. 
Bishop Adams, having finally come to the 
exclusion that he was permanently inca¬ 
pacitated for the work in his jurisdiction, 
sent his resignation to the Presiding Bishop 
in the summer of 1876 a.d. As soon as this 
became known in New Mexico, a petition 
was framed requesting the House of Bishops 
to send out another Bishop as soon as possi¬ 
ble. This petition was signed by a number 
of the most prominent gentlemen in the Ter¬ 
ritory, including the Secretary of State and 
the Commanding Officer of the Military 
District. It was presented to the Bishops 
at their meeting in Philadelphia in October 
of the same year. They preferred, however, 
not to accept the resignation of Bishop 
Adams at this time, and action was deferred 
for another year. In the mean time, Mr. For¬ 
rester continued to reside at Santa Fe and 
to do the general missionary work as cir¬ 
cumstances required and opportunity was 
afforded. 

In the spring of 1877 a.d., by the help of 
friends in the East, the chapel at Mesilla 
was neatly furnished. A school had been 
started, at the earnest request of the people, 
in the autumn of 1876 a.d., but it was never 
self-supporting, and was finally abandoned. 
The mission, in the absence of the mission¬ 
ary in charge, was placed under the care of 
Mr. George D. Bowman, lay-reader, who 
has continued, and still continues, to render 
most faithful and acceptable service. 

A school was opened at Santa Fe also, and 
succeeded very well. When the Congrega- 
tionalists introduced their system of Acad¬ 
emies into the Territory, beginning at Santa 
Fe, it was deemed best to suspend the 
Church school, that a combined effort might 
be made to secure the advantages offered by 
them. 

At the General Convention of 1877 a.d., 
Bishop Adams’s resignation was accepted 
by the House of Bishops, and the Kev. D. 
B. Knickerbacker, who afterwards became 
Bishop of Indiana, was elected to fill the va¬ 
cancy. After the adjournment of the Con¬ 
vention Dr. Knickerbacker declined to be 
consecrated, so the Episcopate was left va¬ 
cant, and, under the Canons, the oversight of 
it fell to the Presiding Bishop. In calling 
a meeting of the Bishops for August, 1878 
a.d., to consider the case of the Bishop of 
Michigan, the Presiding Bishop included, 
as part of the business to come before them, 


the election of a Bishop for New Mexico 
and Arizona. It was found, however, that 
there was a canonical obstacle in the way of 
action at this time, and so the Jurisdiction 
was placed by the Presiding Bishop under 
the care of Bishop Spalding, of Colorado, 
who consented to take it until the next Gen¬ 
eral Convention. 

The Rev. J. A. M. La Tourrette, Chap¬ 
lain U.S.A., having come to Fort Union, 
New Mexico, was now transferred to the 
Jurisdiction, and Bishop Spalding appointed 
the first Standing Committee as follows : 
The Rev. J. A. M. La Tourrette, Presi¬ 
dent ; the Rev. H. Forrester, Secretary; 
Col. J. P. Willard, U.S.A., and Mr. George 
D. Bowman. 

In 1879 a.d., as the A. T. & S. F. R. R 
came southward from Colorado and ap¬ 
proached Las Vegas, New Mexico, services 
were begun there, and Bishop Spalding 
visited the place in August. While there, 
he secured lots for Church purposes, and on 
the 9th of the following November the 
Bishop made a second visit, and opened St. 
Paul’s Chapel for divine service. The same 
month the missionary moved from Santa 
Fe to Las Vegas, making his residence there 
temporarily. In December the Rev. D. A. 
Sanford was sent by Bishop Spalding to as¬ 
sist in the work, and regular services were 
thereafter held at Albuquerque, where there 
had been several visits made during the pre¬ 
ceding six months. Occasional services were 
held at Santa Fe also, and Mesilla was still 
visited as opportunity offered. 

In May, 1880 a.d., the Primary Convoca¬ 
tion of the Jurisdiction was held at Albu¬ 
querque, under the presidency of Bishop 
Spalding. The members were Bishop Spald¬ 
ing, the Revs. J. A. M. La Tourrette, H. 
Forrester, and D. A. Sanford, and, from 
Sante Fe, Mr. L. Bradford Prince; from 
Mesilla, Mr. W. H. Cobb; from Las Vegas, 
Mr. Chas. Wheelock; and from Albuquer¬ 
que, Messrs. W. C. Hazledine, W. K. P. 
Wilson, and R. C. Vose. 

The officers of the Jurisdiction were ap¬ 
pointed or elected as follows : Standing Com¬ 
mittee, Rev. J. A. M. La Tourrette, Presi¬ 
dent ; Rev. H. Forrester, Secretary ; Hon. 
W. C. Hazledine, Mr. H. C. Baldwin. 
Chancellor, Hon. L. Bradford Prince. Treas¬ 
urer, Mr. W. W. Griffin. Registrar, Rev. 
H. Forrester. Examining Chaplains, Rev. 
J. A. M. La Tourrette, Rev. H. Forrester. 
Delegates to General Convention, Rev. H. 
Forrester, Col. J. P. Willard, U.S.A. ; 
Alternates, Rev. J. A. M. La Tourrette, 
Hon. W. C. Hazledine. Trustees of Church 
Property, the Bishop exercising Jurisdic¬ 
tion, the Members of the Standing Commit¬ 
tee, the Chancellor and the Treasurer. 

The Officers and Committees of the Con¬ 
vocation were : Secretary, Rev. H. Forrester ; 
Treasurer, Mr. W. K. P. Wilson; Com¬ 
mittee on Constitution, Order of Proceed¬ 
ings, and Rules of Order, the Bishop exercis¬ 
ing Jurisdiction, Rev. J. A. M. La Tour- 




NEW YORK 


511 


NEW YORK 


rette, Rev. H. Forrester, Hon. L. B. Prince, 
Hon. W. 0. Hazledine; Committee on 
Common Fund for Church Work, Rev. H. 
Forrester, Rev. J. A. M. La Tourrette, Hon. 
W. C. Hazledine, Mr. W. T. Guyer. 

At the second Convention, held under 
the presidency of the new Bishop, at Santa 
Fe, in July, 1881 a.d., the latter Committee 
reported, affirming the Common Treasury 
system to he the true Christian system, and 
urging that its underlying principle should 
by all means be preserved. It also recom¬ 
mended a plan to be used in the Jurisdiction 
providing for this end. The resolutions 
offered by the Committee were unanimously 
adopted, and thus the Missionary Jurisdic¬ 
tion of New Mexico and Arizona was the 
first Episcopal jurisdiction in the United 
States to declare, by its representative body, 
its acceptance of the financial system of the 
Primitive Church. 

At the General Convention of 1880 a.d., 
the Rev. George K. Dunlop, Rector of 
Grace Church, Kirkwood, Mo., was elected 
to the vacant Episcopate. He was conse¬ 
crated November 21 of the same year, in 
Christ Church, St. Louis, the Bishop of 
Minnesota being Consecrator, assisted by 
the Bishops of Missouri, Iowa, Quincy, and 
Springfield. The new Bishop reached Las 
Yegas, on his first visitation, December 2 
following, and from there went on to Santa 
Fe, Albuquerque, and Mesilla. He took 
up his residence, with his family, at Santa 
Fe, March 31, 1881 a.d. After building a 
handsome stone church there, he moved to 
Las Yegas, where he still resides. 

The progress of Church work during 
Bishop Dunlop’s administration has been 
very encouraging. Churches have been 
built at Albuquerque, Tombstone, and 
Santa Fe, and rectories at Las Yegas and 
Tombstone. The value of Church property 
has increased from five thousand to forty 
thousand dollars. Confirmations have about 
doubled every succeeding y§ar, and the 
increase in the number of Communicants 
has been in much higher ratio. The country 
is rapidly filling up with Americans, and 
the Church is leading all other religious 
bodies in the principal towns. 

Rev. H. Forrester. 

New York, Diocese of. The first Con¬ 
vention of the Diocese of New York was 
held Wednesday, June 22, 1785 a.d. Up 
to the time New Amsterdam was ceded by 
the Dutch, its original owners, at the treaty 
of Breda, to the English, there was no ser¬ 
vice of any kind held in the English 
language. The change of ownership which 
took place transferred at once the garrison 
chapel to the English, and they forthwith 
introduced the services of their Church. 
Within these narrow walls it was limited 
for many years, until in 1696 a.d. a con¬ 
siderable number of the inhabitants met to¬ 
gether and determined to have the worship 
of the Church of England settled among 
them. The result was the organization of 


the parish of Trinity Church, and the elec¬ 
tion of the Rev. Dr.Yesey as its first Rector. 
The new parish found zealous supporters in 
Governor Fletcher, by whom it was en¬ 
dowed temporarily, and in Lord Cornbury, 
his successor, who assigned it the freehold 
of a neighboring property, known as the 
King’s Farm. The influence of the Church 
of England began now to increase in many 
towns, but especially in New York City. 
This was in a great measure owing to the 
Rev. Mr. Yesey, who by his conduct com¬ 
pletely won the affections of the people. 
Outside of the city the Church was greatly 
indebted to the fostering care of the venerable 
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in 
Foreign Parts. In 1702 a.d. the Rev. Mr. 
Barton became the missionary of the Society 
in Westchester, “ a small town upon the sea- 
coast,” a few miles above New York, and 
made occasional journeys to New Rochelle, 
East Chester, Rye, Mamaroneck, and Bed¬ 
ford. The chief obstacle, however, in the 
way of the Church’s progress was the lack 
of the Episcopate. All her spiritual chil¬ 
dren who where born here were growing up 
without the valued benefit of confirmation. 
Not one edifice for public worship had been 
consecrated. Our clergy and our parishes 
were destitute of that superintendence which 
is the very life of our Church government. 
Every candidate upon our shores who would 
be admitted to holy orders was compelled 
to seek ordination in the far-distant mother- 
country. A great gulf lay between,—an 
ocean of three thousand miles. No less than 
a fifth part of our young men who were 
destined for the Lord’s service in the sanctu¬ 
ary—being exposed to various “ perils in 
the sea”—paid with their lives the cost of 
the severe ecclesiastical requisition of the 
Church of England. Roman Catholics in 
North America had a Bishop, Francis 
Laval, as early as 1659 a.d., and the 
Moravians had four Bishops previous to the 
year 1750 a.d., but for the Church of Eng¬ 
land here there was not provided one spir¬ 
itual Father to take “ the oversight 
thereof.” Queen Anne, in 1714 a.d., was 
propitious • to the design, and but for her 
death it would soon have been accomplished. 
The first George also appeared favQrable, 
but a dangerous rebellion concentrated all 
his thoughts and feelings on another object, 
and then “ it was not time to attend to the 
subject of American Bishops.” Thus the 
matter dragged slowly along until our 
national liberty gave it a new form. 

It was several years after our civil inde¬ 
pendence when the plan of a General Ameri¬ 
can Church, with an independent American 
Episcopate, was formed. Incipient meas¬ 
ures for the organization of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church in the United States were 
first adopted by the Church in Pennsyl¬ 
vania. The earliest general meeting called 
expressly to consider this subject was at 
New York, in October, 1784 a.d., when 
clerical and lay deputies from the States of 





NEW YORK 


512 


NEW YORK 


Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, 
New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, 
Delaware, and Maryland first took counsel 
together concerning the peculiar exigencies 
of the Church. A more numerous Conven¬ 
tion of the deputies from several States, held 
at Philadelphia in September of the next 
year (1785 a.d.), prepared an address to the 
Archbishops and Bishops of the Church of 
England, requesting them to confer Episco¬ 
pal consecration on such persons as might 
be recommended by the Church in the 
United States. The consent of the Arch¬ 
bishops and Bishops was obtained in 1786 
a.d. Without delay the Rev. Dr. White, 
Bishop-elect of Pennsylvania, and the Rev. 
Dr. Provoost, Bishop-elect of New York, 
who had been chosen at the second Annual 
Convention of the Diocese, set sail for Eng¬ 
land. On their arrival they were conse¬ 
crated in the chapel of the Archiepiscopal 
palace at Lambeth by the Archbishop of 
Canterbury, assisted by the Archbishop of 
York, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, and 
the Bishop of Peterboro’, on Sunday, Febru- 
ary 4, 1787 a.d. The new prelates soon set 
sail from England, and after a 11 very tedi¬ 
ous and boisterous passage,” during which 
Dr. Provoost was “so ill that it was feared 
he would not live,” they reached New York, 
April 8, 1787 a.d., on Easter-Sunday. 

The Diocese of New York could now re¬ 
joice in its first Bishop. The result was 
seen at once in the impetus given to the 
Church’s growth. It is true the new Dio¬ 
cesan was not a man of magnetic character 
or a very ardent worker, but the Church in 
New York at last had found its proper head, 
and, in spite of adverse circumstances, con¬ 
tinued to increase in power and public favor. 
Bishop Provoost remained for fourteen years 
in charge of the Diocese. At last, over¬ 
whelmed by the heart-rending loss of his 
wife in August, 1799 a.d., by the heart¬ 
rending death of his youngest and favorite 
son in the July following, and by many 
painful domestic and embarrassing official 
cares, he resigned the rectorship of Trinity 
Church in September, 1800 a.d., and his 
Episcopal jurisdiction at a meeting of the 
Convention in the year 1801 a.d. He was 
succeeded by the Rev. Dr. Benjamin Moore, 
who was chosen in December, 1800 a.d., 
Rector of Trinity Church, and Bishop of 
New York on the day after the first Bishop’s 
resignation of the crosier. He was conse¬ 
crated at Trenton, N. J., September 11, 1801 
a.d. The Rt. Rev. Dr. White officiated as 
Presiding Bishop, and Bishops Clagget and 
Jarvis aided him in the performance of the 
primitive solemnity. 

Of the second Bishop of New York it can 
be said, “ He rose to public confidence and 
respect, and to general esteem solely by the 
force of talents and worth. His love for the 
Church was the paramount principle that 
animated him. He entered on her service in 
the time of trouble. Steady in his principles, 
yet mild and prudent in advocating them, he 


never sacrificed consistency,—he never pro¬ 
voked resentment. In proportion as adver¬ 
sity pressed upon the Church was the firm¬ 
ness of the affection with which he clung to 
her. And be lived until he saw her, in no 
inconsiderable degree by his counsel and ex¬ 
ertions, raised from the dust and putting on 
the garments of glory and beauty. It was 
this affection for the Church which ani¬ 
mated his Episcopal labors; which led him 
to leave that family whom he so tenderly 
loved, and that retirement which was so 
dear to him, and where he found while he 
conferred enjoyment, and to seek in remote 
parts of the Diocese for the sheep of t 
Christ’s fold.” In 1811 a.d., his health 
having become greatly impaired, he sug¬ 
gested to the Convention the propriety and 
the necessity of an Assistant Bishop, and the 
request meeting with unanimous approval, 
the Rev. John Henry Hobart, one of the as¬ 
sistant ministers of Trinity Church, was 
elected upon the first ballot. The consecra¬ 
tion of the Bishop-elect took place in Trin¬ 
ity Church, May 29, Bishop White offici¬ 
ating as Presiding Bishop, with Bishops 
Provoost and Jarvis as his assistants in the 
ceremonial. This was the turning-point in 
the history of the American Church. The 
war of the Revolution had made her unpop¬ 
ular with the multitude, who looked with 
disfavor upon her because of her British 
origin. Bare toleration was only accorded 
her, for no one, up to this time, had thought 
of claiming honor for her because of her 
Apostolic descent. In this state Bishop Ho¬ 
bart found matters, but their continuance in 
this state he would not endure. Trained in 
a Presbyterian college, he was a Churchman 
in the fullest conviction of his reason. He 
early declared his own principles to run up 
in brief into these two: “We are saved 
from the guilt and dominion of sin by the 
Divine merits and grace of a Crucified Re¬ 
deemer, and that the merits and grace of 
this Redeemer are applied to the soul of the 
believer by humble and devout participation 
in the ordinances of the Church adminis¬ 
tered by a priesthood who derive their 
authority by regular transmission from the 
Christ, the Divine Head of the Church and 
the source of all the power in it.” 

• As was to be expected, the enunciation and 
the enforcement of such sound views was 
followed by a marked increase of Church 
life. The Church began to be honored, be¬ 
cause men for the first time found out that 
she was worthy of honor. Bishop Hobart, 
on the death of Bishop Moore, in 1812 a.d., 
became Diocesan of New York. From this 
time on his labors became more incessant 
to build up the Church of Christ in her 
ministry, in her ordinances, and her most 
holy faith ; this was the great object which 
awakened his solicitude and .called forth his 
incessant and untiring efforts. For several 
years before he was compelled to intermit 
his activities he recorded in his anniversary 
addresses seldom less than thirty and some- 




NEW YORK 


513 


NIOBRARA 


times more than forty visitations of parishes 
widely separated. Added to this onerous 
toil were the charges which he delivered to 
the clergy of his Diocese, the various publi¬ 
cations which he prepared for the press, the 
educational and beneficent institutions which 
he organized and watched over with unflag¬ 
ging interest. As was to be expected, his 
efforts were too exhaustive to be endured 
even by his vigorous frame. His health de¬ 
clined, and while making a visitation at 
Auburn he died, September 12, 1830 a d., 
being fifty-five years of age. At a Conven¬ 
tion of the Diocese held in the same month, 
the Rev. Benjamin Tredwell Onderdonk, 
one of the assistant ministers of Trinity 
Church, was elected as his successor. His 
consecration took place November 26, 1830 
a.d. In 1838 a.d. the Diocese had attained 
such vast proportions that it became evident 
that one Bishop could not properly attend to 
it, and the result was the formation of the 
Western Diocese, Bishop Onderdonk retain¬ 
ing the eastern portion. Charges affecting 
the moral character of the Bishop having 
been made, he was tried in December, 1844 
a.d., by the House of Bishops acting as a 
court; and after a long and searching inves¬ 
tigation the court decided (eight voting for 
deposition and nine for suspension) that he 
be suspended from the office and functions of 
the ministry (January 3, 1845 a.d.1. The 
Bishop never acknowledged himself to be 
guilty of the offenses imputed to him, and 
urgent efforts were made by his friends for 
the removal of the suspension. 

After much delay the General Convention 
passed a Canon allowing a provisional 
Bishop to be chosen. The choice fell upon 
Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright, an assistant 
minister of Trinity Church, who was conse¬ 
crated November 10, 1852 a.d. The arduous 
duties of the Episcopate, greatly enhanced 
by the long period the Diocese had been 
without an acting head, proved to be too great 
for the new Diocesan. He died in New York, 
September 21, 1854 a.d. At the next Con¬ 
vention Horatio Potter, Rector of St. Peter’s 
Church, Albany, was elected to the vacant 
Episcopate, and consecrated November 22, 
1854 a.d. During Bishop Potter’s long and 
wise administration the Church in New York 
has seen its most prosperous years. Parishes 
have multiplied ; the number of the clergy 
has increased sixty- and a hundred-fold; 
educational institutions, hospitals, orphan 
asylums have been established; vast sums 
of money for foreign and domestic missions 
and other charitable purposes have been 
contributed. In 1868 a.d. the Church had 
become so unwield}’ from its vast growth 
that the new Dioceses of Albany and Long 
Island were set off. In 1883 a.d., the health 
of Bishop Potter having become impaired, 
the Convention at his request consented to 
the election of an assistant Bishop, and 
Henry Codman Potter, a nephew of the 
Diocesan, and Rector of Grace Church, New 
York, was chosen with singular unanimity 

33 


to fill the place. The assistant Bishop-elect 
was consecrated in Grace Church, October 
20, 1883 a.d., in the presence of a vast assem¬ 
blage of the clergy and laity, by the vener¬ 
able Presiding Bishop, Dr. Smith, of Ken¬ 
tucky, assisted by over forty of his brethren 
of the Episcopate. The Diocese of New 
York of 1785 a.d. is now divided into five 
Dioceses, having in the aggregate 5 Bishops, 
621 clergy, and 130,000 communicants. 

Rev. E. Guilbert. 

Niobrara. (Vide South Dakota.) The 
Rev. William Hobart Hare, D.D., was 
consecrated in 1873 a.d. as a Bishop having 
special charge of work among the Indians. 
Bishop Hare, in his report of 1880 a.d., states 
that he had traveled during his spring and 
summer visitations 2000 miles in his wagon, 
besides not a little stage-coaching. He 
found most of the Indian tribes friendly, 
and a number had presented themselves for 
confirmation. In the seven and a half years 
of his mission there had been 4 boarding- 
schools established, in which 115 children 
were cared for, and 10 new congregations 
gathered “among the wilder and remoter 
tribes.’’ Eleven mission residences and 10 
churches had been built and paid for. The 
Bishop considers the Indians like other peo¬ 
ple in character, and thinks that they have 
been treated too much in a special way “ as 
a strange people.” The report announces 
the death of the faithful missionary, the 
Rev. E. J. K. Lessell, who had been a 
pioneer in the Black Hills. The Bishop 
gratefully acknowledges the aid of the fe¬ 
male missionaries, as well as the wives of the 
clergy in his field, and the ladies’ associations 
who had sent aid for the work. There 
had been 120 confirmations in Niobrara. 

In the Santee Mission, Rev. W. W. Fow¬ 
ler and his wife had taken six lads into their 
house to be taught English and trained in 
Christian life, and to assist on the Mission 
farm. The Yankton Mission had been 
under the care of the veteran missionary, 
Rev. Jos. W. Cook. Sister Julia had done a 
merciful work in the homes of the people in 
this mission as a Deaconess, and in Emman¬ 
uel House, under her charge, in which “ were 
persons recovering from severe surgical 
operations, and sick women and children 
who could not be cared for in their own 
miserable homes.” In the Yanktonnais 
Mission a number of the Indians, led by 
the Lay-reader and two or three Christian 
Indians, had formed themselves into a Co¬ 
operative Farmers’ Association, to encour¬ 
age each other in farming and building 
houses. Most of them had been heathen, 
but at the Bishop’s visitation they enrolled 
themselves as catechumens. When the 
Bishop, the evening before their admission, 
gave an outline of the Christian religion 
and the duties of civilized life, he asked with 
regard to each dut} r , “ 1 Will you try to do 
it?’ their earnest answers (writes the 
Bishop), ‘ How’ (or yes) were only less im¬ 
pressive than the scene when we closed our 




NIOBRARA 


514 


NOAH 


interview b}' all standing up and repeating, 
they after me, the Apostles’ Creed.” After 
Baptism and Confirmation the Bishop “ cel¬ 
ebrated with the native congregation in the 
Eucharist the death of Him who gathers 
together in one the children of God who are 
scattered abroad.” 

The Lower Brule Mission had been faith¬ 
fully and patiently conducted by the native 
Presbyter, Rev. Luke C. Walker, and his 
assistants. The Cheyenne Agency Mission 
was under the charge of the Rev. H. Swift, 
the tribes being under the “ admirable 
management of Captain Schwan, U.S.A., 
Acting Agent.” The people had progressed, 
and the Church had grown. The Indians 
were inclined to settle on farms, and Mr. 
Swift had planted himself on the Missouri 
River, where the conditions were favorable 
to farm life. A church and parsonage had 
been built near by, and paid for by friends 
in Connecticut. One of the chiefs here 
wrote the Bishop, “ Let all our friends hear 
these words. We long for life. Help us 
more and more.” Upper Brule Mission 
was under Rev. W. J. Cleveland. A num¬ 
ber of white men who had married among 
the Sioux were identified with this Mission, 
and helpful in it. The congregation was 
large and the worship hearty; they took 
pride in their church building, and gave 
liberally towards its embellishment. In 
the Ogalala, or Pine Ridge Mission, like¬ 
wise under Mr. Cleveland, Mrs. J. J. Astor 
had given a church, which was soon to be 
completed. The Bishop urges the need of 
constant Christian care over Indians giving 
up their wild life and striving after civiliz¬ 
ation. The work of the Church in this 
case must be tireless and incessant. 

Most of the clergy have now learned the 
language of the Indians, and the Prayer- 
Book, a Hymn-Book, the King’s Highway, 
and the Calvary Catechism have been trans¬ 
lated into their tongue by them, while others 
have given the natives the Bible in the 
vernacular. “No words can express too 
emphatically the blessing these versions 
have been.” “The secret of any success 
the Missionaries in Niobrara have had lies 
largely in the fact that they have taken up 
their homes among the people, and made 
them hear in their own tongues wherein 
they were born the wonderful works of 
God.” Still, the Bishop has thought it best 
to press the study of the English language 
in the schools. He has striven to break 
down “ the middle wall of partition” be¬ 
tween whites and Indians. 

In the District of Niobrara in 1883 a.d. 
the Bishop baptized 26 adults and 15 in¬ 
fants, and confirmed 117 persons. Then 
he visited the Chapel of the Redeemer in a 
farming population, where in a heavy rain 
70 assembled from their scattered houses 
and 36 “participated in the celebration of 
the Holy Communion.” Of the Rev. Mr. 
Cook’s work in the Yankton Mission the 
Bishop says, “ This Mission was begun in 


the year 1869 a.d. by Rev. Paul Mazakute. 
In 1870 a.d. the Rev. J. W. Cook took 
charge. He has seen the whole people pass 
from tent to log house life, and has presented 
293 persons for confirmation.” There is a* 
central church, which serves as the Bishop’s 
church, and two chapels, each fifteen miles 
distant. Mrs. Fox, assisted by Angelique 
Gay ton, had done an excellent work in Em¬ 
manuel House, though a sacred duty of 
paramount importance had called her away, 
causing a suspension in the special work 
until a successor could be secured. The 
Yanktonnais (Crow Creek) Mission is under 
Rev. H. Burt. Springfield Mission is super¬ 
vised by W. J. Wicks, Catechist and Lay- 
reader. Hope School is located there. . In 
the Black Hills Mission, Deadwood, there 
has been a vacancy since the death of Rev. 
Dr. Pennell, in May, 1882 a.d. In his 
Boarding-School work, Bishop Hare has 
followed “the plan of having small schools 
(none exceeding 36 scholars), that family 
life, as contrasted with that of an institu¬ 
tion, may be preserved, and that the personal 
contact of the officers with each individ¬ 
ual scholar may be frequent and familiar.” 
These schools are at four different points, 
that the “ centres of heat and light may be 
distributed as much as possible.” For Hope 
School, Springfield, he has secured a superb 
site and subscriptions of $4000. In review¬ 
ing the Mission’s history the Bishop finds 
much cheer. The “fantastic gear of the 
savage” and “the hideous orgies of heathen 
dances” have given place to “ 25 congrega¬ 
tions of decently dressed worshipers, ag¬ 
gregating an average attendance of 1160 
Indians, who gather every Sunday and offer 
in prayers and spiritual songs their homage 
to Almighty God, as revealed in His love 
and holiness in His beloved Son.” Churches 
and chapels dot the wilderness, with com¬ 
fortable parsonages at their side. During the 
three years preceding the report of 1883 a.d. 
there had been 864 infants and 468 adults 
baptized. During the preceding ten years 
nearly 900 had been confirmed. In the 
Boarding-Schools 132 children improve 
under Christian teaching. The native clergy 
are faithful, and the candidates promising. 
“ When the King comes in to see His guests, 
He finds 796 ready to sit down at His ta¬ 
ble.” Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Noah, whose name signifies “ rest,” was 
the tenth from Adam in the line of Seth. 
At his birth, his father Lamech, in choosing 
a name, and expressing a hope for the child, 
uttered (possibly unconsciously) a prophecy 
of his future office and function. “ And he 
called his name Noah, saying, This same 
shall comfort us concerning our work and 
toil of our hands, because of the ground 
which the Lord hath cursed” (Gen. v. 29). 
“ Clearly there is an almost prophetic feel¬ 
ing in the name which he gives his son, and 
hence some Christian writers have seen in 
the language a prophecy of the Messiah, and 
have supposed that as Eve was mistaken on 





NOCTURNS 


515 


NONCONFORMITY 


the birth of Cain, so Lamech in like manner 
was deceived in his hope of Noah. But 
there is no reason to infer from the language 
of the narrative that the hopes of either were 
of so definite a nature.’’ When Noah was 
about five hundred years old the wickedness 
of man had become such that the Lord re¬ 
solved upon the destruction of the human 
race, still allowing a respite of one hundred 
and twenty years for repentance. It must 
have been during this interval that Noah 
became a “preacher of righteousness,” if in 
no other way, by his upright conduct, 
whereby he found grace in the eyes of the 
Lord, and by his obedience to the command 
to build an ark and prepare for the threat¬ 
ened flood. The very interesting questions 
called up by the name of Noah, relative to 
the wickedness of the antediluvians, the 
building of the ark, the extent of the flood, 
etc., are here passed over in silence, it being 
intended only to say so much as will show 
how Noah was a type of Christ, and his 
whole story a great prophetic forepicturing 
of salvation of the world from a flood of sin 
by Christ and in the Church of Christ. 
We may see this in his name, which means 
rest; in his office of a preacher of righteous¬ 
ness ; and in his preparation of an ark of 
salvation for his sons who believed him ; all 
these clearly foreshadow Him who has pre¬ 
pared a rest which remaineth for the people 
of God ; whose Gospel is preached as the 
word of life to them that receive it; and 
whose Church is the sole ark and refuge of 
safety from the flood of sin which threatens to 
overwhelm the soul of man in eternal death. 

Authorities : Bible Commentary, Diction¬ 
ary of the Bible. 

Nocturns. Services held anciently during 
the night. The night was divided into three 
parts and an office recited at each, while 
lauds was recited at dawn. But finally the 
three nocturn services were said together 
with lauds at a single office. The Psalter 
was divided so as to form certain portions, 
the first of fourteen, the second of three, and 
the third of three Psalms, and then when 
the nocturns were dropped the Psalms, with 
their nocturn titles, passed into the matin 
office. So it is also a name for a portion of 
the Psalter. 

Nominalism (nomen, a name) is the 
doctrine that general notions, such as the 
notion of a tree, have no realities corre¬ 
sponding to them, and have no existence but 
as names or words. The doctrine directly 
opposed to it is Realism. “The Nominalists 
were called Terminists about the time of the 
Reformation.” “The Terminists, among 
whom I was, are so called because they speak 
of a thing in its own proper words, and do 
not apply them after a strange sort. They 
are also called Occamists, from Ockham, their 
founder. He was an able and a sensible 
man.” (Luther’sTable-Talk, Krauth’s Flem¬ 
ing's Vocab. of Philos. ; see also Cousin’s 
Hist. Mod. Philos, on Nominalism and 
Realism.) 


Nomination. In the English Church it 
is the naming of a clerk to the Patron, who 
has the right to present to the Bishop the 
name of the clergyman to whom he would 
present the living. The right to nominate 
and to present may be in one person, or each 
may be vested in separate persons; and if 
either person misuse his right, the right is 
forfeited to the Queen. But in our own 
Church all this is done away. Not but 
that the right to nominate exists, and is 
constantly exercised in connection with the 
right to present, though neither right hears 
such a title. A clergyman is usually nom¬ 
inated by some one to the Yestry, and they 
elect, and often without reference to the 
Bishop, whose consent is assumed (or the 
need of such consent is disregarded or over¬ 
looked) ; they present to the accepting cler¬ 
gyman, who accepts with perhaps as little 
reference to the Ordinary. It is an infor¬ 
mality which should not be allowed, and 
to correct which was evidently the purpose 
of the Office of Institution. The Yestry is 
the presenting body, and rightly so, but it 
also arrogates to itself the right of induc¬ 
tion, which (if the Institution office is of 
obligation) can belong only to the Bishop. 

Nonconformity. The refusal to conform 
to the rites, ceremonies, or tenets of the 
National Church. In every era of her 
history as parted into National Churches 
there have been Nonconformists. Nor is it 
necessary to suppose that they really held in 
all cases unorthodox or heretical doctrines. 
A Nonconformist is one who does not yield 
that conformity to the observances and rit¬ 
ual of the Church of his nationality ; but he 
may be very orthodox in his creed. The 
modern idea of nonconformity begins with 
the Puritan troubles in Queen Elizabeth’s 
times. Nonconformists passed easily into 
Separatists (can. ix. of 1603 a.d.), and this 
became their title till it was replaced by the 
more recent name Dissenter. ( Vide Dis¬ 
senter.) It was because the Church and 
State were identical in interest, and in fact 
the theory of both the parties, that Noncon¬ 
formity was dangerous to the State, as the 
Rebellion of 1640 a.d. proved. There was 
then no conception that there could be any 
severance between Church and State. That 
is an idea of modern times, and practically 
carried out in this country. Here there 
can be no such thing as Dissent in the sense 
in which it is used in England. Noncon¬ 
formity here is upon a wholly different 
footing, and can only be thought of as ex¬ 
isting for those who do not admit the claims 
of the Church upon them, and is therefore 
merely a relative term between two separate 
organizations. The same objection lies 
against the use of the term Dissenter. The 
Church is here in the position of dissent 
(and very rightly) towards the religious 
bodies around her, as well as they towards 
her. It is only upon the deeper and surer 
ground of a (willing or unwilling) schism 
from her organization and of revolt from 




NONES 


516 


NORTH CAROLINA 


her rightful claims that here we can apply 
the terms of Nonconformity, or Separation, 
or Dissent to those who may be as zealous 
as ourselves. The position of religious 
bodies in this country renders the union on 
important matters hereafter much easier 
than elsewhere. The real division has ever 
lain in the totally different conception of 
the nature and Divine authority of the 
Church. When there is unity on this, a 
broad Catholic Conformity will be more 
than possible. 

Nones. A word used in the English 
Calendar, derived from the ancient Roman 
Kalendars. The nones were the fifth day 
of each month (except March, May, July, 
October, when the nones fell on the seventh 
day). They were so called as they were 
the ninth day before the Ides, on which 
time, in the older lunar mo*ths, the full 
moon appeared. So the nones fell on the 
completion of the first quarter and the ides 
on the second quarter. 

Non-Jurors. Those who in the revolu¬ 
tion of 1688 a.d. refused the oath of alle¬ 
giance to William and Mary. The oaths 
were tendered to be taken by the 1st of 
August upon pain of suspension, and depri¬ 
vation was to follow if the refusal to take 
them was persisted in. 

Archbishop Bancroft and eight Bishops re¬ 
fused. But two of them died before being 
suspended, and one other before deprivation 
was enforced. About four hundred clergy 
followed their example and were deprived 
of their benefices. The non-jurors acted 
conscientiously upon the well-known princi¬ 
ples of passive obedience, though but a few 
years before, in the conflict between King 
James II. and the Church, seven of the 
Bishops, and Ken the chiefest of them, pre¬ 
ferred imprisonment to yielding to the King. 
But that was yet only a passive resistance. 
It was a civil question indeed, and they 
were deprived uncanonicalh 7 and by force 
of the civil power. They were in a troubled 
position indeed, and under all the circum¬ 
stances bore themselves very nobly. Still, 
they acted in one important matter in away 
that has been condemned. Three had died, 
Ken and Frampton stood aloof, but Arch¬ 
bishop Sancroft decided that it was right to 
consecrate a new Bishop to preserve the 
Apostolical succession, since in the confu¬ 
sions of the moment it seemed to them very 
doubtful if King William would continue 
the present connection of the Church and 
the State, and Presbyterianism might obtain 
political and ecclesiastical ascendency. He 
died, however, before the consecration of Dr. 
Hickes, which took place under his sanction 
1693 a.d. Other consecrations followed, but 
beyond this first step their act becomes inde¬ 
fensible, since afterwards the Church’s future 
was established beyond doubt. One of the 
last of those consecrated by the non-jurors 
to keep up their line, Taylor (consecrated 
1721 a.d.), visited this country afterwards. 
But the non-jurors were in every respect 


men of great ability. The studies of Bret 
and Nelson in the history and the uses of 
our Prayer-Book are of the highest value. 
Dodwell, Collier, and Carte in history, 
Kettlewell, Spinkes, Law, and Nelson in 
devotional theology, Lawrence, Law, and 
Leslie in controversial theology, are mighty 
names even yet, and their influence was and 
is very great. The schism, for such it became, 
slowly died out, and at last, in 1799 a.d., the 
last non-juring Bishop quietly renounced his 
schism and was received into communion in 
the English National Church. 

Norman. Vide Architecture. 

North Carolina, Diocese of. This Dio¬ 
cese, as at present constituted, embraces the 
entire State of North Carolina, with its 
52,286 square miles. The civil divisions of 
the State are into ninety-six counties ; the 
total population, including a few Indians, is 
1,399,750 by the census of 1880 a.d. 

The ecclesisastical divisions of the Diocese 
are into six Missionary Convocations, viz.: 
of Edenton, of Newbern, of Wilmington, 
of Raleigh, of Charlotte, and of Morganton. 
The Convocations at present organized and 
in operation are those of Edenton, of Raleigh, 
of Charlotte, and of Morganton. The other 
subdivisions of the Diocese are Parishes and 
Mission Stations, the latter being entirely 
under the Bishop’s control, and being en¬ 
titled to one delegate in the Convention, but 
not to a vote. 

History of the Church in North Carolina. 
—The first services of the Church in the 
territory now constituting the United States 
were on the coast of North Carolina. Ra¬ 
leigh’s first expedition landed at Roanoke 
Island in July, 1584 a.d. August 13, 1587 
a.d., Manteo, an Indian chief, was baptized 
at Roanoke Island, the first Indian convert; 
and a few days after, Virginia Dare, the 
first white child born in America of Eng¬ 
lish parents. In Harriot’s Narrative, 1586 
a.d., we have an interesting account of the 
eflforts of that distinguished scientist to con¬ 
vey to the minds of the aborigines some 
knowledge of the facts and doctrines of the 
Christian religion. 

No permanent settlement, however, was 
effected until about 1662 a.d., and for many 
years after that date the Province was des¬ 
titute of religious services. In 1701 a.d. 
the Assembly passed an act for the support 
of the Church, but it came to nothing. 
About 1702 a.d. a church was built, prob¬ 
ably near where the town of Edenton now 
stands. In the same year Dr. Bray, Com¬ 
missary of the Bishop of London, sent the 
first minister of the Church into the 
Province, Daniel Brett (who officiated only a 
few months), and with him a small collec¬ 
tion of books, which were kept at Bath, and 
constituted the first public library in North 
Carolina. 

In 1704 a.d. the Society for the Propaga¬ 
tion of the Gospel in Foreign Parts sent its 
first missionary, the Rev. Mr. Blair, and 
others from time to time, until in 1770 A.D. 






NORTH CAROLINA 


517 


NORTH CAROLINA 


there seem to have been eighteen ministers 
regularly settled in as many parishes, mostly 
east of Hillsboro; Salisbury being the only 
place farther west which had a minister. 
The western counties were settled chiefly by 
Presbyterians, with a good many German 
Lutherans, and a flourishing colony of 
Moravians about Salem. But the Church 
never had any really healthy existence during 
this period. It suffered the disadvantages of 
a State connection without enjoying the sup¬ 
posed compensating benefits. The laws in 
its favor could not be enforced where its ad¬ 
herents were not a majority of the freehold¬ 
ers, and when enforced they were insufficient 
to effect their purpose, while they served to 
check individual effort. But the annals of 
this period are not altogether barren. The 
names of Clement Hall, Thomas Burgess, 
Nathaniel Blount, and other faithful mis¬ 
sionaries are preserved in honor for their 
works’ sake. And the true remedy for the 
low condition of Church life was plain to 
some of the prominent laymen. Governor 
Dobbs writes once and again to the Society 
urging the absolute necessity of sending 
Bishops to America, and Governor Tryon, 
in a letter of July 31, 1765 a.d., presses 
upon the Society the importance of a larger 
number of ministers, saying that a majority 
of the whole population remained attached 
to the Church, although almost entirely de¬ 
prived of her ministrations. It was prob¬ 
ably owing to the efforts of Governor Tryon 
that the number of ministers in the Province 
rose from five in 1765 a.d. to eighteen in 
1770 a.d. 

The results of the Revolution seemed 
altogether disastrous to the Church. Most 
of her congregations were deprived of their 
ministers, and a very bitter popular prej¬ 
udice arose against her. Her churches and 
chapels were deserted, her property fell into 
the hands of others, who in some instances 
still retain it, and her voice was hardly heard 
in the land. 

In 1790 a.d. , at the suggestion of Bishop 
White, an effort was made to revive the 
Church in North Carolina. Meetings of 
clergy and laity were held in Tarboro’ in 
June and November, 1790 a.d., in Novem¬ 
ber, 1793 a.d. , and in May, 1794 a.d. At 
this last meeting six clergymen (including 
one in Lutheran orders) and a small num¬ 
ber of prominent laymen were present. A 
Constitution was adopted, Deputies to the 
General Convention and a Standing Com¬ 
mittee were appointed, and the Rev. Charles 
Pettigrew was chosen Bishop. Mr. Petti¬ 
grew set out to attend the General Conven¬ 
tion of 1795 a.d., but was providentially 
prevented from accomplishing his journey, 
and seems never to have felt able to under¬ 
take the work afterwards. Thus this attempt 
to organize the Church failed. The Colonial 
Church was an infant which never learned 
to walk alone, and by 1800 a.d. seemed to be 
dead beyond hope of resurrection. 

In November, 1816 a.d., the Rev. Bethel 


Judd, of Connecticut, and the Rev. Adam 
Empie, of New York, traveling for their 
health, met in the city of Wilmington. 
Finding a church and a congregation, they 
began to officiate regularly. In January, 
1817 A.D.,the Rev. Jehu Curtis Clay became 
Rector of the Church in Newbern. On 
Easter-Monday, 1817 a.d., Mr. Judd or¬ 
ganized a Church in Fayetteville. These 
three clergymen, with delegates from their 
several parishes, and with one layman also 
from the Church in Edenton, met in New¬ 
bern, April 2, 1817 a.d., and organized the 
Diocese of North Carolina, requesting 
Bishop Moore, of Virginia, to take Epis¬ 
copal oversight thereof. He consented to do 
so, and in 1819, 1820, 1821, and 1822 a.d. 
made brief visitations to the chief places in 
the Diocese and presided in the Annual 
Conventions. 

In 1823 a.d. the clergy numbered seven, 
and the communicants four hundred and 
eighty. The Convention resolved to elect a 
Bishop. It was felt that a man must be 
found who should be able to assert with bold¬ 
ness, and to maintain with power, the true 
position and doctrines of the Church, then 
but little appreciated among many of her 
professed children. Providence had pro¬ 
vided such a man. In the very month in 
which the Diocese was organized, April, 
1817 a.d. , a Virginia planter, forty-five 
years of age, John Stark Ravenseroft, had 
been ordained Deacon by Bishop Moore. 
Six years later, when the Church in North 
Carolina came to choose a Bishop, the 
youngest of her Priests, William M. Green, 
at present Bishop of Mississippi, rose in the 
Convention, and told his brethren what he 
had seen of the work of this laborer, who, 
although called so late into the vineyard, 
seemed by his zeal and strength to be “ earn¬ 
ing more than his 'penny .” Mr. Ravens- 
croft was personally known to no other 
member of the Convention, but he was 
elected unanimously by both orders on the 
first ballot, April 12, 1823 a.d. He was 
consecrated May 22 following. He found 
in the Diocese only seven clergymen (one 
of whom soon after withdrew from the 
Church), and a few weak and scattered con¬ 
gregations. As he is said to have expressed 
his work, “ he could only assert the true 
position and claims of the Church, and 
strike dismay to the hearts of her adversa¬ 
ries.” But the world instinctively knows 
greatness, and he became at once a power in 
the State. He fed his flock with a faithful 
and true heart, and ruled them prudently 
with all his power until his death, March 5, 
1830 a.d. , and he left an impression upon 
his Diocese which time has not effaced. 

The Rev. Levi Silliman Ives was chosen 
Bishop of North Carolina by an all but 
unanimous vote, May 21, 1831 a.d., and 
was consecrated September 22 following. 
He found in the Diocese, clergy, fifteen; 
communicants, eight hundred and nine. 
The history of his active and, in its earlier 





NORTH CAROLINA 


518 


NORTH CAROLINA 


stages, most effective Episcopate cannot be 
properly summarized in the space at com¬ 
mand. His successor found forty clergy 
and over two thousand communicants in 
the Diocese. Besides inspiring his clergy 
with self-denying missionary zeal, and set¬ 
ting them an example of earnest missionary 
work, he struggled nobly to establish per¬ 
manent institutions for religious and secular 
instruction. The Episcopal School at Ra¬ 
leigh, Trinity School, and the School at 
Valle Crucis failed, but the necessities of 
the Church to-day emphasize the wisdom of 
those attempts. St. Mary’s School is founded 
on the failure of the Episcopal School, al¬ 
though the Church has entirely lost the 
beautiful property and the large sums of 
money invested in it. 

It was very largely by reason of practices 
and teachings said to prevail in the school 
at Valle Crucis that suspicions of the Bish¬ 
op’s faithfulness to the Church began to be 
widely entertained throughout the Diocese, 
as is noticed in the report of the Com¬ 
mittee on the State of the Church to the 
Convention of 1849 a.d. After several 
years of doubt and distress to the Diocese, 
and of painful vacillation on the part of the 
Bishop, he obtained leave of absence, and 
six months’ salary in advance, in September, 
1852 a.d., for the ostensible purpose of trav¬ 
eling for his own and his wife’s health. He 
went abroad soon after, and on the 22d of 
the following December addressed a letter 
from Rome to the Convention of the Dio¬ 
cese, announcing his abandonment of the 
Church and his intended submission to the 
Pope of Rome. 

May 28,1853 a.d., the Rev. Thomas Atkin¬ 
son, D.D., Rector of Grace Church, Balti¬ 
more, was chosen Bishop, and was consecrated 
October 18 following. His administration 
secured at once the perfect confidence of his 
people, and prevented any of those disastrous 
consequences which might have been feared 
from the defection of his predecessor. 

The civil war which broke out in 1861 
a.d. necessitated the organization of the 
Church in the Confederate States, with its 
General and Diocesan Councils; and all the 
energies of the Church in North Carolina 
were called out to supply the spiritual wants 
of her people at home and in the field. 
Prayer-Books and Testaments were im¬ 
ported from England ; Catechisms and 
Tracts were printed at home ; and a fund 
was begun for the establishment of a Dio¬ 
cesan Divinity and Training School. Some 
of the ablest and most zealous of the clergy 
became Chaplains of regiments, and many 
of those who retained charge of their par¬ 
ishes followed the example of the Bishop in 
giving part of their time and attention to 
the soldiers, in camp or in the hospitals. 

It was in the wreck which followed the 
overthrow of the Confederacy in 1865 a.d. 
that the character of Bishop Atkinson ap¬ 
peared in its true greatness. His wisdom, 
firmness, and simple devotion to duty, 


guided by an enlightened appreciation of 
true Church principles, were of lasting ser¬ 
vice to the Church at large. It is now ad¬ 
mitted that the presence of Bishop Atkinson 
with his full delegation of clergy and laity 
(this being the only Southern Diocese so 
represented) at the General Council of 1865 
a.d., and especially the wisdom and firm¬ 
ness with which he met the delicate issues 
of that critical time, made the immediate 
and perfectly harmonious reunion of the 
Northern and Southern Dioceses possible. 
Their presence secured from their Northern 
brethren not only perfect fairness, which 
might have been expected in any case, but 
the most delicate courtesy in all the pro¬ 
ceedings relative to the separation and to 
the terms of reunion, and so made it mor¬ 
ally impossible for the Southern Dioceses 
to refuse to return. 

Another most important question Bishop 
Atkinson and his Diocese settled at once by 
taking the true churchly position in the face 
oftonuch popular prejudice. There has never 
been any distinction made in the Conventions 
since-1865 a.d. between white and colored 
ministers or members of the Church. All 
meet in the Councils of the Church on com¬ 
mon ground. In the interest of the colored 
people, and especially to supply them with 
competent teachers of their own race, St. 
Augustine’s Normal School and Collegiate 
Institute was founded in 1867 a.d., chiefly 
by the efforts of the Rev. J. Brinton Smith, 
its first principal. To this has been added a 
Theological department, for the education 
of colored candidates for orders. 

The Ravenscroft Associate Mission and 
Training School, at Asheville, was founded 
by Bishop Atkinson for the evangelizing of 
the mountain regions, and for the training 
of candidates for orders of this Diocese. 

Soon after the war the Bishop began to 
find the care of so extensive a Diocese too 
much for one man ; and from 1867 to 1873 
a.d. he advocated the division of the Dio¬ 
cese at the earliest practicable moment. In 
the latter year, May 30, *the Rev. Theodore 
Benedict Lyman, D.D., of San Erancisco, 
was elected Assistant Bishop, and was con¬ 
secrated December 11 following. Bishop 
Atkinson died January 4, 1881 a.d., and 
Bishop Lyman became Bishop of the Diocese. 

The movement for division, begun by 
Bishop Atkinson in 1867 a.d., was never 
allowed to drop altogether. It was renewed 
from time to time, and at the last Conven¬ 
tion, May, 1883 a.d., was carried by a very 
large majority of both orders. By the action 
of the General Convention, a new Diocese 
was erected in the eastern part of the State, 
comprising the counties of Hertford, Bertie, 
Martin, Pitt, Green, Wayne, Sampson, Cum¬ 
berland, and Robeson, with all that portion 
of the State lying between the said counties 
and the Atlantic Ocean. The new Diocese 
has taken the name of East Carolina, and 
has elected Rev. A. A. Watson, D.D., to be 
its first Bishop. 





NORTH DAKOTA 


519 


NORTHERN CALIFORNIA 


Statistics■ from, the Journal of 1883.— 
Bishop, 1; Priests, 53; Deacons, 22; total, 
76. Candidates for orders (including 11 of 
the above Deacons, who are candidates for 
Priest’s orders), 22; postulants, 11; total, 
33. Parishes, 87 ; mission stations, 30; 
total, 117. Communicants, 5889. Total 
contributions reported, $61,817.69. 

Rev. J. B. Cheshire,' Jr. 

North Dakota. This new jurisdiction, 
formed by the General Convention of 1883, 
comprises the portion of Dakota Territory 
north of the* 46th parallel. Its population 
in 1880 was 100,000, but emigration is flowing 
into Dakota with wonderful rapidity. The 
jurisdiction contains 50,000 square miles. 
It had been under the care of Bishop Clark¬ 
son, of Nebraska. The Rev. Wm, D. 
Walker having been elected as Missionary 
Bishop, was consecrated in Calvary Church, 
New York, December 20, 1883. He was 
“born in New York City in 1840. Grad¬ 
uated from Trinity School and Columbia 
College, New York. Ordered Deacon in 
1862. He was at once appointed minister in 
charge of Calvary Chapel, New York, and 
this charge he retained up to his elevation 
to the Episcopate.” 

Statistics. —Baptized, 117 ; confirmations, 
85; Sunday-school scholars, 600 ; total of 
contributions, $15,386.10. 

The fifteenth Annual Convocation will 
meet at the call of the Bishop. 

Authorities: Whittaker’s Prot. Epis. 
Almanac and the Living Church Almanac. 

North Side. Some years ago the position 
of the celebrant in the Holy Communion 
was seriously debated, the determination of 
it depending upon the meaning of the term 
in the rubric,—“ Standing at the north side 
of the Table.” In ordinary terms the mean¬ 
ing would be clearly that side of the table 
standing at which the Priest faces south 
when celebrating. But the term in the ru¬ 
bric was really taken from the older rubrics 
of the Latin service-books in the English 
use ; there it clearly means the northern side 
of that edge next^he congregation, and not 
the northern end of the Holy Table. It is 
really a matter of rubrical conformity and 
obedience. And the principle of interpre¬ 
tation chosen should be as naturally the 
meaning that belonged to the words, which 
were transferred from the older use into the 
English Prayer-Book. 

Northern California, Missionary Jurisdic¬ 
tion of. Bishop Kip in 1871 a.d., and again 
in 1873 a.d., urged upon his clergy the need 
of relief from the increasing burdens of his 
growing Diocese, which was of too great an 
extent for his powers. The suggestion was 
acted upon, and the Convention seriously 
took up the consideration of the division of 
the Diocese, and in two successive Conven¬ 
tions received reports upon it, which took 
finally this shape at the Convention of 
1874 a.d. 

“ This proposed Missionary Diocese con¬ 
tains twenty-five (25) counties, or all the 


territory north of the southern boundaries 
of Sonoma, Napa, Sacramento, Amador, El 
Dorado Counties. This section is remark¬ 
able for its varied characteristics and solid 
capacity for the sustenance of a dense popu¬ 
lation. The Sacramento Valley is noted for 
its immense crops of wheat, barley, oats, 
fruits, and vegetables. The timber is with¬ 
out practical limit. The gold, silver, and 
quicksilver mines of California are chiefly 
in this northern section of the State, and, 
in the opinions of scientific men, their richest 
points have not yet been touched. At no 
very distant day the fisheries of Northern 
California will realize vast sums of money.” 
It was anticipated that a large population 
would soon fill up this section. In the im¬ 
agination of the Committee there existed 
“the healthy germ of a magnificent Dio¬ 
cese.” They spoke to the General Conven¬ 
tion of nine self-sustaining parishes, 600 
communicants, and 17 Presbyters; of the 
offerings for that year being $20,000 (twenty 
thousand dollars), and of a population of 
210,000 people. They also assured the 
General Convention that 20 missionary 
stations could be started at once, and they 
closed their petition thus : “ In the name of 
the neglected souls for whom Christ died, 
and for the sake of the millions who will 
soon be pressing to these shores, we beg,” etc. 
With such a presentation and plea, with 
such a prospect for the Church, there was 
nothing left for the House of Bishops to do 
but accede to the pleading of the Diocese of 
California, and accordingly on the 28th day 
of October, the House of Bishops then in 
session in New York City, the General Con¬ 
vention elected for Bishop of Northern Cali¬ 
fornia, the Rev. John Henry Ducachet 
Wingfield, D.D., LL.D., Rector of St. 
Paul’s Church, Petersburg, Va. On the 
29th of October the nomination was unani¬ 
mously confirmed. 

The Rev. Dr. Wingfield was consecrated 
on the 2d of December, 1874 a.d., in St. 
Paul’s Church, Petersburg, Va. 

In 1870 a.d. the jurisdiction covered a 
territory of 52,000 square miles, with an ac¬ 
credited population of 214,000. The census 
of 1875 a.d. estimated that there were 2464 
Indians and 24,980 Chinese. Thus the Dio¬ 
cese was inaugurated without anything hew¬ 
ing guaranteed towards the support of the 
Bishop. And what the Committee would 
understand by “only a temporary charge,” 
when it asked the General Church for this 
division, we cannot conjecture. There is but 
one town of any size, Sacramento, which 
has a population of 25,000, and which, how¬ 
ever, finds a difficulty in supporting the 
parish. It was so when the division was 
made. The report of the Committee cer¬ 
tainly leaves a false impression with one who 
is unacquainted with the jurisdiction. It 
raises hopes with Eastern Churchmen, which 
not being realized, bring upon the Bishop 
and his missionaries their severe criticisms. 
If there is such an opportunity for the Church 




NORTHERN CALIFORNIA 


520 


NORTHERN CALIFORNIA 


to grow,—“ the germ of a magnificent Dio¬ 
cese, ”—why does it not discover itself? The 
question is naturally asked, and not un¬ 
kindly. The Bishop is expected with such 
proposed materials to accomplish a great 
deal. * And if he does not, then the censures 
fall upon him. He, and the General Con¬ 
vention also, was influenced by this imagi¬ 
nary portrayal. There was nothing for him 
to do which could not have been done by the 
Bishop of California, or by an Assistant 
Bishop. And even supposing that there 
were these prospects for a Diocese, the 
migratory habits of the people are such as 
to forbid any reliance being placed upon 
them. And this Committee seemed to place 
great importance upon these districts. 

The Primary Convocation was held in 
Grace Church, Sacramento, May, 1875 a.d. 
There were fourteen clergjmien connected 
with the jurisdiction, eight of whom were 
present, with fourteen laymen. There were 
eighteen parishes and missions from which 
reports were received. 

The Convocation, with the consent of the 
Bishop, placed itself under the Canons of 
California. 

Bishop Wingfield said in his first address 
to his clergy and laity, “ One thing must be 
established in the minds and hearts of the 
people,—that the Jurisdiction of Northern 
California is most emphatically a Missionary 
District. There is not, so far as I know, 
any point where the Church supports her¬ 
self after the Apostolic pattern. There is 
scarcely a congregation which is legitimately 
independent. There is not a clergyman 
whose support is guaranteed by the even and 
regular contributions of the people. There 
is scarcely a Church building unencumbered 
by debt.” 

The first year’s work of the Bishop shows: 
services at which he had officiated, 405; ser¬ 
mons preached, 104; lectures and addresses, 
74; baptisms, 43 ; confirmations. 214; 
Church buildings consecrated, 1; lots for 
Church secured, 3 ; holy communions, 28. 

Thus he was busily engaged daily about 
the Master’s work, and no one but himself 
knows how great the strain upon him, and 
the discomfort, disappointment, absolute 
distress and fatigue he endured in this first 
year’s work. There was no enthusiasm, no 
defined Churchmanship, no hearty greeting 
to meet him in his work. He had not found 
the nine self-sustaining parishes of which the 
Committee had spoken, nor had he crossed 
the tidal wave of immigration to which it 
alluded. There was much work for the 
Church, but he had left as important work 
for this. It was not of sufficient impor¬ 
tance per se to claim a Bishop’s sole and un¬ 
divided attention. There is an air of sad¬ 
ness in this peroration of his second ad¬ 
dress : “ I sympathize with you in all your 
trials, and earnestly pray for your success in 
winning souls. I know that the tongue of 
the ungodly is always ready to blame your 
most faithful efforts, and perhaps to praise 


what may not be pleasing to your Heavenly 
Father. Let us strengthen ourselves in 
the sublime Faith of Him who was un¬ 
moved by earthly approval or disapproval. 
Let us make little of human censure and 
less of human praise, and, fixing our eyes on 
the Master, think of His judgment, of His 
strict scrutiny, and of His just rewards.” 

It remains that we speak of the institu¬ 
tions which give character to the jurisdic¬ 
tion. 

The College of St. Augustine was founded 
May, 1867 a.d., by Dr. J. L. Breck, who 
came from the Indian Mission, and is lo¬ 
cated at Benecia. 

Bishop Wingfield took charge of the Col¬ 
lege, June, 1875 a.d. It was not ready¬ 
made by any means when he took charge ; 
it was a burden he should have been spared, 
and is almost too much for a Bishop in 
whose Diocese neither learning nor religion 
are regarded as of the supremest importance. 
“ The College of St. Augustine,” he says to 
the Convocation in 1878 a.d., “ has received 
much of my immediate and personal atten¬ 
tion since my last report, the hard times 
rendering it necessary to husband finances 
in order to meet obligations. This is a sad 
and weary work for me, and more especially 
because I have grave doubts as to its com¬ 
patibility with the duties of my office as a 
Bishop of the Church of God. Alone, un¬ 
aided, and meeting opposition at all points, 
I feel that my cross is sometimes too heavy 
indeed for me to carry.” From this time 
the College received his personal oversight. 
In 1880 a.d. it was indebted to him for the 
sum of nearly $17,000. The Board of Trus¬ 
tees had determined to rent or sell the prop¬ 
erty to meet the mortgages, amounting to 
$20,000. Failing in this, Bishop Wingfield, 
desiring to save the College and the Church, 
determined to assume the whole debt of 
$38,490.20. 

Another feature in the Diocesan work of 
the jurisdiction which marks its life is St. 
Mary of the Pacific. The property had 
been purchased by Dr. Breck with money 
raised in the East, a large contributor being 
William H. Aspinwall, and in his will it 
was to be under a Board of Trustees chosen 
from both Dioceses. Dr. Breck had mort¬ 
gaged the property to a bank in San Fran¬ 
cisco. The interest on the debt had not 
been paid during his lifetime, and at his 
death the Trustees were called upon for 
both interest and principal. The Board was 
unwilling to assume the obligations, and the 
property was ordered to be sold. On the 
12th of June, 1877 a.d., it was sold at public 
auction, Bishop Wingfield being the highest 
bidder. He thus came to the rescue, hoping 
that Churchmen would at least assist him in 
its payment. Instead of which, on the 1st 
of January, 1878 a.d., he found himself re¬ 
sponsible for the sum of $18,411.20, bearing 
interest at the rate of ten per cent, per an¬ 
num. 

He says, “I have regretted my well- 







NORTHERN NEW JERSEY 521 


NORTHERN NEW JERSEY 


meant action at the auction sale in San 
Francisco, and been sometimes tempted to 
despair.” 

Another burden, through the sloth and 
indifference of Churchmen, is added to his 
shoulders. Now he has two schools for 
which he is personally responsible. In 1879 
a.d. he placed St. Mary of the Pacific under 
the charge of the Rev. L. D. Mansfield, 
who has continued his work to the present 
year. Mr. Mansfield was to pay a nominal 
rent of $500 for the year ending June 1, 
1880 a.d. This sum being below the inter¬ 
est on $23,000 would not justify the Bishop 
in accepting it beyond the first year. 

In 1881 a.d., Bishop Wingfield thus 
speaks of St. Augustine’s and St. Mary’s: 
“ The two Boards of Trustees have aban¬ 
doned all thought of the Institutions over 
whose interests they were appointed by the 
Churchmen of the whole State, and have 
thrown all the burden of debt and stigma 
of failure on the shoulders of one man, and 
he a Missionary Bishop of the Church, with 
a Parish to look after, and having the care 
of all the churches besides. But he is not 
discouraged. Abandoned by the parent 
Diocese, unsustained by his own Jurisdic¬ 
tion, without a dollar of endowment, over¬ 
whelmed with debt, without a word of en¬ 
couragement from the millionaires of this 
State, who are rolling in wealth, which they 
are hoarding for selfish ends, unrepresented 
by a single layman of our Church,—he will 
continue to stand by his work to the last.” 

And the future will tell that he has acted 
wisely. His work is improving, and a Bless¬ 
ing will rest upon so unselfish an under¬ 
taking to which he has given, amidst the 
sneering smiles of indifferent Church people, 
his worldly substance. This sacrifice will 
possess a savor which God will recognize and 
accept. 

During the last four years Bishop Wing¬ 
field has been called to the older and stronger 
and larger Dioceses of Louisiana and Missis¬ 
sippi ; and while we recognize the assurance 
of their trust in him as an able administra¬ 
tor, we must not fail to award him all praise 
for the manliness shown in declining the 
tempting offers, and settling down to a resi¬ 
dence among the rocks and hills of North¬ 
ern California. The last year’s work, end¬ 
ing May, 1883 a.d., shows a total of 466 
families, 1708 souls, 504 communicants, 760 
Sunday-school children, 87 teachers; offer¬ 
ings, including all moneys raised, $15,- 
284.64 ; value of property, $61,748 ; indebt¬ 
edness on Church property, $1358.95. The 
clergy list sums up 10. 

Rev. W. Leacock. 

Northern New Jersey, Diocese of. This 
Diocese consists of the counties of Essex, 
Hudson, Bergen, Passaic, Morris, Warren, 
and Sussex, and of the township of Summit, 
Union County, in the State of New Jersey, 
and was organized in 1874 a.d. 

At the Annual Convention of the Diocese 
of New Jersey, held in 1871 a.d., a resolu¬ 


tion was offered by the Rev. Joseph H. Smith 
for the appointment of a committee to con¬ 
sider and report upon the propriety and 
feasibility of dividing the Diocese. The con¬ 
sideration of this resolution was postponed 
until the next Convention. In 1872 a d. 
Bishop Odenheimer called attention to the 
subject, and a committee of thirteen was ap¬ 
pointed, who reported the following year in 
favor of “ the formation of a new Diocese 
within the limits of the present Diocese of 
New Jersey.” The resolutions appended to 
the report of the committee were adopted by 
the Convention, and Bishop Odenheimer 
gave his constitutional consent to the erec¬ 
tion of the proposed new Diocese. 

At the Annual Convention of 1874 a.d., 
the question came up again, and to satisfy 
all parties as to the real wishes of the clergy 
and laity, the vote was taken by orders, and 
the division of the Diocese on the lines re¬ 
ported by the committee was agreed to by 
an overwhelming majority. At the General 
Convention which met in October of the 
same year the formation of the new Diocese 
was consented to and ratified, and Bishop 
Odenheimer issued his call the same day for 
the meeting of the Primary Convention, and 
announced his intention of electing the new 
Diocese as his future jurisdiction. 

The Primary Convention met at Grace 
Church, Newark, November 12, 1874 a.d., 
Bishop Odenheimer presiding, and the ser¬ 
mon was preached by the Rev. Dr. Farring¬ 
ton from the text, “ Love the Brotherhood.” 
It was decided that the Diocese should be 
called Northern New Jersey, and the 
following officers were duly elected: Secre¬ 
tary, the Rev. William J. Farrington, D.D. 
Standing Committee, the Revs. James A. 
Williams, D.D., Robert N. Merritt, George 
Z. Gray, and E. B. Boggs, D.D., and Messrs. 
D. Dodd, A. Mills, H. Meigs, and J. Edgar. 
Treasurer, Mr. Henry Hayes. Registrar, 
the Rev. Samuel W. Sayres. 

Bishop Odenheimer departed this life 
August 14, 1879 a.d. , full of honors and sin¬ 
cerely lamented, and a special Convention 
was called to elect his successor. This Con¬ 
vention was held at Trinity Church, Newark, 
October 28, 1879 a.d., and on the seventh 
ballot the Rev. Thomas Alfred Starkey, 
D.D., Rector of St. Paul’s Church, Paterson, 
N. J., was duly elected Bishop. His conse¬ 
cration took place January 8, 1880 a.d., at 
Grace Church, Newark, the Rt. Rev. the 
Bishop of Rhode Island presiding, and he 
has just completed the fourth year of a suc¬ 
cessful Episcopate. 

The Diocese contains 2800 square miles, or 
a little more than one-third of the area of 
the State of New Jersey, and has a popula¬ 
tion of over 600,000 souls. Since its forma¬ 
tion it has steadily increased in the elements 
of strength, and already ranks three-fourths 
of the Dioceses which compose the American 
Church. Its Episcopal Fund amounts, in 
Parish bonds and other securities, to $56,000, 
and its Aged and Infirm Clergy Fund to 




NORTHERN TEXAS 


522 


NORTHERN TEXAS 


$14,700. It has two Church Hospitals, viz. : 
St. Barnabas, Newark, and Christ, Jersey 
City ; both of which are doing a noble work 
in ministering to the souls and bodies of 
men, and are prosperous. 

The situation of the Diocese, between the 
Delaware and Hudson Rivers, and by the side 
of one of the world’s great centres of com¬ 
merce, its iron roads crossing every county, 
its rich ore-beds, its thriving manufacturing 
cities of Newark and Paterson, its growing 
towns and villages, many of them “beauti¬ 
ful for situation,” all point to the continued 
and increasing material prosperity of this 
portion of the State, and this assured pros¬ 
perity and the encouraging statistics given 
at the end of this article justify the predic¬ 
tion that a bright future is in store for the 
Church in this goodly jurisdiction. 

The statistics for the last Conventional 
year (ending May 1, 1883 a.d.) are as fol¬ 
lows : clergy, 82; parishes and missions, 
79; candidates for holy orders, 9; bap¬ 
tisms, 1549; confirmed, 828; communi¬ 
cants, 9273; marriages, 311; burials, 829; 
Sunday-school teachers, 923 ; Sunday-school 
scholars, 8565; offerings and contributions, 
$270,769. 

Rev. William G. Farrington, D.D. 

Northern Texas, Missionary Jurisdic¬ 
tion of. No better introduction to the His¬ 
torical Sketch of this Missionary Jurisdic¬ 
tion can be given than that which the ven¬ 
erable Bishop of Texas has furnished in the 
history of his Diocese : 

“ In 1874 a.d. , at the Convention in Jeffer¬ 
son, May 28, final action was taken upon 
the important subject of the reduction of 
the Diocese, which had been considered in 
previous Conventions and by the General 
Convention at its last session, the matter 
of making canonical provision being then 
considered. On this occasion a special com¬ 
mittee reported in accordance with the 
recommendation of the Bishop,—proposing 
the cutting off large portions of the State 
(or Diocese) to be formed into the Mission¬ 
ary Districts of Northern and Western 
Texas, according to the lines suggested by 
the Bishop, and that the General Conven¬ 
tion be petitioned to provide for and ratify 
the same. This was done notwithstanding 
the grave difficulty that no legal provision 
had been made for such a mode of relief. The 
Rev. Alex. C. Garrett, D D., was elected 
Missionary Bishop of Northern Texas, and 
was consecrated at Omaha, Nebraska, 20th 
of the following December.” 

The area thus set off was 100,000 square 
miles, containing at that time about 400,000 
inhabitants. There were five clergymen and 
thirteen parishes and stations in the juris¬ 
diction. The new Bishop undertook his ar¬ 
duous task in a brave spirit, and began to 
set in order the means which the new Dio¬ 
cese afforded for the task. He at once began 
to have schools established and a Cathedral 
planned. Dallas became his residence, and 
there he placed the Cathedral of St. Mat¬ 


thew. There was great need both of means 
and laborers, and both were but slowly sup¬ 
plied. The care of the scattered parishes 
few and feeble, and the visits to new fields 
and the efforts to arouse and stimulate work¬ 
ers to greater exertions necessitated constant 
traveling, much of which was done in an 
open buggy. By 1878 a.d. three more clergy 
had been added and parishes had increased 
to nine, with five organized missions; and 
twenty-three other mission points had been 
opened. There were 968 communicants, and 
the contributions amounted to $14,275.21. 
Perhaps the greatest trial was, and will be 
for some time to come, the difficulty in re- L 
taining men for the work in a State whose 
population, so constantly increasing and so 
bent upon the most material things, cannot 
patiently listen to the Gospel. Too many 
workers lose heart. 

“ The population is cosmopolitan. Every 
degree of refinement and the reverse, of 
knowledge and its opposite, of religionism 
and agnosticism, may find here many repre¬ 
sentatives. The tongues of Europe, the 
dialects of England, the sounds peculiar to 
the lands of Burns and of Moore, mingle in 
our streets with those which may be heard 
in Boston or New Orleans. The sentiment 
of these people is as various as their na¬ 
tivity. 

“ The problem of civilization, politics, and 
the Church is the same,—to blend these het¬ 
erogeneous elements in common language, 
nationality, and religion. With the last of 
these only have we any present concern. 

“ If any one will examine the few brief 
sentences traced above, the following ob¬ 
servations will seem to be of weight: 

“1. Speculation is excessive. Every owner 
of real estate gives it a fictitious value, while 
every owner of capital seeks investment 
with a view to speedy and extravagant re¬ 
turns. 

“2. Investment rather than assured in¬ 
come is the normal condition of almost all the 
capital at present available for legitimate 
business purposes. Merchants and corpora¬ 
tions and companies are all alike expending 
in hope of future benefit, but as yet have 
hardly begun to realize any profits upon the 
outlay. 

“ 3. These circumstances and the peculi¬ 
arities of our population above alluded to 
render the work of the Church, both in the 
erection of buildings and the maintenance 
of the Ministry, a work of extreme diffi¬ 
culty. To allay the prejudices of early 
training and association, overcome varieties 
of language and nationality, break the 
power of atheism and infidelity, and subdue 
the bitterness of sectarian animosity, would 
be a hard thing to do if original sin had 
been eradicated from the human heart; but 
while mankind is constituted as we find it, 
the bravest might well shrink from so great 
a task. This may, perhaps, account in some 
degree for the frequent changes among the 
Clergy. Men quite equal to the average, if 





NOTES OF THE CHURCH 


523 


NUMBERS 


not above it, as is proved by the good posi¬ 
tions they have occupied elsewhere, have 
found it impossible to continue with us long. 
Some of them have plainly stated that the 
strain occasioned by the cosmopolitan char¬ 
acter of the population, and its consequent 
lack of co-operation and cohesion, was too 
much for their powers. If this be so in the 
sphere of spiritual things, it will require no 
labored argument to prove a still greater 
difficulty in that of temporal things. Com¬ 
paratively few have received any training 
in the Church. Of these, again, only a few 
have been trained to habits of systematic 
liberality in the cause of God. Hence gifts 
'are seldom made or services rendered for the 
honor and glory of God, but rather to serve 
some lower purpose of a personal nature. 

“ To these facts we must add one more,— 
the fluctuating character of our population. 
The losses by ‘ removal’ are so severe as to 
have almost extinguished some of our most 
promising Missions. This is an evil against 
which no foresight can guard. Restlessness 
is characteristic of the age, and especially of 
new settlements. Sudden changes of value, 
caused by a new railroad or town, shift the 
centre of population of a district or county, 
and the plans and labor of years are scat¬ 
tered to the winds.” 

By 1880 a.d. the organized missions had 
increased to eight, and the mission points 
which the Bishop himself mainly visited 
were now twenty-four. The calls for more 
laborers and for men who could move easily 
from point to point are ever urgent in such 
a jurisdiction as that of Northern Texas. 
But the disastrous seasons had injured very 
much the ability of the people to aid in the 
support of a clergyman, and it is difficult to 
obtain men who are not more or less en¬ 
cumbered. The last report of the Bishop 
(1883 a.d.) shows a marked increase. The 
communicants are 1112, eighteen parishes 
and organized missions, and twenty-six 
points at which more or less services are 
held during the year. Here as everywhere 
else schools are specially needed for the train¬ 
ing of the young, and for the dissemination 
through them of the sound principles of the 
Church. There is no section of the South 
which needs to receive more aid in this 
than does Northern Texas. Three or four 
Church schools well founded and in success¬ 
ful operation in the three Dioceses would be 
capital and work wisely expended for the 
future of the Church. If the like means, 
given not too lavishly indeed to other 
fields which are more successful in present¬ 
ing their great needs and fast passing op¬ 
portunities, were given to the Northern and 
Western Missionary JurisdictiQns of Texas, 
there would soon be seen an equally great 
advance in the growth of the Church. 

Notes of the Church. Vide Catholic, 
Apostolic Succession, Unity. 

Novice. Vide Neophytes. 

Numbers. The Book of Numbers. The 
third of the five books of Moses, so called 


because it contains the two numberings of 
the people, the one when they left Sinai, the 
second when they were on “ the plains of 
Moab by Jordan near Jericho.” The book 
may be divided into four main divisions: 
I. The leaving Sinai (chs. i.-x. 10). II. 
Journey to Paran (x. 11 ; xiv. 45). III. So¬ 
journ there and wanderings (cxv., xix.). IY. 
The last year of their wandering to the 
plains of Moab (xx., xxxvi.). The book is 
evidently the memoranda of the more no¬ 
table events which befell the Israelites, the 
sore judgments they brought upon them¬ 
selves by their conduct, and yet God’s won¬ 
drous protection over them. The time had 
come for them to take possession of Canaan. 
The people in covenant with Jehovah, with 
the sanctity of His presence, now set for¬ 
ward in solemn march to fulfill their mission, 
thoroughly organized and after some sort 
of discipline, and with the Ark in the midst 
and the pledge of His presence, and with the 
Pillar of Cloud and of Fire leading them. 

The second division contains the narra¬ 
tive of their march, the discipline God 
inflicted because of their murmurings at 
Taberah, and at Kibroth-hattaavah, and 
their arrival at Hazeroth. In this journey 
the people wearied of the manna, and were 
surfeited with quails, but with their willful¬ 
ness came the penalty too. At Hazeroth the 
spies were sent out, and brought back an 
evil report, which led the people, despite the 
remonstrances of Joshua and Caleb, to refuse 
“ to go up to possess the land.” Then when 
God condemned them to the forty years in 
the wilderness they repented as suddenly, 
and were tempted to make a rash attack 
upon the Amalekites in the endeavor to 
force a way into Canaan. The third divis¬ 
ion (from ch. xv.-xx.) records their wan¬ 
derings for thirty-seven years ; the nota¬ 
ble events which befell them, as the rebel¬ 
lion of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, and 
the budding of Aaron’s rod, together with 
various Laws. Fourth, the account of 
what occurred (ch. xx.) at the camp in 
Kadesh. Miriam dies here. Moses and 
Aaron, for speaking unadvisedly with their 
lips, are forbidden the promised land. From 
thence, after vainly asking for a passage 
through Edom, they pass down southward. 
At Hor Aaron dies and is buried. On the 
journey thence the people murmur and are 
bitten with serpents. To heal them, Moses, 
by God’s direction, made a brazen serpent 
and put it upon a pole. “ But it came to pass, 
that if a serpent had bitten any man, when 
he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.” 
They asked a passage of Sihon, King of the 
Amorites, who, for reply, attacked them. 
But he was utterly defeated and his king¬ 
dom taken from him. The fear this pro¬ 
duced in Moab led to the messages to Ba¬ 
laam, and his unwilling blessing, and to the 
plots he advised, which led to the destruction 
of Moab and Midian, and at last they reach 
the plains of Moab and encamp, prepara¬ 
tory to their crossing over. Here Moses 





NUMERALS 


524 


NUNC DIMITTIS 


makes the final dispositions and directions, 
gives the last Laws which are to be ob¬ 
served, and prepares for his death. It was 
in this interval that he read to the people 
the Book of Deuteronomy. The work has 
been often attacked, but none of the objec¬ 
tions advanced can stand the severe criti¬ 
cism that they are arbitrary, willful, and in¬ 
consistent, and are based first on conjecture, 
and then that this conjecture is proven fact, 
a process that would establish any proposi¬ 
tion that can be invented. Gaps do occur, 
but those incident to a record of notable 
facts, and special laws whose record covers 
a period of thirty-eight or nine years. 
The book is acknowledged to be, whenever 
traced, an accurate itinerary, jotted down 
by one who was an eye-witness. In the 
book we have several fragments of popular 
poetry, or of battle-hymns, most naturally, 
if briefly, introduced, and the three noble 
rhythms,—the chant when the people began 
their march, and the chant when they went 
into camp, and the threefold blessing of 
Jehovah, which was to rest, evening by 
evening, upon His people. In the very dif¬ 
ficulties picked out or imagined we have a 
proof of the integrity of the book. The 
writer heeded nothing of apparent incon¬ 
sistency. The several facts were true. He 
did not think of any imaginary discrepancy 
that might be fancied at a later date. 

( Vide Smith’s Bible Diet., SchafF-Hertzog 
Diet., Stephen’s Book of Common Prayer.) 

Numerals. In Holy Scriptures there are 
certain recurring numbers, either integrally 
or as factors of larger numbers, as Three, 
Seven, Ten, Thirteen, Forty, Fifty, and 
Seventy. The recurrence of these, and the 
fact that the periods assigned in many prophe¬ 
cies are products of such factors, have led 
many early interpreters to put a good deal 
of stress upon the numbers and the “ arith¬ 
metic” of Scripture. It must be freely con¬ 
ceded that the prophetic cycles do have a 
roundness that shows a purpose, that seven 
is used mystically, as also forty, and that 
the seventy weeks of Daniel’s prophecy do 
represent a period which accurately included 
the midst of the week when the Messiah 
was cut off, and was terminated when Jeru¬ 
salem was sacked and the Temple burnt. 
There is no doubt of the interrelation of the 
numbers used typically, and the times and 
seasons which God hath appointed, but 
which He keeps in His own hand. Nor can 


we doubt but even in names were concealed 
numbers which made the names highly sig¬ 
nificant, for the letters of the alphabet were 
anciently used as numerals. No more than 
we can suppose for a moment that it was by 
accident that the birthplace of our Lord 
received its name, “ the house of bread,” or 
that it was not with an inner relation to His 
being the bread of Life that He was born 
there, though chiefly because it was the an¬ 
cient home of the House of David. But it 
is only in accomplished predictions based 
upon periods of time that we can be certain 
that the results are correct, and such results 
too are useful to us now. A harmony thus 
appears which shows a definite purpose, a 
premeditation in the prophecy that utterly 
removes it from the rash objection that it 
was possibly a clever guess based upon polit¬ 
ical insight. No clever guess could have 
given to Jeremiah’s prophecy its accuracy ; 
nor to the far greater prophecy of Daniel, 
which so strangely compresses in its phrases 
tangled skeins of after-history, which were 
to help forward the unification of the once 
shattered Jewish nation and to give it the 
characteristics it bore when the Messiah 
did come. 

These numbers in Scripture have a great 
value then, but a study of them becomes 
so fascinating that it tends to mislead. It 
was discredited because of the absurd theo¬ 
ries built upon systems arbitrarily using the 
numerals given us. But it is not necessary 
to discredit a truth because it has been mis¬ 
applied. And it surely is a misapplication 
to endeavor to force not only out of names 
but out of texts results which possibly might 
be wholly upset were a different reading to 
be established. It is a valuable auxiliary 
in proving the perfect accuracy of fulfilled 
predictions, but a dangerous one by which 
to try to solve future mysteries. 

Nunc Dimittis. Simeon’s Hymn of 
Thanksgiving when he took the infant Sa¬ 
viour in his arms at the time the Virgin 
Mary presented Him in the Temple. It has 
been used for about thirteen centuries in 
the Services of the Church. 

The American revisers omitted it in 1787 
a.d., but within the past few years there 
has grown up a use of it after the Commu¬ 
nion service has ended, and there is also a 
frequent use of it as an anthem. The pro¬ 
posed revision of the Prayer-Book has re¬ 
placed it in the Evening Service. x 





OATH 


525 


OBADIAH 


O. 


Oath. An oath is a most solemn assever¬ 
ation. God Himself is spoken of as thus 
asserting the truth to man (Heb. vi. 16, 17). 
Punishment for oath-breaking is denounced 
(2 Chron. xxxvi. 13; Ezek. xvii. 13,18). 
inviolability of an oath is declared in Num. 
xxx. 2. “Shall swear by the God of truth" 
(Isa. lxv. 16). Cicero (De Officiis, iii. 29) 
styles an oatn a religious affirmation. It is 
commonly used on solemn or legal occasions. 
It is usual to object to all oaths whatever, 
from our Lord’s own words and from St. 
James’ Swear not, but in St. Matt. xxvi. 63, 
64, our Lord does not disallow the adjuration 
of the magistrate; though He Himself does 
not originate the oath, He answers it. The 
Church then understood our Lord’s pro¬ 
hibition as directed against profane and 
careless swearing, not against the serious 
and judicial form. 

An oath is taken as in the special presence 
of God. “ Abram said to the King of 
Sodom, I have lift up mine hand unto the 
Lord, the most high God, the possessor of 
heaven and earth” (Gen. xiv. 22). 

In oaths God is called upon as witness 
and judge, and their violation brings on, 
after conviction, the severe punishment 
meted out to perjury, which is considered 
as aggravated falsehood. “ Love no false 
oath : for all these are things that I hate, 
saith the Lord” (Zech. viii. 17). “ I will 

be a swift witness against false swearers, 
saith the Lord of hosts” (Mai. iii. 5). 

In taking either an oath or affirmation one 
should think and speak as not only before 
God, but as conscious of His special pres¬ 
ence, as when kissing His Holy Word, the 
prayer is said with due solemnity, “so help 
me God.” After such a prayer, “ the truth, 
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” 
should follow. After such an oath there 
should be great care in making statements. 

There are Oaths of Testimony, Oaths of 
Promise or Engagement, somewhat like the 
Jewish vows, and Oaths of Office for civil 
officers, and even for the King. In an¬ 
cient times the soldiers took a military oath, 
and the oath of allegiance is a part of mon¬ 
archical institutions. This oath is noticed 
in Ecclesiastes viii. 2: “I counsel thee to 
keep the King’s commandment, and that in 
regard of the oath of God.” 

The King, or Queen, of Great Britain on 
assuming the regal office takes a coronation 
oath. Members of the English Parliament 
either take oaths or make affirmation. Cer¬ 
tain English officers are required to take 
oaths of allegiance and the official oath. 
In the United States, when the President 
assumes his position he swears or affirms 
that he “ will faithfully execute the office.” 


Eor the most part in this country oaths 
are made use of in courts of justice, and in 
the execution of legal documents. That 
their solemnity may be preserved it is de¬ 
sirable that they be not used on light and 
trifling occasions. 

Authorities: Wm. Smith’s Diet, of the 
Bible, which contains numerous Scripture 
references, Bingham’s Antiq., Whewell’s 
Elements of Morality, Constitution of the 
United States, Chambers’s Library of Uni¬ 
versal Knowledge. 

Kev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Obadiah. Of Obadiah, the fourth of the 
Minor Prophets, we know nothing with 
certainty except what is to be learned from 
his prophecy, though there is a tradition 
that he was of the tribe of Ephraim, and 
some relate that he was carried a captive to 
Babylon, while others affirm that he died in. 
Samaria. There are as many as twelve 
persons called by the name of Obadiah in 
the Old Testament, of whom there is hardly 
one who has not been thought to be the 
same as the prophet, but this very difference 
of opinion shows on how little ground these 
identifications are based, and while, on this 
account, they call for no attention, they are 
besides unnecessary, for Obadiah, meaning 
Servant of the Lord , was probably a very 
common name among the Hebrews. The 
date of the prophecy of Obadiah is deter¬ 
mined according to the interpretation of the 
11th verse, which speaks of a capture of 
Jerusalem. If this is understood to mean 
the captivity by Nebuchadnezzar, then 
Obadiah would have spoken after 588 b.c., 
and as the same monarch made a conquest 
of Edom in 583 b.c., these two dates are 
commonly assigned as the limits within 
which the prophecy must be fixed. This 
conclusion would probably be looked upon 
as final were it not that the book of Obadiah 
is arranged between Amos and Jonah, two 
of the very earliest prophets, and it is asked, 
Why was Obadiah put next to them if he 
were not contemporary with them, or nearly 
so ? An answer has been suggested that 
there is a close connection in subject be¬ 
tween the last few verses of Amos and the 
prophecy of Obadiah, such that thelatter is, 
as it were, an expansion of the former. The 
similarity between the opening verses of 
Obadiah and Jeremiah xlix. 7 (as well as 
passages in Lamentations) make it probable 
that one of these prophets had the words 
of the other in mind when he spoke, which 
might very well be, for if the date assigned 
to Obadiah is correct, they were contempo¬ 
raries ; but it is held that Obadiah was the 
first to utter his prophecy. The book con¬ 
sists of a rebuke of Edom for taking partln 




OBIT 


526 


OFFERTORY 


the sack of Jerusalem, and cutting off the 
fugitives from the city (v. 12 to v. 14), and 
of a prophecy of judgment upon the Edom¬ 
ites for so doing (v. 15 and 16). “ Remem¬ 

ber the children of Edom, O Lord, in the 
day of Jerusalem, how they said, Down with 
it, down with it, even to the ground” (Ps. 
cxxxvii. 7). The prophecy concludes with 
a vision of the restoration of the captivity 
of Zion (v. 17 to v. 21). It is held that the 
words of Obadiah have been fulfilled (1) in 
the conquest of Edom by Nebuchadnezzar ; 
(2) in the reduction of the Idumgeans by the 
Maccabees; and (3) that the restoration of 
Zion has been accomplished in the return 
from the Babylonish captivity. But a fuller 
realization of this prophecy is yet to be 
looked for in the deliverance of Zion from 
Edom; in the triumph of the Church of 
Christ over the powers of darkness. For 
the curious interpretations of Obadiah made 
by the modern Jews, reference may be made 
to Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible. 

Authorities : Gray’s Introduction, Bible 
Commentary, Dictionary of the Bible. 

Obit. At present a memorial service on 
the anniversary of the death of a founder 
or benefactor. Originally it was a funeral 
service in the church apart, apparently, from 
the burial service. “ In many of the Eng¬ 
lish Colleges the Obit , or anniversary of the 
death of the founder, is piously observed. 
. . . The Obit Sundays (once a quarter) at 
St. George’s, at Windsor, were celebrated 
formerly with great magnificence, and are, 
to a certain degree, still.” (Hook, Church 
Dictionary sub voc.) 

This commemoration is sometimes insti¬ 
tuted in this country, but the instances are 
rare. “Commemorations” are more fre¬ 
quent. 

Oblation. In Canon law the term 
“oblation” means an offering of any kind, 
whether of movable or immovable prop¬ 
erty devoted to pious and hallowed uses ; but 
it is now usually taken to describe the offering 
of the Bread and Wine, which is placed upon 
the Holy Table at the offering of the Prayer 
for “ the whole estate of Christ’s Church 
militant.” It was originally selected from 
the offerings of the people for the support 
of the ministry, and every one offered in 
the supposition that of his offering at least 
some part of the oblation would be taken. 
And it was a reproach uttered by St. 
Cyprian that a certain rich woman did not 
offer, but partook of the offering of a poor 
person. And St. Augustine writes, “ The 
Priest receives from thee that which he may 
offer for thee.” Later the gifts of bread 
and wine for the general use of the Church 
ceased, and alms in money was substituted 
for them. The oblation of the Bread 
survived for some time. At the Reforma¬ 
tion it was ordered that each house in the 
parish in turn shouid be at charges for the 
celebration in its turn, and should offer, 
since the Priest generally provided the 
loaf, “ the just valour and price of the holy 


loaf, with all such money and other things 
as were wont to be offered with the same, 
. . . and that the house that offered should 
at that time communicate with the Priest” 
(First Book Edw. VI.). But in the Second 
Book, the rubric at the end directed that 
“ The bread and wine for the Communion 
shall be provided by the Curate and the 
Church-wardens at the charges of the Parish, 
and the Parish shall be discharged of such 
sums of money or other duties which hitherto 
they have paid for the same, by order of their 
houses every Sunday.” It is then, if not 
bounden upon the Wardens, at least in strict 
accordance with their duties, to provide in 
the name of the Congregation out of the 
devotions of the Congregation the Bread 
and the Wine as a formal act. The obla¬ 
tion is a formal one itself, and should be 
very solemnly valued by the Communicants. 
For the oblation thus received from them 
by the Priest is used in the most solemn act 
of our holy religion, and for the most 
sacred use for our own selves. Its prepara¬ 
tion, and the placing of it upon the Credence- 
Table, should be done by the Priest or his 
assistant, and not carelessly left to other 
hands, as has been too often the case. The 
act of oblation is formally made by the Priest 
in the words of the Prayer, “ We humbly 
beseech Thee most mercifully to accept our 
alms and oblations, and to receive this our 
prayers, which we offer to Thy Divine 
Majesty.” Wherein there is a threefold, 
offering of Alms, Oblations, and Prayers. 

Octave. The eighth day after a festival. 
It was in honor of the festival, which was 
always one of the first order. It was an 
early Western use, based upon Jewish 
usage. For it was held that whatever was 
commanded the Jews was an intimation of 
what was acceptable to the Divine will, and 
so, if it could be justly used in principle in 
the Christian Dispensation it should be 
received and carried out. As there were 
several Jewish feasts which were celebrated 
through seven days, and one—the feast of 
Tabernacles—which was observed for eight 
days after, the Church in the West observed 
the principle in regard to the feasts of 
Christmas, Easter, Whitsunday, and per¬ 
haps in places the feast of the Epiphany 
also, though this was probably done when 
it was observed as identical with Christmas. 
The American Church has received from 
her English Mother, and has formally re¬ 
tained only the octave on those feasts for 
which she has provided a proper Preface,— 
i.e. } Christmas-day, Easter, Ascension, and 
Whitsunday. 

Offertory. It is commonly applied to the 
act of receiving the alms and other devo¬ 
tions of the people, and of humbly present¬ 
ing and placing them upon the Holy Table. 
But accurately the term means the sentence 
or sentences recited by the Priest. “After 
which the minister shall return to the 
Lord’s Table and begin the offertory, say¬ 
ing one or more of these sentences following, 





OFFICE 


527 


OFFICE 


as he thinketh most convenient.” The 
anthem these sentences represent was intro¬ 
duced in St. Augustine’s time (400 a.d. 
cere). Again, Raban Maurus (850 a.d.). 
After this the oblations are offered by the 
people, and the offertory is sung by the 
clergy, which took its name from that very 
cause, being, as it were, the song of the 
offerers. The custom is now growing by 
which the minister recites a single sentence 
and the choir then sing an anthem. If it is 
done at all, the anthem should be strictly 
one of the sentences appointed for the offer¬ 
tory, and not anything selected at will. But 
taking the word offertory in its common 
use, the privilege of giving in the Church 
was confined anciently only to the commu¬ 
nicants. None else were permitted to offer 
then and there, and any one under censure 
was not permitted to offer any gift. The 
privilege of giving is a very sacred one, and 
is indeed a grace which we should most 
highly value, for it is a consecration of a 
part of our goods which we hold in trust as 
stewards. It is a very important part of 
our worship. And our gifts are humbly 
presented and placed upon the Lord’s Table 
as our acknowledgment of His Lordship, 
and of our holding only at His will and 
long-suffering. It is a part of our sacrifice 
of self and all we have. Notice that we 
offer the sacrifice of reverence of our bodies, 
the offering of prayer and praise, and then 
with our oblations the sacrifice of our goods. 
So that no part of our whole self is left not 
represented in some way. 

Office. One of the three proper words for 
the several Services, as the Office.of Burial, 
or the Funeral Office, the Visitation Office. 
It is used of the Infant and Adult baptismal 
forms in the rubric at the close of the form 
of Adult Baptism. It is the title of the 
Institution Office. The term Order is given 
to the Offices of Morning and Evening 
Prayer, Communion, Baptism, Confirma¬ 
tion, Visitation of the Sick, and Burial. 
Form is applied to the Offices of Marriage, 
Prayers at Sea, Visitation of Prisoners, 
Thanksgiving, Family Prayer, Ordination 
and Consecration, and the Consecration of 
Churches. The term Office is used once of 
the Institution Office as a heading, but it 
occurs in several places, notably in a rubric 
at the end of the Order of Adult Baptism. 
Service is a term used generally in the 
rubrics of all the offices. But chiefly the 
ancient use of the word was in reference to 
the Daily Service, which were named the 
Holy Office, the Divine Office. We now 
employ the word in a broad use for all the 
offices and forms provided in the Prayer- 
Book. Appended are the notices of the 
minor offices of the Prayer-Book. 

Office for the Burial of the Dead .—All 
right feeling would prompt us to bury the 
dead with decent rites, but now that life and 
immortality are brought to light through 
the Gospel, the bodies of the dead in Christ 
are laid away in the hope of the resurrec¬ 


tion. The Church has always taken especial 
care of the dead bodies of her children, and 
has committed them to their rest with confi¬ 
dence in the power of Him who is the resur¬ 
rection and the life. 

The Burial Office is forbidden in the case 
of unbaptized adults, excommunicate per¬ 
sons, and suicides. The reason for this pro¬ 
hibition is that adults unbaptized and ex¬ 
communicate are not members of the Church. 
This service is for her members. In the case 
of suicides, no words of hope can be spoken 
if they have rushed unbidden into the pres¬ 
ence of their Maker. The charitable in¬ 
stincts of our day prompt us to suggest in¬ 
sanity as generally preceding suicide. 

The Burial Office consists of the following 
parts: 1. Passages from the Scriptures. 

2. The Burial Anthem, taken from the 39th 
and 90th Psalms. 3. The Lesson, from 1 
Cor. xv. 4. The Meditation and Prayers at 
the grave. 5. The Committal Sentence. 6. 
The words from Rev. xiv. 7. The Lord’s 
Prayer, other Prayers, and the Benediction. 
All parts of this service are appropriate, and 
as a whole it is one of singular beauty and 
significance. The Committal Sentence, ut¬ 
tered at a time when hearts are heavy and 
when the remains of loved ones are to be 
hidden from sight, brings to view the sure 
coming of the Lord Jesus, and when the 
bodies of those who sleep in Him shall be 
changed and be made incorruptible. 

The main objection made to this service 
is, that it speaks hopefully alike of all over 
whom it is used. The answer is : 

1. It is to be used over those who, having 
been baptized, are thus in the membership 
of the Church. 

2. We are never to judge what is the 
spiritual state of the departed. They have 
gone beyond all human tribunals. We do 
not know what their inner experiences have 
been before they left us. Shall we publicly 
condemn any ? The service sets forth the 
words proper to be used over the Christian 
departed. The tone of the service shows 
what should have been the character of the 
departed, and we must err upon the side of 
charity if at all. 

Office for the Churching of Women .—The 
other title for this office indicates its object, 
“ The Thanksgiving of Women after Child¬ 
birth.” It consists of an exhortation to the 
woman to give thanks, the recitation of a 
Psalm, the Lord’s Prayer, some versicles, 
and a thanksgiving prayer. It is to be re¬ 
garded as a most appropriate way in which 
a mother may acknowledge God’s goodness 
to her, and may supplicate the continuance 
of His mercy. 

The substance of this office has come to 
us from the Sarum use. A service for moth¬ 
ers after .childbirth was in use in the early 
Christian centuries. It is mentioned in old 
records as far back as 460 and 610 a.d. 

There are two important points in the 
rubric at the end of the office. One is that 
the woman should make a thank-offering, to 




OFFICE 


528 


OFFICE 


be applied to the relief of distressed women 
in childbed. The second is that the person 
receive the Holy Communion, if it is then 
administered. 

Two words occur in this office which are 
worthy of special notice. The word “ Ordi¬ 
nary ” and the word “ convenient .” The first 
means the person who orders, rules, or 
directs. Usually it refers to the Bishop of 
the Diocese. Here it may refer to the Dean 
or some one acting for the Bishop. The 
word “convenient” has the old significance 
of proper, seemly, most befitting. 

Permission is given the clergy to use 
either the whole office or only the conclud¬ 
ing prayer. Usually the latter is preferred 
in this country, but in other countries the 
whole office is frequently used. 

The Confirmation Office. —The Bite of 
Confirmation, or the laying on of hands, has 
come down to us from the days of the Apos¬ 
tles. It is mentioned in Heb. vi. 2, as one 
of the first principles of the Christian faith. 
As a rite it is alluded to in Acts viii. 14-17 ; 
xix. 6. 

It is administered to baptized persons for 
three reasons: 

1. To enable them to renew their bap¬ 
tismal vows. 

2. To assure them of God’s favor and 
good will. 

3. To convey to them the gifts of the 
Holy Spirit. 

The essential points in Confirmation are : 

1. It is to be administered by the Bishop. 

2. The candidates must previously have 
received baptism. 

3. They must have reached years of dis¬ 
cretion. 

4. They must have a sufficient knowledge 
of the elementary truths of religion. 

5. They must have a sincere purpose, with 
God’s help, to live a Christian life. 

The significance of the reply “ I do,” 
which the candidates make to the Bishop’s 
question, extends to a renunciation of evil, 
the acceptance of the Christian faith, and a 
determination to live piously and soberly 
henceforth. 

The benefits of Confirmation are numer¬ 
ous : 

1. It gives opportunity for those baptized 
in infancy to make confession of Christ 
before the world. 

2. It enables persons trained in other re¬ 
ligious bodies, where this rite is not pre¬ 
served, to conform to an Apostolic usage 
and to come into accord with our Apostolic 
Church. 

3. It brings the persons into the most 
favorable condition for receiving the 
strengthening gifts of the Holy Ghost. 

4. It is a step forward to a reception of 
the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of 
Christ. 

Office for the Consecration of a Church or 
Chapel. —The Consecration Office was set 
forth in 1799 a.d. by the American Church. 

It is eminently proper that there should 


be some formal setting apart a church or 
chapel to its holy uses. 

The service begins by the recitation of 
words from the 24th Psalm by the Bishop 
and clergy. Then are read any papers con¬ 
taining the record of the gift or endowment 
of the building. This is followed by the 
Bishop’s address, in which he calls upon the 
congregation to beg the Divine blessing upon 
the present undertaking. Then follow the 
Consecration Prayers, in which the building 
is set apart to the honor of God, and dedi¬ 
cated to His service for the reading of His 
Holy Word, celebrating His Sacraments, for 
offering prayer and praise, and for the per¬ 
formance of other holy offices. 

The Bishop then, turning to the people, 
who remain kneeling, continues the pray¬ 
ers, reciting the various purposes for which 
the building may be used, and imploring 
God’s blessing upon those who use it for 
these purposes. 

Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Commu¬ 
nion, Beading and Preaching the Word of 
God, and Holy Matrimony are each speci¬ 
fied. The concluding prayer of this part 
follows the outline of the exhortation used 
in the daily service. 

The Sentence of Consecration is next read. 
This is a document set forth by the Bishop 
declaring the purposes for which the build¬ 
ing has been erected, and its solemn dedica¬ 
tion, and its separation from all unhallowed 
and worldly uses. 

At the end of the reading of this Sentence 
the Order for the Morning Prayer follows: 

The first Lesson is the story of the dedica¬ 
tion of the Temple. The second is that part 
of the Epistle to the Hebrews in which we are 
taught that we may now, through the blood 
of Jesus, have access to the Holy of Holies, 
and that He is the High-Priest over the 
House of God. 

The Epistle tells us that we are the tem¬ 
ples of God through the indwelling of His 
Spirit, and the Gospel tells of the cleansing 
of the Temple by Him who would not have 
it made a house of merchandise or a den of 
thieves. 

The Office for the Institution of Ministers. 
—This is the last office added to our Prayer- 
Book. Its date is 1808 A d. The institu¬ 
tion of a minister is his formal recognition 
by the Bishop and the congregation as the 
rector or assistant minister of the parish. 
It furnishes opportunity for the offering of 
especial supplications for the blessing of 
God upon the work of the new incumbent. 
The use of this office, although it does not 
necessarily secure permanence to the minis¬ 
ter’s relation to his parish, serves to set 
forth the fact that the tie is not to be broken 
lightly, and makes it necessary that the pro¬ 
posal to terminate it shall be referred to the 
Bishop. 

The Institution Office itself is very sim¬ 
ple. There has to be, first of all, a certifi¬ 
cate from the vestry of the election of the 
minister. When this is received by the 





OFFICE 


529 


OFFICE 


Bishop he grants his letter of institution, 
which is read after the Morning Prayer has 
been said. 

At Morning Prayer the institutor (who 
may be the Bishop or some one appointed 
by him), the new minister, and the attend¬ 
ing clergy enter the church together. The 
wardens take their place outside the chan- 
cel-railing to the right and left, the senior 
warden holding the keys of the church. 
The Morning Prayer proceeds as usual, ex¬ 
cept that special Lessons and Psalms are ap¬ 
pointed. When it is ended the institutor 
announces the object before them and de¬ 
mands if there be any impediment. If no 
impediment is urged, the Bishop’s letter is 
next read. The senior warden then deliv¬ 
ers the keys to the new minister with words 
of recognition of him as the rector of the 
church or parish. The minister, receiving 
the keys, promises, in the name of the 
Trinity, to be a faithful shepherd. 

After the prayers which follow, the in¬ 
stitutor receives the incumbent within the 
rails, and presents him the Bible, the Prayer- 
Book, the Books of Canons of the General 
and Diocesan Conventions, charging him to 
let them be the rule of his conduct in dis¬ 
pensing the Divine word, in leading the de¬ 
votions of the people, and in exercising the 
discipline of the Church, and exhorts him to 
be a pattern to the flock. An Anthem and 
special prayers are next in order. After the 
benediction which here follows, the insti¬ 
tuted minister kneels at the altar and uses 
prayers for himself and for his people. 
These two prayers are very full and 
pointed summaries of the needs of a clergy¬ 
man and his congregation. The Commun¬ 
ion must be celebrated by the incumbent 
himself on this occasion, as is eminently 
proper. 

At the close of the whole service the war¬ 
dens, the vestry, and others are directed to 
salute the instituted minister and welcome 
him, bidding him GoD-speed. 

The Office for the Solemnization of Matri¬ 
mony. —Marriage is not a mere civil con¬ 
tract between two persons, but it is a holy 
estate, which is to be entered into soberly, 
advisedly, and in the fear of God. The 
Church has done much to preserve correct 
views as to the sanctity of marriage by set¬ 
ting forth an office which is admirable in its 
simplicity, and full and clear in the essen¬ 
tial truths. The service is made up of two 
old forms, viz., the Betrothal and the Mar¬ 
riage proper. 

It was once the custom to have a formal 
betrothal or engagement of the parties made 
in public before the marriage, with some re¬ 
ligious rites. These rites were known as 
the service of Betrothal. In our present 
office the essential parts of this old service 
of betrothal are prefixed to the regular mar¬ 
riage service. The office may be analyzed 
as follows: 

1. Exhortations to the friends and to the 
parties. 

34 


2. The Betrothal. 

3. The Giving Away of the Bride. 

4. The Vows of Affection and Fidelity. 

5. The Endowment. 

6. The Prayer. 

7. The Formal Declaration. 

8. The Benediction. 

There are impediments to marriage which 
the law recognizes, such as an existing wife 
or husband, certain nearness of blood rela¬ 
tionship, and immaturity of age, but beside 
these the Church forbids marriage to di¬ 
vorced persons, except that the innocent one 
of a divorced couple may remarry, and per¬ 
sons under the legal age must have the con¬ 
sent of parents. 

The Church’s aim is to set forth marriage 
as a most solemn and binding covenant, 
which no caprice or temptation or change 
of feeling should be allowed to break. For 
one cause only may it be annulled, and that 
is the offense mentioned by Christ Himself 
as the one offense for which the bond may 
be canceled. The position of the Church 
and the position of the State are in antago¬ 
nism upon the question of divorce, but 
while the State grants divorces upon grounds 
other than adultery, nothing can compel the 
clergy to marry persons who have been sep¬ 
arated for these reasons, and they can de¬ 
cline solemnizing the marriages of persons 
whom the civil magistrate or the less con¬ 
scientious minister may unite. 

The Office for Prayer in Families. —The 
forms of Morning and Evening Prayer to 
be used in families were composed for the 
Book of 1789 a.d. 

They were probably suggested by the dif¬ 
ficulty which many had in attending the 
daily service of the Church, and also by the 
fact that owing to the scarcity of clergymen 
and the changed habits of modern life but 
few churches were open daily. 

Family Prayer has many reasons to com¬ 
mend its use. God is thus honored, the 
household is bound together more closely, 
and the members are trained in habits of 
devotion. 

The simple services which are set forth in 
the Prayer-Book occupy each but a few 
minutes, but are very comprehensive. 

After reading a portion of the Scriptures, 
the Lord’s Prayer is said, and then in the 
morning an acknowledgment is made of 
God’s mercy in keeping us through the 
night, and we dedicate ourselves to Him 
anew, and grace is asked to guide and keep 
us through the day and to bless our work. 

In the evening we confess our sins, ask 
grace to amend our lives, intercede for 
others, thank God for His goodness, and beg 
His protection for the night. 

Offices to be used at Sea. —"We derived our 
American Prayer-Book from the English 
Book, and as England is a great naval nation 
it is to be expected that provision would be 
made for services to be used upon her ships 
at sea. These forms were composed and 
adopted in 1661 a.d., and their author is 





OFFICE 


530 


OFFICE 


probably Bishop Sanderson. There being 
no established Church in this country, and 
few of the government chaplains being min¬ 
isters of our Church, these offices are com¬ 
paratively seldom used in the navy as they 
are here set forth. 

The first rubric directs that the Daily 
Morning and Evening Prayer shall be said, 
and then some special Collects are appointed 
for use in ships of war. These are fol¬ 
lowed by special prayers in time of a storm 
and before an engagement. 

Some appropriate prayers for individuals 
when they cannot join with the others are 
given. 

Special Prayers “ with respect to the 
enemy,” and “in respect of a storm,” fol¬ 
low. 

When the danger is very great, the direc¬ 
tion is given that as many as can be assem¬ 
bled shall come together to confess their sins 
to God, and to hear the absolution which 
the Priest, if any be present, is to repeat. 

Thanksgiving services are provided with 
their special Psalms and Collects, and the 
office ends with a modification of the Burial 
Office to suit an interment at sea. 

In many American merchant vessels no 
provision whatever is made for holding ser¬ 
vices, and a sailor’s life becomes one of pe¬ 
culiar deprivation of the means of grace,— 
not only so, but the temptations in port are 
of such a character that it is especially dif¬ 
ficult for the seamen to live religiously. 

The establishment of Seamen’s Bethels in 
various ports, the distribution of Prayer- 
Books and religious literature, has of late 
enlisted the sympathy of many Churchmen, 
go that the disgrace of leaving those men so 
utterly unprovided with facilities of know¬ 
ing the Gospel is to some slight extent re¬ 
moved, but the destitution is still most 
lamentable. 

Office of Prayer and Thanksgiving for the 
Fruits of the Earth. —In the Preface to the 
Proposed Book of 1785 a.d. it is stated that 
“ whereas it hath been the practice in the 
Church of England to set apart certain days 
of thanksgiving to Almighty God for sig¬ 
nal mercies vouchsafed to the Church and 
nation, it hath best also been considered as 
conducive to godliness that there be two an¬ 
nual solemn days of prayer and thanksgiv¬ 
ing to Almighty God set apart, viz., the 
fourth day of July, commemorative of the 
blessings of civil and religious liberty in the 
land wherein we live, and the first Thursday 
in November, for the fruits of the earth, in 
order that we may thereby be stirred up to 
a more particular remembrance of the signal 
mercies of God towards us; the neglect of 
which might otherwise be the occasion of 
licentiousness, civil miseries, and punish¬ 
ments.” 

When the Prayer-Book of 1789 a.d. was 
adopted this part of the Preface was omitted, 
as was also the service for the Fourth of July, 
but the Thanksgiving service was retained. 
Three additional sentences from Scripture 


were prefixed to the service as first set forth 
in the Proposed Book. 

When proclamations calling upon the peo¬ 
ple to keep a day of Thanksgiving and 
Prayer are now issued by the civil authori¬ 
ties, the order for the observance of the first 
Thursday in November is of course modi¬ 
fied to suit. Inasmuch, however, as the 
season is late when this fraternal Thanks¬ 
giving is appointed in some places, a Harvest 
Home Festival is celebrated earlier, usually 
at the close of the summer or early in the 
autumn. The origin of the formal united 
thanksgiving for the fruits of the earth is set 
forth in the first Lesson read on this day, 
Deut. viii., and it is in accordance with such 
scriptural precepts as 1 Thess. v. 18; Eph. 
v. 20. 

The service appointed follows the order of 
the Morning Prayer, except that special sen¬ 
tences are read at the opening, the Venite 
gives place to appropriate jubilant verses 
from other Psalms; a special thanksgiving 
follows the General Thanksgiving, and a 
special Collect is given for the Communion. 

Common usage on this day devotes the of¬ 
ferings to the relief of the poor, the sick in 
hospitals, and those who have been deprived 
of temporal blessings. 

'Office for the Visitation of Prisoners. —One 
main object to be attained by the detention 
of prisoners in jail is the reformation of their 
vicious lives, and hence the propriety of 
bringing to bear upon them the teachings 
of religion. In some of our large prisons 
chaplains are appointed, but in others all the 
religious instruction the prisoners receive is 
from the volunteer efforts of unofficial visi¬ 
tors. 

When the Morning or Evening Prayer is 
used in a jail the 130th Psalm is substituted 
for the Yenite, and special collects are pro¬ 
vided. 

A form for the visitation of a prisoner con¬ 
fined for some great or capital crime is given. 
It includes versicles, prayers, exhortations, 
and the like, with directions for the exami¬ 
nation of the prisoner by the minister as to 
his repentance for sins and his being in 
charity with men. Especial admonitions are 
to be given him respecting the crimes of 
which he is charged, and he is to free his 
mind preparatory to the reception of the 
Communion. The purpose of this form of 
visitation is to bring the prisoner to repent¬ 
ance, confession, and amendment. 

When the prisoner has been sentenced to 
death a form of visitation for one in his con¬ 
dition is provided, containing special prayers, 
exhortations, and examinations. jPart of 
this form and the Commendatory Prayer 
may be used at the time of the execution. 
When the Communion is administered a 
special Collect, Epistle, and Gospel are ap¬ 
pointed. 

A curious form of prayer occurs at the end 
of this office, viz., a Prayer for Imprisoned 
Debtors, it once being the custom to im¬ 
prison men for debt. The laws under this 





OFFICE 


531 


OHIO 


head being abolished, the prayer is now no 
longer used in this country. The sufferings 
of imprisoned debtors in old times appealed 
strongly to the sympathies of prayerful men, 
and hence this prayer. 

This office is important as setting before 
the clergy their duty to visit the prisoner 
and him that is appointed unto death, and 
also for the clear statements of the Church’s 
teaching. The exhortations are remarkably 
exact, and are full of suggestive truths 
which may well be pondered in other con¬ 
nections. 

There is no such office in the English 
Prayer-Book. Part of it appears to have 
been taken from the Irish Prayer-Book, and 
part was composed by our American Fathers. 

The Office for the Visitation of the Sick .— 
Our mother, the Church, follows her chil¬ 
dren with holy words and solemn rites 
throughout all the circumstances of their 
lives. Inasmuch as sickness makes up, or is 
likely to make up, part of our experience here, 
she has provided an Office for the Visitation 
of the Sick, which includes suitable prayers, 
exhortations, and Scriptures. 

The office in its complete form is probably 
seldom used now, but it stands as a most in¬ 
structive service, and suggests proper modes 
of ministering to those who are overcome by 
illness. Although the full office is now but 
seldom used, its prayers and exhortations, its 
responsive versicles, and its Scriptures are 
always ready for use as circumstances per¬ 
mit. The commendatory Prayer, the Prayer 
for all present, have become especially 
hallowed. The rubrics in this office are 
worthy of study, inasmuch as they set forth 
duties which are too often neglected. One 
of them requires that notice of sickness shall 
be given to the minister. Usually the min¬ 
ister has to find it out in some way for him¬ 
self. Another requires the minister to ex¬ 
amine the sick person as to his repentance 
and charity, and to exhort him to settle his 
temporal affairs. 

With refeience to the latter point, there is 
usually the utmost diffidence felt by the 
minister in speaking of making wills, paying 
debts, etc., and he prefers to fall back upon 
that other part of the rubric which declares 
that men while in health should be put in 
mind of the duty of settling their temporal 
affairs. Unfortunately, but few direct re¬ 
minders are given to men in health about 
these matters. 

This Visitation Office is particularly im¬ 
portant as declaring the Church’s Faith con¬ 
cerning what a proper preparation for death 
consists of. It emphasizes the need of re¬ 
pentance for sins and faith in the Lord 
Jesus, and declares with utmost solemnity 
that there is no other name under heaven 
given to man in whom and through whom 
health and salvation may be received. 

The Visitation Office shows very clearly 
that the Church expects her ministers to aim 
at the spiritual profit of her children when 
they are visited, and also that just what is 


required at the commencement of a relig¬ 
ious life is required at its close, viz., repent¬ 
ance, faith, and charity. 

Office for the Communion of the Sick .— 
It ought to be considered a high duty and 
privilege to partake of the Communion 
while in health, and particularly when we 
are likely to be exposed to especial peril. 

In the rubric before this office the Church 
reminds us of this fact, and warns us to be 
prepared always for death. To be a devout 
communicant is to be ready for death, inas¬ 
much as no one can be a devout communi¬ 
cant unless he repent of sin, have a lively 
and steadfast faith in Christ, and be in 
charity with all men. Repentance, Fai^h, 
and Charity,—these are the needful pre¬ 
requisites for a departure hence in peace and 
in the favor of God. When it is desirable 
to administer this Sacrament to a sick person 
there is a special order provided. Another 
rubric requires the administration to the sick 
person last. This is to prevent the spread 
of contagion, and for other good and suffi¬ 
cient reasons which are obvious. 

The Collect used in this office gives us an 
idea of what a proper prayer for the sick is. 
It is not an absolute petition for his recov¬ 
ery, but if it be God’s will. Patience is 
asked for, and, in the event of the sickness 
being unto death, that the departing soul 
may be made clean through the Lord 
Jesus. The Epistle and Gospel bring out 
the two truths that the sick person is in the 
hands of a loving Lord, and that eternal 
life is through His dear Son; but the gen¬ 
eral form of service is the same as that used 
in the church, some parts being omitted. 
There must usually be others present beside 
the minister and the sick person, and the 
presence of these others is stated in the old 
service-books to be “a singular great com¬ 
fort to the sick person and a mark of their 
charity or good will towards him.” 

Provision is made by a special rubric for 
the comfort of a man in circumstances where 
it is impossible to administer this Sacrament 
to him. The minister is told to instruct him 
that he may eat and drink the Body and 
Blood of Christ profitably, although he 
do not receive the Sacrament with his 
mouth. If he repent of his sins, and firmly 
and thankfully believes in Christ and what 
He has done for him, he thus may receive 
Christ profitably to his soul’s health. 

Key. G. W. Shinn. 

Ohio, Diocese of. That portion of the 
great Northwestern Territory which has be¬ 
come the great State of Ohio was, at the 
close of the last century, but little more than 
a wilderness. 

In 1796 a.d. the estimated population of 
the entire Territory was fifteen thousand, 
including men, women, and children. Set¬ 
tlements were small, and Church services 
only occasionally held. 

The first clergyman of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church who is known to have 
officiated in Ohio was the Rev. Joseph Dod- 





OHIO 


532 


OHIO 


dridge, M.D. His home was upon the Vir¬ 
ginia side of the Ohio River, but he gladly 
extended his Christian labors into the new 
territory beyond. 

Dr. Doddridge was the first Christian 
minister who officiated in what is now the 
city of Steubenville. It was in May, 1796 
a.d. Services were held in an upper room, 
reached by log steps on the outside of the 
building. In the year 1800 a.d., Dr. Dod¬ 
dridge commenced forming a congregation 
in what is now Jefferson County. So far as 
is known, this was the earliest attempt at 
Church organization. 

In the year 1804 a.d. fifty-six persons in 
"Worthington formed themselves into a re¬ 
ligious society, by the name of “ St. John’s 
Church in Worthington and parts adjacent,” 
expressing their agreement in the faith, 
worship, and doctrines of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church, and beginning prepara¬ 
tions for the establishment of Church ser¬ 
vices. 

In the year 1809 a.d. certain inhabitants 
in the towns of Boardman, Canfield, and 
Poland, in Trumbull County, met, organized 
a “regular Episcopal Society,” and sought 
incorporation and counsel from the Bishop 
of New. York. They also made an effort to 
secure the services of a clergyman. In Sep¬ 
tember, 1814 a.d. , they were visited by the 
Rev. Jackson Ivemper, afterwards Bishop 
Kemper, then acting as missionary from 
the Society of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church for the Advancement of Christianity 
in Pennsylvania. During his visit Mr. 
Kemper baptized twenty-nine persons. 

In other places throughout the State 
many Churchmen remembered the Church 
of their fathers, and maintained its services 
by lay-reading. Bishop Wilberforce, of 
England, in his history of the American 
Church, pays a deserved tribute to these 
faithful pioneers, making special mention of 
the work of Mr. Samuel Gunn, the founder 
of the Church in Portsmouth. 

The earliest organized parishes' in Ohio 
were St. James’, Cross Creek ; St. Thomas’, 
St. Clairsville ; St. Peter’s, Morristown ; St. 
James’, Zanesville,—all formed under the 
ministry of Dr. Doddridge in 1816 a.d. At 
the head of the roll of the clergy who have 
labored in Ohio must be placed the name 
of the Rev. Joseph Doddridge, M.D. 

After him comes the Rev. Roger Searle, 
who in January, 1817 a.d., left a well-estab¬ 
lished parish in Connecticut that he might 
seek for Christ’s sheep that were scattered 
abroad. He gave as his reasons for journey¬ 
ing to Ohio,— 

1st. Its increasing population, in 1800 a.d. 
45,000, in 1817 a.d. 400,000,— a population 
with the best elements of strength. 

2d. It was represented to him that as 
many as one-eighth of this number had 
been trained as Episcopalians. 

3d. Many of them were from Connecti¬ 
cut, and personally well known to him. 

4th. He was an elected member of the 


General Convention soon to assemble. He 
might visit this missionary field, study its 
needs, and report to the governing body of 
the Church. 

Mr. Searle reached Ohio on the morning 
of the 16th of February. At the line he 
knelt and offered a fervent prayer. His first 
visit was to Ashtabula, where he organized 
St. Peter’s Church. He afterwards organ¬ 
ized successively Trinity, Cleveland; St. 
John’s, Liverpool; St. Mark’s, Columbia ; 
St. Paul’s, Medina; St. Luke’s, Ravenna; 
St. James’, Boardman. 

While Mr. Searle was thus officiating in 
Ohio, the mind of another clergyman was 
earnestly turned towards the great Western 
field. 

Philander Chase was then Rector of 
Christ Church, Hartford. Many men would 
have remained at ease in such a position. 
But Philander Chase was of heroic mould, 
and besides, he felt within him the call 
of the Divine Spirit to push towards 
the regions beyond. He left Hartford on 
the 2d of March, 1817 a.d., and two weeks 
later preached his first sermon in Ohio, at 
Conneaut Creek, now the town of Salem. 
At Windsor he organized Christ Church, and 
there he met the Rev. Mr. Searle and some 
prominent laymen, who were connected 
with the Church throughout the Western 
Reserve. It was agreed that a Convention 
of all the parishes in Ohio should he held in 
Worthington during the following January. 

Both Mr. Searle and Mr. Chase then 
journeyed throughout the State, laboring to 
do their Master’s work. 

Mr. Searle reported to the General Con¬ 
vention, which met in New York in May, 
what he had seen and heard of the Church 
“ in the West.” It was received as most 
gratifying intelligence, and measures were 
adopted looking “ to the speedy organiza¬ 
tion of the Church, as well as to the sending 
of missionaries to the Western country.” 
Dr. Horace Reed, of Zanesville, was ad¬ 
mitted to an honorary seat in this General 
Convention. 

The Primary Convention of the Church 
in Ohio was held in January, 1818 a.d., at 
the house of Dr. Goodale, in Columbus. 
This Convention adopted a Constitution for 
the government of the Church in Ohio, sig¬ 
nified its union with the Church in the 
United States, and, having appointed a com¬ 
mittee upon the support of the Episcopate, 
adjourned to meet in Worthington in June. 

On the 3d of June, 1818 a.d , was held 
the first Annual Convention of the Church 
in Ohio. Four Ohio clergymen were pres¬ 
ent, and laymen representing ten parishes. 
Rev. Dr. Doddridge was also present. The 
chief matter transacted by the Convention 
was the election of the Rev. Philander 
Chase as Bishop. He was afterwards conse¬ 
crated on the 11th of February, 1819 a.d., 
in St. James’s Church, Philadelphia, by 
Bishop White, assisted by Bishops Hobart, 
Kemp, and Croes. 





OHIO 


533 


OHIO 


Bishop Chase remained Bishop of Ohio 
for more than twelve years. During his ad¬ 
ministration the clergy list increased from 
four to sixteen. The growth in the number 
and strength of the parishes was correspond¬ 
ingly great. 

The chief work of Bishop Chase’s admin¬ 
istration was the establishment of the Theo¬ 
logical Seminary of the Diocese of Ohio 
and Kenyon College. It was strongly felt 
that “sons of the soil” were needed for 
Western work. Men sent to the East for 
training were likely to linger there. Be¬ 
sides, it was thought that men trained at 
home would do better work. After various 
efforts of one kind and another, Bishop 
Chase determined to ask aid from the mother- 
Church of England. He was opposed by 
influences in the American Church which 
were commanding, but he was resolute ; he 
fought a hard battle and finally won the 
day. Subscriptions were received from 
hundreds of men and women, aggregating 
in all nearly thirty thousand dollars. 

Eight thousand acres of land were bought 
in Knox County, in the midst of a well- 
nigh untrodden forest. For a time the stu¬ 
dents lived in log houses, and the institution 
owned two mills, a printing-office, a hotel, 
a carpenter’s and a shoemaker’s shop, with 
houses for professors and for workmen to 
dwell in. It was a monopoly, and carried 
on business of various kinds. The pioneer 
Bishop’s first resources were soon exhausted. 
But he tried again. He first petitioned Con¬ 
gress for a grant of land, and spent a win¬ 
ter in Washington “lobbying.” His bill 
passed the United States Senate, but was not 
reached by the lower house. Then he be¬ 
thought himself of a small sum from many 
friends, and asked for one dollar each. The 
request was then a novel one, and brought 
success. 

Through Mrs. Chase’s wisdom and effi¬ 
ciency, and Bishop Chase’s untiring labors, 
Kenyon College was for a time very pros¬ 
perous. There was a strong corps of pro¬ 
fessors, headed by Dr. William Sparrow, 
and more students than could be well ac¬ 
commodated. But troubles came. Bishop 
Chase had dreamed of a patriarchal institu¬ 
tion. 

“ Kenyon College,” he wrote at the time, 
“ is like other colleges in some respects, and 
unlike all in many other respects. The 
fundamental principle in which it differs 
from all others is, that the whole insti¬ 
tution is patriarchal. Like Abraham on 
the plains of Mamre, it hath pitched its 
tent under the trees of Gambier hill, it hath 
its flocks and its herds, and its different fam¬ 
ilies of teachers, scholars, mechanics, and 
laborers, all united under one head, pursu¬ 
ing one common interest, and receiving 
their maintenance and food from one com¬ 
mon source, the funds and farms of the col¬ 
lege.” The picture, it must be confessed, is 
not without its beauties, though the coloring 
is certainly more Occidental than Oriental. 


Accurately drawn, it would have shown 
Western workmen ready to cry “independ¬ 
ence,” a Western faculty to question the 
limits of authority, and Western Young 
America to cheer them on. Pecuniary 
troubles added to the embarrassments of the 
situation. So, on the 9th of September, 
1831 a.d., Bishop Chase resigned the Presi¬ 
dency of the college and the Episcopate of 
Ohio. The next day he mounted “ Cincin¬ 
nati,” and rode sorrowfully away, and 
Gambier saw his face no more. He was 
afterwards elected Bishop of Illinois, and 
died at “ Robin’s Nest,” where he had 
founded Jubilee College. 

Bishop Chase has been well described as 
“ that toilsome, way-worn soldier of the 
Cross who was perpetually laboring while 
others entered into his labor, who was in¬ 
cessantly sowing while others reaped the 
fruits of his toil, who was ever moving 
Westward with the wave of emigration, 
having nowhere at times to lay his head, no 
rest for the soles of his feet. But he knew 
when he commenced his work what were 
the wages of a Christian hero, and that he 
looked for, that he reaped in rich abun¬ 
dance.” 

When he died, the language adopted by 
the Convention of Ohio was this: “What¬ 
ever alienation once existed on the part of 
the Convention of this Diocese from that 
great and good man has long since passed 
away, and we believe that throughout the 
Diocese of Ohio but one feeling is prevalent, 
and that is, reverence for his memory.” 

Charles Pettit Mcllvaine was elected the 
second Bishop of Ohio, and was consecrated 
in St. Paul’s Church, New York, on the 
31st of October, 1832 a.d. 

Bishop Mcllvaine remained Bishop of 
Ohio for more than forty years. He died 
March 12, 1873 a.d. 

For some years he acted as President of 
the Theological Seminary and Kenyon Col¬ 
lege. He lived indeed in Gambier till 1846 
a.d., when he removed to Clifton, Cincin¬ 
nati. 

During the early years of his administra¬ 
tion the growth of the Diocese was rapid. 
In five years the number of the clergy in¬ 
creased from 17 to 53. At the time of his 
death the number had risen to 108. The 
list of communicants grew from 900 to 
10,000. The yearly charities of the Diocese, 
as reported, increased from $770 to $205,000. 

In 1859 a.d. the health of Bishop Mc¬ 
llvaine had become so impaired that it was 
deemed wise to elect an Assistant Bishop. 
With great unanimity the choice fell upon 
the Rev. Gregory Thurston Bedell, D.D., 
then Rector of the Church of the Ascension, 
New York. He was consecrated in St. 
Paul’s Church, Richmond, Va., on the 13th 
of October, 1859 a.d. For thirteen years 
he continued to labor with Bishop Mcllvaine 
“harmoniously, easily, lovingly, without a 
jar or jealousy.” 

He too girded on his armor to labor for 




ORATORY 


534 


ORDERS . 


the Theological Seminary and Kenyon Col¬ 
lege. In addition to more than a hundred 
thousand dollars obtained by him for the 
endowment of professorships, he was en¬ 
abled to build (through the generosity of 
his former parishioners in New York, aided 
by his own never-failing benefactions and 
those of Mrs. Bedell) the Church of the Holy 
Spirit, which is one of the most beautiful 
and attractive churches ever erected to the 
glory of God. The lover of art might well 
make a pilgrimage to Gambier for the sole 
purpose of beholding this “poem in stone 
and mortar,” this temple that tells of the 
worship of the living God. 

In 1874 a.d. the Diocese of Ohio was 
divided, Bishop Bedell electing the northern 
half of the State, which retains the old name 
of the Diocese of Ohio. The division has 
been a blessing. Eor ten years now Bishop 
Bedell has gently led his flock as sole Dio¬ 
cesan. The gray hairs have come to him, 
but his influence for good increases as the 
years goby. His step is still vigorous. May 
he continue for many years to tell the story 
which he knows so well how to tell with 
magic power, of the love of Christ, and to 
illustrate by his life the sanctifying power 
of the Holy Spirit. 

Statistics. —Clergy, 65; parishes and mis¬ 
sions, 89; families, 3607; individuals, 12,— 
350; baptisms, infants, 711; adults, 141; 
total, 852 ; confirmed, 578; communicants, 
7259; marriages, 346; burials, 486; Sunday- 
school teachers, 913; scholars, 7480; con¬ 
tributions, $151,786.82. 

Rev. Wm. B. Bodine, D.D. 

Oratory. It was used to mean a stool, 
and also a shrine of costly materials, in which 
were placed relics of saints, but chiefly and 
now principally it means a small chapel 
attached to some house, as either a Church, 
or a Monastery, or a Hospital, or a College, 
in which services were held for convenience 
or other cause. 

Orders, or more generally Holy Orders, 
is the term used to designate the three 
classes of the Ministry of the Church col¬ 
lectively, and the character conferred- by 
Ordination, or the Laying on of Hands. 
Three Orders of Ministers are recognized in 
the Church, viz., Bishops, Priests or Pres¬ 
byters, and Deacons. These are men set 
apart and authorized to minister holy things, 
in the functions of their respective degrees, 
by the laying on of the hands of the Bishop 
with prayer, Priests uniting with him in the 
act in the case of Ordination to the Priest¬ 
hood. A Deacon is said to be “ in Orders;” 
when advanced to the Priesthood he is “in 
full Orders.” A Bishop is a priest “conse¬ 
crated” to the highest degree, and invested 
with authority to transmit Orders to others, 
and to bear rule over other ordered men 
within an assigned jurisdiction. The au¬ 
thority of Orders is derived through the 
Bishop in unbroken official succession from 
the Apostles, and it can be derived in no 
other way. Because no man can have au¬ 


thority to minister divine things except by 
receiving it from some one himself author¬ 
ized to confer such authority. But the only 
source of such authorization must be Christ, 
the Divine Pounder of the Church. Hence 
no such authority can exist unless miracu¬ 
lously conferred, or derived in unbroken 
series from Christ Himself. The fact of 
such unbroken succession through the Bish¬ 
ops is abundantly proven by the historic 
records of the Church. The character con¬ 
ferred by Orders is indelible. An ordained 
man may be deprived for cause and by due 
process of law of the right to exercise the 
functions of his ministry, either irrevocably 
by deposition, or temporarily by suspension ; 
but if restored to that right, he may not be 
re-ordained, having never lost the character 
impressed upon him. In England no or¬ 
dered man may sit in the House of Com¬ 
mons, and in some of the United States, as 
Maryland, no “ Minister of the Gospel” is 
eligible to the General Assembly. The 
functions bestowed by Orders vary with 
each degree, but are progressive. Thus a 
Deacon may minister in public worship and 
in pastoral duties. He may baptize, bury 
the dead, and celebrate matrimony ; but he 
may not preach, unless specially licensed by 
the Bishop to do so, and he may not even 
by license pronounce the benediction or 
consecrate the elements in the Lord’s Sup¬ 
per. A Priest may do all these things, 
and have the cure of souls by virtue of his 
Orders. A Bishop may exercise all the 
functions of the Priesthood, and in addition 
may administer the Laying on of Hands in 
Confirmation and Ordination. The method 
of conferring Holy Orders is that instituted 
and practiced by the Apostles (Acts xiii. 2, 
3; 1 Tim. iv. 14, v. 22; 2 Tim. i. 6; Heb. vi. 
2), and used uninterruptedly by the Church 
since their day. In the Greek and Roman 
Churches Orders is ranked among the Sac¬ 
raments, but in Churches of the Anglican 
Communion that term is restricted to Bap¬ 
tism and the Lord’s Supper, the definition 
of the Catechism excluding Orders which 
possess no “ outward and visible,” i.e., mate¬ 
rial, “sign,” as water, bread, or wine, of 
the “inward and spiritual grace” conveyed, 
and which lack scriptural record of having 
been “ordained by Christ Himself.” 

What are known as the “ Minor Orders” 
in the Greek and Roman Churches are not 
esteemed by them as “ Holy Orders,” and 
are not in use in any Churches of the 
Anglican Communion. It should be noted 
that the various offices held by Bishops, 
Priests, and Deacons, such as Cardinals, 
Archbishops, Archdeacons, Deans, etc., are 
not to be regarded as Orders of the Ministry, 
but only as official distinctions belonging to 
different forms of ecclesiastical administra¬ 
tion. It should also be observed that the 
three Orders as found in the Apostolic 
Church were Apostles, Presbyters, and 
Deacons, the term “ Episcopus” or Bishop 
being applied in the New Testament to 




OEDINANCES 


535 


OREGON 


Presbyters or Elders. In the post-Apostolic 
Church the same Orders have been main¬ 
tained, but the term Apostle fell early into 
disuse, and the term Bishop was transferred 
from the second to the first degree. In re¬ 
minding Timothy of his ordination, St. 
Paul says, “Neglect not the gift that is in 
thee, which was given thee by prophecy, 
with the laying on of the hands of the 
presbytery” (1 Tim. iv. 14), but in 2 Tim. 
i. 6, he adds, “ I put thee in remembrance 
that thou stir up the gift of God which is in 
thee by the putting on of my hands.” This 
is exactly the custom of the Church in con¬ 
ferring Orders. St. Paul was miraculously 
called to the Apostolate, and preached for 
years before the other Apostles received him. 
But he and Barnabas are not called Apostles 
until they had been separated for the work 
by the laying on of hands (Acts xiii. 2, 3; 
xiv. 1*4). Rev. R. Wilson, D.D. 

Ordinances of the Church are not only 
those Rites and Sacraments which are of 
Divine obligation, but are also those greater 
rules and disciplinary matters which are by 
the appointment of the Church herself. The 
Liturgy is in use by an ordinance of the 
Church. Feasts, Fasts, and Order of Ser¬ 
vices, morning and evening, are ordinances. 
The Sunday was substituted for the Jew¬ 
ish Sabbath, and the holy observance of the 
day was and is by an ordinance of the 
Church. But their obligation is not as 
clearly felt as it should be. As the Church 
acts in her collective capacity under the 
guidance of the Holy Ghost, her ordi¬ 
nances are needful corollaries drawn from the 
essential propositions of the Faith in the 
Creeds, and are for the easier and more fruit¬ 
ful use of these greater Sacraments and 
Sacramental rites which are of direct Di¬ 
vine institution. Our Creator did not dis¬ 
dain to dictate for the chosen people a minute 
ritual. Without needing to claim for such 
minutiae, in the Church, the like observ¬ 
ance, yet she must claim of every member 
a due obedience for his own sake of her 
broader ordinances. 

Ordinary. The Bishop of the Diocese. 
The term ordinary, “ ordinarius (which is a 
word we have received from the civil law), 
is he who hath the proper and regular 
jurisdiction, as of course and of common 
right, in opposition to persons who are ex¬ 
traordinarily appointed.” The Bishop is 
called the ordinary, “and so he is at com¬ 
mon law, as having ordinary jurisdiction 
in causes ecclesiastical; albeit, in a more 
general acceptation the word ordinary signi¬ 
fied any judge authorized to take cognizance 
of causes in his own proper right, as he is a 
magistrate, and not by way of deputation or 
delegation.” (Burn’s Eccl. Law, sub voc., 
vol. ii. p. 39.) 

Ordination. Part of this subject has been 
discussed under Orders (which see). But 
there are one or two points with refer¬ 
ence to the three Orders which it may be 
proper to discuss here. It is a state to which 


a man is advanced by his ordination, and in 
one sense an irrevocable step. For it is an 
act done in God’s name in His behalf. Now, 
since it is in His name and by His power com¬ 
mitted to the Church, it confers a rank and 
a jurisdiction which cannot be revoked by 
any one less than God, as in Baptism, it is 
Christ who is the baptizer, the minister 
being His agent; and so none but Christ, at 
the last day, can deprive us of our birth¬ 
right, though our mother, the Church, can 
discipline us. So, though the exercise of 
the powers conferred by ordination can be 
resigned by him, or they can be restrained 
or prevented by the discipline of the Church, 
whether acting justly or unjustly, still the 
ordination itself and its powers can never 
be annulled and the man revert to his lay 
estate. He may act as a layman and live in 
that estate, and be prevented from doing his 
office, but he is not a layman really. Again, 
the three Orders of Bishop, Priest, and 
Deacon are distinct orders. The Bishop’s 
office contains all others and retains as solely 
its own Ordination, Confirmation, and Jur¬ 
isdiction,—this latter can be delegated to 
lower officials, not so of the other two. The 
Bishop commits to the Order of the Priest¬ 
hood the power to celebrate the Lord’s 
Supper, Absolution, and Benediction, with 
power, if so commissioned, to exercise 
special or extraordinary jurisdiction. The 
Diaconate receives the power to Baptize and 
to minister to the Priest in the divine service 
and at the Holy Communion, and to take 
a care in Parish work. The authority to 
preach is official in the Bishop, and commit¬ 
ted by him, as a usual part of his jurisdiction, 
to the Priest, and specially trusted to the 
Deacon by license. But all of these several 
divisions of the stewardship committed to 
the Apostolate are by the grace of God for 
the gifts and graces to be conveyed to the 
people in the Covenant of Baptism. Ordi¬ 
nation is, then, itself an indelible character ; 
it is a grace from God in itself, and it is to. 
authorize men to be the conveyers of His 
Graces to the Elect, and to be the Embassa¬ 
dors for oilr reconcilement to God. While, 
therefore, Ordination is not at all a Sacra¬ 
ment, it has a sacramental grace in it. 

Oregon, Missionary Jurisdiction of. The 
following account of the history of the 
Church in Oregon is drawn from the excel¬ 
lent report of Rev. Mr. Sellwood to the Cen¬ 
tennial Commissioners in 1876 a.d. It was 
kindly furnished by Bishop Morris. This 
general acknowledgment of authority will 
be deemed sufficient. 

The first Episcopal clergyman who visited 
Oregon was Rev. St. M. Fackler, who in 
1847 a.d. went there in search of health. 
The first Church services recorded were held 
by him in Oregon City in 1848 a.d., at the 
house of Mr. McKinlay. He found a few 
members of the Church there desirous of 
services, but, as his health was poor, he did 
not attempt to organize a parish. In 1861 
a.d., Rev. William Richmond, of the Diocese 





OREGON 


536 


OREGON 


of New York, was appointed by the Board 
of Domestic Missions the first Missionary to 
Oregon. 

Mr. Richmond reached Portland on May 
11, 1851 a.d. His first service was held 
in the Methodist house of worship. He 
was assisted by Mr. Fackler, and baptized 
the infant daughter of that clergyman. 
Portland and Oregon City were chosen for 
central work, while Columbia City, the 
Dalles, Milwaukee, and Salem were selected 
as Mission stations. The Rev. Mr. Fack- 
ler’s health improved, and he was appointed 
a Missionary. The newness of the country 
and the hardships to be endured are dis¬ 
played in the following extract of a letter 
written by Mr. Richmond: “I occupy a 
room in a shanty, merely clapboards, quite 
open to the air, with a rough, unplaned, 
ungrooved floor; no carpets, no plaster¬ 
ing, no ceiling. For this I pay twelve 
dollars a month, three dollars (fifteen was 
the price) having been deducted by the 
landlord on account of my Mission. I also 
do my own cooking, and gather my own 
wood out of the forest behind me, and yet 
my expenses will be as great as in a good 
boarding-house in New York.” 

In the fall of 1852 a.d., Rev. Jas. A. 
Woodward, of Pennsylvania, going to Ore¬ 
gon for health, was quite restored. He, by 
the courtesy of the Congregationalists, used 
their building for services in Oregon City 
till a room was prepared. 

In 1853 a.d. , Rev. Jno. McCarty, D.D., 
came as chaplain in the army to Fort Van¬ 
couver, Washington Territory. He took 
charge of Trinity Church, Portland. 

The clergy and laity, at a meeting, re¬ 
quested a Missionary Bishop for Oregon and 
Washington, and the General Convention 
elected Rev. Thos. Fielding Scott, of Georgia, 
to that office. ' He was consecrated June 8, 
1854 a.d. Bishop Scott was occupied from 
February 19 to April 22 in going from 
New York to Portland. A Convocation was 
held, when the Bishop, Dr. McCarty, Rev. 
Mr. Fackler, and lay delegates from Port¬ 
land, Oregon City, and Champoeg were 
present. On September 24, Trinity Church, 
Portland, was consecrated. This was the first 
church consecrated in Oregon, but St. John’s, 
Milwaukee, was the first Church building. 

The Bishop was encouraged by the admis¬ 
sion of Mr. Jas. L. Daly as a candidate for 
Holy Orders. 

In 1855 a.d. churches were consecrated 
at Milwaukee and Salem. In the fall Rev. 
Johnstone McCormac reached the field. 

In 1856 a.d. , Rev. John and Rev. Jas. R. 
W. Sell wood promised to engage in mission 
work, but John Sellwood was wounded in a 
massacre at Panama, so that he could .not 
enter upon work at once. This year a boys’ 
boarding-school was opened at Oswego, 
under Mr. Bernard Cornelius, nearly sev¬ 
enty acres of land, with a house, beautifully 
located on the Willamette River, having 
been bought for the purpose. 


The ordination of Mr. Daly increased the 
clerical force this year, a gain being made 
of two Deacons and one Presbyter. 

Bishop Scott’s work is compared by Mr. 
Sellwood to that of the officers of an army, 
who should see the depredations of Indians 
and yet have no men to station at needed 
posts. The Bishop says, “ Since my return 
1 have been continually on the tramp,—call¬ 
ing occasionally to spend a few days with 
my wife; northward to Vancouver’s Island, 
and southward nearly to the head of the 
Willamette Valley ; eastward to the Dalles, 
and westward to the Pacific. And yet, alas ! 
in all this how little have I done! I can 
say little else of each point than veni 1 vidi , 
discessi. Were there a faithful clergyman 
at each point thus visited how different were 
the work, how different were the fruit, how 
different the retrospection !” 

In 1859 a.d. St. Mary’s Church, Eugene 
City, was consecrated. 

In I860 a.d. the Bishop was cheered by 
the arrival of five clergymen, viz., Rev. 
Messrs. Carlton P. Maples, T. A. Hyland, 
D. E. Willes, W. F. B. Jackson, and P. E. 
Hyland. Two, however, soon returned East, 
and one went to Washington Territory. 

In 1861 a.d. the Bishop opened a school 
for girls at Spencer Hall, Milwaukee. It 
received a good patronage. This year the 
first number of the Oregon Churchman ap¬ 
peared. It was a monthly. 

In 1862 a.d. , John W. Sellwood was or¬ 
dained Deacon. The Mission this year 
cheered the Bishop, as the parishes, schools, 
and Church paper seemed to promise growth. 

In 1863 a.d. St. Stephen’s Chapel, Port¬ 
land, was opened, giving two places for 
Church services in that town. 

In 1865 a.d., Rev. Messrs. Roberts and 
Stoy arrived, and the Bishop was encouraged 
by the ordination of Rev. John W. Sellwood 
to the Priesthood, as he was the first fruit of 
efforts to raise up men on the soil for mis¬ 
sionary work.- 

In 1866 a.d. the Bishop was much dis¬ 
couraged by the closing of the Diocesan 
schools. He began to wish that . some 
younger man should be appointed to the 
charge of his Mission field. In 1867 a.d. 
the Convocation met in Portland preparatory 
to the Bishop’s return East for his wife’s 
health, which was precarious. His address 
proved to be a farewell one. He detailed 
his thirteen years of toilsome labor for 
Christ and His holy Church. He says, 
“ At no time have there been more than ten 
engaged in the work.” Twelve churches 
had been set apart for sacred use, though 
one was not quite finished. They were free 
from debt. The greater part of those con¬ 
firmed by the Bishop had removed to other 
parts of the country. “Shortly after Con¬ 
vocation the Bishop left for the East, and 
had only been in New York three days 
when he was called home to enter upon that 
rest which remaineth for all the people of 
God. When the sad intelligence of his 





OREGON 


537 


OREGON 


death flashed across the wires it produced a 
feeling of deepest sadness, not only over the 
whole Church, but also over the whole 
State. His genial manners, and his marked 
ability as a preacher, won for him the affec¬ 
tion and commanded the respect of all 
who had ever heard him preach, or been 
personally acquainted with him, so that not 
only did his children in the Church weep at 
the loss of their Reverend Father in God, 
but also all who had ever known him.” 

Oregon struggled on without a Bishop 
until the Rt. Rev. B. Wistar Morris, D.D., 
of St. Luke’s Church, Germantown, Phila., 
arrived to take up the work, in June, 1869 
a.d. His friend and companion in the Dio¬ 
cese of Pennsylvania, Rev. C. R. Bonnell, 
preceded him, and took charge of the Church 
at Salem. The coming of Bishop Morris 
marks a new era. In addition to a hearty 
zeal he is possessed of a sound common sense, 
and has business qualifications which lead 
men to follow his plans, believing that every 
dollar given will do its exact and appro¬ 
priated work, if the Bishop can possibly make 
it do it. A school for giris was immediately 
planned by this wise master-builder. He 
was familiar with Bishop Doane’s plans, as 
carried out in St. Mary’s Hall, Burlington, 
N. J., and was accompanied by those who 
were also familiar with that school, and so 
its counterpart arose in St. Helen’s Hall. 
Nearly a block of land was purchased in 
Portland for the school, and it opened with 
fifty pupils. In 1870 a.d. it was enlarged, 
and had one hundred and twenty pupils. 

The Bishop at once began those journey- 
ings of visitation and exploration which he 
has so faithfully continued. 

In 1870 a.d. the Bishop Scott Grammar 
and Divinity School was opened as a boys’ 
boarding-school with forty-six pupils. A 
large tract of land, beautifully situated, was 
secured for this purpose in the Couch addi¬ 
tion to Portland. This year a church was 
commenced in East Portland, and a church 
and school at Corvallis commenced and 
nearly completed. Rev. John Rosenberg 
was added to the mission staff this year. 
Lots were obtained for the erection of 
churches. The Convocation of 1871 a.d. 
notes that the Oregon Churchman was re¬ 
vived as a monthly, and that there were 
many marks of improvement in the par¬ 
ishes. Two clergymen had been added to 
the clerical list. 

In 1872 a.d., Rev. R. D. Nevins, D.D., 
and Rev. John H. Babcock arrived in Ore¬ 
gon. Trinity Parish, Portland, built a 
handsome new church, the Bishop Scott 
Grammar School was enlarged, and a Chi¬ 
nese school was opened in Portland. In 
1873 a.d. there is a note of encouragement 
in the number confirmed, especially in East¬ 
ern Oregon, where the field was white for 
the harvest. At La Grange, Baker City, 
Union, and the Cove services were held at 
intervals by Rev. Mr. Wells, of Walla 
Walla. In 1874 a.d. two clergy were added. 


The corner-stones of five churches were 
laid, and ground broke for two.others. The 
Bishop bought ground in Portland for the 
Good Samaritan Hospital and Orphanage. 
On Ascension-Day its corner-stone was laid. 

In 1874 a.d. the people offered to God 
$20,010.80. In 1875 a.d. the hospital and 
orphanage was formally opened. Six chil¬ 
dren had been previously admitted, and 
within twenty-four hours after its opening 
a patient was received into the hospital 
department. Mr. George Boyd was Super¬ 
intendent, and Mrs. Cornelius Matron. 

The Sunday-school has been found a val¬ 
uable help in Church advancement in Ore¬ 
gon, and Women’s Guilds have done much 
good. 

In Bishop Morris’s report for 1883 a.d., 
we find that sixteen clergy arc under his 
care. The Bishop’s visitations disclose new 
Church families to be cared for, and he en¬ 
deavors to exercise a sort of parochial over¬ 
sight over those who, in their dispersion, are 
still without settled rectors, and yet who 
show by their offerings their interest in 
the Church. A church building has been 
secured in Oakland, and St. Paul’s, Salem, 
and the Church of the Redeemer, Pendle¬ 
ton, and St. David’s, East Portland, have 
been enlarged. Rectories have been built 
at St. Matthew’s, Portland, and at La 
Grande, and one has been purchased at 
Canyon City. There are fourteen rectories. 
Lots for a church have been donated in Sell- 
wood, a district of Portland. The Episco¬ 
pal residence is valued, with the adjoining 
ground, at $20,000. -There is a small Epis¬ 
copal fund. Samuel G. French lately be¬ 
queathed a beautiful property of one hun¬ 
dred acres for a girls’ school, which the 
Bishop styles the Cove School, from its situ¬ 
ation on a cove. St. Helen’s Hall and the 
Bishop Scott School proper have had, to¬ 
gether, in the past year two hundred and 
thirty-one pupils. Pupils have been re¬ 
ceived from Connecticut, British Columbia, 
and Honolulu. The Bishop considers the 
schools “ the right arm” of his work. St. 
Helen’s Hall has purchased a large block of 
ground for new buildings. The Bishop 
Scott School needs aid sadly on account of 
expensive street improvements made and 
contemplated. The Good Samaritan Hos¬ 
pital has cared for two hundred and sixty- 
five patients, and needs a women's and chil¬ 
dren’s ward. Contributions of the Diocese 
reported to the Convocation, $25,244 ; com¬ 
municants, 800. 

The development of Oregon makes new 
demands on the Church at large. The 
Northern Pacific Railroad has taken much 
Eastern money for worldly purposes, the 
East should make it a highway for God by 
sending over it Bibles, Prayer-Books, Mis¬ 
sionaries, and rich contributions to the 
Western Church. The advance in Church 
life under the present hard-working Bishop 
is shown in the fact that the report states that 
the number of clergy in Oregon alone is 




ORGANIZATIONS 


538 


ORGANIZATIONS 


only one less than “ the largest number ever 
reported when Oregon and Washington 
Territory made one jurisdiction.” The 
work is, however, yet a scattered one, as is 
indicated by the fact that the Rev. Reese P. 
Kendall’s ministrations extend for a distance 
of over sixty miles. In considering the lum¬ 
ber, coal, and grain interests of Oregon, it 
may be well to remember that this magnifi¬ 
cent country was saved to the United States, 
when England was about to purchase it of 
our Government, by the heroic self-denial 
and fatiguing journey of the missionary 
Whitman, who, by returning to the East, 
succeeded in informing those in power that 
the district was too valuable to be lost. Let 
us honor this man, though he was not of 
our body, for showing even business men 
the value of missions. This narrative nat¬ 
urally notes the work of Bishops as leaders, 
but they would be the first to say that the 
history could never have been written had 
it not been for the constant help of faithful 
missionaries. Their deeds are recorded in 
Heaven. 

Statistics. —Clergy, 18 ; missions, 28; com¬ 
municants, 889; Sunday-school scholars, 
954; confirmed, 68; adults baptized, 30; 
infants baptized, 172; contributions, $25,- 
224.27. Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Organizations in the Church. It is need¬ 
less here to point out the need of co-opera¬ 
tion and thorough organization to accom¬ 
plish any purpose which may claim the 
energy and work of more than a single 
mind. Skill, thoroughness, and adaptabil¬ 
ity or flexibility in the plan of organization 
are as necessary as persistent, zealous labor 
in a given cause. In the Catholicity of the 
Church there is warrant for the widest 
scope for the full play of all aims in har¬ 
mony with the broad lines of her funda¬ 
mental polity,—no petty narrowness or re¬ 
straint within the bounds of loyalty to the 
Faith, the Government, and Discipline of the 
Church. She must, to be really all things 
to all men, be ready to use all the varied 
energies of the men for whose sake she was 
founded, and to whom she ministers. So or¬ 
ganizations apparently clashing, really rep¬ 
resenting those schools of thought which must 
be side by side in her borders, are to be found 
in the Church. The ancient Templum of 
the old divination was the open sky, meted 
out in its several parts by arbitrary mystic 
lines; in the spiritual Templum the metes 
and bounds may have different aspects, but 
they are in the beams of the sun of 
righteousness, and those who seek to work 
in one quarter, may be as much guided by 
the Lord of true Liberty, who wills that 
all should be in the sweetness and light and 
glory of a holy order, as those who work in 
another. The organizations which are 
sketched below are placed more as represen¬ 
tatives than from any arbitrary selection, 
and certainly no invidious choice has led to 
the omjssion of other organizations quite as 
equally deserving of a place here. 


The American Church Missionary Society 
was organized by Bishops, other Clergy, 
and Laity of the Church, May 9, 1860 a.d., 
and incorporated April 13, 1861 a.d. In 
the words of its constitution, “ The object 
of this Society shall be to extend and build 
up the Kingdom of our Lord J esus 
Christ in accordance with the principles 
and doctrines of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church.” Its plan of organization is the 
same as that of the Church Missionary So¬ 
ciety of the English Church, and known as 
“The Voluntary Principle.” Its work is 
a national one, embracing the Missionary 
Jurisdictions and many of the Dioceses of 
the Church. It has been largely instrumen¬ 
tal in aiding the formation of such mission¬ 
ary fields as Kansas, Iowa, Nevada, Colo¬ 
rado, Minnesota, and Dakota. 

One of its ablest advocates, the late Rev. 
Dr. John Cotton Smith, thus presented its 
special mission : “ The real purpose and ob¬ 
ject of this Society is not to preach the gos¬ 
pel upon the basis of the principles of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church in the broad 
acceptation of these terms, according to the 
understanding which any one may have of 
their meaning, but it is to preach the gospel 
in what is known as the evangelical under¬ 
standing of it, upon the basis of the moder¬ 
ate and liberal principles of our Church ; 
this is the object of this Society, and the 
only reason of its being.” 

In addition to its work of Domestic Mis¬ 
sions, it has founded the work in Hayti, and 
for five years sustained that in Mexico, send¬ 
ing to the latter country more than $85,000. 
During the twenty-three years of its his¬ 
tory it has sustained hundreds of mission¬ 
aries, built churches in very many places in 
the West and South, and expended more 
than half a million of dollars. It is also the 
trustee of large amounts intended to pro¬ 
mote, in perpetuity, the evangelical interests 
of the Church in colleges, missionary foun¬ 
dations, and special parish work. Its Presi¬ 
dent is always a layman. 

William A. Newbold, 

General Secretary. 

The New York Bible and Common Prayer- 
Book Society was organized in the city of 
New York in the year 1809 a.d., and from 
that date to the present time has been en¬ 
gaged in the circulation of Bibles and 
Prayer-Books. 

It now distributes yearly from 40 to 
50,000 volumes, valued at from $7000 to 
$8000. Its income is from interest on in¬ 
vested funds, church collections, and indi¬ 
vidual donations. The aim of the Society 
is mainly to furnish Prayer-Books to Mis¬ 
sionary Stations scattered throughout the 
United States. Thus far its work has been 
found most useful and beneficial, and its 
importance most generally acknowledged. 
Without an agency of this kind the growth 
of the Church would be much retarded. 

The Protestant Episcopal Tract Society is 
an institution in the city of New York or- 




ORGANIZATIONS 


539 


ORGANIZATIONS 


ganized for the purpose of distributing 
Church books and tracts. Its means are 
limited. Its publications are confined to 
those relating to the distinctive teaching 
of the Episcopal Church. 

It distributes yearly from 700,000 to 
1,000,000 pages of tracts. Jas. Pott. 

The Protestant Episcopal Society for the 
Promotion of Evangelical Knowledge. —This 
Society was organized in the city of New 
York during the sessions of the General 
Convention in 1847 a.d. The occasion of 
its organization was the prevalence of opin¬ 
ions and teachings in the Episcopal Church 
which were regarded by many as unscrip- 
tural, and hostile to the acknowledged 
standard of said Church, and opposed to its 
best interests. What was popularly known 
as the Oxford or Tractarian movement in 
the Church of England was quickly and 
widely felt in this country, and awakened 
no little anxiety on the part of many of the 
Bishops, Clergy, and Laitj'. To counteract 
what were considered the Romeward and 
dangerous tendencies of this movement the 
Society was established. It was at first lo¬ 
cated in the city of Philadelphia, and was 
under the management of a President, Vice- 
Presidents, Board of Directors, Executive 
Committee, Secretary, and Treasurer. The 
Rt. Rev. Bishop Meade, of Virginia, was its 
first President. Among its Vice-Presidents 
were Bishops Smith, of Kentucky, Mell- 
vaine, of Ohio, Elliott, of Georgia, Eastburn, 
of Massachusetts, Lee, of Delaware, Johns, 
of Virginia, and several other Bishops. 
A few years later the Society was removed 
to the city of New York and located at the 
Bible House. The Rev. John S. Stone, D.D., 
was its first Editor and General Secretary. 
He was succeeded hy the Rev. C. W. An¬ 
drews, D.D., of Virginia. When the war 
broke up the relations between the North 
and the South, the Rev. H. Dyer, D.D., 
who had been for some time the Correspond¬ 
ing Secretary and General Agent, was made 
the Editor and General Manager of the 
Society affairs. The chief work of the So¬ 
ciety was the preparation and distribution 
of hooks, tracts, and periodicals bearing 
upon the issues agitating the Church. The 
growth of the Society was rapid and re¬ 
markable. Commencing with nothing, it 
soon had quite an extensive catalogue of its 
own and selected publications, suited to 
parochial, Sunday-school, and family use. 
Within a few years it had an income from 
the sale of publications, and from contribu¬ 
tions, of from forty to fifty thousand dollars 
a year. It was not long before its own pub¬ 
lications amounted to some six hundred in 
number. Many of them were good-sized 
volumes. It published and widely circu¬ 
lated the Parish Visitor , designed for use in 
parishes and families, and The Standard 
Bearer for Sunday-schools. 

The Society is still doing an important 
work. Upon the death of Bishop Meade, 
its first President, Bishop Mcllvaine, of 


Ohio, was elected as his successor, and up6n 
the death of the Bishop of Ohio, the Bishop 
of Delaware, the Rt. Rev. Alfred Lee, D.D., 
was elected to the office. 

Rev. II. Dyer, D.D. 

Bishop White Prayer-Book Society. —This 
Society has just completed its fiftieth anni¬ 
versary. The history of its establishment in 
brief is as follows : “ The Rt. Rev. J. H. 
Otey, D.D., having been invited by the Ex¬ 
ecutive Committee of the Domestic and For¬ 
eign Missionary Society of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church to make some statements 
relative to the condition and prospects of the 
Church in Tennessee, a meeting was held 
for that purpose in St. James’ Church on 
the evening of his consecration, January 14, 
1834 a.d. Among the remarks to which 
his statement gave rise, the importance of a 
Prayer-Book as a means of promoting the 
cause of religion and the Church was ad¬ 
verted to, and the Rev. Dr. Delaney made 
some observations on the good which might 
be effected by a Society for its distribution 
as a tract. The Rev. Dr. Bedell expressed 
himself as much pleased with the idea, which, 
he said, had not before occurred to him, and 
it was very • favorably received by all pres¬ 
ent.” It so happened that four laymen oc¬ 
cupied a pew in a remote part of the church, 
and to each of them the thought suggested 
itself that he would make an effort for 
the foundation of a Society. When the 
services were over they were pleased to find 
that a common spirit animated them all, and 
on the 6th of February, 1834 a.d., the pre¬ 
paratory steps having been taken, a meeting 
was held at the house of Mr. W. H. New- 
bold, to whom the society is chiefly indebted 
for its formation, when the following persons 
were present: “ the Rt. Rev. Bishop Onder- 
donk, Rev. Messrs. Boyd, James, and Mor¬ 
ton, Messrs. William Musgrave, James M. 
Aertsen, John Welsh, William H. Wayne, 
W. H. Newbold, and Dr. S. Littell* On 
the 13th of February another meeting was 
held, at which the work previously begun 
was completed, and on the 18th of Febru¬ 
ary, 1834 a.d. , a public meeting was held 
in Christ Church, Bishop White presid¬ 
ing, with Bishops Onderdonk and Doane 
in the chancel, when the Society was organ¬ 
ized. James S. Smith, Esq., Chairman of 
the Committee, presented and read the Con¬ 
stitution, and when he read the title, “The 
Bishop White Prayer-Book Society,” Bishop 
White, in an audible and somewhat excited 
voice, exclaimed, “No, no, no!” but the 
audience were unmoved by his protest, and 
the name of that eminent and revered father 
of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the 
United States was then given to the Society, 
and in these days so given to changes the 
hope may be expressed that it will ever con¬ 
tinue to be known by it. The Society has 
during these fifty years distributed a total 
of 328,631 Prayer-Books and 65,665 Hymn- 


* Extracted from the records of Mr. Jas. M. Aertsen. 





ORGANIZATIONS 


540 


ORGANIZATIONS 


als. The total receipts into the Treasury 
have been $100,322.02. What the Society 
will do in the next half-century is known 
only to Him alone in whose service it is en¬ 
gaged. We can only utter the prayer that 
its humble work may be blessed, and that its 
usefulness may be increased with each pass¬ 
ing year. (From the Fiftieth Annual Re¬ 
port of the Society. ) 

The Evangelical Educational Society of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church was organized 
in the City of Philadelphia by Bishop 
Alonzo Potter, November 3, 1862 a.d., as 
The Divinity Students' Aid Society. 

It was at first Diocesan, but subsequently 
made general, and incorporated November 
1, 1869 a.d., under its present name. It is 
governed by a Board of Managers, consist¬ 
ing of President, Secretary, Treasurer, and 
twenty-two other gentlemen, who represent 
the Church in different sections of the coun¬ 
try, and are elected annually at the public 
meeting of the Society, which consists of 
those who have contributed to its treasury 
within the year. During the twenty-one 
years of the Society’s work it has raised di¬ 
rectly over five hundred thousand dollars to 
aid young men who are preparing for the 
ministry of the Episcopal Church, and a 
very large additional sum for the endow¬ 
ment of theological seminaries, colleges, and 
schools. It has sent into the ministry more 
than three hundred men, distributed thou¬ 
sands of books and tracts, and given consid¬ 
erable aid to aged, sick, and infirm clergy¬ 
men, and the widows and orphans of the 
clergy. Rev. R. C. Matlock. 

The Church Society for 'promoting Chris¬ 
tianity among the Jews. —This most useful 
Society was incorporated in 1878 a.d. Its 
purpose is surely one which appeals most 
earnestly to our aid as well as prayers and 
sympathy. To the Jew we owe every authen¬ 
tic revelation of God’s love and mercy. Sal¬ 
vation comes to us from them. The Church 
was first sent to them. For a thousand 
years, but in ever-dwindling numbers, they 
entered the Church. It is indeed true that 
there has always been some one of that 
chosen race ministering at her altars. 
Some have risen to the Episcopate. But for 
a century and a half the old Judaism of the 
Talmud has been breaking down. The Jew 
has lost his hope of the Messiah, and in 
some of their catechisms even they have 
taught that the career of the nation is the 
fulfillment of the prophecy of . the Mes¬ 
siah. They tend now to rationalism more 
than to any Faith. Yet by Faith comes 
their inheritance to them, and more than are 
willing to confess it are secret believers in 
the Christ. ( Vide Jew.) Within this 
century more than twenty thousand have 
embraced Christianity. It is the holy pur¬ 
pose of this Society to aid in so glorious a 
work, which is, in fact, an endeavor rever¬ 
ently to forward God’s declared purposes to¬ 
wards the people He has so loved. It has 
established work among the Jews in thirty- 


four Dioceses apd in ten Missionary Juris¬ 
dictions. It aids largely the clergy in their 
parochial work by contributing Bibles, 
Prayer-Books, and Messianic and Christian 
publications. Its work is purely spiritual, 
no temporal aid being given to proselytes. 

Free and Open Church Association. —The 
objects of the Association are : 1. To main¬ 

tain, as a principle, the freedom of all seats 
in Churches. 

2. To promote the abandonment of the 
sale and rental of pews and sittings, and in 
place thereof, the adoption of the principle 
of systematic free-will offerings by all the 
worshipers in our Churches, according to 
their ability. 

3. To promote the recognition of the Of¬ 
fertory as an act of Christian worship, and 
as a Scriptural means of raising money for 
pious and charitable uses. 

4. To promote tlie practice of keeping 
Churches open throughout every day of the 
week for private prayer. 

The following are the means employed : 
The printing and dissemination of Tracts 
and Papers; the holding of Public Meet¬ 
ings ; the Preaching of Sermons; Discus¬ 
sions in the Public Press ; and the promo¬ 
tion of needful Legislation. 

The Council is always ready to assist in 
the organization of Public or Private Meet¬ 
ings in reference to particular localities and 
Churches, so that friends who wish to influ¬ 
ence the public opinion of their neighbor¬ 
hood may obtain not only tracts and pam¬ 
phlets, but speakers to help them, by apply¬ 
ing to the Secretary. 

The Council is also prepared to afford legal 
advice on questions connected with the 
movement. 

The Association is entirely free from 
party character. 

It has thirty Bishops as its patrons. As 
only a partial result of its work, out of a 
total of 1859 parishes in twenty-seven Dio¬ 
ceses from which comparatively full returns 
have been received, 1179 are made free and 
open to all who enter the Church doors. 
Nearly all the Churches in the Missionary 
Jurisdictions have been established as free 
Churches. 

The Society for the increase of the Ministry 
(founded 1857 a.d., incorporated 1859 a.d.). 
—As an exposition of the motives which 
have led to the formation of this Society, an 
extract from the report of the Corresponding 
Secretary to its second annual meeting is 
here given : 

“ The need of such a movement as this has 
long existed, and has been deeply felt. Those 
who are at all familiar with the affairs of 
our Church, need not be told that for several 
years past, and even from the beginning of 
her history in this country, her progress has 
been greatly retarded by the want of clergy¬ 
men. At no time and in no part of the land, 
not even in those sections where she has been 
longest established, has the supply been suf¬ 
ficient for her actual wants. But the defi- 




ORGANIZATIONS 


541 


ORIGINAL SIN 


ciency at the present time is greater and 
more alarming than at any previous period. 
The facts which official statistics reveal in 
regard to this matter are truly startling. 
They show that, while the population of the 
country is increasing with unexampled 
rapidity, and while new and promising fields, 
at home and abroad, are continually opening 
to the Church, the supply of laborers, so far 
from keeping pace with this growing de¬ 
mand, is scarcely increasing in any sense; 
that the yearly ordinations but little more 
than make good the annual losses by death 
and other causes; and that the number of 
candidates, for orders now is not much larger 
than it was fifteen years ago. It appears 
that there was a gradual falling off from 
1844 to 1850 a.d. ; and while the reports to 
the General Convention show a gradual in¬ 
crease from 1850 to 1856 *a.d., from 1856 a.d. 
to the present time there has been another 
falling off, so that there are not as many 
candidates now (1859 a.d.^ as there were when 
the last General Convention met, though in 
the mean time there has been an absolute 
gain of about nine thousand communicants 
and two hundred parishes. 

“ The whole number of our clergy is about 
the same as the number of our parishes. But 
the number of those who, though occupying 
various stations of usefulness in the Church, 
are without parochial charge, together with 
the infirm and superannuated, must amount 
to at least three hundred and fifty, and thus 
that number, or more than one-sixth of our 
parishes, must be without pastors, or if sup¬ 
plied at all, only by lay-readers and occa¬ 
sional services of clergymen. It is no won¬ 
der, in view of such a state of things, that 
those who have the interests of the Church 
at heart, especially those to whom the over¬ 
sight and administration of its affairs are in¬ 
trusted, should feel so much anxiety on this 
subject as they have manifested, nor that it 
should have been dwelt upon so frequently 
and earnestly in our Conventions and jour¬ 
nals, in the addresses of our Bishops and the 
sermons of our clergy, and in the reports 
and appeals of our missionaries and Mission¬ 
ary Boards.” 

It is important that the character and plan 
of the Society should be thoroughly under¬ 
stood. It is a general association, intended 
to cover every Diocese, and to include every 
member of the Church througho-ut the coun¬ 
try. It knows no sectional objects or party 
purposes, but is organized as an institution 
of the whole and nothing lqss than the whole 
Church. At the same time, it acknowledges 
itself to be a voluntary organization, without 
the right to exclude other organizations, and 
with no design of interfering with local 
societies engaged in the same or a similar en¬ 
terprise. It seeks to establish itself on a 
permanent basis, to deserve and to secure the 
confidence of the Church as something more 
than a temporary association, and so to con¬ 
duct its affairs and discharge its responsibili¬ 
ties, as to be everywhere regarded in the 


light of a carefully, economically, and effec¬ 
tively administered institution. Whatever 
funds it may obtain will be devoted wholly 
to the great object which it professes to serve, 
subject to the smallest possible charges for 
expenses, and without any deductions for 
percentages or salaries. 

The Society proposes a twofold course. In 
the first place, it undertakes to find suitable 
candidates for holy orders, not waiting for 
candidates to present themselves, but search¬ 
ing after them, encouraging them, and sus¬ 
taining them, provided they prove deserv¬ 
ing, in their earliest aspirations towards the 
ministry. In the second place, the Society 
desires to furnish the necessary instruction 
for such candidates as it may find to be en¬ 
tirely worthy of assistance, at the school, the 
college, and the Theological school, through 
either or all of which, according to individual 
cases, it is the intention of the Society to 
carry its beneficiaries. 

The constitution admits as members all 
persons paying a yearly subscription of not 
less than three dollars. Clergymen may 
make the same payment, or they may take 
up a collection, or raise a subscription every 
year; or they may do both,—that is, sub¬ 
scribe for themselves and obtain contribu¬ 
tions from others. Laymen, likewise, may 
serve the Society by raising subscriptions 
among their friends and fellow-parishion¬ 
ers, or within their respective Dioceses. 
Women may contribute to it through their 
sewing societies and similar associations, 
and Sunday-school children may aid the 
cause by devoting to it their offerings. 

The disbursements of the Society will be 
proportioned to the contributions which it 
receives. It seeks for beneficiaries among 
parishes as well as for subscribers. Every 
Sunday-school, every secular school, every 
college or university, ought to be kept in 
view as likely to furnish some youth fitted 
for the ministry, and yet hesitating, perhaps 
unable, to prepare for it. It would urge 
parents to bring the obligation of the minis¬ 
try before their children. 

The society has aided 629 clergy in their 
studies, besides helping 111 sons of the 
clergy, not ordained. It has raised $577,- 
279.72. 

Original Sin, otherwise Birth Sin, is the 
infection or corruption inherent in human 
nature through inheritance from Adam, by 
which every man born into the world is in 
a state of condemnation without reference 
to the commission of actual sin ; which in¬ 
fection so depraves the moral nature of man 
as to produce a constant tendency to evil 
and prevent any disposition to good. This 
doctrine makes it necessary not only that 
man must be restrained from the evil and 
incited "to the good by the external help of 
God’s grace, but that he must in some way 
be relieved from the condemnation due to 
Original Sin before he can be received into 
God’s favor. It will at once be seen that a 
doctrine involving such subtile distinctions, 





ORIGINAL SIN 


542 


ORIGINAL SIN 


and dealing with so obscure a subject, must 
have led to much controversy and diversity 
of explanation, and such is the fact. The 
denial of any such taint as Original Sin is 
known as Pelagianism, from Pelagius, who 
first taught it in the fourth century. The 
Council of Carthage condemned the doc¬ 
trines of Pelagius as heresy. Denying 
the existence of Original Sin, there still re¬ 
mained the fact, proved by all experience, 
of man’s tendency to evil, and this the fol¬ 
lowers of Pelagius account for by supposing 
an inherited weakness of will, through which 
all men sin after the similitude of Adam. 
This is known as Semipelagianism, and is con¬ 
demned in the IX. Article of Religion of the 
Book of Common Prayer. The variety of 
views held in regard to Original Sin has been 
almost infinite, even within the limits of 
orthodoxy. Of these the harshest and most 
uncompromising are those of St. Augustine 
of Hippo and of the Westminster Confes¬ 
sion. These teach the absolute opposition 
of the natural human will to God, and its 
utter indisposition to all good, disability to 
perform it, and entire inclination to evil. 
This is the result of the sin of our first pa¬ 
rents, the guilt of which is imputed to all 
their descendants, and the infection of which 
is transmitted to them by ordinary genera¬ 
tion. This extreme view, known as the 
doctrine of Total Depravity, was certainly 
unknown to the earliest Christian Fathers, 
such as Clement of Alexandria and Ire- 
nseus. In a modified form it was taught by 
Tertullian, but was fully developed and for¬ 
mulated by Augustine, under the polemical 
heat of his controversy with Pelagius. At 
the time of the Reformation a similar reason 
operated to fix it deeply in the Lutheran 
system and in that of Calvin, it being a 
powerful weapon in the disputes of the Re¬ 
formers with Rome upon the doctrine of 
merit by good works. The influence of 
Erasmus is probably seen in the milder 
teaching of the Anglican Articles of Re¬ 
ligion, which hold (IX. Art.) that “ it is the 
fault and corruption of the nature of every 
man that naturally is engendered of the 
offspring of Adam, whereby man is very 
far gone from original righteousness, and is 
of his own nature inclined to evil, so that 
the flesh lusteth always contrary to the 
Spirit; and therefore in every person born 
into this world, it deserveth God’s wrath 
and damnation.” There is here a careful 
avoidance of the Tertullian doctrine of the 
natural heredity of Original Sin, as well as 
of the Augustinian view of total depravity 
of the will. The infection remains, how¬ 
ever, even in those who are regenerated. 
Baptism, therefore, does not absolutely 
cleanse away Original Sin, but only secures 
its pardon through the merits of Christ, 
and insures the help of the Holy Ghost to 
overcome its influences. From all this it is 
evident that the Scriptural teachings on the 
subject must be extremely obscure, and un¬ 
questionably they are so. The doctrine of 


St. Paul of the Second Adam seems to throw 
the most light upon this difficult and much- 
vexed problem. 

Adam is not only the natural progenitor, 
but the typal representative and federal 
head of the human race unregenerated. 
The moral taint and its condemnation which 
he incurred fell through him upon the 
whole race of men: “ By one man sin 
entered into the world, and death by sin; 
and so death passed upon all men, for that 
all have sinned (Rom. v. 12). “Death 
reigned from Adam to Moses, even over 
them that had not sinned after the simili¬ 
tude of Adam’s transgression” (v. t 14). But 
in the Incarnation, Christ, of whom Adam 
was in this respect the type, became the 
typal Representative and federal Head of 
Regenerated Humanity : “ For as by one 
man’s disobedience fnany were made sinners, 
so by the obedience of One shall many be 
made righteous” (Rom. v. 19). All men 
are naturally members of Adam. But in 
Baptism all men (baptized) are made mem¬ 
bers of Christ ; because they are made 
members of the Church which is His body, 
and the members of the body must be mem¬ 
bers of the Head. All, therefore, who are 
thus made partakers of the nature redeemed 
and glorified by the Incarnation become the 
lawful inheritors of that release from the 
power and consequences of their natural 
moral infection which was won by the sin¬ 
less life of Christ. “ For as in Adam all 
die, even so in Christ shall all be made 
alive.” But as the nature inherited from 
Adam was only redeemed, not changed, by 
the Incarnation, its taint of Original Sin 
was not removed, but only antagonized by 
the infusion of the Christ-Life, the in¬ 
dwelling of Christ’s Spirit, Christ Himself 
in His own Person being alone without sin. 
Hence the dual nature of which St. Paul is 
conscious, the evil constantly warring against 
the good and struggling for the mastery of 
the will; and hence, also, his attributing 
all his tendency to good, not to himself, but 
to the Spirit of Christ within him. “ All 
his sufficiency is of Christ.” But as this 
inheritance from the Second Adam is not 
by natural descent and concerns only man’s 
moral nature, so we may reasonably infer 
that the evil nature inherited from the first 
Adam, which also concerns only man’s 
moral life, is derived federally, rather than 
by natural descent; supposing, therefore, 
that it could be proven that Adam was not 
the natural progenitor of all men, it would 
in no way disturb the fact of the uni¬ 
versality of either Original Sin or its remedy 
in the Atonement. 

The subject of Original Sin has not been 
left entirely in the hands of theologians, 
but has been vigorously discussed by such 
philosophers as Kant, Schelling, and Hegel. 
Perhaps the most appropriate closing"of 
the consideration of- such a topic is that of 
Bishop Burnet’s treatise on the subject: 
“ One great and constant rule to be observed 




OPvNAMENTS 


543 


OKNAMENTS 


is to represent men’s opinions candidly, and 
to judge as favorably both of them and their 
opinions as may be; to bear with one another 
and not to disturb the peace and union of 
the Church by insisting too much and too 
peremptorily upon matters of such doubtful 
disputation, but willingly to leave them to 
all that liberty to which the Church has left 
them and which she still allows them.” 

Kev. Kobert Wilson, D.D. 

Ornaments. It is needless to show at 
length that by Divine command there were 
rich and costly ornaments provided for His 
service, and that this Law holds, since our 
Lord enacted that the Law should not pass 
away till it was fulfilled, nor that He obeyed 
the Law and fulfilled, its bloody sacrifices 
and took them away. But the Epistle to 
the Hebrews proceeds upon an interpretation 
of the Law of ritual, which makes it appar¬ 
ent that the beauty, decency, and order of 
service were not abrogated. The earliest 
Liturgies exhibit an elaborate ornament both 
of furniture and of vestment. Eusebius 
gives the tradition that St. John wore a 
petalon, or mitre, like the High-Priest. So 
coming on down, we find the ornaments in 
the Church’s service as beautiful as the cir¬ 
cumstances of each Diocese or parish per¬ 
mitted. 

Ornaments, in the legal sense of the word, 
are the necessary furniture and vessels for 
the due celebration of Divine service, es¬ 
pecially the Holy Communion, and the neces¬ 
sary and uniform vesture of the Priest that 
shall execute the holy ministry. And the 
definitions concerning these several orna¬ 
ments have in recent years formed the sub¬ 
ject of several famous Judgments in English 
Ecclesiastical Courts. It has been a moot 
question whether, and if so, how far, the 
English Ecclesiastical Law holds in this 
country. This has never been decided ; but 
the soundest legal opinion inclines clearly to 
the view that it stands with regard to the 
Church as the Common Law of England 
does to the Law of nearly all of the United 
States or the Civil Law to the Law of 
Louisiana. The Common Law of the 
times before 1776 a.d. is in force wherever 
it has not been directly abrogated by 
Statute Law. So the English Canon Law, 
as it was up to 1784-87 a.d., holds for 
the Church under common sense limitations, 
except where it is abrogated by our own 
Canon Law. It is limited by utter change 
of circumstances in some things, by the dif¬ 
ferent relations of Bishops, Priest, and people 
in other things. In all else it holds. So, then, 
the famous Ornaments rubric of Edward 
YI.'s First Prayer-Book is deemed by many 
to be in force. The question is, in many 
points of view, to be considered as still open, 
and probably it is much more in the Bishop’s 
power to decide it than is usually supposed, 
since by ancient rule it was an inherent part 
of the Bishop’s office to regulate the Liturgy 
of his Diocese. This is ceded to the Province 
or to the National Church, but belongs to the 


House of Bishops properly. The Ornaments 
rubrics are as follows,—they rest for their 
force on the rubric of 1662 a.d. in these 
terms : “ The Morning and Evening Prayer 
shall be used in the accustomed place of the 
Church, Chapel, or Chancel, except it shall 
be otherwise determined by the Ordinary of 
the Place; and the Chancels shall remain as 
they have done in times past. And here it 
is io be noted that such ornaments of the 
Church, and of the ministers thereof, at all 
times of their ministrations shall be retained 
and be in use as were in this Church of 
England , by the authority of Parliament, in 
the second year of the reign of King Ed¬ 
ward the Sixth.” The Bubric for the Vest¬ 
ments for Daily Prayer runs thus : “ In the 
saying or singing of Matins or Even-song, 
Bapting and Burying, the minister in parish 
churches, and chapels annexed to the same, 
shall use aSiirplice.” Then follows a clause 
as to dignitaries and graduates of colleges 
wearing the hood of their several degrees. 
“ And whensoever a Bishop shall celebrate 
the holy communion in the church, or ex¬ 
ecute any other public ministration, he shall 
have upon him, beside his rochette, a Sur¬ 
plice or alb, and a cope or vestment (i.e., 
chasuble), and also his pastoral stall in 
his hand or else borne or holden by his 
Chaplain.” The liubric for the Vestments at 
the celebration of the Holy Communion runs 
thus : “ Upon the day, and at the time ap¬ 
pointed for the ministration of the holy 
Communion, the Priest that shall execute the 
holy ministry shall put upon him the ves¬ 
ture appointed for that ministration, that is 
to say, a white Alb, plain, with a vestment 
or Cope. And where there be many Priests 
or Deacons, there so many shall be ready to 
help the Priest in the ministration as shall 
be requisite, and shall have upon them like¬ 
wise the vestures appointed for the ministry, 
that is to say, Albs with tunicles.” 

The furniture and vessels used in Edward 
VI.’s second year have given rise to the 
greatest controversies, and even to differing 
and sometimes opposing Judgments. The 
only plan followed seems to have been to 
discover what was in use then by the lists 
and inventories, which have been transmit¬ 
ted to us. The list given here is merely 
what was considered legal in the Purchas 
Judgment of 1871 a.d. 1. A cross, but not 
on the Communion-Table, or attached to it. 
2. A Credence-Table as made necessary by 
the rubric concerning the elements. 3. The 
plain linen cloth covering the Table at the 
time of the ministration. 4. The “ carpet” of 
silk or decent stuff, ordered by the Canon of 
1603 a.d. , to cover the Table during Di¬ 
vine Service, other than at the Communion, 
might be changed, and be of various colors 
and ornamentation, subject to the discretion 
of the Ordinary. 5. The Organ. 

With regard to vestments, the surplice is 
most nearly what we know of the vestments 
of the first four or five centuries of the 
Christian history. The vestments ordered 





OHTHODOXY 


544 


PALM-SUN DAY 


by Edward’s First Prayer-Book, if white 
is the dominant color, is nearly correspond¬ 
ing to the dress of the ministry from about 
500 a.d. to 900 a.d. Vestments later than 
these are the inventions which were intro¬ 
duced at the worst period of the Church’s 
History (900 a.d. to 1100 a.d.). 

Authorities: Rev. Chas. Marriott’s Vest¬ 
ments, Hoffman’s Ritual Law, Stephen’s 
Sealed Books, with legal notes, Prayer- 
Book Interleaved, Blunt’s C. P. Annotated, 
Smith’s Dictionary of Christian Antiquities. 

Orthodoxy. The holding the true inter¬ 
pretation of “ the Faith once committed to 
the Saints.” The acceptance of the Doc¬ 
trines of the Catholic Faith. The test of 
orthodoxy must be the general consensus 
of the Teachers of the Church. What was 
the true sense of the Doctrines given in the 


New Testament has produced the depart¬ 
ment of Theology, and the discussion of 
these Doctrines results in a general consent, 
which is acknowledged to give the orthodox 
interpretation. In the Fathers we find the 
earlier orthodox teaching. In the Councils 
we have the dogmatic definitions of the 
Articles of the Faith. In the Creeds we 
have the Rule of Faith. So he holds the 
orthodox faith who holds (a) the Creed, ( b ) 
the definitions of the four general Councils, 
(c) the interpretation of those definitions in 
the line of general teaching of the Church. 
But while this is true, it must be added that 
without surrendering it he also submits his 
private judgment upon Scripture, its con¬ 
tents and its inspiration, to the definitions 
and authoritative interpretation of the 
Church. 


♦ ♦ 


P. 


Psedobaptism. Infant baptism. For 
argument and proof in behalf of infant 
baptism, see Baptism. 

Pagans. “ The worshipers of many 
gods, the heathen, who were so called by the 
Christians because, when Constantine and 
his successors forbade the worship of the 
heathen deities in the cities, its adherents 
retired to the villages ( pagi , hence pagani , 
countrymen), where they could practice 
their ceremonies in secrecy and safety. In 
the Middle Ages this name was given to all 
who were not Jews or Christians, theirs be¬ 
ing considered the only true religion and 
divine revelations; but in more modern 
times Mohammedans, who worship the one 
supreme God of the Jews and Christians, 
are not called Pagans.' 1 (Encyc. Amer.) As 
Christianity had its first great success in 
cities, the Epistles in the New Testament 
are largely directed to them, as Rome, Cor¬ 
inth, etc. The term heathen means dwell¬ 
ers on a heath, and refers to those who 
dwelt in the country. In the city men con¬ 
gregate in masses, and are more easily in¬ 
fluenced together than in quiet country dis¬ 
tricts. Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Pall. From Pallium, a cloak thrown 
over the shoulders. It was originally an 
article of dress. It was in use as the coarse 
outer garment of the monks. From a cloak 
it became reduced to a long stole-like orna¬ 
ment, with a hole in the centre to put over 
the neck. At first it was given to Bishops 
by the Emperors as a mark of honor and 
privilege, as Anthimus of Constantinople 
received it from the Emperor Justinian, and 
when he was expelled of his See he returned 
the Pall to the Emperor. Later the Pall 


became more common in the East under the 
name Omophorion, and is worn by Bishops 
and Patriarchs. But in the West it was re¬ 
served as a special mark of honor given by 
the Pope to such Archbishops as he would 
honor, or upon whom he would confer cer¬ 
tain vicarial powers. 

But the word is used in another sense 
also. It is the cloth which is thrown over 
the coffin at a funeral. When used, it should 
be of black or of violet cloth with a cross of 
white upon it, the cross to extend across 
the whole of the Pall. 

It is sometimes used to mean the Veils 
which should be put over the Cup and the 
Paten to prevent insects from falling upon 
the Elements, and sometimes the single Veil 
of the Cup. This Pall should be of fine 
linen about a foot square. 

Palm-Sunday. The Sunday next before 
Easter. This is a very usual name for it, 
but it has dropped out of use in the English 
Prayer-Book, and has lost many of the cere¬ 
monies which from the tenth century were 
in use upon this Sunday, which ushers in 
the solemnities of Holy Week. 

These ceremonies of blessing the palm 
branches, which were then distributed and 
borne in procession through the church, are 
of mediasval date. But the Sunday bore 
this name of Palm-Sunday fourteen centu¬ 
ries ago. The Collect expresses the tender 
love of God in the humiliation of His Son 
for our sakes, and the prayers for the gift of 
humility. The Epistle taken from the 
Epistle to the Philippians sets forth both the 
equality of the Son of God, His humiliation 
and His exaltation, and the worship due to 
Him. While the Gospel begins the won- 








PANTHEISM 


545 


PARABLES 


derful recital of that passion and death by 
which our souls are redeemed. 

Pantheism. A subtle and very attractive 
form of religious belief. It was very an¬ 
cient, occupying the thoughts of acute rea- 
soners in India. In its relation to Chris¬ 
tianity it appeared through Egyptian in¬ 
fluence in the Gnostic theories, after having 
fallen with the Gnostics. After several cen¬ 
turies of comparative abeyance it reappeared 
in the midst of the Christian Faith, under 
the influence of the famous John Erigena 
(850 a.d.). It passed into Spain, and was in 
vogue among the Arabs. Its latest authori¬ 
tative expounder was Spinoza, and from him 
it has passed into much of modern thought, 
especially in late German speculation. For 
its history the reader must go to the His¬ 
tories of Philosoph}^ (c/. Schwegler, Morrell, 
and Tenneman). “ It deifies the universe, it 
amalgamates together the notions of the 
Finite and Infinite, unity and universal 
substance. The system is a necessary result 
of the negation of the two received points 
of Christian Faith : that the world is created 
and that truth has been revealed to man 
from heaven. The old crux, ex nihilo nihil 
fit , is repeated. The universe, as it is now, 
is stated to have existed from all eternity ; 
if, then, the world has had a necessary exist¬ 
ence without a beginning, it is a necessary 
condition of the Divine substance as being 
co-eternal with it. Again, a direct revela¬ 
tion of the truth is denied. It is not ques¬ 
tioned that man may possess the truth, but 
that he can gain a knowledge of it from any 
other source than the energy of human rea¬ 
son. He works it out for himself. There¬ 
fore the Divine substance and the Divine 
truth are identified with the spirit of man. 
Moreover, since human reason is a variable, 
changeful element, self-consistent at one 
while, self-contradictory at another, it is 
therefore a finite intelligence, but the Divine 
intelligence is infinite; nevertheless the 
finite and the infinite are also one, of which 
later the finite is only a particular mode. 
And further, since a divinely revealed sys¬ 
tem of truth is devised, and human reason 
is declared to be the only source of truth ; 
since also there is no such thing for man as 
absolute truth, but only such modes of it as 
are discoverable by his finite intelligence ; 
therefore all opinions stand upon the same 
level, whether they affect religion, philoso¬ 
phy, or political principle. They may be 
expected to wax and wane, to ebb and flow, 
like everything else in this world. Truth, 
like time, is in a state of perpetual flux.” 
(Blunt’s Diet, of Hist, and Doc. Theol.,sub 
voc.) This concise statement of the main 
doctrine of Pantheism, opposed, as is pointed 
out, to two prime facts asserted by Chris¬ 
tianity, the Personality of God and the fact 
of a Revelation, carries its own refutation 
with it to every Christian mind. The iden¬ 
tification of Deity with the universe leads 
practically to the most degrading Nature 
worship ; the denial that absolute truth lies 
35 


without man and is imparted to him by 
some revelation leads to the practical de¬ 
struction of all social ethics. It is by these 
things that the true value of a doctrine is 
to be set. The true question to be asked is, 
What does its teaching result in, in practice ? 
not, What is the intellectual setting forth of 
its fundamental propositions? Valued in 
this way, we can easily see what the theory 
of Pantheism is worth to the human race, 
despite its subtility and apparent philosophy. 

Papa. Derived from the Greek nannag, a 
word which passed into common use, and has 
so continued, as the name for the Presbyters 
of the Greek Church. It was early used so 
in the West, but became restricted to the 
Bishops and Abbots, and finally was confined 
to the Pope, who claimed it as his special 
title at or about the middle of the fifth 
century. (Vide Pope.) 

Parables. In teaching children com¬ 
parisons are constantly used, because they 
must be taught what they know not by ref¬ 
erence to what they know. 

Men are children in religious matters, and 
what “eye hath not seen nor ear heard” 
(1 Cor. ii. 9) must be learned by what eye 
hath seen and what ear has heard. The use 
of parables was common among the Jews. 
The comparison of the death of children to 
the plucking of rosebuds to bloom in heaven 
is a Jewish parable. This mode of instruc¬ 
tion was in vogue among the Persians and 
Arabians, and in this country the North 
American Indians are noted for their figu¬ 
rative speech. Says Bacon, “As hiero¬ 
glyphics preceded letters, so parables pre¬ 
ceded arguments ; and the force of parables 
ever was and will be great, as being clearer 
than arguments, and more apposite than real 
examples.” The Scriptures are loaded with 
figurative language. When Nathan would 
rebuke David* he does it by the parable of 
the ewe lamb (2 Sam. xii.). When the wise 
woman of Tekoah would help Absalom, she 
uses similar means to gain her end (2 Sam. 
xiv.). Of our Lord’s teaching it is written 
(Matt. xiii. 34), “ Without a parable spake 
He not unto them.” So the Great Supper, 
the Prodigal Son, the Shepherd, the Fig- 
tree, or the Lily, yield lessons at His com¬ 
mand, and “ the common people heard Him 
gladly.” A woman once said, “ The parts of 
the Bible I like best are the likes.” The 
best preachers and Sunday-school teachers 
must imitate our Lord in this respect. Ar¬ 
guments have been styled the pillars of a 
discourse, and illustrations the windows. 
The Holy Scriptures form a book of rich 
pictures. Palestine held in a small com¬ 
pass, hardly possible in other lands, rock, 
tower, stream, forest, desert, gulf, sea, 
watchman, vine-dresser, robber, and beast 
of prey. All could give religious lessons. 
The gentle dove told of the Holt Spirit, 
and the viewless wind of the new birth of 
the soul. 

It has been supposed that some of our 
Saviour’s parables narrate real events ; in 





PARABLES 


546 


PARADISE 


any case the ideas are true for humanity, if 
not related in regard to any special person. 
Our Lord’s parables secured attention as 
being attractive stories and touching sensi¬ 
ble objects, and giving occupation to the 
mind in seeking their meaning. (For beau¬ 
tiful expositions of these parables, see 
Wordsworth’s Introd. to St. Luke, on the 
Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son, and 
Farrar’s Life of Christ, on “ The Sower,” 
and Trench’s Parables.) The “ various re¬ 
ception” of the Gospel is shown in the 
Sower, the “ mingled results” in the Tares 
and the Net; the “ priceless value” in the 
Treasure and the Pearl; and its “ slow, grad¬ 
ual extension” in the Mustard-Seed, the 
Leaven, and “ the Springing Corn.” As to 
the vividness and picturesqueness of the par¬ 
ables of our Lord, Geikie writes as follows: 
“ Analogies hitherto unsuspected between 
familiar natural facts and spiritual phenom¬ 
ena ; lessons of duty enforced by some sim¬ 
ple imaginary narrative or incident; strik¬ 
ing parallels and comparisons, which made 
the homeliest trifles symbols of the highest 
truths, abound in all the discourses of 
Jesus.” “ Nothing was henceforth left un¬ 
used. The light, the darkness, the houses 
around, the games of childhood, the sight¬ 
less wayside beggar, the foxes of the hills, 
the leathern bottles hung up from every 
rafter, the patched or new garment, and 
even the noisy hen amidst her chickens, 
served, in turn, to illustrate some lofty 
truth. The sower oif the hill-side at hand, 
the flaming weeds among the corn, the 
common mustard plant, the leaven in the 
woman’s dough, the treasure disclosed by the 
passing plowshare, the pearl brought by the 
traveling merchant from distant lands for 
sale at Bethsaida or Tiberias,—at Philip’s 
court or that of Antipas,—the draw-net seen 
daily on the lake, the pitiless servant, the 
laborers in the vineyards around, any de¬ 
tail of every-day life, was elevated, as occa¬ 
sion demanded, to be the vehicle of the sub- 
limest lessons. Others have uttered parables, 
but Jesus so far transcends them that He 
may justly be called the creator of this mode 
of instruction.” 

Sometimes, as Westcott shows, the para- 
.bles in St. John’s Gospel are transformed 
into words and acts. According to a figure 
daily and hourly before men, Christ is 
“ the Door” (St'. John x. 9), the True Vine 
(ch. xv.). The “cornof wheat” preaches of 
the resurrection (ch. xii. 24). Our Lord in 
taking a towel and girding Himself and 
washing His disciples’ feet acted out a para¬ 
ble of humility (ch. xiii.). John the Baptist 
gives a short parable in likening himself to 
“ the friend of the bridegroom” (ch. iii. 29). 
Compare our Lord’s saying in Matt. ix. 15: 
“ Can the children of the bridechamber 
mourn as long as the bridegroom is with 
them ?” 

To the devout soul in its Heavenly Fa¬ 
ther’s house even here on earth all things 
are reminders of God. 


Authorities: Trench on Parables, Bacon's 
Advancement of Learning, Rev. Dr. H. C. 
McCook’s Scripture Object Lessons, E. H. 
Plumptrein William Smith’s Dictionary of 
the Bible, Foster’s Cyclopaedia of Illustra¬ 
tions, Illustrations of the Catechism of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church, Thompson’s 
Land and Book, Farrar’s and Geikie’s 
Lives of Christ, Westcott’s Introduction 
to the Gospels, Rev. Dr. H. Tullidge’s Tri¬ 
umphs of the Bible, “ L. P. H.” in Kitto’s 
Cyclopaedia of Bible Literature. 

Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Paraclete. The name given to the Holy 
Spirit by our Lord in His discourse in the 
last chapter of St. John’s Gospel. It is 
there somewhat strainedly translated Com¬ 
forter, but its chief meaning is Advocate. 
It is a title of one of the offices of our 
Lord, and is properly translated Advocate 
in the text, “We have an advocate with the 
Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 
John ii. 1). It is one of the special offices 
of the Holy Ghost to be the Advocate, the 
Pleader of the Truth, before the bar of our 
conscience, our will, and our reason. He is 
our guide, our leader into all truth, as we 
heed His pleading with our souls. And 
thence, in a secondary sense, He becomes 
our Consoler, our Comforter, as He by His 
very pleading for and presentation of the 
Faith comforts us in our feebleness, and con¬ 
soles us in our shrinking because of our sins. 
But the early English meaning of the title 
Comforter was Strengthened, or Supporter, 
which was more nearly the general use of 
the word Paraclete in our Lord’s discourse. 
But his office of Advocate is also set forth 
by St. Paul: “ The Spirit itself beareth wit¬ 
ness with our spirit, that we are the children 
of God” (Rom. viii. 16). Nor is His office 
of Advocate confined to pleading with us, 
but He is also our pleader, making interces¬ 
sion for us, as well as helping our infirmi¬ 
ties. The title Paraclete, then, while given 
to Christ, is also, and chiefly, given to the 
Holy Ghost, describing His office towards 
us and His work in us as Advocate, and as 
Strengthener and Consoler. 

Paradise. This word seems to come from 
the Sanscrit, parrde$a , a region of sur¬ 
passing beauty, and the Armenian pardes, 
a garden or park. It is a place planted with 
trees, or pleasure-grounds (Solomon’s Song 
iv. 13; Neh. ii. 8; Eccl. ii. 5). In theSep- 
tuagint it is used for the Garden of Eden 
(Gen. ii. 8). Xenophon makes use of the 
word for the pleasure-gardens of Persia. In 
the New Testament the word advances to sig¬ 
nify the region in Hades—the invisible 
world—where faithful souls await their per¬ 
fect bliss. “Their (the Jews*’) meaning, 
therefore, was this: that as paradise, or the 
Garden of Eden, was a place of great 
beauty, pleasure, and tranquillity, so the 
state of separate souls was a state of peace 
and excellent delights” (J. Taylor). “To¬ 
day,” said our Lord to the penitent thief, 
“ shalt thou be with Me in Paradise” (St 





PARADISE 


547 


PARISH 


Luke xxiii. 43). But the word goes higher 
than this inferior Paradise, and also means 
“ The Paradise of God” (Rev. ii. 7), that 
is, “ the third heaven” (2 Cor. xii. 2, 4). St. 
Paul, hy using “paradise” and “third 
heaven” here as of the same meaning, in¬ 
dicates the place where the spirits of the 
blessed dwell with God. The imagery in 
Rev. ii. 7, is drawn from Gen. ii. 8, and so 
Old and New Testament combine. The 
Jews spoke of the upper and under paradises. 
So the word grows from “ any garden of de¬ 
light” to the Garden of Eden, and then to 
the joyful resting-place of souls, and lastly 
to Heaven, so revealed religion exalts a 
word “ from glory to glory” (2 Cor. iii. 18). 
In the inferior Paradise the souls of the 
righteous enjoy a foretaste of future bliss 
and await the Resurrection and Day of 
Judgment, when they will be reunited to 
their bodies, and “ be admitted to the in¬ 
finite and everlasting glory of Heaven.” 
In St. Luke xvi. 23, our Lord represents 
Lazarus as being in Abraham’s bosom, as if 
reclining joyfully at a feast. He adopted a 
Jewish expression for Paradise. Christ’s 
body was laid in a garden (St.John xix. 41, 
42), and his faithful ones shall find the grave 
a garden of Paradise, and they shall be like 
“ the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast 
out the dead” (Isa. xxvii. 19). 

Whatever may be concluded, of St. Paul’s 
vision or visions, the general and proper an¬ 
cient idea of Paradise is that it is, as W. 
Archer Butler styles it, “ the antechamber 
of Heaven,” where the eye may be prepared 
for “ the luminous Presence of the Ineffable 
One, a gentle twilight between the Night 
of this life and the Morning of Immortal¬ 
ity.” In the mystical imagery of Henry 
Suso, Paradise is painted as “ the meadows 
of the bright May, the true valley of de¬ 
light” where the martyrs shine “ in their 
robes red like roses,” and the confessors in 
“ splendid beauty” and the virgins “in an¬ 
gelic purity.” But this and much more 
Suso himself regarded as an image, and he 
thought that true happiness consisted in 
union with God. Happiness lies in charac¬ 
ter rather than place. Paradise is the home 
of divine life; the Rabbis rightly called it 
“the land of life.” Such life is opposed to 
sin, which is the soul’s death. Sin drove 
man from the Paradise of Eden ; the Second 
Adam, Christ Jesus, opens the door of a 
new and better Paradise. 

The right view of Paradise is a great help 
to the toiling soul in this world. A thin 
veil divides it from a place of rest and 
felicity, where streams of living water shall 
quench its thirst. While the paradise or 
park is not the Great King’s Palace, it 
lies on the way to it, and is a preparation 
for it. As the dead in Christ pass away 
one by one, Christian mourners sorrow not 
as those who “have no hope” (1 Thess. iv. 
13), but can think of the departed as in a 
state of great happiness, and freed from all 
pain. 


“ ’Tis sweet, as year by year we lose 
Friends out of sight, in faith to muse 
How grows in Paradise our store.” 

Keble on the Burial of the Dead. 

Paradise is not a mere theory, but a place 
where the reader may be to-morrow. • 

Authorities: Gesenius’s Heb. and Eng. 
Lexicon, Robinson’s Gr. and Eng. Lex. of the 
N. T., Trench on the Epistles to the Seven 
Churches, Commentaries of Wordsworth, 
Whitby, A. Clarke, and Bloomfield, Mc- 
Knight on the Epistles, Hagenbach’s Hist, 
of Doctrines, Wm. Archer Butler’s Ser¬ 
mons, Fairbairn’s Typology of Scripture. 

Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Paraphrase. The word is used to signify 
the enlarging of a text by the interpolation 
of descriptive words, or by putting the same 
ideas into more diffuse and clearer language. 
The Targums, the Chaldee translations of 
some of the books of the Bible, are para¬ 
phrases also, and give the interpretation of 
the text current at that time among the 
Jews. At whatever date the Targums may be 
placed, still they contain remarkable para¬ 
phrases, which show that the Jews before 
our Lord’s coming held the clue to the 
true meaning of the prophecies concerning 
Him. Paraphrases of the Gospels became 
more common in the mediaeval ages, and 
several very valuable commentaries have 
been published upon this plan. The danger 
of interpolating a meaning not cognate to 
the text, or of doing something worse, makes 
the value of such works really very uncer¬ 
tain. 

Parclose. Screens separating chapels, 
especially those at the east end of the aisles, 
from the body of the church, are called 
parcloses. • 

Pardon. Vide Absolution. 

Parish. The English Parish in Amer¬ 
ica. —The word parish is derived through 
the French and Latin from the Greek 
7r apoiKta, which originally meant either a 
collection of men not enjoying full rights of 
Greek citizenship, or a class distinct from 
the rest of the people. In the latter sense 
the word was the designation of a body of 
Christians living in a city and its neighbor¬ 
hood, to distinguish them from the other 
inhabitants. Gradually, as Christianity 
spread over Western Europe, and the 
Church organization became more deter¬ 
mined, it adjusted itself to the civil and 
military divisions existing under the Roman 
provincial system, and the parochia obtained 
a territorial meaning, and was applied to 
the district under the care of a Bishop. 
Under the Roman system any organization 
such as the present parish would have been 
almost impossible, and would have been 
prevented also by the centring of things 
ecclesiastical and lay in the hands of the 
Priests, and through them in the Bishop. It 
is not known positively when the parochia 
was introduced into England, but Gildas, 
writing about the sixth century, used it to 
denote the territory under the jurisdiction 







PARISH 


548 


PARISH 


of the Bishop in Wales. The local divisions 
introduced into the island by the English 
were but reproductions and developments of 
the conquerors’ organization in Germany, 
and they were but little, if in any degree, 
atfected by the Romano-Celtic institutions 
which they supplanted. Christianity was 
reintroduced into England from two di¬ 
rections, and by different methods. The 
policy of the Roman missionaries was to 
convert the ruler and to organize down¬ 
ward. The practice of Aidan and his suc¬ 
cessors in the North was to labor among the 
people, establishing mission stations here 
and there, and to work up to the king. 

The two methods, modified by each other, 
resulted in the Priest’s being naturally con¬ 
fined in his ministrations to the territory of 
the township, or of a number of townships 
united, while the Bishop superintended the 
religious work of the shire or kingdom. 
Tlius the civil and ecclesiastical organiza¬ 
tions, with no apparent intention of so doing, 
were developing side by side, and the Eng¬ 
lishman’s duties to Church and State were 
becoming more nearly related, and it is 
probable that the laity began to claim a 
share in directing church affairs. The ten¬ 
dency to coalesce was greatly increased, 
though modified, by the unifying work of 
Theodore of Tarsus, the traditional founder 
of the English parish in its restricted sense. 
But, according to Pearson, parochia in 
England meant, up to the time of the Nor¬ 
man Conquest, the Bishop’s province, and 
it is found with this meaning in the writings 
of Lanfranc, Anselm, and other ecclesias¬ 
tics, although the smaller district, with its 
civil and religious organization, must have 
been in existence. One result,of the Con¬ 
quest was the conferring upon lords of land 
the right to found churches on their lands, 
which corresponded frequently in extent 
with the old township, and by the end of the 
twelfth century “ the Parochial system, with 
all its legal apparatus, advowson, presenta¬ 
tion, institution, induction, sequestration, 
etc.,” had begun to displace the diocesan 
system. From that time the parish may be 
considered as the ecclesiastical form of the 
township, for the boundaries of the parishes 
and of the original units were identical, and 
in later days the personality of the older 
institution was in many instances absorbed 
into that of the younger. When the people 
of the township assembled to consider the 
affairs of the Church, the meeting was called 
a Yestry, from the place of meeting, origi¬ 
nally the vestiarium , or apartment for the 
clerical garments. Many of the powers and 
duties of the township were bestowed upon 
the courts and officers of the manor, and 
the vestry had to attend to all business, 
civil and ecclesiastical, that did not come 
under the jurisdiction of the manor. 

This rule brought about a confusion of the 
terms parish, vill, and town, though the 
word parish was used generally in referring 
to Church matters. From its beginning 


the ecclesiastical side of the parish was in¬ 
clined to supersede the civil side, and this 
was the condition of affairs at the time of 
the first English settlements in America. 
The various classes and kinds of colonists may 
be, for convenience, considered as having 
been divided into two main streams, the first 
formed of those who settled New England, 
whose doctrines and practices have moulded 
the ideas of what to-day is known as the 
North ; the second consisting of the first 
English dwellers in the region south of the 
present Mason and Dixon’s Line, who in¬ 
fluenced the life of the South. Massachu¬ 
setts may be taken as representing the 
former, Virginia as a type of the latter. 
The men who founded Virginia and exer¬ 
cised the formative influence upon her insti¬ 
tutions were in perfect accord with the pre¬ 
tensions of royalty and faithful adherents 
of the Church of England, and it can be 
safely said that in the golden age of the col¬ 
ony the predominant features of the customs 
and laws of the English at home were repro¬ 
duced in Virginia. There it was that the 
parish, as it existed in England, was insti¬ 
tuted, although, on account of the peculiar 
circumstances of the young estate, it was, as 
a local unit, preceded in time of organiza¬ 
tion by the military and civil divisions, 
and, in consequence, never possessed civil 
powers entirely equal to those of the same 
institution in the mother-country. On the 
other hand, the colonists of Massachusetts, 
originally members of the English Church, 
either came to Arherica out of sympathy 
with the Establishment, or in their new 
home learned to cherish another form of 
church polity. The political unit in the 
colony was the township. But Parker 
wrote: “They founded a civil State upon 
a basis which should support the worship 
of God according to their conscientious 
convictions of duty; and an ecclesiastical 
State combined with it, which should sus¬ 
tain and be in harmony with the civil gov¬ 
ernment, excluding what was antagonistic 
to the welfare of either.” 

In the union of the State and the Church 
there was produced an ecclesiastical govern¬ 
ment which was a combination of Independ¬ 
ency and Presbyterianism, and which de¬ 
veloped in course of time into Congregation¬ 
alism. Such terms as “ Church and Town,” 
and “Members of the Church and inhab¬ 
itants of the Town,” did not signify, there¬ 
fore, an English parish, but an English 
township, with provisions for the support of 
religion. The word parish was used in New 
England to denote the township from the 
ecclesiastical point of view as well as a por¬ 
tion of a township not possessing town rights, 
—but this was not the true English parish. 
The township of N ew England was the parish 
of England shorn of its ecclesiastical powers, 
and the Virginia parish was the English 
parish stripped of some of its civil functions. 
In Virginia the parish, both as a territorial 
division and as an institution, was a devel- 





PARISH 


549 


PARISH 


opment, and in this respect differed from the 
same institution in Maryland, the Carolinas, 
and Georgia, which was fastened upon the 
body politic almost full grown and in¬ 
fluenced by, if not modeled directed upon, 
that in Virginia. Its beginning may be 
seen in the order of the Assembly in 1624 
a.d., that every plantation should have a 
place set apart for worship, and that “ there 
should be in every parish a publick garnary” 
where should be stored by every person over 
eighteen years of age, within a year after his 
arrival in the colony, a bushel of corn, which 
was to “be disposed for the public uses of 
every parish by the major part of the free¬ 
men.” The parishes in Virginia were at 
first co-extensive with the plantations, which 
lay along the rivers, and which afterwards 
became counties. Later the limits of county 
and parish were often the same. To meet 
the requirements of an increased population 
the original parish was divided, and smaller 
parishes thus formed became in a few years 
the bases for new counties. In Maryland 
and South Carolina parishes were originally 
divisions of the counties, and in the former 
province the hundred, which seems to have 
been laid out according to nature’s bounds, 
was the basis for the new division, although 
not an integral part of the parish, but of the 
county. Some parishes, such as those lying 
between the rivers James and York, were 
very small, containing perhaps not more than 
thirty-six square miles, but some, on the con¬ 
trary, were very large, for Augusta Parish 
in Virginia extended from the Blue Ridge 
to the Mississippi River, and many in Mary¬ 
land contained over five hundred square 
miles. The consent of the Assembly had to 
be given before a new parish could be 
formed, and the inhabitants of the new parish 
paid all debts due the old one before they 
were legally organized. To meet the wants 
of all, chapels of easement were erected in 
very large parishes, and services were held in 
them when the mother-church was closed. 

Governor Johnson, of South Carolina, 
was instructed about the year 1730 a.d. to lay 
out in the province eleven towns, each con¬ 
taining 20,000 square acres. Each of these 
towns were to be erected into a parish, which 
was to extend several miles around the 
town, and when one hundred heads of 
families had settled in the parish, it was to 
enjoy all the privileges of any other parish. 
This"last provision was not carried out, at 
least for several years, for in a pamphlet 
description of South Carolina, printed in 
1761 a.d., it was stated that “some towns 
which by the King’s instructions have a, 
right to be erected into Parishes, and to send 
two Members, are not allowed to send any.” 
By a law of 1720 a.d. the South Carolina 
parishes became the election districts for 
representatives in the lower house of the 
Assembly, and they continued to send their 
delegates after they had changed from eccle¬ 
siastical to secular divisions. The same 
right, in somewhat modified form, was en¬ 


joyed by the Virginians, but experience 
soon limited it to cases in which the parish 
had some special measures to bring before 
the Assembly, and before the eighteenth 
century the practice had ceased. The par¬ 
ishes could make by-laws when no general 
law was applicable to certain circumstances. 
This arrangement did not work well, so it 
was changed to the right of electing two 
representatives of the parish to be assessors 
to the justices of the county court in making 
by-laws for the county. The first person in 
the parish was the minister. The Bishop 
of London ex officio had the general super¬ 
vision of the Church in the American colo¬ 
nies, and in theory he sent over ministers to 
be presented by vacant parishes, and they 
were inducted by the governor. In practice, 
however, things were quite different. In 
South Carolina, by law, the parishioners 
were empowered to elect their rector, which 
was the same idea as that represented by the 
Massachusetts town-meetings choosing its 
minister, or by the poll-parish of Pennsyl-. 
vania selecting the candidate of the “So¬ 
ciety for the Propagation of the Gospel in 
Foreign Parts.” The Churchmen of Mary¬ 
land recognized as a rule the governor’s 
right of induction, but there were instances 
when this right was strongly disputed, the 
opposition being carried to such ends as 
locking the unwelcome minister out of the 
church, and threatening him with physical 
force. In Virginia, the matter was in dis¬ 
pute from 1662 a.d. until the Revolution, 
when it was settled by the institution of the 
voluntary system. The vestries acknowl¬ 
edged that the governor could induct a 
minister into a parish that had remained 
vacant over twelve successive months, but 
they evaded this right by employing their 
rectors by the year, and if, after some time, 
all were satisfied, the vestry would present 
the minister to the governor for induction. 
A great deal of the trouble arose no doubt 
from a confusion of the terms induction and 
presentation, but so strong was the feeling 
of the people against what they believed an 
invasion of their rights, that they submitted 
to the makeshift of lay-reading, although 
the vestries were thereby brought sometimes 
under suspicion of misappropriating parish 
funds that should have been devoted to the 
support of a rector. Matters came to such 
a crisis that an appeal was taken to England, 
and Sir Edward Korthey delivered an opin¬ 
ion which the Virginia authorities con¬ 
strued against the vestries, and the governors 
foolishly tried not only to induct but also 
to present ministers to parishes, but the 
vestries stoutly maintained their position. 
There were, however, exceptions on both 
sides, some governors refusing to urge their 
claims, some vestries accepting whomsoever 
the governors sent. 

Ministers were supported in Maryland for 
a few years by private subscriptions, and 
then by an annual poll-tax on every taxable 
of forty pounds, afterwards thirty pounds, 




PARISH 


550 


PARISH 


of tobacco ; in South Carolina their salary 
was made up by money from the Society, by 
private contributions, and by State aid ; the 
ministers of Virginia at first were paid from 
the results of an annual levy of ten pounds 
of tobacco and a bushel of corn for every 
ground-tiller. This salary was increased 
until, in 1696 a.d., it was fixed at not less 
than sixteen thousand pounds of tobacco a 
year. In the colonies, especially in Mary¬ 
land, parochial libraries for the use of the 
rectors were provided through the untiring 
efforts of the Rev. Dr. Thomas Bray, the 
first commissary sent to Maryland. There 
was generally in each parish a glebe for the 
use and support of the rector, who was also 
assisted by occasional fees for a baptism, 
wedding, or funeral. To the minister was 
joined a clerk, who in the incumbent’s ab¬ 
sence could perform all the Church services, 
except matrimony and the two sacraments. 
He published banns, read the responses, 
for Prayer-Books were scarce in the colo¬ 
nies, and set the tunes until the introduction 
of organs at quite a later date. He was 
sometimes the vestry clerk, and acted as col¬ 
lector of the tithes, similar in many respects 
to the town rates of New England. The 
church door, in accordance with an old Eng¬ 
lish custom, and for convenience, was the 
place for advertising matters of all kinds,— 
the lists of taxed bachelors, notices of per¬ 
sons leaving the country, the extent of pa¬ 
trol districts, and the crying of boats or hogs 
that had been found or caught. The parish 
affairs were administered by select vestries, 
varying in different colonies in numbers, in 
powers, in the length of their tenure of office, 
and in minor points. The select vestries, 
which found their parallel in the selectmen 
and assessors of a New England town, were 
probably suggested by the select committees 
of the English vestry, and were adopted in 
America because'of the impossibility of 
gathering together all the parishioners for 
the transaction of business. The minister, 
when present, was the presiding officer, 
though it was not unusual for the church¬ 
warden to occupy the position. In Virginia 
as early as 1615 a.d., the minister and four 
most religious men looked after the moral 
and spiritual welfare of the people, besides 
keeping the church in repair and fit for the 
worship of God. In this body one writer 
sees a resemblance to a Dutch consistory, 
but its prototype is more likely to be found 
in the 11 reeve and four best men,” who rep¬ 
resented the town or parish in the hundred- 
court and shire-moot of England. A some¬ 
what similar idea found expression in 
Maryland, where, during the absence of an 
incumbent, the principal, i.e ., the eldest, 
vestryman, with four of the next oldest ves¬ 
trymen, had to account to the governor for 
the expenditures of the parish poll-tax. In 
1643 a.d. the Virginia Assembly made a 
law requiring a vestry to be held in every 
parish, and 11 that the most sufficient and 
selected men be chosen and joined to the 


minister and church-wardens to be of that 
Vestrie,” for the care of the church, lay¬ 
ing of levies, etc. There does not seem to 
have been any limit to the number of vestry¬ 
men until 1660 a.d. , when it was found that 
twelve would be sufficient, although in the 
eighteenth century there were still some 
irregularities, arising, no doubt, from mis¬ 
understandings. At the time of the Bacon 
rebellion in 1676 a.d., an unsuccessful at¬ 
tempt was made to restrict the term of office 
to three years at one time. When once 
elected, the vestry filled vacancies in its 
body; but vacancies rarely existed, except on 
account of death, removal from the parish, 
or old age, unless for incapability or misde¬ 
meanors the whole vestry was dissolved by 
act of Assembly. 

The Church of England was established, 
and parishes were organized, in Mary¬ 
land by an act of 1692 a.d., and in the 
vestry were combined features which had 
already appeared or were afterwards prom¬ 
inent in similar bodies in other provinces. 
Six vestrymen were chosen at the first elec¬ 
tion by the legal voters of the parish. On 
each succeeding Easter-Monday the two eld¬ 
est vestrymen were voted out, and the vacan¬ 
cies filled by two others elected in the same 
way. Neither of the ex-vestrymon were 
liable to serve during the next three years. 
Everywhere the qualifications of vestrymen 
were nearly the same. They were to be sober 
and discreet, and not members of the Church 
of Rome, and they were often men of good 
repute and occupying places of honor and 
trust in the community. Governors, mem¬ 
bers of the Council, and other high func¬ 
tionaries held the office, and many made it 
a step to political preferment. In the Vir¬ 
ginia Convention of 1776 a.d. there were 
not three who were not or had not been 
vestrymen. When elected they took the 
oath of allegiance, supremacy, abjuration, 
the test, etc., varying according to the times. 
Although church-wardens existed in Vir¬ 
ginia before vestries, yet after the latter had 
been created they chose annually from their 
own body two church-wardons, sometimes 
re-electing one to be a sort of adviser to the 
new appointee. In the proceedings of the 
first representative.. legislative assembly in 
America, held at Jamestown in 1619 a.d., 
the minister and church-wardens are men¬ 
tioned as being the proper ones to bring 
offenders against the moral code to justice. 
In Maryland and South Carolina the war¬ 
dens were elected annually in the same man¬ 
ner as the vestrymen. The vestry of a Vir- 
• ginia parish met at least twice a year at some 
convenient place, generally a small vestry- 
house, though a court-house or dwelling had 
to serve the purpose. The vestry-house 
represented a peculiarity of the Church, 
quite different from the idea of the New 
England meeting-house, which was used not 
only for religious services, or for assemblies 
for Church purposes, but also for the trans¬ 
action of secular business. The Easter 




PARISH 


551 


PARISH 


meeting was for the purpose of electing the 
new wardens and of examining the accounts 
of the retiring ones. At the fall meeting 
was apportioned the annual levy. This was 
done by adding the parish expenses, such as 
minister’s salary, provision for the poor, 
etc., and dividing the whole amount by the 
number of titliables, which determined how 
much each had to pay, Ministers and poor 
or infirm persons were excused from pay¬ 
ing tithes or poll-tax, which was collected 
by a sheriff, constable, or special collector. 
In Maryland vestries met generally once a 
month, and in some parishes refreshments 
were prepared for the members, who had 
traveled, perhaps, the whole morning 
through the forests. Eleven o’clock fore¬ 
noon was the legal hour for the meeting, at 
which were discussed matters relating to the 
welfare of the parish, or in lieu of anything 
else absent members were fined, though the 
fines were remitted at the next meeting. 
Proceedings of vestries were chronicled in 
the vestry-book by the clerk or register, who 
kept also a record of births, marriages, 
and deaths. The clerk gave notices of ves¬ 
try meetings, presented the claims or wishes 
of the vestry to the county courts, and at¬ 
tended to minor matters. 

The guardianship of parish property and 
the censorship of parish morals were con¬ 
fided to the vestry, who had also charge of the 
building or repair of churches, the inspec¬ 
tion of parochial libraries, the nomination 
in South Carolina of overseers of the poor 
the sending of laborers for making and 
keeping highways in order, and the employ 
ment of the sexton. In Virginia, once in 
four years the vestry divided the parish into 
precincts, and appointed two persons in each 
of them to “ procession” the lands. The 
surveyors in company with neighbors ex¬ 
amined and renewed the boundary-marks by 
blazing trees or planting stones, and the re¬ 
sults were recorded in the parish books. 
This custom, rendered necessary by the na¬ 
ture of the country and the fewness of fences, 
was nothing else than the old English sys¬ 
tem of perambulations, which still obtains. 
The name is preserved in the “processioners” 
of Georgia, men who are liable to be called 
on at any time to fix disputed boundaries. 
The vestries had to concern themselves 
about the decent maintenance of the indi¬ 
gent. In the palmy days of the colony, 
after the first bitter experiences and before 
so much land had been occupied, the few 
paupers in private houses and the expenses 
incurred by the householder were paid from 
the parish funds. When a pauper wan¬ 
dered from one parish to* another, he was 
brought back by a constable. Poor children 
were apprenticed to people who promised to 
give them religious instruction and to teach 
them somSarfc or trade, while, on the other 
hand, the children were obliged to endeavor 
to help their masters as much as possible 
and to keep out the company of evil com¬ 
panions. But poverty increased with the 


growth of the colony, so in 1755 a.d. a law 
was passed for the erecting in parishes of 
workhouses. The vestries had power to 
make laws for the government of these work- 
houses, and offenders against them were to 
be soundly thrashed. It was also enacted 
that the inmates should “upon the shoulder 
of the right sleeve of his or her uppermost 
garment, in an open and visible manner, 
wear a badge with the name of the parish 
to which he or she belongs, cut either in 
blue, red, or green cloth.” With few excep¬ 
tions this law of workhouses seems to have 
remained inoperative. Certain fines in 
Maryland were appropriated for the help of 
the needy, hut the parish was concerned as 
a rule only with such poor persons as were 
members of the congregation. To endowed 
public schools the vestry sent a limited 
number of charity scholars. Rev. Thomas 
Bacon, an energetic rector, managed, with 
the aid of collections on communion Sundays 
and of private subscriptions, to found a 
charity working school, where even negroes 
could be taught reading, writing, and rev¬ 
erence to God, at no expense other than the 
cost of their living. Similar treatment of 
the poor prevailed in South Carolina after 
parishes had been introduced by a law of 
1704 a.d., where overseers of the poor nomi¬ 
nated yearly by the vestry were empowered 
to act with the church-wardens. As the 
tobacco crops were the chief sources of par¬ 
ish revenues, it was of the greatest impor¬ 
tance to the vestries that the value of the 
staple should not be lessened. The parish 
was divided into precincts, in each of which 
two tellers or counters were appointed by 
the vestry to prevent the growth of too 
much or trashy tobacco,, and vestrymen and 
church-wardens could arrest persons who 
tried to “run” tobacco, that is, smuggle it 
from the province. The counter’s office was 
after a time discontinued, and the duties with 
some changes fell to the lot of inspectors, 
who were nominated by the vestry and ap¬ 
pointed by the governor. Marriages within 
certain degrees of consanguinity or relation¬ 
ship were forbidden, and vestries in Mary¬ 
land and South Carolina had to place in the 
parish church a table of such unlawful unions, 
and summoned those who infringed the law 
to appear before them. If the guilty parties 
could make no explanation, they were handed 
over to the clerk, who had to present their 
names to the clerk of indictments of the 
county court. At stated times during the 
year the minister or clerk had to read in 
church the laws against adultery, fornica¬ 
tion, etc. Persons suspected of immorality 
were summoned to a hearing before the ves¬ 
try, who caused them to leave each other or 
to marry. Negro women guilty of adultery 
were whipped. If the summons was not 
heeded, offenders were reprimanded by the 
rector or some members of the vestry, and if 
they still persisted in their evil ways, were 
presented to the county court. 

Men who were profane in the presence of 





PARISH 


552 


PARISH 


a minister, church-warden, or vestryman 
were liable to a fine; and if they refused to 
pay, any of the church officers could commit 
them to the stocks, or appoint a deputy con-/ 
stable to whip them. After Braddock’s ter¬ 
rible defeat it was found necessary to in¬ 
crease the militia. To pay for this a tax 
was laid upon bachelors over a certain 
age, and the vestry prepared for the use 
of the sheriff a complete list of such de¬ 
linquents. In Virginia, the minister and 
the church-wardens, or the church-wardens 
alone, were intrusted with the checking of 
immoral practices. When elected, wardens 
were required to take the following oath, 
which is a clear outline of their duties : 
“You shall sweare that you shall make 
presentments of all such persons as shall 
lead a prophayne or ungodlie life, of such ds 
shall be common swearers, drunkards, or 
blasphemers, that shall ordinarilie profane 
the saboth dayes or contemne God’s holy 
word or sacraments. You shall also present 
all adulterers or fornicators, or such as shall 
abuse their neighbors by slanderinge, tale 
carryinge, or back bitinge, or such as shall 
not behave themselves orderlie and soberlie 
in the church duringe devyne servise. Like¬ 
wise they shall present such maysters and 
mistrisses as shall be delinquent in the cate- 
chisinge the youth and ignorant persons. 
So helpe you God! !!” Fines for drunken¬ 
ness, Sabbath-breaking, neglect to have 
children baptized, and absence from church 
were collected by the church-wardens, and it 
was their duty to see that in church every 
one had a seat commensurate with his wealth 
or position as in the New England meeting¬ 
house, and to remove from the church and 
place in the stocks all disorderly persons. 
For adultery and slander penance was done, 
though such an act did not always relieve 
the offender from liability to prosecution by 
the civil authorities. 

Unnecessary journeys, hunting, card¬ 
playing, gatherings for non-religious pur¬ 
poses, on Sundays, were prohibited, and the 
duty of preventing or correcting such 
offenses and of compelling attendance upon 
service, which had once belonged to the 
captain of the watch during the military 
regime, was transferred to the church-war¬ 
den, whose office in this and in many other 
respects differed but little from that of tith- 
ingman or sabbath-warden in Georgia and 
New England. 

Foundlings and bastards were bound out 
by the churchman, and who also could sell 
for a service of five years a woman convicted 
of bastardy, if she refused to pay her fine, 
while the father had to protect the parish 
from any loss likely to arise from the care 
of his child. They were the guardians of 
the pulpit to prevent all but regularly qual¬ 
ified clergymen from officiating, and they 
had charge of the church decorations, linen, 
and vessels for the Sacrament. They pro¬ 
vided at the cost of the parish the bread and 
wine for Communion, which was adminis¬ 


tered at least three times a year. The 
church-wardens in Maryland, when they 
attended the visitation of the commissary, 
were compelled to make reports concerning 
the conduct and character of the rectors, the 
condition of parish property, and offenses 
coming under the penal laws. They saw 
that means were provided for the burial of 
paupers, looked up the infirm poor and paid 
for their accommodation in private houses, 
and sent some to the workhouse. By the 
workhouse act in Virginia, of 1755 a.d., 
the church-wardens had authority to commit 
a vagrant to the workhouse, and they were 
to keep a register of the poor in the parish. 
The last official in the parish was the sexton, 
having about the same duties as the present. 
Such was the parish in Southern colonies, 
in which were reproduced, as occasion re¬ 
quired, with new features to suit different 
surroundings, the laws and customs of old 
England. But there grew up in the North¬ 
ern colonies, from Pennsjdvania to Maine, 
where there was opposition to a Church of 
England establishment, a system of Episco¬ 
pal societies or congregations known as 
poll parishes, which meant either a body 
of Churchmen under one rector, somewhat 
resembling the ancient napoLKia , or this 
body with their estates. There was a par¬ 
tial exception in the province of New York, 
where at the same time were both poll and 
territorial parishes, and even in Philadel¬ 
phia there was a tendency towards the idea 
of a territorial division. For when St. 
Paul’s Church was struggling for existence, 
it was written by Rev. Hugh Neill, that 
“ All the Town Clergy had one point in view, 
and that was either to anihalate the Church, 
or bring them under the dominion of Christ 
Church Vestry ; as it seems to be an estab¬ 
lished maxim among them, that if Phila¬ 
delphia was fifty Miles Square and had two 
hundred Churches in it, they must be all 
subject to one Rector and one Vestry.” 

These organizations originated either in 
a number of Churchmen of the same neigh¬ 
borhood sending to England for a rector, or 
in the small congregation that some mis¬ 
sionary of the Society for the Propagation 
of the Gospel in Foreign Parts had suc¬ 
ceeded in gathering about him. The tem¬ 
poral affairs of such parishes were in the 
hands of church-wardens and vestrymen, 
whose number and mode of appointment 
differed widely in various sections. The 
general rule, however, was for the parish¬ 
ioners to elect them, annually, though some¬ 
times the rector appointed one of the war¬ 
dens. The church-wardens were the agents 
or executive officers of the vestry, whose 
meetings they called. In the early part of the 
eighteenth century there was held a Con¬ 
vention of clergymen from New York, New 
Jersey, and Pennsylvania, who proposed to 
do without vestries, but this did not meet 
with approval, and vestries continued to ex¬ 
ist. They were of two kinds, one composed 
of the church-wardens and congregation, the 





PARISH 


553 


PARISH 


other of church-wardens and vestrymen, in 
number ranging from twenty to two. Their 
duties were only such as related to Church 
affairs and were quite similar to those of 
present vestries. Occasionally vestrymen 
were appointed to civil offices, not as vestry¬ 
men, however, but as representative mem¬ 
bers of the Church of England. The min¬ 
ister was necessary to the complete organi¬ 
zation of a parish, and to accomplish this 
the Bishop of London was made the first 
rector of Trinity Church Parish, New York. 
The ministers were supported by stipends 
from the government, by funds of the So¬ 
ciety, or by private subscriptions. In the 
New England colonies Churchmen gained 
gradually the right of exemption from town 
rates. By a law of 1735 a.d., town treas¬ 
urers in Massachusetts were obliged to pay 
to the minister of the Church of England 
the taxes collected from such of his parish¬ 
ioners as could prove that they were regu¬ 
lar in their attendance upon his services. 
In the Declaration of Rights, in Maryland, 
made in 1776 a.d., there was a like provis¬ 
ion. No one sect alone could be aided by 
the State, but the Legislature could impose 
a tax for the support of religion, and each 
person could designate to whom his quota 
should be paid. Rectors were either chosen 
by the vestries, appointed as in New York 
by the governor, or inducted by the vestries 
after presentation to the Bishop of London. 
In induction were without doubt the germs 
of the later office of institution. The vestry 
sent a deputy to the Bishop of London to 
recommend a desirable person for the rec¬ 
torship. If all things were agreeable the 
Bishop gave to the minister a certificate and 
license, which were read to the vestry and 
congregation. All then left the church, the 
senior warden at the door giving the key to 
the minister, who locked himself in, tolled 
the bell, and, throwing open the door, wel¬ 
comed his parishioners. But the American 
Revolution, which had been fomenting in 
vestry and town-meeting, checked the growth 
of the Church of England in America. The 
de-establishment of religion, the departure 
to England of many loyal clergymen for 
conscientious reasons, the rise of Methodism, 
and the general apathy if not hatred shown 
for the Church as such, produced disastrous 
results that at this day can hardly be appre¬ 
ciated. In those regions especially where 
the minister’s support had depended upon 
taxes imposed by government, there seemed 
to be little hope of any kind of reorganiza¬ 
tion, and the churches in the North were 
strongly inclined to Congregationalism. 

In some States the property of the Church 
remained in her possession, in others it was 
confiscated. As soon as the struggle was 
over, active movements were started for its 
organization upon an Episcopal basis. Con¬ 
ventions of the clergy had been held at in¬ 
tervals before the Revolution in some sec¬ 
tions of New England annually. The idea 
was revived and extended to all the seaboard 


States, and lay representation from parishes 
was developed. With the American Epis¬ 
copate the Diocesan system was introduced, 
and in combining into Dioceses parishes had 
to relinquish certain privileges, and in time 
the civil duties of vestries were taken from 
them. To-day they exist for ecclesiastical 
purposes, controlled by Diocesan canons, 
and as civil corporations governed by State 
laws. The word parish is used, in rather a 
loose way, to designate the territorial parish, 
the poll parish, and the congregation, which 
is nearly the same as the poll parish. It is 
a recognized law or custom in some territor¬ 
ial parishes, that no new congregations with¬ 
in them can be admitted into union with the 
Diocesan Convention without asking the 
rector’s consent. Parish affairs are con¬ 
trolled in some instances for special reasons 
by trustees, but generally by the “ Rector, 
Church-wardens, and Vestrymen,” who, as a 
corporate body, can make and enforce by¬ 
laws. But wide differences as to qualifica¬ 
tions, number, and rights of vestries exist 
not only among different Dioceses, but 
among the parishes of single Dioceses. The 
General Convention of 1877 a.d. recognized 
this fact, and appointed a committee, who 
made an exhaustive report before the next 
General Convention on the “ functions of 
Rectors, Wardens, and Vestrymen.” In 
this report is shown with regret the prevail¬ 
ing want of uniformity, and suggestions are 
made which have been and should continue 
the ideal of parish organization in all Dio¬ 
ceses. To avoid unpleasant relations be¬ 
tween rectors and vestries it was proposed 
that the Bishop should have something to 
say in the selection of a rector, for “ accord¬ 
ing to the present laws of the Church, he 
has no right to say a word in reference to 
bringing into his Diocese, of which he is the 
sole custodian, and into his ecclesiastical 
family, of which he is the spiritual father, 
any minister who may be asked by a vestry 
to come into that Diocese, and take a place 
in that clerical family over which the Bishop 
presides.” The opinions of the committee 
in regard to the functions of rector, war¬ 
dens, and vestry may be summarized as fol¬ 
lows : The rector being the ecclesiastical 
head of the parish, is president of the ves¬ 
try, has control for parochial purposes of 
Church buildings, and, as a minister, is an¬ 
swerable to the authorized head of the Dio¬ 
cese only. The vestries and their represent¬ 
atives, the wardens, are guardians of the 
property and rights of the corporate parish, 
they can elect their rectors, whom they are 
bound to support, and to aid him as far as 
possible. A majority, if not all, of these 
officers ought to be communicants in the 
Church. If these suggestions were carried 
out faithfully there would be a unity in 
Church organization which would result in 
greater spirituality and increased usefulness. 

Edward Ingle. 

Work in a City Parish. —We do not 
propose under this heading to say anything 




PARISH 


554 


PARISH 


concerning the organization of a parish, its 
vestry, wardens, and other officers. Such 
matters are ruled by the Canons of each 
Diocese, or, failing these, by the Canons of 
the whole Church in the United States. In¬ 
formation upon such points must be sought 
from the Diocesan or other authorities. Our 
intention is to assume the existence of a 
parish such as may be found in any of our 
large cities, t^ consider the manner in which 
the work of such a parish is usually con¬ 
ducted, and perhaps to offer some sugges¬ 
tions for the better and more efficient man¬ 
agement of the same. And first of— 

The Church .—The church building is the 
centre of the life and work of the parish. 
It ought to be emphatically the Religious 
House of the people. In the older countries 
of Europe, and perhaps especially in rural 
districts, this is much more the case than 
is generally to be found among ourselves. 
There the Church has stood in the midst of 
the homes of the people perhaps for many 
hundreds of years, and has gathered around 
it a mass of history, tradition, and associa¬ 
tion, making it very dear to their hearts. The 
more fixed habits of the people, and the dif¬ 
ferent character of parish organizations, 
have no doubt much to do with this. The 
parish there is a territory lying all around 
the church building, and every resident 
within its circumference has a right, whether 
he exercises it or not, to speak of “ my 
parish,” “my parish church.” Many an 
emigrant, driven by necessity to seek our 
shores, has felt that the hardest wrench of 
all in leaving his native land was the separa¬ 
tion from his church. In it he and all his 
family had been baptized, there he had been 
married, around it in the quiet church-yard 
lay the remains of many generations of his 
forefathers, in it he had many a time re¬ 
ceived words of cheer for daily troubles, 
and in the clergyman he had always found a 
kind friend and sympathetic adviser. It is 
much to be desired that the church should 
hold a larger place in the lives and hearts 
of American Church people than now it 
does. 

The church should be worthy of its place 
in the parish. Pleasant, bright, and attrac¬ 
tive, for the sake of the people ; stately and 
richly furnished as may be, for the glory of 
God. 

There should be in it all to teach by eye and 
influence as well as by words spoken. Chil¬ 
dren should feel instinctively that it is no 
common house into which they have come, 
and should be eahly taught habits of rever¬ 
ence. The emblems of salvation upon walls 
and altar should remind “How dreadful is 
this place, this is none other than the House 
of God, this is the gate of Heaven.” 

To be the home of the people the Church 
must be open all day that they may come in 
at any time and say a prayer, and feel a hal¬ 
lowing influence touching the weary and 
commonplace every-day life. It is well, too, 
that they should be able to find their clergy¬ 


man there in vestry or parish room, either 
at stated times or by frequent appointments, 
that in any difficulty or sorrow they may 
know where they will be sure to find a 
friend. 

In addition to the main building of the 
Church, with its chancel, transepts, nave, 
and vestries, there need to be for its efficient 
working suitable parish rooms, where parish 
business may be transacted, charities dis¬ 
pensed, and Bible-classes or other classes for 
instruction held. And further, there mu'st 
be one or more large rooms for Sunday- 
school purposes or large gatherings of the 
parishioners on social and business occa¬ 
sions. Many Churches have such rooms 
now, and often call them mistakenly chapels. 
We say mistakenly, for a chapel is but a 
small church, and should have its altar and 
other church-like fittings, and should only 
be used for sacred purposes, as the Church 
itself. Magic-lanterns, Christmas-trees, and 
social gatherings are as much out of place in 
the Chapel as they are in the Church itself; 
while they have their appropriate place in 
school-room or lecture-room, and are useful 
agencies in parochial work. 

Clergy .—It is impossible that a City Par¬ 
ish, if it has any large number of communi¬ 
cants and is to have any number of good 
works or organizations connected with it, 
and still more if it is to be amissionary work 
towards the neighboring population, can be 
worked efficiently by one clergyman alone. 
Two, or still better, three, are needed. 

If these men are single, they should live 
together in a clergy-house in the neighbor¬ 
hood of the Church, even though that neigh¬ 
borhood is poor and unattractive. A clergy¬ 
man living away from his Church, for what¬ 
ever reason, is sure more or less to fail in 
his work. 

If, as is generally the case, the Rector of 
the parish is married, the assistants will 
probably not be, and they can live together 
in some suitable house. The strength that 
comes from sharing work with another and 
feeling mutual sympathy in all cares and 
labors cannot be measured. 

Where three or more men are working 
together thus, the assistants may be chosen 
for special gifts. We are getting to expect 
too much of our clergy. It is not reasonable 
to expect to find in every clergyman a man 
who is at once a deep theologian, an eloquent 
preacher, a good financier, a skillful organ¬ 
izer, a discreet spiritual guide, an accom¬ 
plished musician to superintend the choir, 
and of great and acceptable social gifts. All 
these qualities may well be found and effi¬ 
ciently used for the service of the Church 
where several men are living and working 
together. 

The power of a parish is marvelously in¬ 
creased when it is felt that whatever the 
hour, whatever the need, whether among its 
own people or strangers, at their church or 
clergy-house, a clergyman can always be 
found ready and willing to aid. 





PARISH 


555 


PARISH 


Lay-Helpers .—But even where there are 
many clergy they must not be left to do all 
the work, the laity have their share. 

Foremost, perhaps, among Lay-helpers 
are Sisters of Charity. We say advisedly 
Sisters, not a Sisterhood. A Sisterhood is 
no part of parish work. It is something al¬ 
together outside and independent of ordinary 
parochial work. It is autonomous, electing 
its own Superior and making its own rules, 
taking in and dismissing its own members, 
and directing and controlling its own work. 

By Sisters we mean a small company, or 
two or more Sisters, sent out from some Sis¬ 
terhood to do work in some parish. In their 
own house, which must be near the Church 
and distinctly set apart for them, they keep 
their own rule of life, but in all their work 
they are directed by the clergyman of the 
parish. It were well that the number thus 
working should not be less than three, so that 
a change of one might be made from time 
to time, as there was occasion for one or an¬ 
other to return to her communit} 7 , without 
disturbing the general work they were en¬ 
gaged in. 

Such Sisters, associating other ladies with 
themselves, would visit the poor and sick in 
their homes, administering necessary com¬ 
forts of life, thus securing greater efficiency 
in the work by wise direction, and saving 
much time to the clergy. The sick and 
poor will often receive their words of spir¬ 
itual counsel and help which hardly reach 
them from other lips. 

Sisters will naturally gather girls around 
them, moulding them for good and raising 
their moral tone by such associations. 
Guilds and confraternities for girls of all 
ages may well be carried on under their di¬ 
rection. In many places their work has 
been very powerful among lads and young 
men, who, turning aside from other men 
and keeping away in timidity from the cler¬ 
gymen, are won in true, manly, and chival¬ 
rous feeling by the gentle influence of a 
high-minded, tender-hearted, and religious 
woman. The ladies working with the Sis¬ 
ters cannot but be helped themselves. In¬ 
deed, there seems no limit to the influence 
for good in a city parish that may be exer¬ 
cised by such a little company of devoted 
Sisters. 

Other methods of lay-help will be what we 
have just hinted at, the visiting of the poor 
and sick by others than the Sisters. This 
work, generally delegated to women, may 
well be shared in by men. Indeed, in many 
cases, the work may be far better done by 
men whose business habits, trained minds, 
and strong resolution can hardly be more 
usefully exercised than for the benefit of the 
poor and sick. 

The Sunday-school calls for lay-help, the 
choir also, and the workingmen’s club and 
reading-room, if such there be. 

Sunday-schools are too large atopic to be 
spoken of here. This much may be said,— 
the Sunday-school must be under the eye and 


direction of one of the clergy. Let one of 
the assistants have it as a special care. Let 
him appoint every superintendent and 
teacher. Let him know every child by 
face and name, and be able to greet all with 
an appropriate word. Let him direct the 
lessons and catechise the children. When 
the Sunday-school is thus worked there 
ought to be a school in which the children 
feel themselves at home, and that their 
Church loves and cares for them ; in which 
the teachers may feel that theirs is a real 
work for God; in which teachers, children, 
and clergy alike are banded together and 
go forward lovingly in devotion to God and 
faithful service to His Church. 

The choir, too, should be ruled on a sim¬ 
ilar plan. Let one of the clergy be in 
charge and have the general direction of the 
music. He need not train the choir, but be 
the friend of all. Let every man and boy 
feel that he is known and has a share in his 
clergyman’s interest, and a high tone of life 
ns well as of singing may be maintained. 
The choir should never be a singing party, 
or club, apart from the clergy. Every adult 
member should be a regular communicant, 
and every boy baptized and looking forward 
to his confirmation. No unbaptized person 
should ever be allowed to take an official 
part in the services of the Church, nor any 
person outside the fold, unless in some ex¬ 
ceptional instance where one is earnestly 
seeking and preparing for admission. 

Enough here has been said to indicate the 
tone that ought to be maintained in the 
choir, the subject is large enough to receive 
separate treatment. It may be added that 
it is better that none of the adult members 
of a choir be paid, but that they should give 
their services a free-will offering to the glory 
of God. Some small payment may be 
made to boys as insuring greater regularity 
at practices and more sustained interest. 

Other forms of lay-help will occur, but 
too much stress cannot be laid upon the im¬ 
portance of the work of men in visiting the 
poor, and in teaching in the Sunday-school. 

Services .—The hours of service must be 
suited to the habits and residences of the 
people, with some limitations. The great 
distance at which many parishioners live is 
a hindrance to church-going. It would be 
well if the lay-people would take this a lit¬ 
tle more into consideration when selecting a 
locality for their home. 

Services must be frequent. The Daily 
Morning and Evening Prayer of the Church 
should be said in the principal church 
building of the parish, or in the chapel at¬ 
tached to it. In most city parishes it will 
be found well to have one or two early cele¬ 
brations of Holy Communion during the 
week, looking forward to the time when 
they will be daily. This is a matter of real 
convenience when many members of a fam¬ 
ily are communicants and all cannot well 
leave home together on a Sunday morning. 
It also enables some to keep their birthdays or 




PARISH 


556 


PARISH 


other anniversaries in the highest Christian 
method. 

While an afternoon hour will generally 
he found most convenient for the Evening 
Prayer, some later services should be pro¬ 
vided during the week for those whose hours 
of labor occupy them all the day. Such late 
evening services may be accompanied by ser¬ 
mon, lecture, or instruction, while the after¬ 
noon service may well be preceded or followed 
by a public Bible-class or meditation intended 
more especially for persons of inferior edu¬ 
cation ; of course all Festivals of the Church 
and all Saints’ Days will be observed by'the 
celebration of Holy Communion and other 
services. It is sometimes found well to have 
a service with address on the evening be¬ 
fore a Festival. The minds of the people 
are thus led on to think more of such days 
and give more heed to their observance. 

In every well-worked city parish there 
will be at least one celebration of Holy 
Communion on every Lord’s Day, gener¬ 
ally there will be two, one early in the morn¬ 
ing and one at a later hour. Probably 
7 30 a.m. is the most convenient hour for 
the general communicants, but there may 
well be an occasional earlier service for ser¬ 
vants, nurses, mothers of families, or others 
whose avocations employ them on Sundays 
as well as week-days. 

The morning service at 10.30 or 11 a.m. 
is generally the best attended, and care 
should be taken to make the seiynons and 
teaching of an educational as well as horta¬ 
tory character. Sunday morning church¬ 
goers are oftentimes those to whom church¬ 
going is a mere habit, and who have little 
appreciation of the great spiritual realities 
that underlie the teachings and practices of 
the Church. 

The afternoon service may well be devoted 
to children. If the Sunday-school meets 
at 2.30 or 3 p.m., a bright service in Church 
at 3.30 will be found very attractive. In 
our opinion the forms of service given in 
most Service-books for children are very 
objectionable. Let the older children be 
taught to attend the regular services of the 
Church, and to use their Prayer-Books, but 
at the children’s service, which is intended 
distinctly for the young, let the Service be 
as simple as possible. 

A processional Hymn, the Creed, a Metri¬ 
cal Litany, sung kneeling, followed by the 
Lord’s Prayer and a Collect, is sufficient. 
Then let there be a short lesson from Scrip¬ 
ture, another Hymn, and after that a bright 
address or catechising of not more than 
fifteen minutes, ending with another Hymn, 
a Collect, and the Blessing. The service 
will be about forty minutes, and the chil¬ 
dren’s interest sustained throughout. Chil¬ 
dren get very fond of a service intended for 
themselves. Such service should not be 
limited to the children of the Sunday-school, 
but all parents belonging to the Parish may 
be invited to bring or send their little ones. 

In some city parishes it will be found well 


to have the Evening Prayer on Sunday at 
4.30 or 5 p.m., either with or without a ser¬ 
mon, and then to have a later service, 
when the office will be less formal and litur¬ 
gical and the preaching of a character more 
adapted to mission work. 

With regard to the time for Communion, 
the practice of receiving in the middle of 
the day is very much a matter of habit, and 
a little instruction will show the more in¬ 
telligent of our Church people the better 
way of rising early, even at the cost of a 
little self-denial, to receive the Bread of 
Life. As we write, a parish occurs to us, 
where out of 520 communicants on an Easter- 
day, 470 received before 8.30 a.m. There 
were on that day celebrations at 6, 7, and 8 
a.m. , as well as at the 10.30 service. 

Sermons .—The sermon is a most impor¬ 
tant factor in the life of the parish. With¬ 
out exalting preaching above praying, this 
must be distinctly recognized. The major¬ 
ity of people do not read much, either in 
the Bible or in books of religious instruc¬ 
tion. For the greater number their teach¬ 
ing comes altogether from the lips of the 
preacher. 

Preachers need to remember this, and to 
make their preaching instructive. They 
must not think that the people in general 
know all that they ought to do, and the 
reasons why such things should be done, 
and only need to be moved to action by 
impassioned appeals. It is not really so, 
and many an earnest appeal is made in vain 
because the doctrines, or Scripture facts, 
upon which the appeal is founded are un¬ 
known. 

For this reason instructive sermons are 
needed, and also instructions in addition to 
sermons. It is most useful to have set times 
for instruction, pure and simple, apart from 
homiletics and exhortation. Such instruc¬ 
tions niay well follow sermons on Sunday 
evenings, as they do in the course of Paro¬ 
chial Missions; or they may be given in 
connection with a week-day afternoon or 
evening service. 

So much has been said by all sorts of 
teachers upon the subject of preaching that 
little need be said here, but the foregoing 
hints will be found useful and practical in 
working in a city parish. 

Mission Chapels. — Subsidiary to the 
church building, in which the chief ser¬ 
vices of the Parish are conducted, and round 
which its life centres, may be small mission 
rooms, or mission chapels. 

These may be located in the poorest lo¬ 
calities of the city, being made out of some 
store or stable, clean, simply colored, and 
made bright with pictures. Here may be 
gathered a little Sunday-school of shabbily- 
dressed children, and on Sunday evenings a 
miscellaneous company, including many who 
could not be got within a church door. The 
Sunday-school may be worked entirely by 
Laymen, young or old, and so also may 
the evening service, if a really competent 




PARISH 


557 


PARISH 


man can be found to speak. Written ser¬ 
mons in such places are worse than useless, 
but it will be well for the Rector or one of 
the assistants to go round from time to time 
with words of kindly interest. No Sacra¬ 
ments will be administered in such rooms, 
but the people will be led on to the Parish 
Church. It is not proposed that such places 
shall become in time parishes, but that they 
shall always retain their missionary char¬ 
acter as feeders to the central church. As 
one family or individual after another is 
raised in religious, and therefore social life, 
or is prepared to receive Sacraments, he 
will be handed on to the parish itself, though 
he may still remain attached to the mission 
room as a helper for the sake of his influ¬ 
ence upon others. Many a soul now in Para¬ 
dise praises God for the work of conversion 
begun in some such simple room. 

Societies .—There is much to be said for 
and against the multiplication of Societies 
within the Parish. Some we must have, and 
they are useful in organizing work and em¬ 
ploying workers, but it is easy to have too 
much machinery. 

Some that seem the most useful may be 
mentioned. A Temperance Society with 
both adult and juvenile branches. It is bet¬ 
ter that this should be a branch of the 
Church Temperance Society on its compre¬ 
hensive basis, than a merely local organiza¬ 
tion. 

A society for young girls, such as the 
Girls’ Friendly Society, is a real need, and 
also some similar Guild or Society for 
boys. 

It is extremely doubtful if large, mixed 
Parochial Guilds and Societies do good in 
proportion to the amount of labor they in¬ 
volve, and whether they do not really hin¬ 
der work. All parishioners ought to be 
working in some way or another, whereas 
the existence of a Guild or Rector’s Aid 
Society may hurt the workers, those not be¬ 
longing to it giving that as a reason why 
they need not work. 

An organization for distinctly spiritual 
purposes may be really valuable, in which, 
for instance, all the members undertake to 
keep a spiritual rule of life. An association 
for intercessory prayer, in which the obliga¬ 
tion is to give a certain time to this work 
every day, and also meet together from time 
to time for united intercessions, is of great 
use in building up the true spiritual life of 
the parish. 

An Altar Society is also desirable, not 
for the purpose of raising money, but to 
bind together in work and with a Rule of 
Prayer those who have leisure to care per¬ 
sonally for the sanctuary and its furniture, 
or can occupy themselves in the necessary 
needle-work, embroidery, or washing of 
linen, etc. 

In working among the poor advantage 
should be taken of any societies existing in 
the city, whether connected with the Church 
or not. In many places, as Philadelphia, 


Buffalo, Boston, and New York, there are 
Charity Organization Societies of various 
kinds. Clergy and visitors among the poor 
will do wisely to work in harmony with all 
such, and will find their own labors light¬ 
ened thereby. It does not seem well to have 
a distinct society in the parish for the care 
of the poor, but still such work must be done 
methodically and under direction. If there 
are Sisters of Charity connected with the 
parish, it will naturally fall under their 
care. If none such can be had, individual 
visitors should be asked to care for indi¬ 
vidual cases, meeting together occasionally 
for mutual counsel and advice. Such meet¬ 
ings might be held weekly and be presided 
over by one of the clergy, or better still, by 
some competent layman. 

Foreign and Domestic Missions must not 
be omitted, but this ought not to be a mat¬ 
ter for personal solicitation and collections. 
It is the duty of Christians to give for such 
purposes, and such duty should form part 
of the regular instruction of the people, so 
that when the offerings are made at stated 
times the contributions of the parishioners 
may be forthcoming as a matter of course. 

Finances .—Finances generally need a few 
words. The Scriptural mode of dealing with 
the matter is that the Church shall be free to 
all, and that all expenses be met by the free¬ 
will offerings of the people laying up as 
God has prospered them. Where this plan 
has been tried in faith and prayer it has not 
failed. 

To win'the young, the timid, and the poor, 
the Church must be free. Such are willing 
to come, and will give of their means to sup¬ 
port the Church and its works, but they are 
not equal to the effort involved in taking a 
pew. Many, too, will come to free churches 
who would feel themselves pledged or com¬ 
promised by taking a seat before they at all 
see their way to come out on the side of 
God and of His Church. 

In free churches the envelope system is 
often tried, whereby persons pledge them¬ 
selves to give certain amounts weekly or 
monthly through the year. By this means 
a fixed sum is guaranteed, and the wardens 
do not live in any anticipation that they will 
not be able to meet their liabilities. This 
plan has its advantages, though to some it 
may seem rather to take away the freedom 
of giving. Of course, however, where this 
plan is adopted, any person can add at will 
to his or her weekly contribution. 

Permanence .—As we write a continually 
recurring thought is, But all this takes time 
to work out, and much of this work and 
these plans can only be tested by years of 
patient labor ; and we live in an age of rest¬ 
lessness and change. People move, clergy 
move, there is little fixity at present in any 
of our Church work. 

This is, unfortunately, true, and it is a 
reason why our city parishes will hardly 
ever reach that high state of efficient orga¬ 
nization and work which may be seen by 




PARISH 


558 


PARISH 


visitors to London and other great English 
cities. The people there are much more fixed 
in their homes and habits, while the Rector 
is almost an absolute permanency. 

Whether the English plan by which a 
Rector once installed settles down and ac¬ 
cepts the parish as his life-work, as by far 
the greater number of Rectors do, there 
being no power to displace him so long as 
he observea ecclesiastical law, could ever 
be naturalized in our country, or would work 
well if it were so naturalized, is a question. 
We do, however, need more stability. 
Clergy ought to be more content with their 
positions, and not be continually looking 
upon them as simply steps to something bet¬ 
ter. Parishioners, too, should be content 
with their Rector as he grows in years. He 
may, perhaps, lose something of brightness 
and freshness, but this is more than com¬ 
pensated for by the added experience and 
knowledge of his people. A younger as¬ 
sistant can always be found to meet the 
thoughts and wishes of younger people. A 
continual succession of young, inexperienced 
men is fatal to any spiritual growth in the 
parish. 

So, too, with residences. We do change 
too much. And when we change we think 
far too little about our Church. It is not 
creditable that so many Church people, after 
they have secured a home and are comfort¬ 
ably settled, suddenly finding themselves far 
removed from any Church, should say, “ I 
never thought of asking about the Church.” 
No Christian has a right for mere purposes 
of comfort or money-getting to exile him¬ 
self from the means of grace. 

If the Rector remains at his post and gives 
time and energy to know and work among 
his people, and his people loyally and faith¬ 
fully stand by him, all bearing and forbear¬ 
ing with one another, and all heart and soul 
in the work to which God calls each, a 
growing interest will be created, and the 
parish will increase in strength, efficiency, 
and spiritual life, and be fruitful not only 
in good works, but in a harvest of souls to 
the glory of God. 

Rev. Edward Osborne. 

How to Establish a Country Congre¬ 
gation.— In establishing a country parish, 
the first requirement is a Rectory. The pres¬ 
ence of the minister should be a fixed and 
recognized fact, and he should be secured 
against landlords and rivalry. In preparing 
to build, every one should be asked to have a 
share, thus enlisting interest. Many small 
offerings from many persons are far prefer¬ 
able to one of even greater amount from a 
single giver. And a score of churches could 
be built while congregations of men of small 
means are waiting for some rich and gener¬ 
ous person to do all for them. Happily, for 
spiritual good and education in sustaining 
parishes afterwards, such events are compar¬ 
atively rare. As the whole cost seems large 
to people who, really or in fancy, will always 
be “poor,” write down each article needed, 


windows, furniture, etc., with its price, and 
many will agree with alacrity to place their 
names opposite as pledged workers, and will 
raise the small sum in a few months, who 
could not be aroused to the seemingly hope¬ 
less task of “helping to build a church.” 
Scores can be found who will readily give 
one cent a day, who would be regarded 
liberal if, at the end of a year, they gave a 
dollar, who yet, by system, cards, and collec¬ 
tors, will even more cheerfully in the year 
give much more, and feel it less. It is marvel¬ 
ous how rapidly the whole amount thus ac¬ 
cumulates. If all will thus give, there will 
be less disposition to engage in fairs and 
other expedients often more hurtful than 
leaving the church unbuilt, and hindering 
to the necessary acquirement of learning 
how to give from principle. As a matter of 
economy, whatever furniture is procured 
should be handsome and of the kind needed 
for the church. As soon as a room can be 
had, let the minister open a Sunday-school. 
If good teachers of sufficient number can¬ 
not be obtained, the minister should teach 
for a short time, and then drill in a part of 
the Church service. As Evening Prayer is 
the shorter of the two, it would be well, as 
soon as the children have learned two or three 
chants and hymns, to have regular Evening 
Service, with the scholars as the choir; this 
to be followed by catechising in place of a 
sermon, and enriched by anecdotes, but 
especially Bible stories. Brief catechising 
every Sunday should be a matter of course. 
Let the first books used be Prayer-Books 
and Church Hymnals. The “ Nursery of the 
Church” should not drill for the Church in 
substitutes or imitations of her Liturgy, nor 
can we afford to expend brief time and lim¬ 
ited opportunity in teaching hymns, good or 
bad, which have no place in her services. 
How to take their place in our worship is the 
lesson for our scholars, and they will delight 
as much in using the Prayer-Book and Hym¬ 
nal, as in the ephemeral Liturgies and 
books of song which do nothing towards in¬ 
structing in the Church. This will do much 
to solve the problem, “ How to retain the 
older scholars in the Church.” Each class 
should engage in work for some article of 
furniture. 

The organization of a vestry should be 
deferred for a year or two, and until the 
men understand something of the Church’s 
system and their peculiar duties. In some 
Dioceses the property can be vested in the 
Bishop. A treasurer, if desired, could be 
appointed by the minister. Two or three 
trustees could act for a year or two, when a 
vestry could be elected, and the organiza¬ 
tion effected. 

Faithful visiting, avoidance of contro¬ 
versy, cottage meetings, spirited services, 
preaching, good common sense, and a loving 
spirit will commend the Church anywhere. 
We want no better “ plan” or “system.” 
Give the Church its opportunity, which it 
has not always enjoyed, without diluting 





PAROCHIAL MISSIONS 


559 


PAROCHIAL MISSIONS 


or laying aside what we have for seemingly 
successful experiments, and we have all we 
need to plant the Church even in villages 
or country where others have failed. 

Rev. T. G. Littell. 

Parochial Missions. We use the phrase 
“ Parochial Missions” advisedly that we may 
at once clearly distinguish for our readers 
the nature of that of which we speak. We 
do not speak of “ Missions” in the sense of 
mission stations permanently established 
with a view to future churches and par¬ 
ishes; nor yet of missions to the heathen, 
whether foreign or domestic, conducted by 
the Central or any Diocesan Board. We 
speak of missions of and the kind compar¬ 
atively new and untried in the American 
branch of the Church Catholic. 

By a Parochial Mission we understand a 
special effort made in a parish already ex¬ 
isting and having a corporate life, lasting 
during a limited period, and intended to 
build up the parish in its life and work, to 
deepen the spiritual life of the individual 
members, and to draw others in the town 
or neighborhood within hearing of the Gos¬ 
pel, that they may also become partakers of 
the spiritual blessings held out to them in 
the Church of Christ. 

I. A Parochial Mission implies a parish 
and a clergyman in charge of it. It involves 
much labor in preparation, and more still 
in carrying on the works that may result 
from the mission, and harvesting fruit from 
the seed sown. 

A mission is not a substitute for the or¬ 
dinary labors of a parish, such as services, 
sermons, house to house visiting, and the 
like. It is something added to all the or¬ 
ganization and work of a parish, to fill these 
with new spirit and energy, and to supple¬ 
ment them by accomplishing that which 
they are not intended or are unable to do. 

We can imagine a parish, long settled 
and solvent, with a church in good repair 
and well attended; a congregation drawn 
in average proportion from various walks 
of life; a fair number of communicants, 
the greater number of whom, however, are 
women; Lent and other Church seasons 
observed by somewhat more frequent ser¬ 
vices ; the charities of the parish sustained ; 
the Sunday-school in good order; a good feel¬ 
ing existing between clergyman and people, 
the former having been in the parish some 
ears and knowing his flock and feeling 
imself at home with them. Such a parish 
might be accounted by some a model parish. 

An/I yet the clergyman has a feeling, 
shared with him by some of the more devout 
lay-people, that all is not just as it ought to 
be. Perhaps the feeling is hard to describe. 
He is conscious of a want. He takes pains 
with his sermons, but there is a want of result; 
the words seem to have become familiar 
and to have lost their power with the 
people. The number of Eucharists may be 
increased with the increase of the parish, 
but the number of Communions made by 


individuals does not grow. Even the young 
people coming forward for Confirmation 
seem to do it in a formal way without the 
earnestness he desires to see. . The parish 
works go on, as Guilds and other societies, but 
there is a lack of zeal. Besides this, there 
seems to be a cessation of the power of the 
parish as a missionary centre. Outsiders do 
not come, the people of the neighborhood 
are not affected by it, there are many, it 
may be living close by the Church, either 
poor or of the well-to-do classes, who dis¬ 
regard the Church and her services, who 
never heed the Lord’s Day, who practically, 
though so near the Church, are living with¬ 
out God in the world. 

Here is the exact field for a Parochial 
Mission. “We want stirring up.” “We 
want a revival, only we can’t have that in 
the Church.” “We want deepening in 
someway.” “What is to be done?” A 
Parochial Mission is the answer. 

II. For a Parochial Mission is a Church 
Revival, a time of awakening and stirring 
up, a “ time of refreshing from the presence 
of the Lord.” 

It is a special and earnest attempt to bring 
all the agencies the Church has at com¬ 
mand to bear upon those both within and 
without her fold, an attempt carried on vig¬ 
orously for from seven to fourteen days, 
and, if possible, for a longer time, with 
many services, sermons, and instruc¬ 
tions at different hours and suited to differ¬ 
ent classes of persons. There will be Eu¬ 
charists at which many can be present and 
pray. There will be spiritual instructions 
adapted to those who have made some ad¬ 
vance in spiritual things, and more ele¬ 
mentary addresses to beginners. There will 
also be opportunities for intercession by 
those who have learned to pray, and rousing 
sermons with burning words appealing to 
those who never have bent the knee, or have 
given up the good habits of their childhood. 
The children ofithe parish, too, will not be for¬ 
gotten, but have some opportunities provided 
when suitable words may be spoken to them, 
for though the mission is mainly for adults, 
still the young ones of the flock are capable 
of being interested and drawn nearer to 
God ; through them, too, some of the parents 
may be reached. Special addresses will also 
be given to men and women separately, 
bearing upon their own special difficulties, 
temptations, and sins. Something may also 
be done for the young men and women just 
growing into manhood and womanhood, with 
life and its joys and temptations opening be¬ 
fore them. 

It will be seen at once that a mission in 
the Church differs from an ordinary Meth¬ 
odist revival in this great characteristic,—it 
is not simply a call to the unconverted, but 
while it is that, it is also a call to the 
converted and faithful members of the 
Church to a higher and closer walk with 
God, to more faithful and devoted lives in 
His service. 








PAEOCHIAL MISSIONS 


560 


PAROCHIAL MISSIONS 


III. It may be fitting to say a word here 
of the origin of Parochial Missions. Like 
very many other things which mark the re¬ 
vived life of the English Church, and of our 
own branch of it, they had their origin in 
Prance. 

St. Vincent de Paul, when chaplain to the 
De Gondi family, was called to minister to a 
dying peasant. He found to his horror that 
this man, though using the sacraments of 
the Church and living an outwardly respect¬ 
able life, was yet in a state of most grievous 
sin which he had neither confessed nor at¬ 
tempted to overcome. Impressed with the 
thought that there were probably many 
others in the same condition, he preached on 
the Feast of the conversion of St. Paul, 1617 
a.d., on the subject of a general confession. 
The effect of this sermon was so great that 
he had to send to Amiens for other clergy 
to help him in ministering to the people 
whose consciences were aroused. So en¬ 
couraging were the results of this his first 
mission, that it was determined to set on foot 
others in other villages and towns, and to 
secure suitable preachers for the work. From 
this arose the Congregation of Mission 
Priests, or Lazarists, as they are sometimes 
called, an order of Priests in the French 
Church dedicated to this special work. 
Other religious orders, as the Dominicans, 
Passionists, and Redemptionists, have also 
engaged in it, and Parochial Missions have 
now become a recognized part of the system 
of the Roman branch of the Church. 

John Wesley and others had long seen the 
need of some such work in the Church of 
England, but it was not until about 1869 
a.d. that their thoughts and wishes took 
shape. In that year a mission was organized 
in the city of London, in which some sixty 
churches took part. The success of this 
effort and the many blessings following it 
caused Parochial Missions to be fully ac¬ 
cepted in the Church of England. In 1874 
a.d. the Bishop of London, Rochester, and 
Winchester organized another mission for 
London, in which nearly three hundred 
churches shared, and now a third is planned 
to take place in 1884 a.d., only, owing to the 
magnitude of the city, it has been deter¬ 
mined to divide it into two sections and 
hold a mission for each section at different 
seasons. 

From London the influence spread, until 
every large city and town in England has 
had its united mission, and many a small 
village and parish besides. It would not be 
easy to say how many of the thousands of 
parishes of the Church of England either 
have had, or are looking forward to, the 
time when in the near future they will have 
the benefit of Parochial Missions. 

The need of men fitted for the work has 
been felt in England just as it was in France, 
and in several of the Dioceses Missionary 
Brotherhoods have been formed whose mem¬ 
bers are Priests, and in the Dioceses of 
Lichfield and Oxford laymen also, set apart 


for the special undertaking of preaching 
Parochial Missions. 

In our own Church a beginning has also 
been made. The city of Baltimore stands 
alone, as far as we know, in having had a 
general mission in which the greater num¬ 
ber of the churches of the city took part, 
but there have been a considerable number 
of missions in separate parishes in other 
cities and towns; Boston, Newark, N. J., 
Hoboken, Chicago, Cleveland, O., Utica, 

N. Y., Philadelphia, St. Louis, Springfield, 

O. , Tilton, N. H., Louisville, Ky., 
Nashua, N. H., Kansas City, and others 
come into our mind as we write. Many 
missions have also been preached in Canada, 
as, for instance, in Toronto, Halifax, Mon¬ 
treal, Quebec, St. John, and other smaller 
places. 

IV. It may be asked, What is the nature 
of the preaching, and what are the subjects 
of instruction, during such amission? Per¬ 
haps the best answer will be to subjoin a 
full list of Sermons and Instructions given 
in a mission in Trinity Church, Utica, N. 
Y., in Advent, 1882 a.d., taken from the 
Earnest Worker , the parish paper. 

Sermons. 

Amos. iv. 12. The will of God the end of 
man. 

Hag. vii. 5-7. The unsatisfying character 
of all earthly things. 

Hag. vii. 5-7. Sin leading away from God. 

St. Luke xv. 11-13. The beginning of sin. 

2 Cor. v. 10. The judgment after death. 

St. John xi. 28. The call of death. 

1 John iv. 9. The Love of God in the In¬ 
carnation. 

1 Cor. vi. 20. The Love of God in the Pas¬ 
sion. 

1 Cor. iv. 5. The coming of Christ the 
time of approval. 

Rev. iv. 1. The call to Heaven. 

Phil. i. 21. Spiritual life in Christ. 

Rev. xxi. 1. Heaven. 

Each sermon, except on Sunday mornings, 
was followed by an Instruction, the subjects 
being, What is a Mission? On making the 
Mission profitable. Conversion. Self-ex¬ 
amination. Repentance. Confession of Sin. 
Pardon of Sin. Mission Resolutions. The 
Blessed Sacrament. Perseverance. 

Addresses were given at mid-day upon 
Prayer, and at 4 p.m. on each week-day 
there was a Bible-class upon the life of St. 
John Baptist. Four special services for 
children were held. Two addresses were 
given to men on “The Image of God in 
Man by Creation” and “ The Restoration of 
the Image of God in the Incarnation.” One 
address was given to young women, and a 
Temperance Meeting was also held, at which 
a Branch of the Church Temperance Society 
was organized. On the first day there was 
an address to Church-Workers, and on the 
first Saturday night a Prayer-Meeting. The 
opening address of the Mission was given by 
the Bishop of the Diocese, who commended 





PAROCHIAL MISSIONS 


561 


PAROCHIAL MISSIONS 


the Mission Preacher to the prayers and at¬ 
tention of the people. The Mission began 
on Friday evening and lasted until the 
morning of the Wednesday week follow¬ 
ing. In addition to the sermons, etc., the 
Holy Eucharist was celebrated on each morn¬ 
ing, and Matins and Even-song were also 
said. 

Where so many sermons or instructions 
are given in so short a space of time (forty- 
eight in eleven days at the above Mission), 
there must be some course of teaching to 
avoid mere repetition. In this the power of 
a Mission comes out. One thought can be 
taken and fully dwelt upon, and then before 
it is forgotten or the efiect has passed from 
the mind of the hearers another is brought 
forward, bearing upon the former and en¬ 
forcing it, and the soul is by this roused to 
attention and stirred to action. 

This result is also attained by the use in 
many instances of what are sometimes known 
as “after-meetings." Generally an Instruc¬ 
tion on some point of Christian Faith or 
Practice follows the evening sermon, but 
this is occasionally omitted, and an after¬ 
meeting either in the church or some adja¬ 
cent room substituted. At such meetings 
the speaking is of a more personal and ex¬ 
perimental character, the Missioner going 
round the room and addressing himself to 
one after another with the invitations of the 
Gospel. Several prayers are offered, either 
extempore or in the form of a Litany. 
Others engage in the work, conversing with 
individuals and endeavoring to lead them 
to repentance or faith in the Lord Jesus. 
Such workers are either men or women, Sis¬ 
ters of Charity, or simply private persons. 
The results of such after-meetings are often 
remarkably great and happy. 

It will be understood from the foregoing 
that the Services at the time of the Mission 
are of the simplest character, without the 
ordinary formality. Matins and Even-song 
are generally said on week-days unaccom¬ 
panied by any sermon or address. At the 
Mission Services proper there will generally 
be a Hymn, a few verses of Scripture, the 
Lord’s Prayer, and a few Collects, followed 
by the Sermon ; after the Sermon a few more 
Collects will be said, or perhaps some words 
of extempore prayer. A form of Confession 
from the Prayer-Book or the opening sen¬ 
tences of the Litany are profitably used, or 
a penitential Psalm. Anything in the way 
of a musical service or choral singing would 
be entirely inappropriate. For this reason 
a volunteer choir is often better than the 
usual choir of the Church, whom it is diffi¬ 
cult to move out of their accustomed manner 
of choral praise. 

Much, or elaborate, music would destroy 
the penitential character of the work of the 
Mission. All deepening of spiritual influ¬ 
ences must be accompanied by deepening 
penitence, and everything in the services 
should conduce to this end. In churches 
where variously-colored altar-cloths and 

36 


hangings are used, violet is that chosen for 
the season of a Mission. 

The last service of the Mission will gen¬ 
erally be of a more joyful character; indeed, 
the Te Dkum is often sung as an appropri¬ 
ate thanksgiving to Almighty God that He 
has allowed the work to be brought to a 
successful issue. 

V. In addition to the public teaching, 
there will be tbe fullest opportunity afforded 
for free intercourse between the preacher 
and those of his hearers desiring explana¬ 
tion, instruction, or spiritual help in their 
own lives. Such intercourse may be simply 
in the way of conversation over special needs 
and difficulties, or in the way of more formal 
use of the confession and absolution provided 
by the Church for souls burdened with a 
sense of sin. 

It has always been found that this per¬ 
sonal intercourse is the most important part 
of the work. There are many who find it 
difficult to speak to their own Pastor, meet¬ 
ing him frequently in daily life, who will 
open their hearts readily to a stranger ; and 
many, who have long wished to speak to 
some clergyman upon spiritual matters, but 
to whom the right moment seems never to 
have come, are glad to avail themselves of 
the special opportunity which the Mission 
affords. Half the benefit of sermons is lost 
because the impression made is allowed to 
pass away. A few moments alone with the 
clergyman, with heartfelt words of counsel 
and an earnest prayer and blessing, will 
many a time save that which is most pre¬ 
cious. 

VI. Of course such a work as we have 
described needs preparation to make it really 
effectual. The preparation should in no 
case be less than three months. 

The earnest communicants of the Parish 
should be asked to remember the proposed 
mission in their prayers, and especially at 
the time of the Eucharist. Bands of work¬ 
ers may be organized who will distribute 
tracts or papers inviting to the mission. 
The young people should be sought, and all 
those who, having been confirmed and be¬ 
come communicants, are known to have 
fallen away ; the opportunity of a return to 
means of grace will be urged upon them. 
The clergyman and his workers will be care¬ 
ful to visit all persons living in the neigh¬ 
borhood of the church, whether attendants 
or not at any place of worship, and invite 
them to be present. Curiosity may bring 
some who will stay for better reasons, and 
there are in every community anxious souls 
who will be thankful to hear of such a work 
and occasion, on which mayhap they will 
obtain that which they are longing for. 

A volunteer choir should be formed to 
supplement or take the place of the ordinary 
choir, and bright, stirring hymns be well 
rehearsed, that the singing throughout the 
Mission may be hearty and congregational. 

A weekly or fortnightly Prayer-Meeting 
for special intercession will be found most 







PAROCHIAL MISSIONS 


562 


PAROCHIAL MISSIONS 


helpful, persons being invited to send in 
special cases to be prayed for. 

All such preparation carefully and thought¬ 
fully made will tend to create a feeling of 
reality in the minds and hearts of the peo¬ 
ple. A great opportunity is really coming, 
a message to which they must give heed, a 
voice from God in their midst, a call to 
change their lives in some way ; all this and 
more will come to them and prepare them 
to cry out and seek for the blessing of God 
upon themselves, their parish, and all those 
around. 

VII. After the mission much remains to 
be done. At the closing services of the 
mission “Resolution Papers” are given 
away, that those who have received benefit 
may write upon them some good resolution 
by which the impression made may be fixed 
and become lasting, obtaining the signature 
of the Mission Preacher as a witness. It is 
for the parish clergyman to help such to 
keep their resolutions. Some will need in¬ 
struction for Baptism, Confirmation, or Holy 
Communion, and for these classes must be 
formed without delay. Others who have 
been deeply moved desire to learn more of 
spiritual things that they may go forward. 
For these it is well to have one or more 
Bible-elasses,—if none exist to which they 
can be invited. Special instructions upon 
various matters of doctrine or practice 
which have been brought prominently for¬ 
ward by the Mission may be usefully given 
at convenient times. In some cases it is 
well to organize a Parish Guild, or a Guild 
for some special class in the parish,— e. g ., 
boys or young men. A Temperance Society 
may also be begun, or a branch of the Girls’ 
Friendly Society. Nothing better can be 
used than a meeting for prayer and inter¬ 
cession. To this many will gladly come, 
and brief spiritual instruction on the deeper 
things of the Christian life may well be 
joined with it. 

VIII. The results of the mission must be 
left until the Day of the Revelation of 
Jesus Christ. Some things will be seen, 
as increased attendance at church and at 
Holy Communion, an increasing number 
of candidates for Confirmation, more liberal 
offerings for Church purposes, perhaps the 
clearing off of some debt, a greater desire on 
the part of individuals to take an active 
part in the work of the parish, a distinct 
increase in the attendance at church of men ; 
all these may be thankfully noted. But the 
mission preacher and the parish clergyman 
must often be content to labor and leave 
other men to enter into their labors. 

It is not to be expected that all the parish¬ 
ioners will be benefited, nor that all will 
approve. Many careless ones will dislike to 
be aroused. Many staid, old-fashioned peo¬ 
ple may object because a mission is some¬ 
thing new and, in their judgment, sensa¬ 
tional. Possibly there may be some opposi¬ 
tion to be overcome and much prejudice to be 
encountered in a spirit of faith and prayer. 


In connection with the matter of preju¬ 
dice, it is to be observed that these Parochial 
Missions have been adopted by every section 
of the Church, and have been prepared for, 
and also preached by, men of very varying 
shades of theological opinion and belief. Of 
course in every case the parish clergyman 
will be careful to secure the services of a 
preacher who is in full sympathy with him¬ 
self and whom he can fully trust in every 
respect. 

IX. This brings us to the last, and for 
some reasons hardest, part of our subject. 
Who is to preach such a mission ? Where are 
the men to be found who are capable of giv¬ 
ing from forty to fifty sermons or addresses 
on ten or more consecutive days, keeping up 
and deepening the interest of the hearers ? 
Where are the men who have sufficient ex¬ 
perience in dealing with spiritual things to 
be able to meet and deal well and wisely 
with the many souls who may come to them 
for counsel and help during the course of a 
mission ? 

Such men are greatly needed in the 
Church. We need Orders of men trained 
for the work. Men with no parochial ties, 
who can go from place to place as they are 
needed, at the invitation of the parish clergy¬ 
man or Bishop of the Diocese. The num¬ 
ber needed is large, for the work is grow¬ 
ing, and where it is possible two preachers 
should always go together. 

We have already the Society of St. John 
the Evangelist, with its houses in' Boston 
and Philadelphia, and the more recently or¬ 
ganized Society of the Holy Cross in New 
York, but these only represent one section 
of the Church’s thought and. teaching, and 
are but few in number. We have heard 
that in some Dioceses an effort has been made 
under the direction of the Bishop to asso¬ 
ciate together men adapted for the work. 
Where there is a Cathedral with staff of 
clergy, some of the Canons might well be 
set apart for this distinctive form of labor. 

Meantime, the help of the parochial clergy 
must be sought by their brethren. The num¬ 
ber of sermons, etc., does not seem so great 
and overwhelming when it is remembered 
that they are arranged in courses and 
are preached to strangers, and not to those 
among whom the clergyman is daily visit¬ 
ing. Many clergymen who have had the 
benefit of Missions in their own parishes 
might, from the experience there gained, be 
able to go forth to aid their brethren. 

Still there is a need, and a growing one, 
of men for the work. We cannot doubt that 
as the need is felt God will be pleased to raise 
up men to supply it. For this it would become 
all Churchmen interested in the true spirit¬ 
ual growth of their Church to pray. 

X. The last word must be a financial one. 
Of course the Mission Preacher receives 
nothing for his services, but is put to no ex¬ 
pense for traveling or board. The expense 
for tracts and papers will be from twenty- 
five to fifty dollars, according to the size of 







PARSON 


563 


PASSION 


the parish and number required. This and 
the necessary expenses of the preacher or 
preachers will readily be met by a collection 
on the last day of the Mission only (there 
should be none on the other days), supple¬ 
mented by the free-will offerings of some of 
the wealthier parishioners. The expense 
should not be allowed to fall upon the 
clergyman of the parish. 

Rev. Edward Osborne. 

Parson. The Priest set over a congrega¬ 
tion is called a Parson (from the Latin. 
Persona ), because he is the representative of 
the Church, representing her in that Par¬ 
ish, and having certain legal rights, and 
too, certain responsibilities in the eye of the 
law. He is the holder of all the rights, 
temporal and spiritual, belonging to his of¬ 
fice in relation to the Parish over which he 
is placed, and he is also answerable for all 
the affairs of the Parish which fall within 
the purview of his office. But the title does 
not occur in the Canons of the American 
Church. The titles used to describe this 
office are Rector or Minister in charge of a 
congregation. We have dropped the titles 
Curate and Parson from our Canons, and in 
fact the word Parson is retained only in 
common parlance. The canonical terms 
for those in holy orders (besides the three 
names Bishop, Priest, and Deacon) are 
Presbyter, Clergyman, Rector and Minis¬ 
ter, and Assistant Minister. Vicar, Parson, 
and Curate have dropped out of our canon¬ 
ical usage. (Vide Rector.) 

Parsonage. The house which should be 
provided by every parish as a residence for 
the Rector. 

Paschal. Relating to Easter, or more 
correctly, to Easter through the Jewish 
Passover. It is the title of our Lord as 
the true Paschal Lamb. The Paschal Let¬ 
ters were letters written by Patriarchs and 
Archbishops to the Bishops within their 
jurisdiction, and by Canonical right, the let¬ 
ters written by the Pope of Alexandria to his 
brother Patriarchs to give the due notice of 
the true day on which Easter was to be ob¬ 
served in their several jurisdictions. There 
was also a famous controversy called the 
Paschal Controversy, which was set at rest 
by the Nicene Council, 325 a.d. Some 
claimed that Easter should be observed ac¬ 
cording to the Jewish rule, on the third 
day after the fourteenth day of the month 
Nisan, irrespective of the day of the week 
upon which it would fall,—the fourteenth of 
Nisan being the very day upon which our 
Lord’s Passion and Death took place. This 
was a very early custom of the Asiatic 
Churches. But the Church at large fol¬ 
lowed the present rule of observing as Eas- 
ter-day the Sunday after the fourteenth of 
Nisan. The controversy dates as early as 
the days of Polycarp (160 a.d.), and was 
carried to that pitch that Victor, Bishop of 
Rome, attempted to excommunicate those 
Asiatic Churches which followed the rule 
they claimed came to them from St. John. 


Traces of these practices are found in the 
usage of the British Churches, which show 
the Ephesine origin of their foundation. 

Easter is sometimes called the Paschal 
Feast. 

Passing Bell. A bell which was tolled 
when any one was dying. The sixty-seventh 
Canon of 1603 a.d. enjoins, “ When any is 
passing out of this life a bell shall be tolled, 
and the minister shall not then slack to do 
his last duty ; and after the party’s death (if 
it so fall out) there shall be rung no more 
but one short peal, and one other before the 
Burial and one other after the Burial.” 

Passion. The very and real suffering of 
our Lord, from His agony in the garden on 
through His trial, scourging, and revilings 
to its consummation in the parting of His 
soul from His body in a true and real death. 
That to a pure nature as His the jarring and 
clash of sinful men with evil passion was a 
suffering is very true. That a man so per¬ 
fect should shrink in inexpressible pain from 
our pains, and suffer by coming in contact 
with them, is as true. But in neither of 
these senses do we generally speak of our 
Lord’s Passion. To measure its love at all 
requires from every man earnest and true 
meditation. Its extent cannot be felt, 
its power will be unknown to us, its love a 
misty conception unless we will try to con¬ 
sider it in its several aspects towards our¬ 
selves and our needs, so great and pressing 
in His sight that for love of us He willingly 
did that from which He as naturally shrank. 
To give directions upon this is beyond the 
limits of this work, but there are many 
books of devotion which give much excel¬ 
lent direction for such profitable medita¬ 
tion. 

Our Lord’s Passion was in a certain sense 
necessary to show Him perfectly human as 
well as perfectly sinless,—its agony showed 
Him sinless, its reality showed Him human. 
It was in its beginning the fit step pre¬ 
paratory to the Atonement, which He com¬ 
pleted by His death. As it passed from point 
to point of shame and pain, it was some¬ 
thing far more than a must lovely example, 
it had a bearing upon the inner life of all 
His followers, and was a test? for them. In 
its culmination upon the Cross He was made 
the victim and accomplished an act of re¬ 
demption which we could not share in, but 
of whose inestimable benefits every bap¬ 
tized person becomes a partaker, and through 
the Christian indirectly but really all man¬ 
kind, since Christ died for all men. It is 
noticeable that Plato should have pointed 
out that the good men must suffer shame and 
even death ; but his was only a heathen idea, 
which could not conceive that God should 
take upon Himself perfect and pure flesh, 
and in it, by suffering all that hatred and 
malice could heap upon Him, wrest from 
His enemies the very instrument by which 
forgiveness could be proffered to them and 
to all. In this the Passion of our Lord is 
wonderful and beyond reach. 






PASSION-WEEK 


564 


PASTOR 


Passion-Week. (Vide Holy W eek.) To 
enforce upon us so far as she can the neces¬ 
sary meditation upon the marvelous work 
of redemption in its last steps, the Church 
has from very early times appointed the 
days before Easter at first only from Good- 
Friday, then prefixing to these the preced¬ 
ing days, till now Passion-Week, or Holy 
Week,"extends from Palm-Sunday to Easter- 
even. For usages and ceremonies, see Holy 
Week. But here it may not be amiss to 
add, that whatever worth the solemn ser¬ 
vices have for our souls, and whatever im¬ 
pression is made upon us, it must come from 
our own endeavor, both as individuals and 
as congregations, to realize the verities set 
forth, the facts commemorated, by medita¬ 
tion and by prayer. 

Passover. “ It is the sacrifice of the 
Lord’s Passover, who passed over the houses 
of the children of Israel in Egypt when 
he smote the Egyptians and delivered our 
houses.” The relation of this central Feast 
of the Mosaic worship to our Lord and to 
ourselves is so great that it must find a place 
in every work that relates to His Person 
and Life. While historically it was the 
commemoration of the deliverance of the 
Israelites, it was also a prophecy of the 
wider deliverance of God’s people through¬ 
out all time, and over the whole earth, 
through the Blood of Jesus. Its observ¬ 
ance was kept with a solemnity and care 
that marked its place in the National Life. 
The leaven carefully removed, the gar¬ 
nishing of the houses, the preparation of a 
guest-chamber for visiting Jews, the pure 
water brought to the house from a living 
stream, the ushering in of the solemn Feast 
with the blast of trumpets, the choice lambs 
taken to the Temple and there slain, and the 
offerers having the blood of the lamb 
poured out at the foot of the altar, and the 
kidneys and fat burnt with incense on the 
great altar,—all these made the public 
solemnity one of surpassing importance, 
while the worship at home by their families 
and the joyful feast which followed, was of 
incalculable use in preserving the household 
religion aflame in the Jewish home. Then the 
tale of their deliverance, so beyond all hope 
and human power, was the chief point with 
their children, which roused their pride in, 
and stimulated research into, their national 
history, and kept them up to the rigid ob¬ 
servance of this Feast. But its historical 
value overshadowed its prophetic value, and 
the Jew was not prepared to admit that it 
prefigured anything else. Then this won¬ 
drous redemption. But with the Christian 
the Passover was a type of the greater pass¬ 
ing of God’s Judgments over those who 
have been sprinkled with the Blood of the 
Lamb upon those who have not. The ful¬ 
fillment of the type in the sacrifice of Christ 
our Passover is very remarkable. It was 
at the time of the daily evening sacrifice, 
which was now offered earlier in the evening 
to allow space for the slaying of the Paschal 


Lambs, that the darkness covered all the land, 
and the evening sacrifice was interrupted, 
and as the light returned and our Lord 
yielded up the ghost, the true Paschal Lamb 
had shed His blood to be the deliverance of 
the children of God. Christ’s Atonement, 
then, is that blood of the Passover that pro¬ 
tects God’s people. Its sprinkling upon 
the lintel and door-post of our life, our bod¬ 
ies and their senses, the gateways whereby 
our soul goes out to the world and through 
. which it can return within itself, is by bap¬ 
tism, which is the application to our bodies 
and souls of the Blood of the Lamb. The 
Passover, then, is full of prophetic signifi¬ 
cance, and has not only a historic value and 
was a most important rite in the national 
religion, and was bound up in the political 
life of Israel, but it has a doctrinal signifi¬ 
cance to the baptized Christian. As the 
Israelite was, so is he of God’s elect, and 
that Judgment which falls upon the world 
falls not on him. Yet a3 the Israelite, in 
the face of all that he had seen and shared 
in of God’s holy deliverances, could sin and 
was destroyed of the destroyer, and fell by 
the way, so the Christian must feel that his 
deliverance is from the Judgments that fall 
on the world, but not from the discipline 
needful for him, or from the destruction 
which his disobedience may have brought 
upon him. Yet the relation of this Pass- 
over to ourselves must enter as completely 
into our religion, into our Christian citizen¬ 
ship, be as rigidly observed and as joyfully 
celebrated. Its spiritual application must 
but intensify its power over our lives and 
educate us to a better realization of the 
unseen. 

Pastor. The word Pastor, or Shepherd, 
is an appropriate designation for a clergy¬ 
man in charge of his spiritual flock, and it 
is to be regretted that it is not more in com¬ 
mon use in this country. In Germany it is 
a familiar word, and when one reads of such 
a man as Oberlin he may consider it rightly 
given. Such names as "Heber and Keble in 
England at once call up the thought implied 
in the word. In France, Archbishop Fene- 
lon, sitting on the grass, and talking with 
the people about their affairs, and about 
religion, entering cottages, and eating with 
the poor, as a brother, or father, and even 
driving home a peasant’s lost cow on a dark 
night, was a beautiful example of a pastor. 
The word is frequently used in Holy Scrip¬ 
ture. The shepherd’s duty was to feed his 
flock, and to watch them, lest wild beasts 
should tear them; and even to spend the 
cold night, if need be, in the oversight of 
his charge. In the xxiii. Psalm, Almighty 
God Himself is the Shepherd who provides 
“ green pastures” and “ still waters” for His 
flock, and guides them through “ the valley 
of the shadow of death.” Christ is “The 
Good Shepherd” who gives “ His life for the 
sheep” (St. John x. 11), and who still from 
Heaven watches over them. Jeremiah styles 
spiritual teachers “pastors” (Jer. iii. 15). 





PASTOR 


565 


PATRIARCHS 


After Christ’s Ascension, “ He gave some 
pastors” (Eph. iv. 11). David was a shep¬ 
herd (1 Sam. xvii. 34). It was necessary that 
the shepherd should be tender towards the 
young and feeble (Isa. xl. 11, and Gen. 
xxxiii. 13). King Cyrus is called God’s 
shepherd, and Homer speaks of the king as 
the shepherd of the people. In *Heb. xiii. 
20, the risen Christ is the “ great Shep¬ 
herd.” In 1 Pet. ii. 25, He is “ the Shepherd 
and Bishop of your souls.” Did* St. Peter 
in writing these words think of our Lord’s 
direction to him, “Feed my sheep”? (St. 
John xxi. 15-17.) As Christ is “ the chief 
Shepherd” (1 Pet. v. 4), His ministers are 
under-shepherds, seeking “ acrownofglory” 
in His service. The term pastor is personal, 
while rector and priest are official. The 
clergyman is by his office somewhat isolated, 
and in giving social confidence to his people 
he needs to have it returned from them. 
Like the Good Shepherd he should know his 
flock by name, and they should gladly follow 
his lead. Geikie draws attention to the 
close relation that subsisted between the 
shepherd and the sheep as they found com¬ 
panionship on the lonely mountain. They 
shared common dangers, and the leader’s 
voice was known as the call of safety. So 
has Christ drawn near to His people in His 
own figure, and so should His clergy feel that 
the words shepherd, watchman, overseer, 
and steward imply an acquaintance with in¬ 
dividual wants, and a proper distribution of 
needed benefits. Bishop Andrews engraved 
on his Episcopal seal the words of St. Paul, 
“ Who is sufficient for these things ?” (2 Cor. 
ii. 16.) The Holy Spirit answered St. Paul, 
and he answered himself, “ our sufficiency 
is of God.” Again, in trouble, this faithful 
pastor is cheered by the divine message, 
“My grace is sufficient for thee: for my 
strength is made perfect in weakness.” As 
Matthew Henry says, the clergyman should 
“study Christ, preach Christ, live 
Christ.” 

Christian art delights to keep up the pas¬ 
toral idea in the pictures of Christ bearing 
the lost sheep in His arms, which has been 
engraved even on the Sacred Vessels of the 
Holy Communion; and it is seen also in the 
pastoral staff’ of the Bishop. One of the best 
exemplifications of what a Christian pastor 
should be is found in the life of George Her¬ 
bert, the saintly rector of Bemerton. The 
secret of his success is shown in his delight¬ 
ful book, “A Priest to the Temple ; or, The 
Country Parson.” Chap. i. is entitled 
“ Of a Pastor.” He begins with this defini¬ 
tion : “ A pastor is the deputy of Christ, 
for the reducing of man to the obedience of 
God.” He demands a holy life of the Coun¬ 
try Parson, and learning, especially in Holy 
Scripture. He should be devout in public 
pra} T er, earnest in preaching, a peace-maker,- 
and a comforter of the sick. He should be 
courteous and charitable, and a visitor and 
counselor “from house to house” (Acts xx. 
20). He must watch as a sentinel. He is 


a faithful catechiser, and wisely and rever¬ 
ently administers the Holy Sacraments. 
Chap, xxxvi is on “The Parson Blessing;” 
and as he treats of the proper assurance and 
power of that benediction through God’s 
authority, we can feel that Herbert’s blessing 
was no common one, and it blessed the giver 
as well as the receiver, so that the Chris¬ 
tian world sanctions Isaac Walton’s descrip¬ 
tion of him as “ that pattern of primitive 
piety.” 

Authorities : Upham’s Life of Madame 
Guyon, Walton’s Lives, Geikie’s Life of 
Christ, Bridges on the Christian Ministry, 
Heber’s Memoir, prefixed to Poems, T. 
Woodward’s Memoir of W. Archer Butler, 
prefixed to Sermons. 

Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Pastoral Letter. A letter or an instruc¬ 
tion issued by one who holds a Pastoral re¬ 
lation to a congregation or to a Diocese. 
But chiefly it refers to the triennial letter 
issued by the House of Bishops at the close 
of the sessions of the General Convention. 
It is read there for the first time, and after¬ 
wards at the earliest convenient time to each 
congregation by its rector. The Bishop of 
a Diocese also may issue a Pastoral to his 
Diocese or to any separate members of it, as 
to the laity or to the clergy alone. In many 
parishes it is a custom for the rector to have to 
issue a letter to his congregation upon some 
pressing subject, calling their attention to 
or urging their action upon it. It has often 
proved of service, and may be made by the 
rector an effective way of appealing to his 
flock in some really important conjuncture. 

Pastoral Staff. Vide Vestments. 

Paten. The Patena (Latin), a wide and 
shallow dish, most usually and correctly 
made of metal, gold or silver, in which the 
bread for the Holy Communion is placed 
when offered as the oblation, and on which 
it is consecrated. Ancient patens were of 
large size, as some of -them were said to be 
very weighty, but those of modern use are 
much smaller. The paten used to be made 
with a foot beneath it, but it is now more 
usftal that it should have no foot, and the 
bed be only of a size to fit upon the rim of 
the cup or chalice. The brim of the paten 
is often very broad and has some inscription 
upon it. The old paten was shaped like an 
ordinary plate, but made of silver. Gold 
patens are frequently presented by devout 
donors. 

Patriarchs. The word Patriarch is found 
only in the New Testament, in Acts vii. 8, 
and then applied to the twelve sons of 
Jacob. Our common usage transfers the 
title first to Noah (though sometimes also 
to the antediluvians), and then to Shem, 
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but generally 
withholds it from the sons of Jacob. In 
strictness, however, it should be extended 
not only to them but to the chiefs of great 
houses, as to Jesse. But the title has ac¬ 
quired in the Church another application. 
It was given to the Bishops of the five centres 





PATRIARCHS 


5G6 


PAUL (SAINT) 


of Christendom, and thence to other impor¬ 
tant Sees. But originally there were only An¬ 
tioch for Asia, Alexandria for Africa, Rome 
for Europe, and Jerusalem as the Mother 
City. Constantinople was added when it 
became the seat of the Empire. These, except 
Constantinople, were Apostolical Churches, 
as being founded by Apostles. But since po¬ 
litical importance was the guide in arranging 
church precedence, Constantinople was raised 
to the second rank by the decree of the 
Council of Chalcedon (451 a.d ), an act 
which was not submitted to by the See of 
Rome for some time. But in the earliest 
usage, Primate and Patriarch were synony¬ 
mous, and in fact the title was used rather 
in a general than in an official sense for 
some time after it was recognized as the 
proper designation of these five Sees. Their 
Patriarchal rank was acknowledged as early 
as the Council of Nice (325 a.d.), but the 
name was not exclusively used of them till 
about the time of Charlemagne. Besides 
these, other Sees were ranked as Patriarchal, 
and some of them still survive with this 
title, but, of course, do not rank with the 
Patriarchates as above recited. These are 
Canterbury, Toledo, Vienne, Lyons, Venice, 
Aquileia. The Church in this country has 
properly the extent of a Patriarchate, and 
were there an Appellate Court properly es¬ 
tablished, it would contain one of the chief 
notes of a Patriarchate. But as its Synod, 
the General Convention, is now organized 
and the precedence of its Bishops not placed 
upon any provincial system (vide Province), 
it is an inchoate Patriarchate. 

The authority of the Patriarch is thus 
described (Blunt’s Diet. Hist, and Doct. 
Theol.): “Their authority consisted in or¬ 
daining Metropolitans, confirming them or 
imposing of hands, in giving the pall, in 
convening patriarchal synods and in presid¬ 
ing in them, in pronouncing sentence accord¬ 
ing to the plurality -of votes when metro- 
political synods were insufficient to decide 
some important difference, and in some hon¬ 
orary privileges, such as the acclamation of 
the Bishops to them at the end of a general 
council.” 

The exercise of Patriarchal power is not re¬ 
fused, by every Churchman at all acquainted 
with Church history, to each Patriarch. 
But the exercise of such power without his 
jurisdiction has always been forbidden, and 
the Patriarch of Rome assuming to himself 
an uncanonical Supremacy, has suffered the 
consequences of a revolt from his com¬ 
munion of so many parts of Christendom. 
At a General Council his place in the rank 
of Patriarchs would not be refused him ; his 
arrogated supreme powers alone would be 
excepted to and denied him. The Arch¬ 
bishop of Canterbury exercises practically 
Patriarchal powers in England, and his right 
to preside in all formal gatherings of the 
Bishops of the Anglican and American 
Communions is acknowledged. Two such 
gatherings, for they were not Synods and had 


no conciliar authority, have been held (the 
first in 1867 a.d., the second in 1877 a.d.) 
at Canterbury. 

Patrimony. A name by which the estates 
and revenues of the Church were described. 
The most famous was the “ Patrimony of 
St. Peter.” The older Churches had estates 
given thebn in different parts of the Empire. 
Thus both the Sees of Ravenna and Milan 
had estates in Sicily. And Rome had large 
estates left to the See for various purposes,— 
the poor, the clergy, the church-furnish¬ 
ing,— e.g ., one in Lombardy was for keep¬ 
ing the lamps alight in St. Peter’s Church. 
It is eminently proper that some of the 
Church’s permanent work should be inde¬ 
pendent of what is called the voluntary sys¬ 
tem. In this class should be put the sup¬ 
port of the Episcopate, and the establish¬ 
ment of schools and hospitals. They should 
have a patrimony for their proper main¬ 
tenance, and this patrimony should be so se¬ 
cured that it could not be wasted, alienated, 
or forfeited. It deserves the best attention 
of the laity, since to them is committed the 
ministry of the temporals of the Church, 
and upon them rests in the largest propor¬ 
tion the regulation of those matters of 
finance which should place the work of the 
Church and the discharge of her respon¬ 
sibilities upon a secure basis. This duty 
has been discussed under the head of Fi¬ 
nance. 

Patron. “ The person who has the right 
to present to a benefice. The greatest part of 
the benefices in England are presentative : 
the thanes or lords who built and endowed 
churches having first agreed with the 
Bishops that they should have the privilege 
of presenting fit clerks to serve and receive 
the profits of the churches founded by them. 
This was a modification of the older system 
that built the churches at common charge 
and by which the right of presentation lay 
in the congregation. It was, however, the 
outcome of the needs of the times, and its use 
was the cause of many disputes between 
the wealthy founders and the Bishops. 
There is as yet in this country no departure 
from the primitive mode, but should there 
arise any imitation of this custom (which 
began about 400 a.d.), the limitations and 
the rights established elsewhere would 
form a sufficiently authoritative guide 
for the settlement of any disputes. These 
disputes, it may be added, have at times 
led to results far different from those 
involved in them at their inception. For 
example, the refusal of the Bishop of 
Exeter to induct the Rev. Mr. Gorham into 
the vicarage of St. Just in Cornwall, upon 
the presentation of Lord Lyndhurst, be¬ 
cause of alleged unsoundness in the Faith, 
led to the famous “Gorham case.” (Vide 
Hook’s Ch. Diet., Stephen’s Book of Com¬ 
mon Prayer, Philimore’s ed.of Burn’s Eccl. 
Law.) 

Paul, St. “ Saul, who is also called 
Paul,” was born at Tarsus, the capital of 





PAUL (SAINT) 


567 


PAUL (SAINT) 


the province of Cilicia, and one of the three 
great Academies (Athens, Alexandria, Tar¬ 
sus) of the classic world. His father was a 
Jew, a Benjamite, one of the great ortho¬ 
dox-patriotic party of the Pharisees ; a “ He¬ 
brew,” in the special sense of a maintainer 
of Hebrew customs and of the use (within 
his own household) of the Armaic language, 
and, finally, a known citizen. This citizen¬ 
ship was no result of the “ freedom” of Tar¬ 
sus ; for civic “ freedom” under the Empire 
implied no more at the most than municipal 
self-government and exemption from public 
taxation. Saul’s father may have been the 
freedman of a Roman noble, or he may have 
received citizenship in reward for political 
services during the great civil wars ; or, 
just possibly, he may have bought the priv¬ 
ilege. His name, as that of his wife, is un¬ 
known to us. We gather (2 Tim. i. 3) that 
they were sincerely pious. They had, be¬ 
sides Saul, at least one child, a daughter 
(Acts xxiii. 16). Saul’s circumcision-name 
was perhaps common in his tribe, in memory 
of the Eirst King. His other and, to us, 
far more familiar name, Paul (Paulus), was 
probably given him also in infancy for use 
in the Gentile world, just as Jewish chil¬ 
dren in England now have a Hebrew home- 
name as well as an English (or otherwise 
European) name for exterior use. If his 
father was in any sense a dependent of the 
HSmilian family, the choice of Paulus is 
easily explained, for Paulus was a common 
cognomen of the .Emilii. But it was used 
also by the Sergii and other families. The 
name first occurs, Acts xiii. 9. The marked 
mention of it there is sufficiently explained 
by the fact that the Gentile name was, just 
then, in the Apostle’s life, necessarily com¬ 
ing to be the more usual name of the two, 
and that the first distinguished Gentile be¬ 
fore whom he spoke for Christ was himself, 
by a coincidence, a Paulus. The exact date 
of Saul’s birth is quite uncertain, but it 
must lie within the few years before and the 
few years after the common (or Dionysian ?) 
date of the birth of Christ. When 
Stephen died Saul was still a “ young man” 
(in the then recognized sense of the words); 
that is, he was not more than forty years 
old. And the date of Stephen’s death must 
probably be placed in, or very near, 30 a.d. 
Quite early, perhaps as early as his ninth or 
tenth year, Saul was transferred, as a stu¬ 
dent of the Law, to Jerusalem, where the 
great Pharisaic teacher of the day was Ga¬ 
maliel, grandson of Hillel. Gamaliel was an 
orthodox “ Hebrew,” but also a student of 
Gentile literature, and Saul, under his influ¬ 
ence, not only matured into the best Rab- 
binistof his generation (Gal. i. 14), but also 
gained an acquaintance, traceable in his 
Epistles and Discourses, with at least a few 
Greek authors and with the then prevalent 
Greek philosophies. Under Gamaliel, too, 
he would not be discouraged from using 
(along with the original Scriptures) the 
u Septuagint” (lxx.) Greek Version. 


His quotations from the Old Testament 
indicate an equal familiarity, or nearly so, 
with the Original and the Version. He 
quotes in Greek much as an English Hebraist, 
with the authorized Version in his memory, 
might quote in English. Whether Saul 
dwelt continuously at Jerusalem till his first 
recorded public acts is uncertain. Acts 
xxvi. 4, 5, suggests a residence continuous 
on the whole; but, on the other hand, St. 
Paul’s silence is sufficient proof that our 
Lord during His earthly life was unknown 
to him by sight. This suggests a break of 
residence, an absence (in Cilicia or at 
Alexandria) during about the period of 
our Lord’s ministry ; after which, perhaps, 
a return to Jerusalem was prompted by the 
sudden prominence of the Nazarene heresy. 
At the date of Stephen’s work Saul was per¬ 
haps a member (as a Scribe) of the Great 
Sanhedrim. But more probably his election 
into it (which seems to be proved by Acts 
xxvi. 10, “I gave my vote against them”) 
was due to his display at that great crisis 
(for such it was both for the Church and the 
Synagogue) of intense and energetic zeal. 
He now became a regular delegated inquis¬ 
itor for the Sanhedrim, and, among other 
places (Acts xxvi. 11), visited Damascus, of 
whose 50,000 Jews, as of all the Jews of the 
Dispersion, the High-Priest (under certain 
imperial grants) was not only the spiritual 
head, but also in some respects the civil 
patronus. His delegate thus carried the 
power of arrest. Under King Aretas of 
Petra (a vassal of the Empire), who was 
just then lord of Damascus, the Jews there 
had a governor ( ethnarch , 2 Cor. xi. 32) of 
their own, to whom Saul would show his 
commission, but who was soon to set guards 
at the city gates to bar the renegade’s es¬ 
cape. On the ever-memorable conversion 
we only remark here that the appearance 
then granted was, in the convert’s own life¬ 
long belief, radically different from what is 
commonly called a vision. It was truly, 
though mysteriously, corporeal , for St. Paul 
(1 Cor. xv. 8) bases upon it his claim to 
count among the witnesses of our Lord’s 
corporeal Resurrection. We do not dwell 
on the absolute and perfectly permanent 
change in the intense purpose of Saul’s life 
which then and there took place ; it is best 
read in the Scripture pages. We only sug¬ 
gest the study of its two contrasted yet har¬ 
monious aspects,—the supernatural aspect, 
in that it was wrought by an objective Di¬ 
vine act which was the issue of a Divine 
purpose (Gal. i. 15), and the first step in a 
life-long experience of Divine inspiration ; 
and the natural aspect, in that it left the 
frame-work of character unchanged, pre¬ 
served unimpaired the balance of intellectual 
judgment, or rather gave a vastly greater 
expansion to its legitimate use ; and far 
from leading Saul impatiently to reject old 
beliefs as such, left him quite as fixedly as 
ever, and far more deeply than ever, sure 
of the entire and eternal truth of the Dro- 






PAUL (SAINT) 


568 


PAUL (SAINT) 


phetic Scriptures and of the Divine mean¬ 
ing of the very Ritual which had once 
seemed to him irreconcilably to contradict 
the teaching of the Nazarenes. 

After baptism, and some intercourse with 
the Damascene disciples (Acts ix. 19), and 
then a withdrawal from the city (Gal. 1. 17) 
for some weeks or months, Saul began at Da¬ 
mascus the new work of his life. His with¬ 
drawal had secured for him, probably, the 
mysterious preparation of supernatural inter¬ 
course with his Master in the solitudes of 
Arabia,—perhaps in the peculiarly congenial 
solitudes of “ Sinai in Arabia.” After three 
years (at most) he left Damascus, to avoid 
arrest or murder, and made his way to 
Jerusalem, where Barnabas, his friend and 
perhaps once fellow-student, introduced him 
to the still hesitating Apostles. He became 
St. Peter’s guest; but after a fortnight of 
discussions with the Hellenists of Jerusalem 
he was again compelled, by plots of assassi¬ 
nation, to retire to the coast of Syria, and 
thence to his native Tarsus (38 or 39 a.d.). 
From Tarsus, no doubt, he now worked as 
the evangelist of Cilicia, and so spent at 
least three years. At length he was sum¬ 
moned by Barnabas to the Syrian Antioch, 
the scene of wholly new developments ; .for 
in it first the “ Greeks” or heathen Gentiles 
(Acts xi. 20) had now been freely welcomed 
to the covenant of the Messiah. 

At Antioch he labored with Barnabas for 
“a whole year,” about 43 a.d., probably a 
year memorable as the birthtime of the 
Christian name (Acts xi. 26); and then 
visited Jerusalem to carry relief there dur¬ 
ing (or just before) one of the great dearths 
which marked the reign (41-54 a.d.) of Clau¬ 
dius. The martyrdom of St. James, the son 
of Zebedee, and the seizure and deliverance 
of St. Peter, occurred while Saul and Bar¬ 
nabas were in or near Jerusalem. This 
brief and troubled visit is scarcely (it would 
appear from the words of Gal. ii. 1) to be 
reckoned as a visit to the Apostles at all. 
Now followed, at Antioch, another period 
of work for Saul and Barnabas. It is a 
period not easy to date: some reckonings 
close it 45 a.d., some as late as 49 a.d. It 
lasted, however, till a Divine oracle called 
Saul and Barnabas to embark on their great 
missionary tour. They began with Cyprus, 
where at Paphos the Proconsul Paulus be¬ 
came, we may hope, a true convert to the 
Gospel through the work and word of the 
Tarsian Jew who bore his name. They 
then passed to the Pamphylian shore, and 
thence to the inner uplands of Pisidia and 
Lycaonia, including the Isaurian fastnesses 
where Derbe stood. At length they ap¬ 
proached, from the west, the Cilician border, 
and then returned on their footsteps to the 
port of Attalia, and so by sea to the Syrian 
Antioch. 

We attempt no details of this memorable 
circuit,—crowded as its story is both with Di¬ 
vine instruction and with innumerable notes 
of historic accuracy and reality. At Antioch 


they remained “ a long time,”—probably till 
50 or 51 a.d. And now a disturbance of 
extreme gravity broke in upon the work in 
this great centre of Gentile Christianity. 
The Judaic party in the Christian Church, 
retaining and intensifying the exclusive 
views which had once clouded even St. 
Peter’s mind (Acts x. 34), and which degen¬ 
erated afterwards into manifold heretical 
divergences, now intruded on the field of St. 
Paul. Jerusalem, where by this time the 
Lord’s brother was what we may fairly call 
the Bishop, was recognized as the metropo¬ 
lis of the Gospel, and the dispute was re¬ 
ferred thither,—a Divine oracle (Gal. ii. 2) 
concurring with, or prompting, the resolve 
of the Church. The result was in some sort 
a compromise, though it was a compro¬ 
mise divinely sanctioned (Acts xv. 28)'; 
but it was at least so solemn a state¬ 
ment of the covenant equality of Gen¬ 
tile Christians, and thus so real a vic¬ 
tory for St. Paul, that it secured to him 
for life the bitter and restless opposition of 
the Judaic party,—an opposition curiously 
developed in somewhat later days in the 
heretical literature falsely inscribed with the 
name of Clement of Rome, and in which 
St. Paul is covertly assailed as the grand 
corrupter of the primeval Gospel. The un¬ 
diminished energy of the Judaists, even just 
after the decision at Jerusalem against their 
main principle, appears from the successful 
pressure they put upon St. Peter himself, 
and that at Antioch (to which he appears to 
have followed St. Paul), to act for the mo¬ 
ment as a separatist (Gal. ii. 11-21). From 
this crisis, then, St. Paul came forth as more 
than ever a recognized Apostle, co-ordinate 
with the Twelve, and also more than ever 
the object of intense hatred with a powerful 
party. He had returned to Antioch with 
Barnabas, and accompanied by the new¬ 
comers from Jerusalem, Judas and Silas 
(Silvanus); and now, after a residence there 
of “ some days,” he proposed to Barnabas a 
second circuit. But a personal difference 
led to their separation, and St. Paul set out 
with Silas (say 51 a.d.) on an independent 
track. This time he went by land ; revis¬ 
ited his plantings in Syria, Cilicia, and Ly¬ 
caonia; joined the young Timotheus to his 
company in what proved to be a life-long 
connection ; broke new ground in Phrygia 
and the “Galatian region,” where (itseems 
from Gal. iv. 13) he was detained among the 
Celtic inhabitants by illness,—a detention 
overruled to a large and enthusiastic accept¬ 
ance of the Gospel, soon, however, to be 
marred by Judaic intruders; and then at¬ 
tempted other districts of Asia Minor. But 
Divine commands, perhaps in the form of 
“prophesying,” closed all avenues, and at 
last guided St. Paul across the JEgasen to 
Europe. Here he landed in Macedonia, 
perhaps 52 a.d. ; made his first converts, 
now in peace, now amidst cruelties and ter¬ 
rors, at Philippi ; passed southward to Thes- 
salonica, a Jewish centre and a busy trad- 




PAUL (SAINT) 


569 


PAUL (SAINT) 


ing-place, where he planted a vigorous 
Church; then, southward still, to Berea , 
still followed by Jewish violence, but also 
by Divine blessing ; and at last, for safety’s 
sake, to Athens. Silas and Timotheus were 
left at Berea, with orders to follow in due 
time. At Athens he took advantage of 
the ways of the place, and opened discus¬ 
sion with the students and dilettanti who 
frequented the walks of the Agora; and at 
length (whether formally or informally, ser¬ 
iously or in irony, who shall say?) he was 
brought up to answer for his strange doc¬ 
trine before (or at least in) the sacred Court 
of Areopagus. His address indicates famil¬ 
iarity with Stoicism. Before long he left 
Athens for Corinth, the seat of the Roman 
government of Achaia (i.e., the Southern 
Greek Province). Here a scene of mingled 
activity and vice made both peculiar diffi¬ 
culties and peculiar opportunities for St. 
Paul. Early in 52 a.d., Claudius, by a severe 
hut soon canceled edict, banished from Rome 
its multitude of Jews. Of these, one mar¬ 
ried pair, Aquila and Prisca (or Priscilla), 
settled or rested at Corinth. They were 
work-people, hair-cloth-workers, and thus 
plied the trade which long before (according 
to Rabbinic precepts, by which every Rabbi 
was to learn a handicraft against a time of 
need) had been taught to the boy Saul, and 
this trade was now standing St. Paul, the 
Christian Rabbi, in good stead ; and thus, 
perhaps at first in the way of business, he 
fell in with‘Aquila and Priscilla. Whether 
he found them Christians, or (under God) 
made them such, we shall never know, but 
it is more probable that they were already 
believers,—for otherwise we should certainly 
expect some distinct allusion in the Acts or 
the Epistles to so important a conversion. 
But doubtless they owed their first direct 
apostolic teaching to St. Paul, to whom now 
they were bound for life in a holy friend¬ 
ship. We have thus in Aquila and Pris¬ 
cilla, very probably, an example of what is 
antecedently likely,—the arrival already of 
the Gospel at Rome ; the first facts and doc¬ 
trines may have reached the city soon after 
the Pentecostal preaching (see Acts ii. 10), 
and there they would find rather easy audi¬ 
ence than otherwise. At Rome a peculiar 
weariness of paganism was manifest in 
many directions. The East was, in a cer¬ 
tain sense, in fashion; Judaism had at¬ 
tracted abundant notice ; and the prophecies 
must have been at least superficially known 
to a multitude of proselytes or semi-prose¬ 
lytes. 

" But no organized Church seems as yet to 
have arisen at Rome. Indeed, there is no 
clear token of any Christian organization 
west of the JEgxan before St. Paul’s arrival 
at Philippi. At Corinth St. Paul spent 
eighteen months. This time was marked 
by the writing of his earliest Apostolic Let¬ 
ters,—the two Epistles to the Thessalonians. 
These must be dated in, or near, 53 a.d.,— 
certainly not earlier. Great opposition and 


great success marked the beginnings of the 
great Corinthian Church, with the “ out- 
stations” (in modern missionary language), 
which, doubtless, then sprung up at the port 
of Cenchreae and other neighboring towns. 
Probably the assistants of St. Paul carried 
the Gospel through the whole Acliaian 
province at this time, or very soon after (2 
Cor. i. 1). About this stage of St. Paul’s 
life Nero succeeded Claudius, October, 54 

A.D. 

After scenes of outrage which the Procon¬ 
sul Gallio treated with impartial indifference, 
St. Paul at last left Corinth for Syria, say 
some time in 54 a.d. He touched at Ephe¬ 
sus ; left Aquila there with his wife, perhaps 
to be the organizer of a regular community, 
and himself departed for Csesarea and Jeru¬ 
salem. There he was perhaps in time to 
keep, as he had intended, one of the great 
Festivals; but all that is certain is that he 
“saluted the Church” of St. James, and 
then soon left for Antioch, where again he 
spent “ some time” (Acts xviii.). Now fol¬ 
lowed a missionary tour in the “ upper 
coasts,”— i.e. , the inland regions, of Asia 
Minor. It must have been long and labori¬ 
ous ; but it is dismissed by St. Luke with a 
brief allusion. At length St. Paul reached 
the shore, at Ephesus, some time (say) in 55 
a.d. Here an eminent Alexandrian Hel¬ 
lenist convert, Apollos, had meanwhile ar¬ 
rived ; had held intercourse with the more 
advanced and instructed Aquila and Pris¬ 
cilla, and had crossed to Corinth ; there to 
do much good (Acts xviii. 27, 28), but also, 
probably, by his more ornate and philosoph¬ 
ically-worded preaching, to raise prejudices, 
unwittingly, against St. Paul. The Apostle 
spent about three years at Ephesus in cease¬ 
less Christian labors ; and during this time 
his assistants traveled, it seems, to Colossae, 
and Laodicea, and other places in proconsu¬ 
lar Asia which he could not reach (Col. ii. 
1). At length the tumult of Demetrius, 
perhaps at the festival of the Ephesia, has¬ 
tened St. Paul’s already-planned departure 
for the European side. Very shortly before 
this departure (spring, -57 a.d.) he had writ¬ 
ten and sent the First Epistle to the Corin¬ 
thians ,—occasioned by distressing reports 
from Corinth as well as by questions raised 
by the Church there. To give the Epistle 
time to do its work, he resolved to reach 
Corinth by a long circuit round the head of 
the JEgsean , and so southward through 
Macedonia. Titus went before, to ascertain 
the state of the Corinthians, and to report to 
St. Paul, if possible, in Asia Minor ; but this 
proved impracticable, and St. Paul’s intense 
anxiety was not relieved by the longed-for 
tidings until he entered Macedonia (2 Cor. 
ii. 12,13). Thence he wrote the Second Epis¬ 
tle to the Corinthians ,—a wonderful mosaic 
of serene revelations of eternal truth and 
outpourings of personal anxiety and affec¬ 
tion. 

He was now free to visit Macedonian 
churches and to evangelize new districts. 





PAUL (SAINT) 


570 


PAUL (SAINT) 


Here we may probably place bis westward 
tour (Rom. xv. 19) as far as the Adriatic 
sea-board. Now also he effected throughout 
Macedonia (t.e., in the then sense of that 
term, the Northern Grecian Province) the 
ingathering of a fund, already organized, 
for the poor Christians at Jerusalem (Rom. 
xv. 25, 26; 2 Cor. viii. 1-4 ; ix. 1, 2); a task 
which was not only a tangible proof of deep 
sympathy with the work of St. James, but 
also an expression of St. Paul’s own heart’s 
love for his fellow-Jews. (See Rom. xv. 27.) 

But the most lastingly important effort 
of this period (for to this period it surely be¬ 
longs) was the Epistle to the Galatians ,— 
the result of news of the inroads of Judaic 
propaganda in that well-loved, but already 
troubled, scene of his earlier labors. At 
length he reached Corinth ; there found (as 
we have good cause to think) happy results of 
his two messages of warning and instruction, 
and there also collected the Achaian gifts 
for the Jerusalem Fund, which he now 
(Rom. xv. 25) prepared to carry to St. 
James. This stay at Corinth lasted only 
three months. But it was made memorable 
forever by the writing of our great Epistle, 
—the Epistle to the Romans. The Epistle 
was evidently written not under pressure of 
anxiety, but with calm deliberation. It was 
composed, apparently, in the house of a 
Corinthian Christian, Gains or Caius, dic¬ 
tated by St. Paul, and written down by one 
Tertius. Would that we could call up the 
scene in the Corinthian chamber! The 
three months at Corinth over, he left Achaia 
for Macedonia, spent Passover at Philippi, 
crossed to Asia Minor, addressed the Ephe¬ 
sian Presbyters at Miletus, sailed to Tyre, 
and at length (amidst prophecies of danger) 
reached Jerusalem, perhaps in May, 58 a.d., 
—not long after an Egyptian impostor, at 
the head of a huge gang of the zealot 
Sicarii (Assassins), had seriously threatened 
the Roman authorities of Palestine. 

In the act of a last effort to conciliate the 
Judaic part}', St. Paul was almost murdered 
in the Temple by the Jews; rescued by the 
Roman commandant, but under the belief 
that the victim of the mob was the Egyptian 
rebel; allowed to defend himself on the 
spot before the multitude, and the next day 
before the Sanhedrim, and then, for safety, 
conveyed as a prisoner to Caesarea. There, 
within a fortnight of his arrival at Jerusa¬ 
lem, he was heard before the Procurator 
Felix, who lingered, however, over the case, 
and at last, two 3 7 ears after, when recalled 
on a serious charge (summer of 60 a.d.), left 
St. Paul a prisoner still. Of these two years 
of St. Paul’s life we know almost nothing. 
Some critics assign to them the writing of 
the Epistles to the Ephesians, Colossians, 
and Philemon. But these are certainly to 
be dated later, and from Rome. At length, 
before Porcius Festus, the Apostle was heard 
again; but even this far better judge hesi¬ 
tated to do him full justice, and he appealed 
in due form, as a citizen, to the Emperor's 


own hearing. He was, ere long, shipped 
for Italy; but off the Cretan coast, perhaps 
early in October, a typhoon struck the ship, 
which soon was a drifting wreck, and was 
at last run aground at Malta. There the 
rescued company wintered, and not till the 
early spring of 61 a.d. (the year of Boadi- 
cea’s revolt in Britain) did St. Paul at last 
see Rome. At some distance from the city, 
in detached parties, at two different spots, 
the representatives of the Church (now for 
nearly three years in possession of the great 
Epistle) met the captive Saint, and cheered 
his anxious and weary spirit by their loyal 
sympathy. In the city he was permitted to t 
occupy a hired lodging, perhaps a story of 
one of the lofty Roman tabernse. Here, a 
few days after his arrival, he made a last, 
long effort to convince the leaders of the 
Roman Jews of the Messiahship of Jesus; 
and here, under military custody, but other¬ 
wise unmolested, he spent “ two whole 
years,” full, no doubt, of immense mental 
and spiritual labor, and holy influence, and 
marked forever by the writing of the four 
Epistles (probably in this order), Colos- 
sians, Philemon, Ephesians, Philippians. 
This Roman residence closed in the course 
of 62 a.d., probably in the summer. The 
question how it closed—whether with con¬ 
demnation to death or acquittal—is a famous 
one. Its discussion would be out of place 
here, but our undoubting conviction is that 
the result was St. Paul’s acquittal ; that he 
was set free, and once more undertook 
missionary labors; that he visited Western 
and Eastern Europe and Asia Minor; and 
that, late in this last stage of his life, he 
wrote the Pastoral Epistles,—in the order, 

1 Timothy, Titus, 2 Timothy. 

This last most affecting letter is dated once 
more from a prison, and from Rome. It is 
our only relic of St. Paul’s second Roman 
captivity, which ended in his martyrdom,— 
probably 66 a.d., the year of the Great Fire 
and of the Neronian Persecution, though 
perhaps the date of the martyrdom must be 
placed one or two years later. Probably 
soon before St. Paul’s execution, and prob¬ 
ably also at Rome, St. Peter had suffered his 
predicted death. And (if 66 a.d. is the true 
date) the Jewish war had already begun a few 
months when St. Paul died,—to close four 
years later with the Fall of Jerusalem. The 
one question within our scope here, connected 
with this last period of St. Paul’s life, is the 
question of a visit to Spain. Was the hope 
of Rom. xv. 24, 28, at length fulfilled? 
There seems to be good evidence that it was. 
In the Epistle to the Corinthians, written by 
St. Paul’s own follower, St. Clement of 
Rome, we find it stated (ch. v.) as a familiar 
fact that St. Paul, before his “departure 
from this world to the holy place,” “ went 
to the end of the West.” It has been 
pleaded against the theory of a Spanish 
journey, that this may mean only Italy , as 
viewed from the locality of St. Clement’s 
correspondents at Corinth. But the then 




PAUL (SAINT) 


571 


PELAGIANISM 


centre of the world could not possibly be so 
described, and above all not by a writer 
dating from Rome, however he might care 
to put himself in his reader’s geographical po¬ 
sition. And there is direct evidence besides 
that such a phrase as “ the end of the West” 
would have a familiar connection, at that 
time, with Spain. (See Bishop Lightfoot’s 
St. Clement of Rome, p. 49-51.) 

This witness, certainly genuine and quite 
contemporary, is fairly conclusive. St. Clem¬ 
ent cannot have been mistaken or igno¬ 
rant on so leading a fact of his great master’s 
latest labors as the westward limit of those 
labors. The only serious difficulty in the 
theory of the Spanish visit (once granting 
the theory, necessary to the genuineness 
of the Pastorals, of St. Paul’s release and 
second Roman imprisonment) is that there 
is no traditional trace whatever of any work 
of St. Paul’s in Spain. But this is equally 
true of other districts (as Illyricum), in 
which, however, we have St. Paul’s own 
word for his labors. 

We take it, then, for certain that St. Paul, 
some time after the spring or summer of 62 
a.d., and probably before the spring of 66 
a.d., visited the Western Peninsula,—whose 
present name, Espana, is said to be an abo¬ 
riginal word, meaning “ The Land’s End.” 
The belief that he landed in Britain pos¬ 
sesses, in Bishop Lightfoot’s words (St. Clem¬ 
ent of Rome, quoted above), “neither evi¬ 
dence nor probability.” 

It is impossible not to wish to know some¬ 
thing of St. Paul’s personal appearance. 
Mr. Lewin (in his Life and Epistles of St. 
Paul, vol. ii. ch. xi.) has collected all that 
approaches to information in this matter; 
and in this one case at least tradition appears 
to be something better than mere fancy. It 
seems to be certain that St. Paul’s stature 
was short, if not diminutive; that his head 
was bald and his face bearded; and that 
his expression, even if deformed in some 
measure by ophthalmia (which is one of 
the many conjectural explanations of the 
“thorn in the flesh”), yet reflected some¬ 
thing of his soul. A medallion, dating per¬ 
haps from the generation next to St. Paul’s 
own, is engraved by Mr. Lewin (vol. ii. 
p. 411): it gives the profiles of St. Paul and 
St. Peter; and that of St. Paul expresses, 
or seems to do so, all the elevation and in¬ 
tensity both of thought and feeling which 
still, as we read the Epistles, touch us with 
the touch of life. The character and labors 
of St. Paul have been so often eulogized, and 
are so inimitably described in a thousand 
unconscious touches by his own pen, that it 
would be vain in this brief summary to at¬ 
tempt another portrait. 

We will only quote the words of but one 
of the many existing delineations. 

“ Amidst the circumstances of his apostolic 
work he developed a force and play of spirit, 
a keenness, depth, clearness, and cogency of 
thought, a purity and firmness of purpose, 
an intensity of feeling, a holy audacity of 


effort, a wisdom of deportment, a precision 
and delicacy of practical skill, a strength 
and liberty of faith, a fire and mastery of 
eloquence, a heroism in danger, a love, and 
self-forgetfulness, and patience, and humil¬ 
ity, and altogether a sublime power and 
richness of endowment, which have secured 
for this chosen Implement of Christ the 
reverence and wonder of all time.” (Meyer, 
Brief an die Komer, Einleitung, p. 7. From 
Rev. H. C. G. Moule’s Intro, to his Com¬ 
ment. on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans.) 

Peculiars. They were parishes or mon¬ 
asteries which, for some reason or cause, 
were exempted from the jurisdiction of the 
Bishop in whose Diocese they were situated. 
During the Middle Ages there were many 
such exemptions granted upon one or other 
cause. Nearly all of those which lay in Eng¬ 
land were swept away at the Reformation ; 
but some were retained, notably the famous 
Westminster Abbey, which is subject to 
visitation from the Queen only. 

Pelagianism. This heresy, though it 
takes its name from Pelagius, “does not so 
much represent single notions of a single 
man as a complete moral and religious sys¬ 
tem,” its peculiar tenets being concerned 
with original sin, freedom of the will, Di¬ 
vine grace, and predestination. 

Differing opinions concerning these mat¬ 
ters were entertained, and more or less 
clearly expressed, from the earliest times ; 
but it was not until the fifth century that 
they were so developed as to claim general 
attention and merit the decision of Councils. 
In the beginning of this century there ap¬ 
peared, among others, two who seem to 
have been chief in formulating that system 
which has been rejected and condemned by 
the Church, Celestius, a monk of Rome, and 
Pelagius, a British monk, from whom the 
heresy has taken its name—Pelagianism. 

They were bitterly opposed by St. Jerome, 
and with less asperity by St. Augustine, 
whose writings contain the orthodox doc¬ 
trines on the disputed points. The follow¬ 
ing seven heads are given by Hagenbach 
as St. Augustine’s summary of the Errors 
of Pelagius: 

1. Adam was created mortal, so that he 
would have died whether he had sinned or 
not. 

2. Adam’s sin has only affected himself, 
and not the human race. 

3. New-born infants are in the same con¬ 
dition in which Adam was previous to the 
fall. 

4. The whole human race dies neither in 
consequence of Adam’s death, nor of his 
transgression ; nor does it rise from the dead 
in consequence of Christ’s resurrection. 

5. Infants obtain eternal life though they 
should not be baptized. 

6. The Law is as good a means of Salva¬ 
tion as the Gospel. 

7. There were some men, even before the 
appearance of Christ, who did not commit 
sin. 




PELAGIANISM 


572 


PENANCE 


It is probable that some of these proposi¬ 
tions would have been universally con¬ 
demned by the earlier theologians, while 
upon others there would have been some dif¬ 
ferences of opinion. But the contrast be¬ 
tween Pelagianism and orthodoxy may be 
best exhibited by comparing what each 
taught on the chief points of difference. 
Pelagius appears to have held that there is 
no other connection between the sin of 
Adam and the sin of his posterity than 
that which exists between example and 
voluntary imitation. Hence infants are in 
the same condition in which Adam was prior 
to the fall, and are free to develop sin or vir¬ 
tue as they choose, and are alone responsi¬ 
ble for what they do. In opposition to this 
St. Augustine taught, “ As all men have 
sinned in Adam they are justly exposed to 
the vengeance of God, because of this hered¬ 
itary sin, and guilt of sin.” 

As regards liberty and grace Pelagius held 
that man stands in need of Divine aid, 
which he spoke of as the grace of God, as¬ 
sisting the imperfections of man; but this 
was something external, added to the efforts 
put forth by the free-will of man, and even 
merited by virtuous inclinations. 

Augustine, on the other hand, taught that 
grace was “ the creative principle of life, 
which produces out of itself the liberty of 
the will, which is entirely lost in the natural 
man.” Out of this position follows as a 
logical consequence the whole doctrine of 
predestination, from whose harsh conclu¬ 
sions Augustine himself seems to have 
shrunk, seeking to soften them by practical 
cautions, though he combated the views of 
the Semi-Pelagians, who proposed a middle 
course between Pelagianism and Augustin- 
ism. The following summary may serve to 
illustrate this subject: 

“ The motto of Pelagius was free-will; 
that of Augustine efficacious grace. The 
former held that, notwithstanding the fall, 
the human will was perfectly free to choose 
at any time between good and evil; the lat¬ 
ter that, in consequence of the fall, the will 
is in a state of moral bondage, from which 
it can only be freed by Divine grace. With 
the British monk election is suspended on 
the decision of man’s will ; human nature is 
still as pure as it came originally from the 
hands of the Creator ; Christ died equally 
for all men, and as the result of His death, 
a general grace is granted to all mankind, 
which any may comply with, but which all 
may finally forfeit. With the African 
Bishop election is absolute. We are pre¬ 
destinated, not from foreseen holiness, but 
that we might be holy ; all men are lying 
under the guilt or penal obligation of the 
first sin, and in a state of spiritual help¬ 
lessness and corruption; the sacrifice of 
Christ was, in point of destination, offered 
for the elect, though, in point of exhibi¬ 
tion, it is offered to all; and the saints ob¬ 
tain the gift of perseverance in holiness to 
the end.” (Historical Introduction to Pas¬ 


cal’s Provincial Letters, by Rev. Thomas 
McCrie.) 

Pelagianism was condemned in the person 
of its teachers, Celestius and Pelagius, in a 
series of Councils from 412 a.d., the chief of 
which were held in Carthage in 417 and 418 
a.d. ; and in particular our own Church has 
condemned the doctrines of Pelagius in the 
IX., X., and XVII. Articles of Religion; 
not without reason, for the heresy is still 
held by many, though never at any time 
have Pelagianists formed a distinct sect. It 
is extremely probable that many of the 
sects would defend his doctrines, and in par¬ 
ticular it may be shown that the Jesuits in 
their controversy with the Jansenists have 
probably fallen into this error. 

In pursuit of this subject the reader is re¬ 
ferred to Hagenbach’s History of Doctrines, 
Blunt’s Dictionary of Theology, Pascal’s 
Provincial Letters, and Burnet and Browne 
on the Articles. 

Penance. The outward expression of the 
inner repentance of the heart. This was re¬ 
quired in the early Church, where the heathen 
civil law did not take cognizance of many of¬ 
fenses against the moral law. He who was 
guilty of some offense whereby the congre¬ 
gation was offended and injured was sus¬ 
pended from Communion, and was required 
before readmission to testify and prove in 
some public way his repentance. It was the 
protection that the Church then demanded 
for her purity, and from it arose the peni¬ 
tential discipline of the Primitive Church. 
It was natural, since the fault was more or 
less public, that the reparation of it should 
be as public. It was, moreover, a defense, 
and a hindrance to those who might be 
tempted to sin, were there no penalty. It 
was the expression, too, of the inward con¬ 
trition of the soul. The publican in the Tem¬ 
ple abased his eyes, beat upon his breast, and 
stood apart. In our own day, since there are 
legal penalties for nearly all overt infringe¬ 
ments of ordinary morality, there is no pub¬ 
lic expression of contrition demanded of 
offenders, except in the cases of evil living 
or of a quarrel between communicants, as 
recited in the rubrics before the “ Order for 
the Administration of the Lord’s Supper;” 
nor is there at this place any order for any 
penitential act in any other sense than the 
acknowledgment of the fault or sin, and 
the vow of amendment. The ancient peni¬ 
tential system required something more than 
this. There was a definite penalty assigned 
for every breaking of the moral law, and 
the person who submitted to the Church’s 
censures had to undergo it. If he were 
contumacious it but increased the severity 
when he finally did submit. “The theory of 
penitential discipline was this: that the 
Church was an organized body with an out¬ 
ward and visible form of government; that 
all who were outside of her boundaries were 
outside the means of grace; that she had a 
command laid upon her and authority given 
to her to gather men into her fellowship by 




PENANCE 


573 


PENITENTIAL 


the ceremony of baptism; but as some of 
those who were admitted proved unworthy 
of her calling, she had also the right by 
the power of the keys to deprive them tem¬ 
porarily or absolutely of the privilege of 
communion with her, and on their amend¬ 
ment to restore them once more to Church 
membership. ... It was a purely spiritual 
jurisdiction. It obtained its hold over the 
minds of men from the belief, universal in 
the Catholic Church of the early ages, that 
he who was expelled from her pale was ex¬ 
pelled also from the way of salvation, and 
that the sentence which was pronounced by 
God’s Church on earth was ratified by Him 
in heaven.” (Smith’s Diet, of Chr. Antiq., 
sub voc.) Penitence has at once its origin 
and sanction in the New Testament, and 
primarily in the promise of Christ Him¬ 
self (St. Matt, xviii. 18). There is room 
only for a mere mention here of the several 
orders of Penitents in the Primitive Church. 
In the earliest records we find the duration 
of the penance, as of fasting and weeping 
and prayer, quite short,—from two to seven 
weeks. This was gradually lengthened, and 
after the close of the second century we find 
years substituted for weeks, though thejudg- 
ment of the Bishops and the circumstances 
of the case, as well as the dangers from per¬ 
sistence, often led to a shortening of the 
time. But the concession of the privilege 
of being restored was also granted. Eor with 
the shorter time was also held the greater 
depth of humiliation and the greater strict¬ 
ness of life after restoration. So it came to 
pass that the longer period, with all its sharp 
discipline, led to no greater strictness after¬ 
wards. But about 260 a.d., Gregory Thau- 
maturgus arranged an order of restoration, 
which was as follows: The Flentes were 
without the door of the church, where the 
sinner can beg the prayers of those who go 
in. The Audientes stood in the vestibule 
(Narthex), where they were to stand till the 
Catechumens were dismissed, as only worthy 
to hear the Scripture and the Instruction, but 
not to hear the prayers. The Substratentes 
stood within the Church, after the Catechu¬ 
mens were dismissed. The Consistentes were 
mingled with the Faithful, and did not leave 
with the Catechumens. This was in prac¬ 
tical use, but still the Bishops could curtail 
it, and very often did so shorten or omit 
entering one or other of the steps. 

The arrangement, too, varied in different 
parts of the Church, as however rigid the dis¬ 
cipline was, it was yet adapted to the character 
of the people for whose correction it was in¬ 
dicted. * Besides, sackcloth was worn, some¬ 
times continuously, but necessarily at some 
step in the restoration, also ashes were 
sprinkled upon the head. The restoration, 
when at last it did take place, was with 
public prayer and with imposition of the 
hands of the Bishop. If a penitent were 
in a mortal sickness the Priest could re¬ 
store him at once, and if it happened that 
the penitent recovered, the remainder of 


the sentence was thereby remitted. But 
later on he was required to resume and 
complete it. It is foreign to our plan to go 
farther in this sketch, which applies only to 
those ages of the Church when penance, 
penitence, and repentance were more clearly 
understood, and the Church’s work was to 
see that her spiritual power was enforced. 
Nor can we enter into any details of the 
English system of Church discipline, which 
is outlined in the Canons of 1603 a.d., and 
which is carried out in Archidiaconal and 
Episcopal courts. 

In our own Church in this matter of pen¬ 
ance, there is no enforcement of a public 
penalty in the Church, at least in the case 
of laymen. Suspension from the Commun¬ 
ion is almost the sole penalty, and practically 
a layman conscious of having offended ex¬ 
communicates himself by absenting himself 
therefrom. Nor under the Rubric can any 
notice be taken of scandals, unless they be¬ 
come notorious and the congregation be 
thereby offended. In, however, this matter 
of observation and presentment, the vestry, 
who can have much of the public opinion of 
the congregation in their hands, can be of 
material aid in presenting scandalous persons 
in such a way to the clergyman that he can 
act. For it is a hardship which now hinders 
the clergyman, in his effort to control his par¬ 
ish and admonish his flock, to present to him¬ 
self as judge, an offender, and to be jury and 
witness both, and further, to execute the sen¬ 
tence. Yet practically this is the case, for the 
Bishop leaves it to him to do all that is need¬ 
ful. Happily, the notorious cases are but 
few, and there are some compensations in 
the consciences of offenders that keep them 
from urging an impudent claim for spirit¬ 
ual gifts; a private admonition generally is 
all that is needed. (Vide Repentance and 
Discipline.) 

Penitence. The preceding article has 
touched upon so much of what properly be¬ 
longs to this, that but little more will be 
needed. A penitent mind continues in the 
state of repentance. It is a frame of life, so 
to speak, that holds over itself the discipline 
that a “ godly sorrow that worketh a re¬ 
pentance to salvation not to be repented of” 
will constantly exercise. “ My sin is ever 
before me” was David’s repentant admis¬ 
sion. It is the energetic display of sorrow 
for which St. Paul commended the Corin¬ 
thians (2 Cor. vii. 11). 

Penitential. A book of discipline con¬ 
taining the lists of crimes, offenses against, 
and infractions of the moral and eccle¬ 
siastical Law. The first books were proba¬ 
bly digests of disciplinary canons, which 
were very numerous in the Church in Central 
and Western Europe. They were also the 
enactments of local authorities, and some¬ 
times were in conflict with the canonical 
discipline. Probably this was owing to the 
attempt to apply to the people a relaxed 
form of the monastic discipline. Its at¬ 
tempt to classify sins, and to give a penalty 







PENITENTIAL PSALMS 


574 


PENNSYLVANIA 


rather than a remedy for it, had a bad effect. 
The chief Penitentials were that of Theo¬ 
dore, Archbishop of Canterbury, who, how¬ 
ever, was not the actual author, that of the 
Venerable Bede, and that of Egbert of 
York. On these were based many other 
Penitentials, of which the chief was that of 
Halitgar’s Collection of Canons. This effort 
at discipline was intended to impress the 
newly converted tribes of Upper Europe with 
the heinousness of vice and the need of com¬ 
pensation. It took hold of their ideas of fines 
and compensations, and through these en¬ 
deavored to enforce the morality of a Chris¬ 
tian life by the power of the Church wielded 
in a way that they could understand. 

Penitential Psalms. The penitential 
Psalms were very early picked out and 
called by this name. In the West their use, 
especially in penitential systems, was much 
more marked than in the East. They are 
the sixth, thirty-second, thirty-eighth, fifty- 
first, one hundred and second, one hundred 
and thirtieth, and one hundred and forty- 
third. These have been appointed for the 
Service on Ash-Wednesday, but in re¬ 
arranging our service, by oversight the fifty- 
first Psalm was omitted in the enumera¬ 
tion, since it was printed at length instead 
of being referred to by number in the Eng¬ 
lish Commination Offic e, from which our 
Intercessions before the General Thanksgiv¬ 
ing are taken. Their repetition was often 
imposed as a penance upon penitents, and 
thus they became by far the most familiar 
portions of Holy Scripture. 

Pennsylvania. The Swedish Church is 
an Episcopal Church, and Bishop Morris 
therefore begins his sketch of this Diocese 
in “The Churchman’s Calendar,’’ with an 
account of the establishment of Swedish 
services. Pleasant relations subsisted in 
provincial days between the Swedish and 
English missionaries, and when the Swedish 
mission was given up by the mother-coun¬ 
try, the parishes fell into the ranks of 
the American Episcopal Church. Wicaco 
(Gloria Dei), and Kingsessing (St. James’), 
and Upper Merion (Christ Church), Bridge¬ 
port, lay in Pennsylvania. During Dr. 
Nicholas Collin’s long rectorship these 
Churches were Swedish, until 1831 a.d., 
when Kev. J. C. Clay, D.D., became rector 
of the united parishes, as a clergyman of 
the American Church. Dr. Collin used the 
Prayer-Book, and his assistants for forty- 
five years were American Episcopal clergy¬ 
men. The Swedish Governor, Printz, 
brought Kev. John Campanius with him, 
and settled at Tinicum. There he built a 
church, near the Lazaretto, in 1646 a.d. 
The church and burying-ground were dedi¬ 
cated by Campanius. This was the first 
church in Pennsylvania, and this clergyman 
of the Catholic and Apostolic Church was 
at work nearly forty years before William 
Penn’s arrival. Campanius “translated 
Luther’s Catechism into the Indian lan¬ 
guage.” In 1677 a.d. the “ Block-house” 


at Wicaco was “ first used as a place of 
worship.” It had loop-holes as windows, 
and the congregation came with fire-arms, 
through fear of a surprise by Indians. In 
1697 a.d., Rev. Andreas lludman arrived as 
pastor. In 1700 a.d. the present brick 
church (Gloria Dei) was built, and dedi¬ 
cated July 2. Rev. Andrew Rudman was 
the founder of this church. He afterwards 
officiated for the Dutch in New York, and 
at Oxford and Christ Churches, Philadel¬ 
phia, where he died in 1798 a.d. Rev. 
Nicholas Collin, of Upsal, was appointed to 
the Wicaco Church in 1786 a.d., and died 
in 1831 a.d. In William Penn’s charter 
(1681 a.d.) it was, by the desire of the 
Bishop of London, stipulated that if twenty 
persons in the Province should apply to the 
Bishop for a clergyman, that he might 
“ reside within the Province, without any 
denial or molestation whatsoever.” In 1695 
a.d. Christ Church erected its first house of 
worship. It was “a goodly structure for 
those days, and of brick, with galleries large 
enough to accommodate more than live hun¬ 
dred persons.” (Dr. Dorr’s Historical Ac¬ 
count.) “The cost was more than six hun¬ 
dred pounds.” In 1697 a.d., Governor 
Nicholson is thanked by the members of the 
Church for his liberal assistance. In 1695 
a.d. , Rev. Thomas Clayton is appointed first 
minister by the Bishop of London. In 1699 
a.d. he died of yellow fever, “ caught in 
visiting the sick.” In 1700 a.d., Rev. Evan 
Evans was sent as a missionary by Bishop 
Compton. William Penn writes of him, 
that he “ appears a man sober and of a mild 
disposition.” On November 8, 1702 a.d., 
Rev. George Keith and Rev. John Talbot, 
on a missionary tour, preached in Christ 
Church. They were missionaries of the 
Propagation Society. Keith notes that ser¬ 
vices were held at Christ Church on 
Wednesdays and Fridays, and holy-days. 
This year a bell was presented to Christ 
Church. It is now in St. Peter’s. The 
Communion service of Christ Church was 
presented by Queen Anne in 1708 a.d. In 
1711 a.d. Christ Church was enlarged. 
While it was closed, for three Sundays, the 
congregation worshiped with the Swedes at 
Wicaco. To denote their fellowship and 
unity, a Swedish hymn was sung at the 
English service. In “ 1721 a.d. the Propaga¬ 
tion Society acknowledged the services of 
Swedish ministers in preaching to the vacant 
English Churches, and made an appropria¬ 
tion of ten pounds per annum for such ser¬ 
vices.” Mr. Evans held Christ Church 
eighteen years, and in 1717 a.d. resigned and 
moved to Maryland. He was “ a faithful 
missionary, and had proved a great instru¬ 
ment toward settling religion and the 
Church of England in these wild coun¬ 
tries.” In 1724 a.d., Rev. Dr. Richard Wel- 
ton took charge of Christ Church. He had 
been consecrated a Bishop in England by a 
non-juring Bishop. He was recalled to Eng¬ 
land “for having exercised Episcopal func- 




PENNSYLVANIA 


575 


PENNSYLVANIA 


tions in this country,” but he went to Por¬ 
tugal, where he shortly died. In 1728 a.d. 
Christ Church bought an organ, cos.ingtwo 
hundred pounds. In 1739 a d., Whitefield 
preached in this Church. In 1754 a.d. a 
chime of bells, cast by Lester & Pack, of 
London, for Christ Church arrived. Now 
Thomas Makin’s “ Descriptio Pensilvanim 
1729 a.d., may be recalled in its reference 
to this church: 

“ A lofty tower is founded on this ground, 

For future bells to make a distant sound.” 

In 1750 a.d. , Christopher Gist, while ex¬ 
ploring Western Pennsylvania, on Christ- 
mas-day read Prayers and a Homily to the 
Indians and traders, on, or near, what is 
now the town of Coshocton. In 1754 a.d., 
Col. Washington conducted public prayers 
in Fort Necessity, and in 1755 a.d. he read 
the Burial Service at the funeral of General 
Braddock. In 1758 a.d., Rev. Thos. Barton, 
Missionary of the Propagation Society, held 
service in presence of Col. Washington, and 
many officers and soldiers, at Kaystown, 
(now Bedford). On May 2, 1760 a.d., “a 
voluntary Convention” of Episcopal clergy 
in Christ Church heard “ a sermon by Dr. 
Smith on the conversion of the ‘ Heathen 
Americans.’ ” In 1761 a.d. St. Peter’s 
Church, and also St. Paul’s Church, Phila¬ 
delphia, were opened. In December of 1770 
a.d. , Wm. White was ordained Deacon by 
Bishop Young, of Norwich, in the Koval 
Chapel at London. In April, 1772 a d., he 
was ordained priest by the Bishop of Lon¬ 
don. In November of this year he was 
elected Assistant Minister of Christ Church 
and St. Peter’s, Philadelphia. In 1772 a.d., 
Dr. Jno. Kearsley, architect of Christ 
Church, died. He left a large part of his 
property to found Christ Church Hospital. 
He was a vestryman for fifty-three years. In 
1774 a.d. , on September 7, Rev. Mr. Duche, 
an Assistant Minister of Christ Church, read 
Prayers for the First Continental Congress, 
in Carpenters’ Hall, Chestnut St., Philadel¬ 
phia. The Psalter included Psalm xxxv. 
Jno. Adams wrote, “It seems as if Heaven 
had ordained that Psalm to be read on that 
morning.” In 1775 a.d., Mr. Duche was 
elected Rector of Christ Church. On July 20 
of this year, being a Fast-day appointed by 
the Continental Congress, the Congress at¬ 
tended service at Christ Church. On July 4, 
1776 a.d., the Vestry of Christ Church and 
St. Peter’s resolved to omit the prayer in the 
Liturgy for “the king of Great Britain.” 
In 1775 a.d., Rev. Wm. White was elected 
chaplain to Congress, then sitting in Balti¬ 
more, but there is no evidence that he then 
entered on the duties of the office. In 1776 
a.d., Rev. Mr. Duche was appointed chap¬ 
lain. In 1777 a.d. , Rev. Wm. White was 
elected chaplain to Congress, in connection 
with Rev. Mr. Duffield, a Presbyterian. The 
Congress, on account of British success, had 
left Philadelphia for York, Pa. Bishop 
White had removed temporarily to Mary¬ 


land. Being on a journey, a courier met 
him, and announced his appointment. It 
was a very gloomy period in American af¬ 
fairs, but with his usual decision, he turned 
his horses’ heads, and went to the Congress. 
In a like spirit, when the Bishop, on taking 
the oath of allegiance to the new Republic, 
was warned of his danger by a gesture from 
an acquaintance, after having taken the 
oath, he acknowledged to the gentleman that 
he knew it to be dangerous, but that he 
trusted in Providence, believing the Ameri¬ 
can cause just. In 1779 a.d., Rev. Wm. 
White was elected Rector of Christ Church 
and St. Peter’s. In 1784 a.d. the Protestant 
Episcopal Academy was opened in Philadel¬ 
phia. A meeting in New Brunswick in ref¬ 
erence to the corporation for the Relief of 
Widows and Children of Deceased Clergy 
led to the call of a General Meeting in New 
York, which meeting provided for a call for 
a General Convention in Philadelphia, Sep¬ 
tember 27, 1785 a.d. In this year the Pri¬ 
mary Convention of the Church in Pennsyl¬ 
vania met at Christ Church. The clergy 
were Dr. White, Robt. Blackwell, Jos. 
Hutchins, and Samuel Magan. There were 
twenty-one laymen. Sixteen Churches were 
represented. Dr. White was chairman. In 
1785 a.d. the first proper Diocesan Conven¬ 
tion of Pennsylvania met in Christ Church. 
“ Of the first twenty-nine Annual Diocesan 
Conventions, all but one were held in Christ 
Church.” 

At the close of the Revolution the Penn¬ 
sylvania country parishes had been scat¬ 
tered and their pastors driven away. The 
missionaries of the Propagation Society 
could no longer pursue their faithful work. 
Bishop Perry refers to the second volume of 
the “ Historical Collections of the American 
Colonial Church,” and to Bishop White’s 
Memoirs of the Church, for the sad story. 
Bishop White took steps, however, for or¬ 
ganization. In 1784 a.d. a meeting was 
held at his house, composed of persons dele¬ 
gated by the vestries of Christ Church, 
and St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s. They asked 
for a conference with the Episcopalians from 
the country, who were then in Philadelphia, 
and some Churchmen were members of the 
House of Assembly in session there. A 
circular letter was sent out to the churches 
in the State, calling a meeting of clergy and 
laity in Philadelphia. On May 24, 1784 
a.d. , this meeting took place in Christ 
Church. At this time and on the following 
day delegates were present from Christ 
Church and St. Peter’s, Philadelphia; St. 
Paul’s, Philadelphia; St. James’, Bristol; 
Trinity, Oxford; All-Saints’, Pennapecka 
(Torresdale); St. Paul’s, Chester; St. Da¬ 
vid’s, Radnor; St. Peter’s, in the Valley; 
St. Martin’s, Marcus Hook ; St. James’, 
Lancaster; St. James’, Perkioming; St. 
John’s, New London, and Huntingdon 
Church, York County; and St. Mary’s, 
Reading, and St. Gabriel’s, Marlatton, 
Berks County. A Standing Committee of 





PENNSYLVANIA 


576 


PENNSYLVANIA 


clergymen and laymen was appointed to 
confer with representatives from the Church 
in other States, “ and assist in framing an 
ecclesiastical government.” The committee 
delegated their powers to certain persons of 
their own number, together with Samuel 
Powel and Richard Peters, Esqs., who at¬ 
tended a meeting held in New York. At a 
meeting February 7, 1785' a.d., it was re¬ 
solved, that there should “ be sent to every 
clergyman and congregation in the State an 
account of the proceedings of the Committee, 
in concurrence with sundry clergymen and 
others at a meeting in the city of New 
York, on the 6th and 7th days of October 
last,” and that a Convention should meet in 
Christ Church, Philadelphia, on May 23, 
“to organize the Episcopal Church in this 
State, agreeably to the intentions of the 
body assembled in New York, as aforesaid.” 
This resulted in “ An Act of Association.” 
It was determined that there should be a 
Diocesan Convention, composed of clergy 
and laity, each congregation having one 
vote. The Orders were to vote separately, 
and their concurrence was needed to make 
a measure valid. The Convention of Penn¬ 
sylvania should have power to admit clergy 
or deputies desiring seats from any adjoin¬ 
ing State or States. The Act of Associa¬ 
tion was signed by the Deputies on May 
24, 1785 a.d. Bishop White was a leader 
in the idea of lay representation, and it has 
been generally acceptable in this country, 
though the Diocese of Connecticut, for a 
time, insisted on clerical representation 
alone in its own Convention, but it soon 
gave way. The meeting chose deputies, 
“in accordance with the recommendation 
of the preliminary Convention at New 
York, for the meeting in Philadelphia, in 
September, 1785 a.d.” This first General 
Convention met in historical Christ Church. 
“ There were clerical and lay deputies from 
seven of the thirteen States, viz., from New 
York to Virginia inclusive, with the addi¬ 
tion of South Carolina.” "What a small 
body compared to the General Convention 
which met in 1883 a.d. in the same church 
for its opening service ! “ What hath God 

wrought!” still, let us not boast, when so 
much remains undone on this vast Conti¬ 
nent. 

A special Diocesan Convention elected 
Rev. Dr. Wm. White as Bishop, September 
14, 1786 a.d. He was consecrated at 
Lambeth together with Bishop Provoost, of 
New York, on February 4, 1787 a.d., by 
the Archbishop of Canterbury, assisted by 
the Archbishop of York, and the Bishops 
of Bath and Wells, and Peterborough. In 
1809 a.d., Bishop White confirmed in Trin¬ 
ity Church, Swedesborough, N. J., 251 
persons. The Episcopal Fund began this 
year by receipt of a bequest of $2000 of 
Mr. Andrew Doz. St. James’, Philadelphia, 
was consecrated this year. In 1812 a.d. 
the Advancement Society was organized. 
In 1816 a.d. the Episcopal Missionary So¬ 


ciety of Philadelphia was formed, which 
was the germ of the General Foreign and 
Domestic Society. In 1823 a.d. St. Stephen’s, 
Wilkesbarre, was consecrated. In 1825 a.d. 
Trinity Church, Pittsburg, was consecrated, 
and 135 persons confirmed there. Rev. Jos. 
Pilmore, D.D., died this year. In 1826 a.d. 
an attempt was made to elect an Assistant 
Bishop ; Rev.Wm. Meade (afterwards Bishop 
of Virginia) had 27 clerical votes, and Rev. 
Bird Wilson 26. There being 54 entitled 
to vote and one not voting, there was no 
election. This year the corner-stone of St. 
Stephen’s, Harrisburg, was laid, Rev. Messrs. 
Bedell, Clarkson, Piggot, and Clemson as¬ 
sisting. In 1827 a.d., Rev. H. U. Onder- 
donk was elected Assistant Bishop. He was 
consecrated this year in Christ Church, 
Philadelphia. In 1828 a d. St. James’ 
Church, Philadelphia, was separated from 
Christ Church and St. Peter’s, but Bishop 
White remained Rector of the three par¬ 
ishes. In 1831 a d., Rev. H. J. Morton was 
elected Assistant Minister to Bishop White 
at St. James’ Church, Philadelphia. In 
1832 a.d. Christ Church and St. Peter’s 
were separated as corporations, hut Bishop 
White was still Rector of both. In 1834 
a.d. the Bishop White Prayer-Book Society 
was organized. Bishop White died July 
17, 1836 a.d., in the eighty-ninth year of his 
age, having been Bishop nearly fifty years. 
Prefixed to Bishop Stevens’s sermon, “ Then 
and Now,” is a fac-simile of the certificate 
of the ordination of Bishop White to 
Deacon’s orders in 1770 a.d. by the Bishop 
of Norwich. Little did the English Bishop, 
or the young American deacon, afterwards 
to be Presiding Bishop, dream of the his¬ 
tory that Should follow. A lady, who was 
a playmate of the future prelate, declared 
that “ Billy White was born a Bishop,” as 
he would always be playing Church in his 
childhood. Dr. Morton speaks of his 
youthful wisdom. In old age his venerable 
form impressed all. The universal regret 
at his death showed his wide influence. He 
was buried in a vault adjoining Christ 
Church, but in 1870 a.d. the remains were 
moved to the Chancel of that Church. At 
one time Bishop White (as a Presbyter) 
was the only Episcopal clergyman in Penn¬ 
sylvania. At the Convention next before his 
death, thatof 1836 a.d., there were86 clergy 
and 91 congregations. It was a blessing to 
this Diocese that it was so long guided by a 
Bishop so judicious and godly. The ad¬ 
vance in Church life has continued under 
other wise Bishops. Dr. Buchanan, in the 
Convention Sermon of 1876 a.d., recalls his 
memory of the small Convention of 1834 a.d. 
as compared with that one, though the Dio¬ 
cese then contained but five counties, instead 
of the whole State. The State now has 
three Dioceses. 

In 1841 a d. the Christmas Fund for Dis¬ 
abled Clergymen was created by the Con¬ 
vention. Rev. Dr. Abercrombie died this 
year. “ Up to this year the Diocese of Del- 





PENNSYLVANIA 


577 


PENNSYLVANIA 


aware had been under the care of the 
Bishop of Pennsylvania.” In May Rev. 
A. Lee was elected Bishop of Delaware, and 
consecrated at the General Convention in St. 
Paul’s, New York, October 12. 

In 1842 a.d., Bishop, Mar Johannan, of 
Persia, was introduced into the chancel by 
Bishop Onderdonk at Convention. In 1844 
a.d. a special Convention received the res¬ 
ignation of Bishop Onderdonk. In 1845 
a.d. , Bishops Kemper, Lee, and Gadsden 
performed various Episcopal services. This 
year Rev. Alonzo Potter, D.D., was chosen 
Bishop. He was consecrated in Christ 
Church, Philadelphia, September 23. In 
1847 a.d. , Bishop Potter requested offerings 
for sufferers by famine in Ireland, and 
nearly nine thousand dollars were raised. 
In 1849 a d. there were one hundred and 
forty-four clergy and one hundred and forty- 
three organized congregations in the Dio¬ 
cese. The floating church for seamen was 
consecrated this year. Now (1884 a.d.) 
the mission has a beautiful stone church 
on land not far from the Delaware River. 

The Clergj 7 - Daughters’ Fund was estab¬ 
lished in 1849 a.d. In 1850 a.d., Bishop 
Potter, in his Convention address, com¬ 
mended the Bible Society. In 1858 a.d., 
Bishop Onderdonk died. This year Rev. 
Samuel Bowman, D.D., was elected Assist¬ 
ant Bishop. He was consecrated in Christ 
Church, Philadelphia, on August 25. The 
missionary work of the Diocese was, in 
1859 a.d. , committed by the Convention 
to the Diocesan Board of Missions. The 
corner-stone of . the new building of the 
Episcopal Hospital was laid by Bishop 
Potter, in presence of members of the Con¬ 
vention, in 1860 a.d. This noble institu¬ 
tion is largely indebted to Bishop Potter 
for its existence. In 1861 a.d. (August 3) 
“ Bishop Bowman fell dead while walking 
beside the Alleghany Railroad, about twenty 
miles from Pittsburg,” while on a visita¬ 
tion. Thus closed a saintly life. In 1861 
a.d., Rev. William Bacon Stevens, D.D., 
was elected Assistant Bishop. In 1862 
a.d. the Philadelphia Divinity School was 
organized, with Bishop A. Potter as Pres¬ 
ident. Bishop Stevens was consecrated in 
St. Andrew’s Church, Philadelphia, where 
he had long been rector, on January 2, 
1862 a.d. On the 23d of May in this year 
the chapel of the Episcopal Hospital was 
consecrated during the session of the Con¬ 
vention. In 1864 a.d., the Convention 
was held in St. Peter’s and Trinity 
Churches, Pittsburg. In 1865 a.d. the 
Convention consented to the division of 
the Diocese. On Tuesday, July 4 of 
this year, “ Bishop Potter died on board 
the steamship Colorado, in the harbor of 
San Francisco, California.” So passed away 
a wise master-builder in the Church of 
Christ. In 1869 a.d., Bishop Stevens, in 
his Convention address, spoke of the neces¬ 
sity of a further division of the Diocese. 
The Diocese of Pittsburg had been set off 

37 


by the General Convention in 1865 a.d., 
and had held its first Convention in Pitts¬ 
burg November 15 of that year, and 
elected Rev. Dr. J. B. Kerfoot, President 
of Trinity College, as Bishop. He was con¬ 
secrated January 25 (St. Paul’s Day), 1866 
a.d. In 1869 a"d., Bishop Stevens recom¬ 
mended to the parishes the insurance of the 
lives of their clergy. The Committee on the 
Episcopal Residence reported its purchase, 
the amount needed ($35,000) having been 
procured. The Christmas Fund for Disa¬ 
bled Clergy, and the Widows and Or¬ 
phans of Deceased Clergy had received over 
$5000. Ten churches were admitted into 
the Convention. A committee recom¬ 
mended the free opening of the churches 
for “at least one service on every Sun¬ 
day.” In 1870 a.d. the Bishop in his ad¬ 
dress to Convention noted the death of the 
venerable Dr. Dorr, rector of Christ Church. 
Mr. John Welsh’s gift of $18,000 to the 
Episcopal Hospital was named. The Bishop 
outlined the plan of the City Mission, with 
a Superintendent, all the missionaries being 
appointed by the Bishop, and responsible 
to him. He also desired lay-workers to 
assist the missionaries. The benevolent and 
reformatory institutions of the city needed 
religious instruction, and it was thought 
best thus to secure it. The Bishop con¬ 
sented to the second division of the Dio¬ 
cese, stipulating that there should be left “ in 
the Diocese of Pennsylvania not less than the 
five counties of Philadelphia, Montgomery, 
Delaware, Chester, and Bucks.” The Com¬ 
mittee on Parochial History had received 
sketches of twenty-nine parishes, and accu¬ 
mulated numerous “ books, pamphlets, and 
files of Church papers,—some of them rare 
and important.” The Convention consented 
to the formation of another new Diocese. 
Eight churches were admitted into union 
with the Convention. 

Rev. Dr. M. A. De W. Howe having been 
elected Bishop of Central Pennsylvania, 
was consecrated in St. Luke’s Church, Phila¬ 
delphia, of which parish he had been rector, 
on December 28, 1871 a.d. The Diocese of 
Pennsylvania, thus diminished greatly in 
size by two divisions, in 1883 a.d. had 20 
candidates for orders, 200 clergy, and 120 
parishes, including 2 not in union with the 
Convention. There were 9 corner-stones 
laid and 9 consecrations. The whole num¬ 
ber of churches is 120, and chapels 27. There 
are 61 parsonages. There were over 10,000 
baptisms, and 5583 persons received confir¬ 
mation. The value of Church property, in¬ 
cluding parsonages, cemeteries, school build¬ 
ings, and endowments, hospitals, etc., was 
$8,700,000. The Bishop, in his address in 
1883 a.d. , spoke of the death of Rev. Dr. 
Suddards, who ministered “ for nearly half 
a century” in Grace Church, Philadelphia. 
There are in Philadelphia Italian and Span¬ 
ish Missions, and a Chinese Mission. Faith 
Home, for crippled children, has lately been 
opened, as a venture of faith, by a Christian 





PENTATEUCH 


578 


PENTATEUCH 


lady. The Hospital of the Good Shepherd, 
for children, at Rosemont, is a similar in¬ 
stitution, which has been doing loving and 
faithful work for years. There is also a 
Home for the Homeless. The Episcopal 
Hospital does a CHRiST-like work. The 
Burd Orphan Asylum, the Church Home for 
Children, the Lincoln Institution, must not 
be forgotten. There is also a Mission work 
among Deaf-Mutes, conducted by Rev. 
H. W. Syle. If the early Church people, 
who for a few Sundays in 1711 a.d., during 
the enlargement of Christ Church, walked 
along the river-shore to Gloria Dei to wor¬ 
ship with their Swedish friends, could see 
the wharves and residences and places of 
business that now cover the green fields 
of their day, and could behold the churches 
and charitable institutions of Philadelphia 
at this time, they might realize the impor¬ 
tance of the good work which they began, 
and which the children of God have con¬ 
tinued. May the blessed work still prosper 
and advance to the glory of Christ. 

Authorities: For the most part, Bishop 
Morris’s Sketch in the Churchman’s Calen¬ 
dar of 1866 and 1867 a.d. Bishop Morris 
refers to Clay’s Annals of the Swedes, 
Smith’s History of Delaware County, 
Colonial Records, Dorr’s History of Christ 
Church, Humphries’s History of Propaga¬ 
tion Society, Hazard’s Annals, and Conven¬ 
tion Journals. The author of this article 
has also received aid from Bishop Perry’s 
Churchman’sYear-Book, 1870 and 1871 a.d., 
and Dr. Bird Wilson’s Memoir of Bishop 
White, and Bishop Stevens’s Sermon “ Then 
and Now,” and Rev. Dr. II. J. Morton’s Ser¬ 
mon “ The Days of Old,” and Rev. Dr. E. 
Y. Buchanan’s Convention Sermon, 1876 
a.d , and a pamphlet of Historical Notes 
concerning Christ Church. 

Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Pentateuch. The writer of this article 
has availed himself largely of Bishop Harold 
Browne’s Introduction to the Pentateuch in 
the first volume of the Bible Commentary, 
and of “ Moses and the Prophets” by Pro¬ 
fessor W. H. Green, D.D., of Princeton 
Theological Seminary, in addition to other 
works. 

The Pentateuch, the name given to the 
first five books of the Old Testament, is a 
Greek word, signifying the fivefold volume. 
It is derived from the Septuagint transla¬ 
tion, and some authors attribute to those 
translators the division into separate books. 
The Jews, however, recognized this arrange¬ 
ment, but distinguished the different por¬ 
tions bv the initial word of each. The whole 
was called by them “ The Law” (Torah), or 
“The Law of Moses.” 

In the Pentateuch are continued the an¬ 
nals, civil and religious institutions of the 
people of Israel, and a record of the Divine 
dealings with them until the eve of their 
entrance into the land of Canaan. This 
national history is prefaced with an account 
of the creation of the world, the formation 


of man and his lapse from a state of original 
righteousness, the growing corruption of the 
human race, the judgment of Almighty God 
consequent thereupon, bringing upon the 
earth a deluge of water, the saving of Noah 
and his family from the common doom, the 
repeoplirig of*the earth by his posterity, and 
very interesting notices of kingdoms founded 
in the region of Mesopotamia and ancient 
cities built there. Then the historian passes 
to the call of Abraham, the great progenitor 
of the Hebrew people, from the midst of 
idolatry to the knowledge and worship of 
Jehovah, the true and living God, and his 
removal from Chaldea to Canaan. The in¬ 
cidents of his life are related, as well as those 
of Isaac, his son, and Jacob, his grandson, and 
with much particularity the circumstances 
which brought the sons of Jacob, ancestors 
of the twelve tribes, to become dwellers in 
Egypt. 

The Book of Genesis is evidently intro¬ 
ductory. It accounts for the sojourning of 
the Israelites in the land of Egypt, narrates 
their ancestral traditions, and explains 
their inherited faith. Without it much of 
the subsequent history would be unintelli¬ 
gible. While we are by no means com¬ 
pelled to maintain that every portion and 
word were written by the author of the re¬ 
maining books, there is clear indication of 
one mind directing and arranging the whole 
work. 

In the Book of Exodus are fully related 
the bondage, deliverance, and departure of 
the Israelites from Egypt through direct in¬ 
tervention of Jehovah. The plagues sent 
upon the Egyptians, the passage through the 
Red Sea, and many incidents of their wan¬ 
derings in the desert are graphically de¬ 
scribed. Miracles are interwoven with the 
whole narrative, and especially was the giv¬ 
ing of the Law upon Mount Sinai accom¬ 
panied with awe-inspiring manifestations of 
the majesty of God. The writer sets forth 
an array of wonders which he evidently be¬ 
lieves, and would have his readers believe, 
accompanied a theopbany. For his legis¬ 
lation, and for the religious system and wor¬ 
ship which he enjoined, he constantly and 
confidently claimed Divine warrant and di¬ 
rection. The Law came by Moses, but he 
himself being witness, the Lawgiver was 
Jehovah. 

In the remainder of the Book of Exodus, 
and in that of Numbers, the wanderings of 
the twelve tribes for the space of forty years 
are related, and the most noteworthy events 
‘ occurring during this long period. 

The Book of Leviticus contains the cere¬ 
monial law, the ordinances of priesthood 
and sacrifice, and whatever pertains to Di¬ 
vine worship. 

Deuteronomy is hortatory, didactic, and 
prophetic. The great legislator, before lay¬ 
ing down his office and his life, seeks to im¬ 
press, with earnest reiteration, the duties 
bound upon a people so distinguished from 
other nations, and with whom the Almighty 




PENTATEUCH 


579 


PENTATEUCH 


had condescended to enter into a special cov¬ 
enant relation. The book is full of allusions 
to past events in their history, appeals to 
miracles wrought in their behalf as well- 
known facts, and contains prophetic an¬ 
nouncements of the rewards that would 
follow their obedience and the severe punish¬ 
ments that would be sure to follow disobedi¬ 
ence and apostasy. As Genesis is a preface 
to the whole work, so Deuteronomy is an ap¬ 
propriate conclusion, such a summary of 
facts and duties, such a recapitulation and 
practical enforcement of the lessons of the 
past, as became the author upon the point of 
resigning his great charge. Such a man as 
Moses, at such a period, might well speak in 
just this manner to the people over whom for 
so many years he had been so faithful a shep¬ 
herd. The Pentateuch, therefore, is a unit— 
a single coherent work, following out a great 
purpose from beginning to end. The at¬ 
tempt to break it up into fragments and as¬ 
sign different portions to different authors is 
doing violence to a well-arranged and com¬ 
plete whole. Of the skeptical tendency in¬ 
spiring and underlying the criticism which 
so boldly gainsays the integrity and unity 
of the work, there will be occasion to remark. 

"VVe havespoken of Moses as theauthor of 
the Pentateuch in accordance with the con¬ 
current testimony of Hebrew and Christian 
antiquity. This is a vital point, and upon 
this mainly hinges the controversy be¬ 
tween the maintainers and impugners of 
the Divine inspiration of the work and 
the reality of the supernatural interposi¬ 
tions. Denial of the supernatural is the 
true source and meaning of the destructive 
criticism that has been of late so radical 
and positive. If the authorship of Moses be 
conceded, then the account of the signs and 
wonders therein described was the work of 
an eye-witness and principal actor. It was 
credited by the generation then living. 
Laws, rites, ceremonies, and observances 
commemorated them. The miracles and the 
institutions were coeval. Of course it would 
have been impossible to persuade a whole 
people that they saw with their own eyes 
what they never had seen, experienced de¬ 
liverances and chastisements which they had 
never known, and were observing ceremo¬ 
nies in testimony of events which had never 
occurred. 

Then there is that in their later history 
which closely corresponds with warnings 
and denunciations contained in the book, 
especially in Deuteronomy. If really writ¬ 
ten by the hand of Moses, it is difficult to 
deny his prophetic inspiration. He uttered, 
through the Holy Spirit, Divine oracles. 
The only escape from this conclusion is to 
deny that these supposed prophecies were 
penned by Moses. To this recourse those crit¬ 
ics are driven who admit no such thing as 
Divine inspiration. AV ith them it is a fore¬ 
gone conclusion that miracles and prophe¬ 
cies are incredible. The histories embodying 
them, therefore, were the production of sub¬ 


sequent ages. Old myths and legends were 
converted into historical facts. Ingenious 
forgers palmed upon their credulous con¬ 
temporaries compositions written after the 
events referred to had taken place, as if they 
had come down from remote antiquity. 
Moses being a heroic character in the na¬ 
tion’s infancy, was the most attractive name 
to be affixed to these fables. Policy and 
priestcraft combined to persuade the people 
into the acceptance of these fictitious writ¬ 
ings as if they were genuine works of the 
venerated lawgiver of Israel. Thus laws, 
doctrines, ceremonies, tributes, were imposed 
upon the nation, and this mainly from re¬ 
ligious and patriotic motives. According to 
these critics the Pentateuch is largely a pious 
fraud. 

Encountered by such bold denials, we 
turn to the reasons for the opinion once so 
universally prevalent. Upon what grounds 
do we believe Moses to be the author of the 
Pentateuch ? 

In maintaining this view we are not 
obliged to contend that every word was 
penned by his own hand or written from his 
mouth. Eor historical works to contain 
documents of an earlier age, public or pri¬ 
vate record, and genealogies, fragments from 
ancient annalists is not unprecedented or 
uncommon. If some of the narratives em¬ 
bodied in the Pentateuch, especially in the 
Book of Genesis, are of this nature, it does 
not at all invalidate the claim to Mosaic au¬ 
thorship. There is no necessity for solving 
perplexing questions as to whether the use 
of the words Jehovah and Elohim indicate 
different sources, nor to draw the lines be¬ 
tween the respective positions of each. We 
can readily grant that the accounts of the 
creation, the fall, the antediluvian patri¬ 
archs, the deluge, etc , had been preserved 
by tradition, and were transmitted by Noah 
to his descendants. The similarity of these 
primeval annals to records preserved by the 
most ancient nations, especially by Egypt 
and Babylonia, point to a common origin. 
The traditions of these people bear a strik¬ 
ing resemblance to the Biblical narratives, 
although often distorted and intermingled 
with heathen fables. If Moses selected cer¬ 
tain accounts, of the truthfulness of which 
he was well assured, and inserted them in 
his book, this detracts nothing from his au¬ 
thorship of the work or from overruling Di¬ 
vine inspiration. This will satisfactorily ex¬ 
plain peculiarities of style upon which great 
stress has been laid by skeptical critics. 

So also, at a subsequent period, explana¬ 
tory notes may have been introduced by 
learned men, like Ezra, who reviewed the 
work, and perhaps the Old Testament Canon. 
The account of the death of Moses was of 
course so written, and some geographical 
and historical annotations. To this source 
might be ascribed personal allusions, like 
Exodus xi. 3, and Numbers xii. 3, although 
there is no urgent necessity for admitting 
this. The objection that Moses could not 







PENTATEUCH 


580 


PENTATEUCH 


have spoken of himself is a potty cavil, un¬ 
worthy of scholars who have read Caesar’s 
Commentaries. 

In support of the genuineness of the 
Pentateuch appeal is first made to its own 
testimony. This is prima facie evidence, 
and of great weight unless it can be set aside 
by convincing arguments. Moses repeat¬ 
edly represents himself as the writer. 

Exodus xvii. 14, “ And the Lord said 
unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a 
book,”—where instead of a “a book” read 
“ the book,” reference being to a well-known 
register. Exodus xxxiv. 27, “ And the Lord 
said unto Moses, Write thou these words: 
for after the tenor of these words I have 
made a covenant w T ith thee and with Israel.” 

Moses makes express mention of his doing 
what was thus enjoined. Exodus xxiv. 3, 
4, “And Moses came and told the people all 
the words of the Lord, and all the judg¬ 
ments : and all the people answered with 
one voice, and said, All the words which the 
Lord hath said will we do. And Moses 
wrote all the words of the Lord.” So he 
recorded the history of the wanderings of 
Israel in the desert, specifying the stages of 
their journeys. Numbers xxxiii. 2, “And 
Moses wrote their goings out, according to 
their journeys by the commandment of the 
Lord.” 

Towards the close of the book (Deut. xxxi. 
9-12) we read, “ And Moses wrote this Law, 
and delivered it unto the priests the sons of 
Levi, which bare the ark of the covenant 
of the Lord, and unto all the elders of 
Israel. And Moses commanded them, say¬ 
ing, At the end of every seven years, in the 
solemnity of the year of release, in the feast 
of tabernacles, when all Israel is come to 
appear before the Lord thy God in the 
place which the Lord shall choose, thou 
shalt read this Law before all Israel in their 
hearing. Gather the people together, men, 
and women, and children, and thy stranger 
that is within thy gates, that they may hear, 
and that they may learn, and fear the Lord 
your God, and observe to do all the words 
of this Law.” Deut. xxxi. 24-26, “And 
it came to pass, when Moses had made an 
end of writing the words of this Law in a 
book, until they were finished, that Moses 
commanded the Levites, which bare the ark 
of the covenant of the Lord, saying, Take 
this book of the Law, and put it in the side 
of the ark of the covenant of the Lord 
your God, that it may be there for a witness 
against thee.” 

This mention of the writing of the book 
of the Law by Moses himself may have ap¬ 
plied only to Deuteronomy. Granting this 
detracts not from the weight of the argu¬ 
ments already adduced in behalf of the pre¬ 
ceding books. Deuteronomy, moreover, has 
been the special object of assault by recent 
critics, who while assigning this book to the 
reign of Josiah, or to a still later period, 
have been willing to allow to Moses consid¬ 
erable portions of the others. 


While reading the majestic flowing sen¬ 
tences of this grand composition, glowing 
with intense feeling and breathing senti¬ 
ments so elevated, it is difficult to repress 
some emotions of indignation, if not con¬ 
tempt, for men who, whatever the extent 
of their erudition, can see nothing here but 
an artful invention of priestcraft. The im¬ 
press of a noble spirit, far above dishonest 
arts and base imposture, is stamped upon 
the whole. And what forger would venture 
so to speak in the name of Jehovah, and 
use such solemn language of warning against 
any attempts to tamper with the oracles he 
was commissioned to deliver? Deut. iv. 2, 
“ Ye shall not add unto the word which I 
command you, neither shall ye diminish 
aught from it, that ye may keep the com¬ 
mandments of the Lord your God.” 

Moses was perfectly competent to com¬ 
pose such a work as the Pentateuch. It is 
impossible to deny eminent* ability and 
intellectual power to the man who led 
a multitude of serfs out of Egypt, formed 
them into a compact, well-ordered nation, 
and impressed himself so deeply upon 
their institutions and traditions. For this 
we have the concurrent testimony of both 
secular and sacred history. Moses is indis¬ 
putably a historical character, and the 
transfer of the Jewish people from Egypt to 
Israel is established from other sources than 
the Scriptures. That such a man should 
have superior knowledge and mental train¬ 
ing is a necessity. 

When Stephen affirmed that “Moses was 
learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians 
and was mighty in words and in deeds,” he 
uttered what was not only the universal be¬ 
lief of his people, but an unavoidable in¬ 
ference from his public life and acts. Even 
the most carping and destructive critics con¬ 
cede the Decalogue to Moses, and the man 
who can be believed capable of produc¬ 
ing such a code cannot surely be pro¬ 
nounced incompetent to compose the entire 
Pentateuch. That the art of writing was 
then well known in Egypt is abundantly 
proved. Papyri of dates several hundred 
years earlier than the Exodus have been 
brought to light. 

Moses being certainly capable of such 
a performance would naturally desire to 
effect it. He would not, we may be con¬ 
fident, have been willing to abandon the 
memory of events so important to the un¬ 
certainties of oral tradition, or that laws 
and religious rites should lack a sure and 
trustworthy method of transmission. Coming 
generations had as deep a stake in the truths 
and ordinances delivered as that which was 
then living. The solicitude of the great law¬ 
giver for the future welfare of his people is 
everywhere apparent. His patriotism was 
profound and fervent. For the preservation 
of their national existence and prosperity he 


* Bishop Browne’s Introduction, The Bible Commen¬ 
tary, vol. i. p. 2. 






PENTATEUCH 


581 


PENTATEUCH 


was ready to make any personal sacrifice. 
He was always looking forward to the future 
destinies of the nation, most anxious for its 
loyalty to Jehovah and faithful observance 
of the covenant. He felt his own mission 
to be very much preparatory. He was 
moulding and shaping a nation for the great 
part it was to perform in another land and 
through many ages. Knowing how much 
depended upon the Israelites, keeping in 
mind the eventful beginnings of their his¬ 
tory, he would certainly not have neglected 
to put these things in permanent shape. 
Without overweening self-estimate, Moses 
knew that no subsequent leader or legisla¬ 
tor could give institutions better adapted to 
the wants of the people than his own, or 
speak with anything like his authority. 

For such a work, moreover, he had time 
and opportunity during the long sojourn of 
Israel in the wilderness. During these weary 
waitings and wanderings, Moses was profit¬ 
ably occupied in composing records of such 
deep interest and vital consequence to the 
welfare of his people. 

The historical, political, and geographical 
allusions found in the Pentateuch are in 
perfect harmony with the theory of its 
Mosaic authorship. The writer shows es¬ 
pecial familiarity with Egypt and Arabia. 
The recent highly-interesting disclosures 
of old Egyptian life in no way contradict, 
and often strikingly confirm, his references 
thereto. The royalty and priesthood of 
Egypt as described in this book, the labors 
imposed upon bond-servants, the longevity 
of the plagues, with phenomena of the re¬ 
gion and features of the prevalent idolatry, 
sepulchral rites, proficiency in the arts of 
embalming, engraving, and embroidery, 
and occasional words and phrases, accord 
with modern discoveries. It is scarce con¬ 
ceivable that writers of a later age and 
different nationality and education should 
manifest such familiarity with the customs 
of Egypt, or that a fabricator should intro¬ 
duce so many local allusions and never 
betray himself by anachronism or misstate¬ 
ment. 

The wilderness has left its impress on the 
work. Many passages breathe the air of the 
desert and tell of a nomad people dwelling 
in tents. The nation could be readily assem¬ 
bled. Each tribe had its position in the en¬ 
campment and in the order of march. The 
unclean and lepers were to remain without 
the camp, and thither was the sin-offering 
to be carried and consumed. The phrase¬ 
ology thus originated was of lasting continu¬ 
ance. “ To your tents, O Israel," was the 
watch-word of sedition. The Hebrew Chris¬ 
tians were reminded that Jesus, as a sin- 
offering, “ suffered without the gate," and 
were exhorted to “go forth to him without 
the camp." The tabernacle, so conspicuous 
a feature in their religious institutions, was 
a movable tent, and precise directions are 
given concerning the mode of its transpor¬ 
tation. Could such numerous, often slight 


and incidental, allusions have proceeded 
from a forger and have been designedly 
scattered throughout the work ? 

The consensus of later books of the Old 
Testament corroborates the Mosaic author¬ 
ship of the Pentateuch. From Joshua to 
Chronicles and Malachi there are numer¬ 
ous quotations from the Pentateuch, or allu¬ 
sions to events and precepts there recorded, 
and nowhere the least doubt expressed or im¬ 
plied. The Law of Moses is the constant 
standard of appeal. Obedience or disobe¬ 
dience thereto is the test of character, the 
key of Divine blessings or judgments. Those 
who reverence it are commended. Those 
who neglect or scorn it are threatened and 
condemned. The constitution, laws, and 
rites represented as obligatory correspond 
with the legislation and ordinances of the 
Pentateuch. The Priesthood is continued 
in the family of Aaron. To the tribe' of 
Levi is assigned the performance of various 
ministries connected with divine service. 
The ark is regarded with peculiar veneration, 
as the depository of the tables of the ten 
commandments, and associated with the 
manifestation of the Divine glory. There is 
constant mention of circumcision, the Pass- 
over, the sacrifices, as well known to those 
addressed. Now, is it credible that this 
minute, onerous, and expensive ritual could 
be foisted upon generations which had not 
grown up under it, and that they could be 
made to believe that they had received it 
‘from those before them as divinely commu¬ 
nicated through Moses ? It would seem that 
one who could persuade himself of this had 
little cause to sneer at the credulity of be¬ 
lievers, who reverently accept as trustworthy 
the account of those miracles and the early 
date of the prophetic portions. 

So cogent is this argument that the im- 
pugners of the Mosaic authorship are com¬ 
pelled to deal in like manner with the later 
books. Inasmuch as the Book of Joshua is 
so closely connected with the Pentateuch, 
that also must be discredited. The allega¬ 
tion of forgery is a short and easy method of 
disposing of this troublesome witness. And 
so the process is continued. Either whole 
books or intractable passages must be swept 
away by this bold assumption. Historians, 
judges, and prophets, unless they confirm the 
theories of rationalizing critics, are sum¬ 
marily thrust aside. Verily, according to 
the theories of these intrepid arguers, we 
have in the Old Testament a most amazing 
series of literary impositions. The attempts 
of later ages in this line fade into insignifi¬ 
cance. For unscrupulous, plausible, and 
successful fictions these ancient prophets and 
scribes must be allowed the palm. Wonder- 
fully have they deceived after-ages as well 
as their own, the learned as well as the 
ignorant, teachers as well as the multitude, 
Christian Apostles as well as Jewish Rabbis, 
and we cannot avoid adding (with rever¬ 
ence) Jesus Christ Himself. And what 
was to be gained by these stupendous frauds ? 





PENTATEUCH 


582 


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According to some critics the imposition of 
the Levitical sacrificial and ritual system 
was to be a proof of priestly power and a 
support of monotheism. Others charitably 
impute such devices to zeal for promoting 
the moral and religious improvement of the 
nation, and suggest that through these 
means it was better prepared for the accept¬ 
ance of the gospel. It is even piously inti¬ 
mated that the hand of God may be recog¬ 
nized in this preparation. It is difficult to 
decide whether such theories are the more 
preposterous or dishonorable to the God of 
truth. 

And who were the astute and crafty men, 
of intellects so acute and of morality so de¬ 
fective, who successfully essayed this great 
imposture? To what age and to what 
agents shall it be attributed? Here the 
critics are much at variance among them¬ 
selves. Each propounder of a new inter¬ 
pretation begins by demolishing that of his 
predecessor. Whether successful or not in 
establishing his own hypothesis, he is fairly 
so in overthrowing structures already reared. 
“ The most effectual reply to these various 
hypotheses often is to set them over against 
each other and exhibit their mutual con¬ 
trariety.”* Samuel, Hilkiah, Jeremiah, 
Ezekiel, and Ezra have been named in turn 
as probable achievers of this marvelous de¬ 
ception. Dr. Robertson Smith maintains 
that Deuteronomy first appeared in the 
reign of Josiah, and that the Levitical Law 
was not in existence before the time of 
Ezra. Great stress is laid upon the finding 
of the book of the Law, in repairing the 
Temple, and the effect produced upon the 
king, as recorded in 2 Kings xxii. 8. Hence 
it is argued that previously to this presumed 
occurrence the law could have had no exist¬ 
ence. The finding of the Bible by Luther 
in the library of the convent at Erfurth, pro¬ 
duced upon his mind an impression as pro¬ 
found as that ascribed in the passage re¬ 
ferred to upon King Josiah. This would 
be as valid an argument to prove the non¬ 
existence of the entire sacred volume before 
Luther’s day. The constant references to 
the Law in earlier writings cannot be dis¬ 
missed in this summary way. During the 
reigns of Josiah’s predecessors who favored 
idolatry, especially Manasseh, whose reign 
was of such long continuance, there would 
be no disposition to bring into prominent 
notice a testimony so strong against pre¬ 
vailing evil practices. The rolls of the Law 
would be treated, as the holy volume has 
been often treated since, thrust out of 
sight and out of mind. Copies must have 
been rare, and it is not improbable that 
some were purposely destroyed. But Heze- 
kiah’s attempted reform recognized the ob¬ 
ligation of this Law a century before. It 
was “ the testimony” given to Jehoash at his 
coronation (2 Kings xi. 12). Solomon ap¬ 
pealed to it in his prayer at the dedication 


* Green, Moses and the Prtapliets, page 20. 


of the Temple (1 Kings viii.). The Book of 
the Law found in the Temple was very pos¬ 
sibly the autograph directed by Moses to 
be deposited in the side of the ark. If from 
the circumstances of his education Josiah 
had only a partial acquaintance with the 
words of the Torah, the complete work, so 
remarkably brought to light, would natu¬ 
rally agitate a mind so open to religious 
impression and render him more zealous for 
the national reformation. 

Ingenious attempts are made to disprove 
the Mosaic authorship by adducing passages 
showing the neglect and disregard of many 
of the injunctions contained in the Penta¬ 
teuch in subsequent ages. If infraction of 
a Law proves its non-existence, Christianity 
is likely to suffer as well as Judaism, the 
New Testament is as open to attack as the 
Old, and the existence of the Lord Jesus 
Christ as an actual living person might be 
called in question. In truth, the perverse 
heart of man is continually struggling to 
escape from the holy commandments of God. 
“ Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not 
the things which I command?” The dis¬ 
obedience of the recipients of Divine revela¬ 
tions is their own sin and loss, no disproof 
of the revelation itself. This is a sufficient 
answer to objections drawn from irregulari¬ 
ties of worship, as well as from moral dis¬ 
obedience. 

That there were periods when the pre¬ 
scribed ritual was not fully carried out, nay, 
fell into extreme neglect, and when corrupt 
practices widely prevailed, is freely conceded. 
Of this degeneracy we have frequent in¬ 
stance, during the periods embraced in the 
Book of Judges, and until the establishment 
of Divine worship as it had been appointed 
in the reign of David. It is hence argued 
that the provisions restricting sacrifice to 
one appointed place could not have been 
then enacted, and so the early date of the 
Pentateuch is discredited. 

But wherever God manifested His glorious 
presence it was lawful to erect an altar and 
offer sacrifice. This is sufficient explanation 
of the sacrifices offered at Bochim (Judges 
ii. 1-5), by Gideon (Judges vi. 20), by Ma- 
noah (Judges xiii. 16), and by David at 
the threshing-floor of Araunah (2 Sam. 
xxiv.). In the Book of Judges the Taber¬ 
nacle at Shiloh, containing the ark, is rec¬ 
ognized as the house of the Lord until the 
ark was carried into captivity by the Phil¬ 
istines. This was a Divine judgment. 
God’s people had broken their covenant 
with Him, and were no longer entitled to 
retain the symbol of His presence. Shiloh 
then lost its peculiar sacredness, and was de¬ 
serted by Jehovah (Jer. vii. 12, 14). After¬ 
wards Samuel, as God’s prophet, exercised 
a general religious superintendence. During 
the interval between the capture of the ark 
and its solemn restoration by David, the 
regular performance of the Levitical service 
was suspended. Upon solemn occasions 
Samuel, the Lord’s prophet, exercising gen- 







PENTATEUCH 


583 


PENTATEUCH 


eral religious superintendence, offered sacri¬ 
fices. But while the ark was in the hands 
of the Philistines God had no sanctuary in 
Israel. And when first returned by its cap- 
tors, the ark became a source of terror and 
alarm. No priest or Levite ministered be¬ 
fore it. From the time the ark was laid up 
at Kirjath-Jearim till David removed it to 
Zion there is scarcely a recorded instance 
of sacrifice where Samuel was not present, 
except Saul’s rash and unhappy act. Sam¬ 
uel is plainly the centre of the religious life 
of this period. (Green, pp. 101-105.) 

To argue, therefore, from the record of 
sacrifices offered elsewhere than at Shiloh, 
during this season of disorder, while ordi¬ 
nary service was intermitted, against the 
existence of the Levitical directory, is to 
base grave conclusions upon very slight 
premises. Can such reasoning overthrow 
conclusions founded upon clear and cogent 
proofs which have carried conviction to the 
minds of thousands of thorough Biblical 
scholars? Is the veritable historian and 
lawgiver of ancient Israel to be thrust aside 
and mighty miracles converted into myths 
and fables by cavils of this sort ? 

So, also, if the prophets in their zeal for 
true religion, genuine faith, and godliness 
sometimes use very strong language in con¬ 
demnation of formalism and hypocrisy, are 
we to understand them as meaning to deny 
that the ceremonies and sacrifices of the Law 
were actually given as set forth in the Pen¬ 
tateuch? For instance, we read in Jere¬ 
miah (vii. 22, 23), “ I spake not unto your 
fathers, nor commanded them in the day 
that I brought them out of the land of 
Egypt, concerning burnt-offerings or sacri¬ 
fices. But this thing commanded I them, 
Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and 
ye shall be my people: and walk ye in all 
the ways that i have commanded you, that 
it may be well with you.” Can it be se¬ 
riously maintained that the prophet here 
denies the enactment of the Ceremonial 
Law ? Or can a like inference be drawn 
from penitential confessions, such as those 
of David? (Ps. li. 16, 17.) Who that is 
familiar with Scripture style cannot turn to 
numerous instances of similar phraseology? 
Is Samuel controverting the Divine appoint¬ 
ment of altar-service when he says to Saul, 
“Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt- 
offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the 
voice of the Lord ? Behold, to obey is bet¬ 
ter than sacrifice, and to hearken than the 
fat of rams.’ 4 The spiritual requirements 
of the Law coexisted with the outward or¬ 
dinances, and the mission of the’prophets 
was mainly directed to arouse the national 
conscience, and turn the hearts of the people 
to God in repentance, submission, and holi¬ 
ness of life. 

Arguments against the Mosaic author¬ 
ship of the Pentateuch have also been 
sought in its phraseology. It has been urged 
that the stjde is too much like that of later 
books of the Old Testament to warrant the 


opinion that so long a period of time inter¬ 
vened. But to this it is answered that there 
is not in Semitic languages the tendency to 
change which exists in modern European 
tongues. Scholars attest that the Arabic 
of the Koran does not differ materially from 
that of the present day, although quite as 
long a duration has elapsed as that between 
Moses and Ezra. The Syriac of later times 
is said not to vary from that of the Peshito 
version. Egyptian papyri much more widely 
separated from each other in age are the 
same in style. The work of Moses, more¬ 
over, like the translations of Tyndall and 
Luther, would strongly tend to fix the na¬ 
tional style and become the standard of lan¬ 
guage as well as of religion. The sacred 
books were mainly the literature (ra 
ypafjLfMTa ) of the people. 

Biblical scholars, however, do find archa¬ 
isms in the Pentateuch and peculiar phrases 
to fully as great extent as could be reason¬ 
ably expected. 

Another objection, somewhat dissimilar, 
has been drawn from alleged variations of 
style between Deuteronomy and the pre¬ 
ceding books. But when the respective cir¬ 
cumstances under which they were composed 
are considered and the design of the author, 
this is no more than might be looked for, 
and is rather a confirmation than a diffi¬ 
culty. An interval of nearly forty years 
separates them. Probably the earlier books 
were written, from time to time, in detached 
portions. In Deuteronomy, the venerable 
lawgiver in a connected discourse reviews 
the past, pours out his heart in affectionate 
exhortations, solemn prophecies, and fer¬ 
vent praises. The prophetic spirit burned 
within him. His eye penetrated into the 
hidden future, his soul was wrapt in holy 
ecstasy, and his great loving heart yearned 
over the people whom he had watched over 
for so many years, and from whom he was 
now about to be removed. A more elevated, 
diffuse, and impassioned style would fittingly 
clothe his farewell utterances. 

The theory of the later date of the Pen¬ 
tateuch involves far greater inconsistencies 
and difficulties than are encountered by those 
who accept its early composition. Accord¬ 
ing to this interpretation laws are promul¬ 
gated which have no meaning or fitness. 
What object in the reign of Josiali to issue 
injunctions forbidding peace with the 
Amalekites, who had long since disap¬ 
peared? Or to prohibit foreign conquests, 
when the urgent question was whether 
Judasa could maintain its own existence 
against powerful and warlike neighbors ? 
A law discriminating against Ammon and 
Moab in favor of Edom had its warrant in 
the Mosaic period, but not in the times of 
the later kings, when Edom was to the proph¬ 
ets the representative foe of the people of 
God. Would an injunction to show no un¬ 
friendliness to Egyptians be found in a code 
composed by the prophets, who were striv¬ 
ing with all their might to dissuade the peo- 




PENTATEUCH 


584 


PENTATEUCH 


pie from alliance or association with Egypt ? 
And what necessity for the requirement 
that, when the kingdom was established, 
the King should be a native and not a for¬ 
eigner, when for ages the succession to the 
throne in the family of David had been un¬ 
disputed ? (Green, pp. 62-66.) On the post 
exilian theory there is a ritual arrangement, 
full and particular, framed at a time when 
no cultus existed, an exhaustive description 
of the tabernacle and all its parts as if it 
were a reality, when according to this as¬ 
sumption it was an imaginary structure, 
great prominence given to the ark and all 
that pertained to it, although the ark per¬ 
ished in the destruction of the first Temple, 
and was never subsequently renewed. (Green, 
pp. 62, 67.) Such are specimens of the ab¬ 
surdities and incongruities continually con¬ 
fronting the acceptors of this pretentious 
criticism, which claims to disabuse us of 
old and vulgar errors. 

The great schism, which was never after¬ 
wards healed, took place in the reign of 
Kehoboam, about 975 a.c. It was the policy 
of Jeroboam to deepen and perpetuate the 
alienation between Israel and Judaea. With 
this end he discountenanced any participa¬ 
tion of his subjects in the prescribed Temple 
worship at Jerusalem, and established 
shrines of an idolatrous character at Dan 
and Bethel. The prophets who testified in 
Israel against these corruptions constantly 
appeal to the Law of Moses as the standard 
of religious truth. The correspondence of 
many passages in Hosea, Amos, Micah, with 
events described and laws contained in the 
Pentateuch show unmistakable reference 
thereto. Now it would have been a mani¬ 
fest impossibility, after the separation, to 
have palmed upon the Northern Kingdom 
a fictitious work containing such strong con¬ 
demnation of their own practices. There is 
no way of accounting for the reverence in 
which the Pentateuch was then held but 
upon the fact of its having been the sacred 
book of the whole nation prior to the sever¬ 
ance. Jereboam and his counselors tried 
to prevent the subjects of his kingdom from 
going to Jerusalem to worship, but did not 
venture to question the Divine mission 
of Moses or the genuineness of the received 
sacred books. The books, therefore, were 
existent, and their holy character recog¬ 
nized prior to the revolt of the ten tribes. 
This is of itself a sufficient answer to all 
pretenses of a subsequent fabrication. 

As illustrative of references in the proph¬ 
ets, compare 

Hosea ix. 10 with Numb. xxv. ; 

Hosea xi. 8 with Deut. xxix. 23 ; 

Amos iv. 9, 10 with Deut. xxviii. 27, 60; 

Micah vi. 5 with Numb, xxii., etc., 
and very many similar correspondences. 

The date of the Samaritan Pentateuch is 
disputed, but there is reason for assigning 
it to an age as early as that of Ezra, if not 
earlier. Indeed, there is much to favor the 
supposition that the priest sent by the King 


of Assyria to teach the Samaritans the man¬ 
ner of the God of the land, and who taught 
them how they should fear Jehovah, then 
gave them the Torah (2 Kings xvii. 26-28). 
This book, differing not materially from 
the Jewish text, has been held in the highest 
veneration by the Samaritans. Jealous as 
they were of their Jewish neighbors, it is 
incredible that they could have accorded to 
the volume implicit faith unless its claims 
and character, as communicated by God 
through Moses, were considered indisputa¬ 
ble. 

There remains another branch of con¬ 
firmatory evidence, that derived from the 
New Testament, than which none can be 
more conclusive to the believer in the Lord 
Jesus Christ. The Scriptures of the Old 
Testament, just as we have them now, were 
in the hands of the Jewish people at the time 
of our Saviour’s appearance. In His in¬ 
tercourse with that people the import and 
meaning of these books were a subject of 
constant discussion. With those who ac¬ 
cept Jesus as the Son of God, the light of 
the world, the great revealer of grace and 
truth, there can be no question as to His 
knowledge of the grounds upon which the 
belief of the nation rested, and whether or 
not their reliance was justified. If Jesus 
knew that they were laboring under an 
error in believing Moses to have been the 
author of the books attributed to him, would 
He not have sought to undeceive them? 
Would He have taken advantage of their 
mistakes and availed Himself of falsehood ? 
Yet, so far from uttering a syllable to that 
effect, He consents entirely to their exalted 
estimate of the Scriptures, and appeals to 
their testimony in support of His Messianic 
claims. He argues therefrom to expose and 
condemn the corrupt glosses of the Scribes 
and traditions of the Babbins, as from a 
standard point and incontrovertible. 

When the Pharisees question Him upon 
the subject of divorce and adduce the per¬ 
mission given by Moses (Deut. xxiv. 1), He 
makes no question of the permission having 
proceeded from Moses, nay, expressly ad¬ 
mits it, but assigns the reason for his legis¬ 
lation, “ Moses because of your hardness 
of heart suffered you to put away your 
wives” (Matt. xix. 8). When the Sadducees 
hoped to entangle Him by pretended per¬ 
plexities touching the resurrection, con¬ 
nected with the provision in Deut. xxv. 5, 
He does not gainsay their assertion that the 
injunction came from Moses, but rising to a 
loftiness far above their wretched cavils, He 
charges ’them with ignorance of the very 
Scriptures upon which they rely. “ Do ye 
not therefore err, because ye know not the 
Scriptures, nor the power of God?” And 
in proof of the doctrine of the resurrection 
He educes grea meaning, unsuspected by 
His hearers, from a passage in the book of 
Exodus, “ Have ye not read in the book of 
Moses, in the place concerning the bush, how 
God spake unto him, saying, I am the God 




PENTATEUCH 


585 


PENTECOST 


of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the 
God of Jacob? He is not the God of the 
dead, but of the living” (St. Mark xii. 18-27). 
Here our Lord recognizes not only the author¬ 
ship of Moses, but his Divine mission, taking 
the words quoted as undoubtedly the words 
of God. In St. John iii. 14, Christ recog¬ 
nizes the genuineness, as well as historical 
accuracy, of the Book of Numbers in the ref¬ 
erence to the brazen serpent. In St. John vi. 
32, the miraculous supply of manna is argued 
from as a historical fact. So far from our 
Lord making any attempt to weaken the 
popular faith in the writings of Moses, He 
rests His own title to acceptance upon the 
words of the great lawgiver rightly inter¬ 
preted. “ Had ye believed Moses, ye would 
have believed me; for he wrote of me. But 
if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye 
believe my words?” (St. John v. 46, 47.) 

In the converse of the risen Saviour with 
His disciples there is express and conclusive 
attestation to the genuineness and inspira¬ 
tion of the Scriptures, classified, as the Jews 
were wont, in a threefold division. “ And 
he said unto them, These are my words 
which I spake unto you, while I was yet 
with you, how that all things must needs be 
fulfilled, which were written in the Law of 
Moses, and the prophets, and the Psalms, 
concerning me” (St. Luke xxiv. 44). That 
the first division, the Law of Moses, con¬ 
sisted of the five portions of the Pentateuch, 
is undeniable. We could not have a more 
decided and conclusive attestation. The 
entire fivefold volume is stamped with the 
seal of the world’s Redeemer. Questions of 
minor importance, to which allusion has 
been made, are not so determined as to pre¬ 
clude examination and discussion, but the 
language of Jesus leaves no room for doubt 
that He accredits the Pentateuch as a whole, 
and confirms the Divine mission of Moses. 

The Apostles deal with the Scriptures with 
the same reverence, and appeal to the vol¬ 
ume as ultimate authority, nowhere in¬ 
timating the slightest doubt as to the au¬ 
thenticity and credibility of the different 
books. The words ascribed to Moses are 
relied upon as his veritable utterances, and 
decisive upon the points in dispute (Acts 
iii. 22; vii. 1-41 ; xiii. 39 ; xv. 21; xxvi. 
22 ; xxviii. 23; Rom. x. 6; 1 Cor. x. 1-11 ; 
2 Cor. iii. 7—16). The reasoning of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews supposes throughout 
the Divine institution of the Levitical law 
and ceremonial, and the Apocalypse au¬ 
thenticates the song of Moses. 

It is no satisfactory answer to these cita¬ 
tions to say that the age was not a critical 
one, and that Jesus and His Apostles 
adopted the current opinions of the day. 
Jesus is Himself “the Truth.” He can 
neither be deceived Himself nor mislead 
others. “ Every one that is of the truth 
heareth His voice.” We are not indeed 
by our faith in Christ compelled to dis¬ 
courage critical inquiry, or shut our eyes 
to evidence, or to decline discussion. The 


studies and investigations of learned and 
judicious men are to be welcomed. The 
purity of the text and the elucidation of 
obscurities are to be diligently sought. 
Words may be changed, other readings may 
be vindicated as of superior authority, and 
some portions traced with more or less prob¬ 
ability to other sources. But to suppose 
that a stupendous fabrication was imposed 
upon the Jewish people, that the oracles es¬ 
teemed by them as of God were the inven¬ 
tion of priestcraft, and that Jesus Christ 
was either imposed upon, or knowingly 
countenanced a fraud, is too monstrous a 
supposition to be admitted for a moment. 
He knew whereof He affirmed, and we know 
that His witness is true. And the theories 
and objections of skeptical critics, were they 
vastly more able, ingenious, and alarming 
than they are, will not shake this convic¬ 
tion, and need occasion no anxiety to the 
sincere, albeit unharmed, follower of the 
Lord Jesus Christ. 

Rt. Rev. Alfred Lee, D.D., 
Bishop of Delaware. 

Pentecost. The Feast of weeks. It was 
a single, solemn feast-day when the harvest 
was completed,—the fiftieth day from the 
great Sabbath of the Passover, when the un¬ 
leavened bread was put away and the Pas¬ 
chal Lamb was prepared. The feast of the 
Pentecost was the offering of the harvest 
sheaf and the two loaves of leavened bread, 
the unleavened bread of the first feast typi¬ 
fying the pure nature (1 Cor. v. 6-8) of our 
Lord which He offered for us, the leavened 
bread our own human nature. For at this 
Feast the Holy Ghost was given to the 
Apostles, according to the most true promise 
of our Lord (Acts ii.) when the “Holy 
Ghost came down from heaven with a sud¬ 
den great sound, as it had been a mighty 
wind, in the likeness of fiery tongues light¬ 
ing upon the Apostles to teach them, and to 
lead them into all truth, giving them both 
the gift of divers languages, and also bold¬ 
ness with fervent zeal constantly to preach 
the Gospel unto all nations, whereby we 
have been brought out of darkness and error 
into the clear light and true knowledge” of 
God and of His Son Jesus Christ (Preface 
for Whitsunday). Its real meaning and 
power is summed up in the prophetic verse 
of the lxviii. Psalm, so appropriately used on 
the Feast-day : “ Thou hast ascended on 
high ; Thou hast led captivity captive; Thou 
hast received gifts for men, yea, for the re¬ 
bellious also, that the Lord God might 
dwell among them.” It is that Gift that 
includes all other gifts, the Gift of the abid¬ 
ing of the Holy Ghost in the Church of 
the Son of God. It was the filling of the 
mystical body of Christ with His Spirit, 
which should lead that body into all truth, 
and should preserve it despite all its failures 
and falterings from utter loss. It is this as¬ 
pect of the celebration of this day, which has 
passed with all its pomp and significance from 
the Jewish into the Christian ritual. The 




PENTECOSTALS 


586 


PERSECUTION 


Church administered baptism to the classes 
of the catechumens who had been preparing, 
and received them at the font clad in white 
array. It was a day of solemn celebration 
of worship and of thanksgiving, and was 
observed with all due honor. It is a type 
of our own confirmation when we receive 
from the Bishop’s hands that gift of the 
Holy Ghost which St. Peter preached was 
the special gift of that day,—“ and ye shall 
receive the Holy Ghost. For the promise is 
unto you and to your children, and to all that 
are afar off, even as many as the Lord our 
God shall call” (Acts ii. 38, 39). 

Pentecostals, otherwise called 'Whit¬ 
sun farthings, took their name from the 
payment due at the Feast of Pentecost. 
It appears that Pentecostals were oblations, 
and as the inhabitants of chapelries were 
bound on some certain festival or festivals 
to repair to the Mother-Church and make 
their oblation there in token of subjection 
and dependence, so, as it seems, were the in¬ 
habitants of the Diocese obliged to repair 
to the Cathedral (as the Mother-Church of 
the whole Diocese) at the Feast of Pen¬ 
tecost. These oblations grew by degrees 
into fixed and certain payments from every 
parish and house in it. These are still paid 
in a few Dioceses, being now only a charge 
upon particular Churches where by custom 
they have been paid. (Burn’s Eccl. Law.) 

Perambulation. An old custom, now 
nearly fallen into disuse, in England. The 
Parson, the Church-wardens, and parish¬ 
ioners went in solemn procession round the 
bounds of the parish once every year, in or 
about Ascension-tide. There is a homily to 
be read on this occasion, extant in the Book 
of Homilies. Queen Elizabeth’s injunctions 
appointed the cxii. and civ. Psalms to be re¬ 
cited during the procession. The custom 
was also used in this country in colonial 
days. 

Pernoctations. Vigils. It was a cus¬ 
tom among the early Christians upon cer¬ 
tain feasts and fasts to watch all the night 
previous. 

Perpetual Curate. When the revenues of 
an English parish are in the hands of a lay 
impropriator and there is neither spiritual 
rector nor vicar, the curate who does duty 
under the impropriator is called a perpetual 
curate. It can be held with a benefice, and 
is revokable if the impropriator so choose. 
The title “perpetual” seems to mean that 
the impropriator is compelled to have a 
curate in charge continually, but not that 
particular curate to whom he may have 
given it. But Acts of Parliament, however, 
provided for some cases. 

Perpetual Virginity of St. Mary the Vir¬ 
gin. Vide Mary. 

Persecution. It is the suffering of what 
malice, hatred, and violence, whether legally 
or irresponsibly, can inflict upon a person 
because of his religious convictions. Perse¬ 
cution means, generally, physical pains and 
more than mere threats to compel a surren¬ 


der of opinion. In this Persecution, by 
whomsoever used, is an evil, and has always 
proved to be a most dangerous weapon in 
the hands of those who use it, and it should 
be remembered that persecution cannot be 
used in behalf of a righteous cause. Truth 
must be intolerant of error, the two are in¬ 
compatible, but we must speak the truth, 
the whole truth, in love, and we must use 
all such influences as are holy and right to 
lead others into the truth. There is a holy 
compulsion that lies within the power and 
influence of a holy life, but this is the sole 
compulsion we should use. The Church’s 
compulsion is the earnest prayer she uses. t 
It is the loving setting forth of the doctrine 
of our Lord Jesus Christ, and a trust that 
if she is faithful to her trust He will not fail 
in His answer to her intercessions. But the 
rulers of the Church have not always taken 
this view, and because of some chance ex¬ 
pressions of the Fathers, notably of St* Au¬ 
gustine, upon force to be used with those who 
will not believe aright, the power to inflict 
temporal penalties for spiritual offenses has 
been assumed, as by the Roman Church. 
But again, since Church and State were 
joined together and overt acts against the re¬ 
ligion established by law would lead, as was 
foreseen, to the attack upon political institu¬ 
tions, the English State persecuted religious 
opinions after the Reformation. The history 
of Persecution is divided naturally into two 
parts. The first is the Persecutions she 
suffered, at the hands of the Jews as a sect 
subversive of Judaism, and at the hands of 
the heathen as being a religio illicita ; and, 
secondly, the Persecutions which were taken 
up by the Church and State in later times. 
It is impossible to give more than an out¬ 
line of either of these. In their attempts at 
persecution the Jews either prosecuted the 
Christians by their own officers (as when Saul, 
yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter, 
went to the high-priest and desired of him 
letters to Damascus to the Synagogue, that 
if he found any of this way, whether they 
were men or women, he might bring them 
bound unto Jerusalem), or raised a riot (as 
Acts xiii. 50; xiv. 2), or used the prefects 
and governors for the same end (Acts xvii. 
4-9). But when Christianity outgrew this 
limit it was ranked as treason against the 
State, and therefore was proceeded against 
by imperial edicts and by legal enactments. 
In consequence there was a constant perse¬ 
cution going on all the world over, till the 
conversion of Constantine, 315 a.d. But the 
formal persecutions inaugurated, sometimes 
by the policy of the Emperor, sometimes 
by some conjuncture, were reckoned as ten 
in number. Not counting that of Nero, 
64 a.d. , they are: I. Domitian’s, 95 a.d. 
II. Trajan’s, 102 a.d. III. Marcus Anto¬ 
ninus’s, 167-177 a.d. IV. Severus’s, 202 
a.d. V. Maximin’s, 235-237 a.d. VI. 
Decius’s, 250 a.d. VII. Valerian’s, 257 a.d. 
VIII. Gallienus’s, 260 a.d. IX. Diocletian’s, 
303 a.d. X. Maximin’s, 311 a.d. For the 




PERSON 


587 


PERSON 


next ten years the political troubles and the 
struggles for the purple make it difficult to 
distinguish into formal persecution the 
edicts issued and then modified and then 
partially enforced by Gallerius, Maximin, 
Maxentius, and Heraclius, together or in 
turn. Persecutions which occurred later, as 
in Persia, and the martyrdoms of such great 
men as Boniface, the Anglo-Saxon Apostle 
to Germany, are not within our limits. 
But we now turn to the persecutions of 
heretical bodies in Europe. The most notable 
are the war against the Albigenses, ordered 
by Innocent III., 1209 a.d. ; the continuous 
persecutions of the Inquisition, an organi¬ 
zation which sprang out of this war against 
the Albigenses; and the persecution of the 
Spanish Jews, 1391 a.d. The war of the 
Hussites was a successful resistance to per¬ 
secution. The Inquisition was one continu¬ 
ous act of persecution of both Jews and 
heretics, which was pushed forward with 
the vigor of a relentness organization. 
Kings were made its executioners, since the 
Church could shed no blood. The Reforma¬ 
tion was the real culmination of persecution. 
In England there had been a persecution 
of the Lollards, but when Mary Tudor as¬ 
cended the Throne (1554 a.d.) she began, 
contrary to the advice of her soundest 
Councillors, that persecution which only 
established the Anglican Church more firmly 
under the rule of Elizabeth. 

The English Church was also guilty of 
persecution later. (The execution of the 
Jesuits and of the seminary priests who suf¬ 
fered under Elizabeth was not a persecu¬ 
tion, it was Elizabeth’s counter-stroke to the 
excommunication and forfeiture of her king¬ 
dom issued against her in her excommunica¬ 
tion by the Pope.) The dissenters, who were 
fined and imprisoned for opinion’s sake, suf¬ 
fered persecution. But as was pointed out 
at first, there was in men’s minds then no 
such idea as we have now of religious lib¬ 
erty, and to attack the Church was in the 
conception of the statesmen of those days to 
injure the majesty of the State. This prin¬ 
ciple was used quite as freely by the Presby¬ 
terians and Independents when they obtained 
power (1642-1656 a.d.). Toleration was 
not thought of as a Christian duty till after 
the Revolution, and there was no complete 
announcement of religious liberty. Indeed, 
Toleration is only a half-step. In Maryland, 
the nearest approach to civil liberty was 
granted by Charles I. to Lord Baltimore. 
But persecution in one sense never ceases. 
So long as the world lies in hatred and 
enmity, so long must persecution in one or 
other shape exist. It is an exercise of faith, 
it is the patience in which the Christian 
must possess his soul, and it is not the less 
a persecution if it comes from one’s own 
household,—the division of homes our Lord 
foretold His Doctrine would bring about. 

Person. Person, in theological language, 
refers to the (a) Personality of God as being 
a Spirit, sole, self-existent, governing all 


things, and apart from them. Here we can 
only speak of the Nature of the Holy Trin¬ 
ity. God has revealed to us the Unity of His 
Substance and the Trinity of Persons. For 
ourselves the Unity can be readily conceived 
of, and that He can act through the many 
powers of nature. That so men did mislead 
themselves into Polytheism, is also a historic 
fact. But that the Divine Substance con¬ 
sists in Three Persons is a mystery that we 
cannot now comprehend. But if God be 
not a Personality in the highest sense, our 
noblest instincts are at fault. We seek for 
the impersonation in some form or other of 
all abstract moral and religious ideas ; they 
must become facts, and must be related either 
as essential or as attributive to some living 
sentient Being. We cannot merely or con¬ 
sistently worship an abstraction. So far can 
we go, but herd we must stop. God must be 
a Being. Revelation, then, shows us that 
these apparently abstract ideas, the longings 
of the soul, are indeed indissolubly bound up 
in the Essence of God. God is love, God 
is truth, God is Justice. The Being whose 
law of Being involves these. The Persons, 
then, of the Holy Trinity most certainly 
contain these as facts, as essential laws. 
“I am the Light of the World” saith our 
Lord, “ I am the Bread of Life,” “ I am 
the way, the truth, and the Life.” Holi¬ 
ness is of the essence, Perfectness is of the 
nature, of the Holy Ghost. 

(b) As for the Person of our Lord, His 
humanity is so infolded with His Divine 
Nature, that from the moment it began to 
be in the virgin womb it was. perfectly His 
own, as it grew, was perfected, and entered 
into our life. He had our nature interpene¬ 
trated with His own eternal nature, so that 
the two not being commingled yet thor¬ 
oughly cohering together, were but ono 
Person,—the GoD-man, Christ Jesus. 
This, while an unfathomable mystery, be¬ 
cause on a higher plane, is yet quite within 
the range of our acceptance by the analogy 
of our dual nature while we are yet single 
Persons. In this Person our hopes are bound 
up, and all our realization of what our God 
has done and is doing for us. Through Him 
we receive that partaking of the Divine Na¬ 
ture which it is His prerogative to bestow 
upon us. Therefore to us the Person, Jesus 
Christ, is the man. 

(c) As for the Holy Ghost, He must be a 
Person, for He is sent from the Father by 
the Son. He searches the deep things of God, 
He gives the gifts Christ hath received for 
us, He reveals, He sanctifies, He guides, 
He leads into all Truth. No abstract idea 
can do these things, only a Person can pos¬ 
sibly execute them. 

It is not necessary for us to picture to our¬ 
selves aught beyond these facts, but it is 
necessary to conceive of and acknowledge 
with all our power the fact of the Persons 
of the Holy Trinity and their relation to us, 
that our religion may have its rightful 
power over our lives, and that our worship 




PERSONA 


588 


PETER (SAINT) 


may be fervently paid, not to a holy idea, 
but to the living God. 

Persona. Vide Parson. 

Peter’s Pence. Ofta, King of Mercia 
(793 a.d.), made a pilgrimage to Rome, 
where he granted to the English school a 
silver penny from every family in his domin¬ 
ions as a yearly income for its maintenance. 
It was claimed as a tax later, and continued 
to be paid, not without remonstrance (see 
Hart’s' Eccl. Records), and not without 
many interruptions, till Henry VIII. for¬ 
bade it altogether. 

Peter, St. The notices in the New Testa¬ 
ment of St. Peter’s life are very scanty, but 
there is a coherence in them which enables 
us to restore in a measure the great Apostle’s 
characteristic traits. When we leave the 
New Testament, however, we are without 
any trusty guide ; on the contrary, we are 
wholly misled by tradition, which is too late 
to be of any value. Simon, son of Jona, 
was a native of the village of Bethsaida, on 
the Sea of Galilee ; a fisherman in partner¬ 
ship with his brother and his friends, the 
brothers John and James, the sons of Zebe- 
dee. His brother Andrew and another 
(doubtless John) had been attending upon 
the ministry of St. John the Baptist, who 
pointed out to them J esus the Lamb of God ; 
they at once followed Him ; abode with Him 
that night; and the next day Andrew sought 
his brother Simon and brought him to J esus. 
The Lord addressed him with the memora¬ 
ble words, “Thou art Simon the son of 
Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is 
by interpretation ‘A stone’ (Peter).” Hence¬ 
forth he bears this name also, being some¬ 
times called in the Gospels Simon, often 
Simon Peter, but generally Peter. Simon 
returned to his work till Christ was ready 
to call him from it to be trained to catch 
men. As Jesus was preaching on the sea¬ 
side the people so pressed on Him that He 
entered Simon Peter’s boat, and from thence 
taught them. His sermon finished, He would 
reward the owners of the boat. The miracle 
of the large draught of fish follows, and the 
consequent call to him and to the two 
brothers to leave all and follow Him. As 
yet for some months the Twelve were not 
chosen, but our Lord was gathering around 
Him the band. Peter was present at some 
of His miracles, and was present when Levi 
was called ; and with James and John was 
present at the raising of Jairus’ daughter. 
When the Lord chose the Twelve, St. Peter 
seems to have been the leader. He stands 
first in all the lists. He is spokesman for 
the rest. He shows his love and zeal for 
our Lord promptly, almost to rashness. 
When, after the discourse at Capernaum, the 
Lord turned to the Twelve and asked, 
“ Will ye also go away?” St. Peter at once 
replied for them all, “ Lord, to whom shall 
we go ? thou hast the words of eternal life. 
And we believe and are sure that Thou art 
the Christ, the Son of the living God” (St. 
John vi. 66-69). Here this Confession was 


indeed the same as the one made afterwards 
at Caesarea Philippi. But it was not so 
much that personal conviction now, which it 
was at the later Confession. 

With the others, two and two, he is sent 
forth by our Lord when He had given 
them special supernatural gifts by which 
they were to attract notice to, and prove 
the authority of, the preaching He gave 
them, to cast out evil spirits, to heal 
the sick, to raise the dead, to cleanse the 
lepers (St. Matt. x. 8). Nothing is re¬ 
corded of their work. They seem to have, 
however, little insight into the spiritual 
character of their work. It was to them a 
power to be wielded, not a training, which 
they had received. In these things St. Peter 
shows the defects of his character as well as 
its salient strong points. Ready to begin, 
bold, forward, trained in the hardy work of 
a fisherman on a dangerous lake, loving, 
devoted, zealous, yet he is easily daunted, 
and passes from one extreme to the other. 
This he displayed at the several crises of his 
training from our Lord. When he made 
his great Confession and received for it the 
famous promise, it would seem that he was 
so elated with spiritual pride, that when 
soon after the Lord showed to His disciples 
His future humiliation, St. Peter took Him 
and began to rebuke Him, saying, “ Far be 
it from Thee, Lord, this shall not be unto 
Thee.” Then, again, when before this the 
Lord appeared to the disciples at near dawn, 
walking on the sea, St. Peter asked, “ Lord, 
if it be Thou, bid me come unto Thee on the 
water. And He said, Come. And when 
Peter was come down out of the ship, he 
walked on the water, to go to Jesus. But 
when he saw the wind boisterous, he was 
afraid, and beginning to sink, he cried, 
Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus 
stretched forth His hand, and caught him, 
and said unto him, 0 thou of little Faith, 
wherefore didst thou doubt ?” The disciples 
here too worshiped our Lord, confessing 
Him to be the Son of God. Again, this 
characteristic of St. Peter, in failing to com¬ 
pletely apprehend spiritual things, is shown 
by his reply, so wide of the meaning of the 
scene when on the Mount of Transfigura¬ 
tion. After seeing the wondrous change in the 
Master’s person, and hearing the converse of 
Moses and Elias, he could only say, Master, 
it is good for us to be here : and let us make 
three Tabernacles : one for Thee, and one for 
Moses, and one for Elias. For he wist not 
what to say ; for they were sore afraid” (iSt. 
Mark ix. 5, 6). 

But these characteristics came out most 
strongly on that sorrowful night; how he 
shrank at first from the Master’s humble 
service! how he vowed devotion to death ! 
how poor a guard he kept with the two 
while the Lord underwent His agony ! how 
rashly he smote with the sword, and yet 
how readily he fled! how he timidly crept 
into the Court of the Iligh-Priest and there 
denied his Master ! well might he go out and 




PETER (SAINT) 589 PETER (SAINT) 


weep bitterly. It was so wholly in keeping 
with all we have been told, the loving, bold, 
yet easily daunted heart, ready to go to 
either extreme. Even at the Tomb, St. 
Peter, outstripped by St. John in running to 
see if indeed the Sepulchre were empty, en¬ 
ters in when St. John shrinks back at first. 
So too after the Resurrection, when they go 
to their fishing on the Lake. St. John ex¬ 
claimed to St. Peter as he looked on the 
shore, “It is the Lord I” then St. Peter 
plunged into the water and hastened to the 
Lord. It was then that the threefold res¬ 
toration for his triple denial took place. St. 
Peter’s answers show how utterly devoted 
he was to his Lord j “ Lord, Thouknowest 
all things : Thou knowest that I love Thee,” 
and yet the old temperament made him ask 
of the fate of his brother Apostle: “ Lord, 
and what shall this man do?” to receive the 
check again : “ If 1 will that he tarry till I 
come, what is that to thee? follow thou Me.” 
So too, St. Peter leads in the election of St. 
Matthias, and his sermon is chosen as typical 
of the sermons preached at Pentecost. He 
is foremost in the steadfast confession the 
Apostles made before the Sanhedrim. He 
administers the discipline of the Church, 
as in the case of Ananias and Sapphira. 
He is sent with St. John to Samaria by the 
College of Apostles to confirm those baptized 
by the Evangelist St. Philip. He afterwards 
spent some time in the villages near, goes to 
Lydda and to Joppa. Here again came a 
crisis in his life. He was at Joppa, in the 
house of Simon the tanner. "While fasting 
there was given him the thrice repeated 
vision of the great sheet knit at the four 
corners, and filled with all manner of beasts 
of the earth and wild beasts and creeping 
things and fowls of the air. While wonder¬ 
ing at the vision the messengers from Cor¬ 
nelius the Centurion came seeking him, 
and the Spirit bade him go with them nothing 
doubting, for He had sent them. The Baptism 
of Cornelius was the fulfillment of the 
Lord’s promise that he should be a founda¬ 
tion-stone of the Church. Attacked by the 
stricter brethren, he defended himself byre¬ 
citing to the Apostles the Divine authority 
by which he acted. 

The next record .of him is his imprison¬ 
ment by Herod (Easter, 44 a.d.), and his 
deliverance by the Angel. His work in the 
interval is not given us, but he appears in 
Jerusalem at the council which was sum¬ 
moned under the presidency of St. James to 
decide the question of circumcising the Gen¬ 
tile converts. After much debate, St. Peter 
clearly and concisely stated his position in 
the question, urging that it was too heavy a 
yoke for the Gentiles to bear. SS. Barnabas 
and Paul then recounted their mission work, 
and St. James summed up the question and 
gave the final decision. The last time St. 
Peter comes before us is most characteristic. 
When at Antioch, first he had eaten with 
the Gentile converts, yet from fear of the 
censure of those who came thither from St. 


James, he withdrew and separated himself 
from his Gentile brethren, and influenced 
many Jews to do this, and even Barnabas 
was carried away with their dissimulation. 
Therefore St. Paul withstood him to the 
face, because he was to be blamed. Ap¬ 
parently St. Paul did not take a hasty step, 
nor too soon, since St. Peter’s vacillation 
had affected so many who should have known 
better. This is the last authentic notice of 
him in the New Testament history, save 
(what we may note in his Epistle) that he 
was at Babylon (65 a.d.). Legend has given 
us minute accounts of his life, which may 
be briefly dismissed by saying that they are 
too late to be authentic. The tradition that 
he died at Rome is not sufficiently early to 
be free from much doubt. We have passed 
rapidly over his career, and omitted many 
slighter details—if aught in the Gospels 
could be called slight—to obtain space to dis¬ 
cuss one or two points of special importance 
in his career, and of the claims founded upon 
them by the Roman See. The Promise 
given to him upon his Confession at Csesarea 
Philippi. His confession, “ Thou art the 
Christ, the Son of the Living God,” pro¬ 
cured for him the blessing, “ Blessed art 
thou, Simon Bar-Jona: for flesh and blood 
hath not revealed it unto thee, but My 
Father which is in heaven. And I say 
unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this 
Rock I will build My Church ; and the gates 
of hell (Hades) shall not prevail against it. 
And I will give unto thee the keys of the 
kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou 
shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: 
and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth 
shall be loosed in heaven.” (St. Matt. xvi. 
17-19.) 

The Roman theologians claim that this 
gives to St. Peter a transmissible headship 
over the Visible Church, which belongs 
now to the See of Rome. The replj 7 is clear, 
concise, convincing, (a) That the words 
Peter, or stone, and Rock, are two different 
things, and are to be determined by their use 
in the New Testament; now St. Paul uses 
the word Rock to refer to Christ: “For 
they drank of that spiritual Rock that fol¬ 
lowed them, and that Rock was Christ” 
(1 Cor. x. 4). (5) That St. Peter’s relation 
to the foundation of the Church is settled by 
St. Paul’s words : “ Now therefore ye are no 
longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow- 
citizens with the saints, and of the House¬ 
hold of God ; and are built upon the foun¬ 
dation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus 
Christ Himself being the chief corner¬ 
stone” (Eph. ii. 19, 20), and by St. John’s 
words of the Vision of the New Jerusalem, 
“ And the city had twelve foundations, and 
in them the names of the twelve Apostles of 
the Lamb” (Rev. xxi. 14). (c) Again, St. 

Peter received the privilege of being the lead¬ 
ing Apostle. This was undoubtedly a pre¬ 
rogative of leadership, but certainly not 
of supremacy. In no official act after the 
Resurrection did he lead, save in one,—the 





PETER (SAINT) 


590 


PETER (SAINT) 


election of St. Matthias. In this he did 
take the directing part. As for his Sermon 
at Pentecost, it was not the only Sermon 
preached, but his was the only one reported. 
He passed sentence upon Ananias and Sap- 
phira, but this was a momentary disciplin¬ 
ary act, involving no leadership. He was 
by natural temperament chief spokesman 
before the Sanhedrim. But he is sent by the 
College of Apostles to Samaria (Acts viii. 
14). He was questioned before the Apostles 
by some of the brethren (Acts xi. 1-18). 
When miraculously escaping from prison 
he sends word to St. James (Acts xii. 17). 
He is a chief debater only in the Council at 
Jerusalem (Acts xv.). It is very evident 
from these facts that he was the foremost 
and the influential Apostle, but not the 
Governor. But in a still more marked way 
we find this to be his true position when we 
contrast him with St. Paul. St. Paul gives 
very positively their relation to each other 
(Gal. i. 18, 19; ii.). In this narration he 
declares his independence. He and St. Bar¬ 
nabas received the right hand of fellowship 
from SS. James, Cephas, and John (notice 
the order). His own gifts were equal with 
St. Peter’s. They parted the mission work 
between them, and this at Jerusalem, where 
St. Peter’s influence would be paramount. 
At Antioch St. Paul rebuked St. Peter 
openly, and apparently St. Peter made no 
defense. In another place St. Paul is not 
behind the chiefest Apostles. At every 
point, by undeniable facts, we find St. Peter 
acknowledged a leader, but by no means a 
master. 

Turning to the claim that St. Peter estab¬ 
lished his supremacy in and transmitted it 
through the Roman See, the facts prove to 
be still weaker. The passages which refer 
to his going there at all are at the best a 
full century after the alleged event. The 
“ Clementines, w a heretical work, rejected 
by Rome herself, first assigns to St. Peter a 
visit to Rome. But Dionysius of Corinth 
(170 a.d.) refers to it in an Epistle to 
Rome. Irenseus (177 a.d..) repeats it. 
Tertullian (180 a.d.) speaks of it; and 
Caius of Rome, 200 a.d. The tradition, 
of course, was more widely received as time 
went on. St. Cyprian (250 a.d.) takes it 
for granted, and argues from it. Firmilian, 
250 a.d. , says that it was urged in Rome 
very strenuously. But this visit and mar¬ 
tyrdom, not testified to by any earlier writer 
than Dionysius, had grown to a residence and 
a government of twenty-five years by the 
thirteenth century. In the light of these 
facts, while a martyrdom in Rome may be 
admitted, there is not the shadow of proof 
that he exercised any Episcopal right. Nay, 
if any did so, it must have been St. Paul, 
who was there in his own hired house two 
whole years at his first imprisonment. Of 
the legends which surround his life, but one 
is really worth the quoting. It is said that 
on the night before his martyrdom he suc¬ 
ceeded in escaping from prison. As he was 


passing the city walls he met his Master 
coming, and exclaimed, Domine quo Vadis , 
—Master, whither goest Thou ? The reply 
was, To suffer in place of my servant. St. 
Peter at once returned to his cell, and was 
crucified the next day,—some later writers 
say head downward, as not worthy to suffer 
as did his Lord. 

Epistles of .—The First Epistle of St. 
Peter, addressed to the Christian Jews of 
the dispersion, was received at once and 
without dispute. As we read that Silvanus 
(St. Paul’s companion) was with the Apos¬ 
tle at the time, and since those addressed 
were partly churches which St. Paul had 
founded, we see at once the kindly relation¬ 
ship which existed between the two chief 
Apostles. It is most probable that the 
Apostle wrote from the Babylon upon the 
Euphrates and as the Apostle to the Circum¬ 
cision. That he knew of St. Paul’s Epis¬ 
tles to these Churches is shown by the simi¬ 
larity of thought in the Epistle to those of 
St. Paul to the Ephesians, Romans, Colos- 
sians, Corinthians, and Thessalonians. These 
are not in any sense quotations, but certain 
coincidences,.which prove that each of the 
two Apostles was aware of the teachings of 
the other. St. Peter’s practical character 
is shown in his Epistle. Earnest, straight¬ 
forward, zealous, he has not the genius of 
St. Paul, but a soberness seems 'to run 
through what he writes. There is mingled 
a strain of reminiscences and allusions to our 
Lord’s life and the incidents at which St. 
Peter was present which give a vividness to 
some of his sentences. He begins with an 
allusion to their inheritance in Christ’s 
Kingdom, of which they had a most certain 
hope, based upon a faith which, indeed, had 
not seen the Lord, but rejoicingly accepted 
Him. He exhorts them to be steadfast in 
holiness and purity, seeing by whom they 
were redeemed, and at what a price. As in¬ 
nocent children live in purity and truthful¬ 
ness founded upon Christ Jesus and in Him. 
act as a royal priesthood, a peculiar people. 
Then (ch. ii. 11 sq.) he urges them to 
greater purity of life, since their Christianity 
makes them, as it were, public, submitting 
to the Law and to the Administrator of it. 
Servants are exhorted to bear and to forbear, 
as Christ did, wives to be obedient, hus¬ 
bands to honor their wives. The love to¬ 
wards each other, the keeping a good con¬ 
science, the reference to the baptismal vow 
(the answer of a good conscience is the 
replies to the questions in a good con¬ 
science) which makes us subject to Christ, 
our ascended Lord, are used as urgent rea¬ 
sons for a greater use of their opportunities 
for patience, for prayer, for suffering joy¬ 
fully for the Lord’s sake, committing them¬ 
selves to Him in all things. The Apostle 
closes with an exhortation to the Presbyter- 
ate to rule Christ’s flock as ensamples to 
the flock, and with a prayer for their firmer 
establishment in the Faith. 

The Second Epistle at an early date had 




PEWS 


591 


PEWS 


suffered from doubts of its genuineness. It 
had some points of resemblance to the Epis¬ 
tle of St. Jude, and was consequently quite 
different in style from the first and un¬ 
doubted Epistle. The question is closed for 
us, since the canon is received by the Church, 
and, admitting the guidance of the Holy 
Ghost, and the inspiration of Scripture, not 
to preserve the identity of style, but to re¬ 
veal and to teach, there is no reason for us 
to doubt of its genuineness. It contains the 
doctrine of the “ last things,” conveyed in a 
style different from those of any other Epis¬ 
tle. It reads more as the production of the 
headlong zeal of the disciple who smote off the 
ear of the servant of the High-Priest than 
of the calm courage of the Apostle before 
the High-Priest. It has very much of the 
tone of St. Jude. In these very objections 
we see that very character of the Apostle 
which both the Gospel and the Acts bring 
before us. He is calm and courageous at 
one time, at another he shrinks, and again 
he is forward through zeal. This Epistle 
may well have been suggested by St. Jude’s 
Epistle, as probably the first Epistle was 
written because of the visit of Silvanus, St. 
Paul’s companion. Its contents may be 
summarized thus : (A) The first chapter is 

very similar in every respect to the parallel 
passage in the first Epistle, the salutation, 
the reminders to them of their calling, and 
of the Christian virtues they should cultivate, 
of their redemption, of the value of proph¬ 
ecy. (B) With the second chapter he begins 
his denunciation of false teachers deceiving 
the members of the Church. The warning 
is vehement and couched in energetic style, 
condemning their evil life, which is inti¬ 
mately bound up in their false doctrines. 
The third chapter closes the Epistle, with 
a passage which seems written for the 
scientific opposition of the present day upon 
the end of all things. “ If these things are 
true, and their consummation is largely in 
your own hands, hasting unto the coming 
of that day by your prayers and conduct, be 
diligent, that ye may be found of Him in 
peace without spot and blameless.” 

Pews. Anciently the ground floor of a 
church was open. The chancel contained 
stalls for the officiating clergy and musi¬ 
cians. Standing and kneeling space was 
free to all, and the worshiper had no spe¬ 
cial place assigned to him. The founder of 
an English church and his family often re¬ 
tained a part of the building for their use, 
one side of the church, or the east end of an 
aisle. Here they buried their dead, and the 
place in church descended to the heirs. 
Sometimes a person added a chapel or aisle 
to a church. In the fourteenth or fifteenth 
century, benches were occasionally placed 
in the nave or aisles of the churches; consid¬ 
erably later they were supplied throughout 
the building. In a few old English churches 
a stone bench ran around the inner, and 
even almost as often the outer, part of the 
edifice, and in one case round each pillar. 


In the greater part of Europe the churches 
are still without fixed seats, except a bench 
or so. 

In old times stools seem to have been 
used, according to antique pictures, as early 
as the fourteenth century. The earliest ex¬ 
ample of regular benching Hailes met with 
in the nave of the cathedral at Soest, West¬ 
phalia. The word “ pew” is used in the diary 
of Pepys in the seventeenth century. In 
1454 a.d. there is a record of Swaffham 
Church having been pewed by “Thomas 
Styward and Cecily his wyf” previously. 
In one version of Pier’s “ Plowman’s Vis¬ 
ion,” in the fourteenth century the word 
“ pues” occurs. Accounts of St. Michael’s, 
Cornhill, London, 1457 a.d. and onward, 
contain references to pews, and I am sorry 
to say, refer to doors and “a lok.” From 
the beginning of the sixteenth century there 
is a frequent mention of pews. The Church 
accounts contain entries concerning mending 
and making them. It is probable that the 
churches were only fitted in part with pews, 
and especially in country places their use 
was not universal until long afterwards. 
Seats in the church and choir were given to 
kings and distinguished persons. Anciently, 
women occupied one side of the church and 
men the other. In the sixteenth and seven¬ 
teenth centuries, young women were sepa¬ 
rated from matrons in some English churches. 
In St. Margaret’s, Westminster, in the seven¬ 
teenth century, expenses about old and new 
pews are noted in the accounts. In the early 
part of the sixteenth century payment for 
use of pews is recorded in that parish, before 
pews were common in that church. It 
seems to be a rare case at the time. In 
England there were corporation pews and 
a mayor’s pew. Up to the middle of the 
sixteenth century there does not appear to 
have been a payment for a pew-rent, except 
at St. Margaret’s, Westminster. St. Mat¬ 
thew’s, Friday Street, London, has accounts 
which show that the pews were numbered 
in 1569-70 a.d., where payment is made for 
painting the numbers. Spelman, 1641 a.d., 
refers to the sale, but not the renting of 
pews. A motion against locks was issued 
by Bishop Neile, of Winchester, 1631 a.d. 

Pepys, in 1661 a.d., was obliged to stay at 
the door of his pew during “ a good sermon 
by Mr. Mills,” because the sexton had not 
unlocked it. Galleries, or lofts or scaffolds, as 
then called, were built because the general 
allotment of pews required larger accommo¬ 
dation. The early pews were ben-ches, with 
backs and ends, not square pews. A pew 
at St. John’s, Winchester, is thought to 
be as old as the third quarter of the four¬ 
teenth century. Doors were used as early 
as 1457 a.d. in St. Michael’s, Cornhill. 
The benches at Bishop’s Hull, Somerset, 
had a bar across them for a door. While 
Gothic architecture prevailed the seats 
were rows of single benches, which seem 
always to have faced the East, though pos¬ 
sibly some examples might be found of their 




PEWS 


592 


PHARISEES 


facing North or South. Practice did not 
allow the congregation to sit with their 
backs to the altar. Afterwards seats were 
made approaching a square in form; the 
earliest is dated 1G01 a.d., at Barking, Suf¬ 
folk. In 1612 a.d. a pew is named five feet 
high. At Cholderton, Wiltshire, is a pew 
six feet high, with glass windows in the door 
to enable the occupants to see the preacher, 
and other windows in the side to permit 
them to survey the congregation, all being 
fitted with sliding shutters. At Brank- 
sea, Dorsetshire, there is a pew as large as 
a drawing-room, magnificently furnished, 
having a fire-place, and windows, and blinds 
to secure privacy. In Little Bemingham 
Church, Norfolk, a pew was built by a 
shepherd for strangers and wedding parties. 
On it is a skeleton carved in wood, and an 
inscription warning the passer-by to “ Re¬ 
member Death.” 

In Central and Southern France chairs 
are used in church. In Spain and Italy 
the cathedrals and churches are free and 
unappropriated, and the Eastern Church, 
including Russia and Greece, keeps up its 
old traditions, and has a clear and free area 
for all worshipers. The noble and peasant 
may kneel together before God, who “is 
no respecter of persons” (Actsx. 34). “ The 
rich and the poor meet together: the Lord 
is the Maker of them all” (Prov. xxii. 2). 
The Church of God should be as free as 
His blessed sunlight, and reviving air, and 
refreshing water. In giving a church to 
God, let us not keep “ back a part of the 
price.” Pews should be low, so as not to 
be obstructions, and doors, and locks, and 
waiting for seats should be unknown. It is 
the plain duty of the Church to return to 
the custom of primitive times, and to make 
the house of God free. Can she not hear 
her Master’s cry as it comes down loud and 
clear through the ages, “Make not my 
Father’s house an house of merchandise” ? 
(St. John ii. 16.) The “man with a gold 
ring in goodly apparel” and the “ poor man 
in vile raiment” (James ii. 2) are to 
be equally cared for in the Christian “ as¬ 
sembly.” We may not say to him of the 
“ gay clothing,” “Sit thou here in a good 
place ;” and to “ the poor, Stand thou there, 
or sit here under my footstool;” if so, we 
become “partial” and “judges of evil 
thoughts” (ver. 4). 

Pew-rents are declared by some to be ne¬ 
cessary for the expenses of the parish, but 
quite half of our parishes arc free. The 
offering on the Lord’s day is the old Apos¬ 
tolic plan of church support (1 Cor. xvi. 
2). New dioceses and new parishes can 
correct old faults. The desirability of seat¬ 
ing families together is urged for the pew- 
rent system, but in many cases by early at¬ 
tendance that could be secured, and the 
principle of church freedom would not be 
violated. Free churches imply a deep and 
constant interest in all, but if a tithe of the 
money spent in fine houses, rich dress, jew¬ 


elry, and travel could find its way to the 
altar of God, not only could the church be 
free, but also open daily for public and pri¬ 
vate prayer. May God hasten the good day 
that this may be a reality. The facts of 
this article are drawn from the valuable 
work of Alfred Heales, F.S.A., Proctor in 
Doctor’s Commons, on the “ History and 
Law of Church Seats or Pews,” 2 vols. 
That author refers to Rev. Jno. Mason 
Neale’s “ History of Pews,” and to works 
by Billings, Oliphant, Fowler, and Rogers, 
as well as many others, and to various 
church records. The second volume has 
references to cases in law with regard to 
ownership in church seats, which lawsuits 
should never have been possible, for no man 
should have the slightest right to call a 
church a gift to God, and then to claim any 
part of it for himself. 

Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Pharisees. The leading party or school 
of theology among the Jews in our Lord’s 
day. Their name meant separated. By a 
minute analysis of the Law, and by petty 
regulations they had formalized, as well as 
formulated, the precepts of Moses, and by 
these means had constructed a system which 
went counter to the spirit - and often to the 
very letter of the Law they professed to 
obey. Now our Lord at once opposed this, 
for it created a party and a sect of preten¬ 
tious saints ; it also separated the people 
from the obedience to the law,—these were, 
to the Pharisee, ignorant of the Law, and so 
cursed. It was, therefore, in defense of the 
Law our Lord opposed them ; in defense 
of the rights of the people He denounced 
them ; in defense of all true interpretation 
of the Law He wittingly broke through 
their maxims. What of truth they taught 
that He did but commend, “these ought ye 
to have done and not to leave the other un¬ 
done.” They held to the resurrection of the 
dead and to the duty of constant prayer, 
which two doctrines are not enjoined in 
the Law at all. They trained their nation 
in that exclusiveness which is even yet so 
marked a characteristic, and when their 
wretched troubles unified the Jewish nation, 
if indeed it needed this after the Babylonish 
Captivity, if these Jews were Pharisees in 
doctrine. It has been only lately that this 
yoke has been really broken. But this 
formalism trained the Pharisee in a hypoc¬ 
risy which our Lord most bitterly de¬ 
nounced. It was an ostentatious, sinful ob¬ 
servance of the letter of religion, the long 
prayer, the parade of gifts and of natural 
formalities, the niceties of dress and of 
meats, and with it was a disregard of an 
inner morality. This party had yet noble 
men in it, Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, 
Saul. Many fled from it into Christianity, 
as the refuge that could satisfy them, as is 
shown by the mysterious hints given in the 
Talmud, of the influence of the hated sect 
of Christians. Both by their evil traits, by 
their organization, and by the good that was 




PHILEMON 


593 PHILIP, THE EVANGELIST 


in them, for thej' upheld the law, and the 
prophets, and were conservators of the main 
doctrine (the resurrection), and the chief 
practice (prayer) of Christianity, both for 
good and for evil they stamped their form 
of Judaism upon the Nation, which shrunk 
from the epicurean scorn of the Sadducee. 

Philemon. The Epistle St. Paul wrote to 
his friend Philemon at Colosse, commend¬ 
ing to his pardon and favor the slave 
Onesimus, who had run away and whom 
St. Paul had found and recovered at Rome. 
It was written at the same time that the 
Epistle to the Colossians was written. It is 
replete with all the love and tenderness and 
friendship that the Apostle’s large heart 
felt. Onesimus was reclaimed no longer a 
faithless runaway slave, but a Christian in 
the s^me bonds of Faith as his master. 
Onesimus was St. Paul’s son in the Faith, 
and he pleads for him as for a son. It is of 
importance both as having a relation to the 
Apostle’s life and work, and as having 
beneath it the divine will upon the relation 
of master and servant, the true principle 
upon which emancipation from slavery can 
he soundly instituted and as from which 
emancipation will surely follow. 

Philip, St., the Apostle. Philip of Beth- 
saida, the fellow-townsman of SS. Andrew 
and Peter, was the first to whom our Loud 
said, “ Follow me.” Of his life we have 
only the scanty notices in the Gospels. 
From his finding Nathaniel and bringing 
him to Jesus, and from his intimacy with 
St. Andrew, we may conjecture that these 
had before been bound together in acommon 
communion upon the highest of all the 
hopes of the Jew,—the coming of the Mes¬ 
siah. It is a lovely trait that is pictured to 
us. John and Andrew follow Jesus and 
abide with Him ; they bring Simon to the 
Messiah; Jesus seeks their fellow-towns¬ 
man and attaches him to Himself; but as he 
obeys the call Philip brings another, Nathan¬ 
iel, the guileless Israelite, to the Lord. It 
may well have been the bond of a longing 
common to them that brought them to that 
height of faith which fitted them to be His 
Apostles. After our Lord began His fuller 
ministry after the imprisonment of St.John 
the Baptist He called anew the band He had 
selected. When our Lord set them apart 
for the Apostolate he in the lists stands fifth. 
At the head of the second group of four, and 
closely joined to him is Bartholomew (who 
was most probably also the Nathaniel of St. 
John i. 45 fin.). That Philip was most de¬ 
votedly attached to the Master is shown 
in the very few notices of him in the Gos¬ 
pels. Clement of Alexandria assumes as a 
well-known fact that Philip was the one 
who pleaded to the command to follow Him, 
“ Suffer me first to go and bury my father,” 
and received the reply, “ Let the dead bury 
their dead, follow thou me.” It was to 
Philip that our Lord addressed the question, 
“ Whence shall we buy bread that these 
may eat?” when He paused in His instruc¬ 

38 


tion to the people. How little he could yet 
trust the Divine power, how little he could 
forecast his own future duty of feeding the 
hungry multitudes with spiritual food is 
shown by his reply, “Two hundred penny¬ 
worth of bread is not sufficient for them 
that every one may take a little.” This spir¬ 
itual dullness was not his peculiarity; the 
other Apostles shared it, yet it "was com¬ 
patible with loving zeal. It was to him 
the Greek proselytes came, asking to see 
Jesus. Again he goes to his friend Andrew, 
and the two bring the Greek seekers to 
Jesus. Once more Philip comes forward. 
He has listened to our Lord’s discourse, He 
is going to the Father, those who know 
Him know His Father also. The eager 
Philip exclaims, Lord, show us the Father 
and it sufficeth us. His faith is yet with 
dimmed spiritual eyes, and our Lord gently 
pleads, “ Have I been so long time with you, 
and yet hast thou not known me, Philip?” 
The Apostle afterwards undoubtedly under¬ 
stood the tenderness of the appeal when it 
was his duty by his Apostolic labors to make 
others see Jesus as he had seen Him, and to 
know Him as he had known Him. This is the 
last incident in which he appears. All be¬ 
yond is either doubtful tradition, or it is so 
apocryphal as to be beyond belief. He is 
said to have married and not to have refused 
his daughters in marriage, and also it is 
stated that he died a natural death, but this 
again is contradicted. 

Philip, the Evangelist. The notices of 
the Evangelist are all confined to the Acts 
of the Apostles. He appears as one of the 
seven men of good report selected for the 
work of serving tables, and is ordained dea¬ 
con. "When upon the death of Stephen the 
disciples were scattered, St. Philip proved 
to be a most active Evangelist. He went to 
Samaria and then among the proselytes, con¬ 
verted and baptized very many ; tidings of 
his success came to the Apostles (who still 
remained in Jerusalem), and they sent SS. 
Peter and John to confirm the new converts. 
St. Philip was not permitted to remain 
longer in Samaria, but the Holy Ghost 
selected him to convert the Ethiopian 
Eunuch, the treasurer of Queen Candace. 
This is a marked record, since it gives us the 
terms of admission (repentance implied), and 
Faith in Christ as the Son of God. It gives 
us the rule for the Church as to the proper 
procedure when compared wilh the direction 
of our Lord, just to baptize them, to teach 
them all things whatsoever He had com¬ 
manded the Apostles to instruct the Church 
in. Then he was sent to the villages of the 
old Philistine country. Finally he came to 
Caesarea. There we find him in his own house, 
the centre of many, journeying to and com¬ 
ing from Jerusalem. He has a family, four 
daughters, who were endowed with the gift 
of prophecy. He is the entertainer of St. 
Paul on his way to Jerusalem, the last 
journey the Apostle made of his own free¬ 
will, for thenceforth he journeyed as a 





PHILIPPIANS, EPISTLE TO 594 


PILGRIMAGES 


prisoner of the State. “At such a place as 
Caesarea the work of such a man must have 
helped to bridge over the ever-widening gap 
which threatened to separate the Jewish and 
the Gentile Churches. One who had preached 
Christ to the hated Samaritan, the swarthy 
African, the despised Philistine, the men of 
all nations who passed through the seaport 
of Palestine, might well welcome the arrival 
of the Apostle of the Gentiles.” (Smith’s 
Diet, of Bible.) Here we lose sight of the 
Evangelist. His future, whether he died at 
Caesarea or whether he really became Bishop 
of the Trallians, cannot be known in this 
present life. 

Philippians, Epistle to. This is usually 
considered the last of the Epistles of the 
first Imprisonment. It has been assigned 
to the Apostle’s imprisonment under Felix, 
but this is to do violence to all the indica¬ 
tions of the chronology of St. Paul’s life 
contained in the Acts and in the Epistle 
itself. It is far more natural to suppose that 
it is the last of the scries, Ephesians, Colos- 
sians, Philemon, and Philippians. The con¬ 
tents of the Epistle are so within the scope 
of the Apostle’s time and the order of his 
work that no rational commentator can 
doubt its authenticity, and Dean Alford has 
well branded the doubts of recent German 
Commentators as the insanity of hypercrit¬ 
icism. The Epistle must have been near the 
close of his imprisonment, for Epaphroditus’ 
sickness being known to the Philippians 
implies at least four journeys, back and 
forth, between St. Paul’s arrival in Rome 
and the date of his letter. First the news 
that he had reached Rome, then Epaphrodi¬ 
tus’ journey, then the report of his sickness, 
and, lastly, the return account of the anxiety 
at Philippi, before St. Paul indites this let¬ 
ter. Besides, the tone of his letter shows 
that his present condition and future acquit¬ 
tal were very doubtful at the time he wrote. 
This places the date of the Epistle near the 
time of his trial, which took place probably 
in 63 a.d. 

The contents of the Epistle are chiefly 
notable for two things : (a) That there are 
none of the warnings against some besetting 
sins that were current in the other cities, as 
in Corinth, or in Ephesus, or in Colosse, as 
is shown by the other letters. Here his ex¬ 
hortations are general, and imply a faith and 
general purity which call rather for his com¬ 
mendation ; and indeed an exhortation to 
Euodias and to Sjmtyche to unity is the 
only hint at any failure of charity from his 
pen. (6) The contents of the Epistle are 
grouped around two central points. The 
inscription, so different from the others by 
the omission of his official position as 
Apostle, introduces his urging to greater 
love and confidence and forbearance in the 
midst of affliction and persecution, culmi¬ 
nating at last in the noble passage declaring 
the Divinity, the manhood, the humiliation 
and exaltation of the Lord Jesus Christ 
(a passage the Church reads most fitly upon 


the Sunday next before Easter), followed by 
a loving exhortation to a blameless life. 
The passage is on its surface wholly dissimi¬ 
lar, yet withal underneath very like the 
parallel exhortation in St. Peter’s first 
Epistle upon the meekness of Christ. A 
comparison of the two is very instructive. 
With this thought of meekness and long- 
suffering in his mind, the Apostle is next led 
to speak of those temporal advantages which 
he had joyfully cast away lor Christ’s sake, 
and thus adds a noble practical declaration 
of the righteousness which cometh by the 
Faith of Christ and his longing for that 
resurrection in Him ; to gain this he urges 
the pressing forward to the mark of our 
high calling of God in Christ Jesus, and 
closes with that magnificent image of the 
Politeia we have in our Mother-City in 
heaven of which we are colonists, by whose 
laws we are governed here, and from which 
we look for our Judge, who will refashion 
us into His own perfect and glorious body. 
The glow of love, tenderness, enthusiasm, 
eager longing for his Lord’s presence, and 
the exhortations scattered through the 
whole Epistle, not as in others placed at the 
end, make it, apart from its great doctrinal 
value, one of the most-delightful of all the 
Apostle’s letters. .We seem to be on differ¬ 
ent terms with him. He is not the Lawyer 
holding a weighty brief, as in the Epistle 
to the Romans, not a vehement expostulator, 
as in the Galatian and Corinthian Epistles, 
nor setting forth the unity of the Church, 
as in the other two Epistles of the Imprison¬ 
ment, but here, as in the short Epistle to 
Philemon, apparently pouring out his en¬ 
thusiastic heart to loving friends in the joy 
of their faith. 

Pilgrim. The word pilgrim means a 
wanderer or traveler, and it is generally 
used to designate those who visit some sacred 
place. Sometimes the term has a general 
sense, as in Purchas’s “ Pilgrimages, or Re¬ 
lations of the World.” In Bunyan’s “ Pil¬ 
grim’s Progress” the Christian is represented 
as journeying through earth to his heavenly 
home. 

Pilgrimages. There is a natural desire 
among men to behold places which have 
been made famous by the residence of those 
who were esteemed great or holy. The 
looking on the scenes which gratified the 
eyes of heroes and the treading on the ground 
where they have trod seems to bring them 
nearer to us. The idea attains its height in 
respect to our Lord and Saviour. It is, 
then, little wonder that hundreds of thou¬ 
sands through the Christian centuries should 
have thronged to look on the abode of 
Christ. As one stands on the Lake of Gal¬ 
ilee he can almost hear again the Divine 
words which resounded over it when the 
Son of God taught men there, and can in 
imagination see the waiting crowds who 
heard them. 

Pilgrimages were common among the 
Jews. Jerusalem, their central place of 







PILGRIMAGES 


595 


PILGRIMAGES 


worship, called them to its sacred services 
thrice a year, and with glad Psalms they 
approached it in vast crowds. “Our feet 
shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem” 
(Ps. cxxii. 2), was the burden of their song, 
and the city is described as the place “ whither 
the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, 
unto the testimony of Israel, to give thanks 
unto the name of the Lord” (ver. 4). 

In Christian times Jerusalem again be¬ 
came a centre of pilgrimages. The Church 
historians, Socrates and Theodoret, relate 
that Helena, the mother of Constantine the 
Great, was instructed by a dream to go to 
Jerusalem, and believed that she had found 
there the cross on which our Blessed Lord 
was crucified. Thus she “seems to have 
been the first who gave the signal for these 
religious journeys.” Many went to be bap¬ 
tized in the Jordan, which was the desire of 
Constantine, and they were also “attracted 
by the marvelous and the love of relics. 
Even the very dust of the Holy Land was 
thought of great value, and was carried 
home by pilgrims. 

“ Chrysostom says that from all quarters 
of the earth men flock to see the place where 
Christ was born, where He suffered and 
was buried.” He also declares that “ the 
memory of Job drew many pilgrims to 
Arabia to see the dung-heap and to kiss the 
earth on which the man of God had suf¬ 
fered with such resignation.” It seemed to 
Chrysostom a remarkable thing that places 
sanctioned by religion should be sought after 
for thousands of years in preference to 
“monuments of earthly glorj",” and he 
speaks of the profit from such sacred recol¬ 
lections. The trouble was that the impres¬ 
sion was too often a fleeting one. It is easier 
to trust in the outward than to seek inward 
grace, and hence we find St. Jerome declar¬ 
ing that “ the places of the crucifixion and 
of the resurrection of Christ profited those 
only who bore their own cross, and rose 
each day with Christ, but those who said 
‘ The temple of the Lord, the temple of the 
Lord,’ should hearken to the Apostle, ‘ Ye 
are the temple of the Lord, the Holy 
Spirit dwells within you.’ Heaven stands 
open to us in Britain as well as in Jerusa¬ 
lem ; the kingdom of God should be within 
ourselves.” He states that the venerable 
monk Hilarion, in Palestine, had visited the 
holy places but once, though near them, 
that he might not countenance the exagger¬ 
ated veneration of them. 

Gregory of Nyssa said, “ Change of place 
brings God no nearer. Wherever thou art, 
God will visit thee, if the mansion of thy 
soul is found to be such that He can dwell 
and rule in thee. But if thou hast thy inner 
man full of wicked thoughts, then, whether 
thou art on Golgotha, on the Mount of 
Olives, or at the monument of the Cruci¬ 
fixion, thou art still as far from having re¬ 
ceived Christ into thy heart as if thou 
hadst never confessed Him.” In after-years 
the Council of Chalons (813 a.d.) found it 


necessary to denounce the false confidence 
of some in the merit of pilgrimages to Rome 
and the church of St. Martin at Tours, 
without a holy life, being “ so foolish as to 
believe that by the mere sight of a holy 
place they should be cleansed from their 
sins.” The pilgrimages were thought com¬ 
mendable which proceeded from sincere 
piety, and aimed at amendment of life. 
Alcuin wrote to a nun troubled in con¬ 
science on account of inability to finish a 
pilgrimage which she had begun: “This 
was no great harm; for Gob had chosen 
some better thing for her ; she had now only 
to expend in supporting the poor what she 
had appropriated to so long ajourney.” The 
English pilgrimages to Rome in the eighth 
century, though often morally injurious, 
helped to transplant a needed culture to 
rude Britain, and were the means of bring¬ 
ing Bibles and other good books to her 
shores, as well as “ the elements of many of 
the arts.” 

As the ages passed on an undue reverence 
for the tombs of martyrs caused many to 
make superstitious pilgrimages to them. 
People who should have remembered that 
their own bodies were temples “of the 
Holy Ghost” (1 Cor. vi. 19) began to rev¬ 
erence the bones of dead saints, who if they 
could have spoken from Paradise would 
have rebuked such action, as Barnabas and 
Paul did the heathen priest at Systra, who 
“ would have done sacrifice with the peo¬ 
ple ” to “ men of like passions” with them¬ 
selves (Acts xiv. 13, 15). They warned the 
people to turn “unto the living God.” 

The Crusades, those strange mixtures of 
war and devotion, were pilgrimages, and 
Peter the Hermit and others excited vast 
numbers of people to throng to the Holy 
Land to redeem the sepulchre of Christ 
from the hand of the Turks. Perhaps the 
most remarkable feature of these times was 
the children’s crusade, whereby thousands 
of innocents were drawn from their homes, 
many of whom perished miserably. 

While merit is not to be sought in pil¬ 
grimages, Christian hearts will always long 
to behold the scenes of Christ’s earthly 
work, and crucifixion, and burial, and re¬ 
surrection, and ascension. Dr. Johnson, 
with his usual good sense, in “ Rasselas,” 
makes distinctions between proper and im¬ 
proper pilgrimages. He calls them “ reason¬ 
able or superstitious according to the prin¬ 
ciples upon which they are performed.” 

In short, instead of leaning on sacred 
places or sacred people to make us holy, we 
must be ourselves “ perfecting holiness in 
the fear of God” (2 Cor. vii. 1). St. Peter’s 
exhortation (1 Pet. ii. 11) is, “ Dearly be¬ 
loved, I beseech you as strangers and pil¬ 
grims, abstain from fleshly lusts, whieh war 
against the soul.” Life is the real pilgrim¬ 
age, Heaven is the true goal. The aged 
Jacob speaks of his still more aged fathers, 
“in the days of their pilgrimage” (Gen. iv. 
7 9). Earthly life to the patriarchs was as 





PITTSBURG 


596 


PITTSBURG 


an inn or a tent, a sojourning place. Their 
steps tended towards the “ city which bath 
foundations,” the “Jerusalem which is 
above.” “ From the ends of the earth do I 
cry unto Thee” (from this distant earth, 
this remote and foreign land); “O that I 
might dwell in Thy tabernacle of the eter¬ 
nities. 0 that I might find shelter under 
the covert of Thy wings, in the secret place 
of Thy Presence” (Ps. lxi.). In Ps. cxix. 
54, the statutes of God are the “ songs of the 
Psalmist in the house of his pilgrimage.” 
In the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, the 
ancient worthies, who “died in faith, con¬ 
fessed that they were strangers and pilgrims 
on the earth” (ver. 13). Philo says that 
“ All the wise men are introduced by Moses 
as strangers, their souls coming from heaven 
to travel here on earth, looking upon heaven 
as the city where they dwell, and the earth 
in which they travel as their place of pil¬ 
grimage.” The philosophers taught that to 
die was to go into our country, “ to the true 
country whence we came.” Abraham and 
David call themselves strangers and sojourn¬ 
ers (Gen. xxiii. 4; Ps. xxxix. 12). So of 
the Jewish nation (2 Chron'. xxix. 15, and 
Lev. xxv. 23). The rest for the pilgrim and 
the stranger comes hereafter, and the best 
pilgrimage is that which ends in Abraham’s 
bosom, the Paradise of God. 

Authorities: Mosheim’s, Gieseler’s, and 
Neander’s Church Histories, Illustrations 
of the Catechism of the Prot. Epis. Ch., 
Buck’s Theological Diet., Eneyc. Amer., 
Note of Tayler Lewis, in Lange’s Genesis, 
on Chap, xlvii., Whitby, Com. on Heb. 
xi. 13. Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Pittsburg, Diocese of. The Diocese of 
Pittsburg is formed out of that part of the 
old Diocese of Pennsylvania lying west of 
the Alleghany Mountains, and comprises 
twenty-four counties of the State ; the East¬ 
ern boundary being formed by the Eastern 
lines of McKean, Cameron, Clearfield, Cam¬ 
bria, and Somerset Counties. According to 
the last census the population of these coun¬ 
ties is about 1,300,000. The first movement 
towards setting apart this territory a separate 
Missionary Jurisdiction was made in the 
early part of the century. The consent of 
Bishop White was readily obtained, and the 
preparatory steps were taken in General Con¬ 
vention ; but nothing practical came of it. 
The project was not revived until some fifty 
years later, and it then took the form of a pro¬ 
posal to form a new Diocese. The application 
to the Convention of the Diocese of Penn¬ 
sylvania was made at nearly every annual 
meeting ; but for a long time was vehemently 
opposed and consent refused. At length, in 
the Convention of 1865 a.d., a resolution 
was passed permitting the formation of the 
new Diocese, coupled, however, with the con¬ 
dition that the consent of the Bishop should 
not be asked until the sum of at least $30,000 
should be raised and safely invested, as a 
fund for the support of the new Bishop. A 
larger amount than was demanded was very 


soon secured, and the Bishop of the Diocese 
of Pennsylvania gave the required consent. 
This action of the Diocesan Convention and 
the Bishop was ratified by the General Con¬ 
vention at its session held in Philadelphia, 
October, 1865 a.d., to take effect November 
1, 1865 a.d. It is worthy of note that this 
was the first instance of the division of a 
Diocese since the formation of the Diocese 
of Western New York in 1836 a.d. It is 
also to be remarked that the Diocese of 
Pittsburg was the first to adopt as its eccle¬ 
siastical letter the name of the leading city 
within its bounds, and the consent of the 
Bishop in charge was given only with the 
public declaration that “the name adopted 
is open to very grave objections.” 

The Primary Convention was held in 
Trinity Church, Pittsburg, November 15, 
1865 a.d. All the clergy entitled to seats, 
28 in number, were present, and 28 parishes 
were represented by lay delegates. The Rt. 
Rev. Wm. Bacon Stevens, of Pennsylvania, 
the Bishop in charge, preached the sermon 
at the opening service and presided over the 
sessions. The preliminary business having 
been disposed of, on the second day the 
President announced the order of the day to 
be the election of a Bishop. The Rev. Mr. 
Swope, Rector of Trinity Church, Pitts¬ 
burg, nominated the Rev. John Barrett Ker- 
foot, D.D., President of Trinity College, 
Hartford, Conn., and the Rev. Dr. Page, 
of Christ Church, Alleghany, nominated 
the Rev. Frederic Dan Huntington, D.D., 
Rector of Emmanuel Church, Boston. The 
election was suspended in order to fix the 
salary of the Bishop who should be elected, 
which was, upon the motion of Mr. John 
H. Shoenberger, made $4500 per annum. 

The election then proceeded, and on the 
first ballot Dr. Kerfoot was “ duly nominated 
and supported by the order of the clergy” 
by a vote of 19 to 9. The election was con¬ 
firmed by the laity; 19 Parishes voting for 
approval, 8 for disapproval, and 1 being di¬ 
vided. 

Dr. Kerfoot accepted the election, and was 
consecrated in Trinity Church, Pittsburg, 
St. Paul’s Day, January 25, 1866 a.d. The 
Presiding Bishop, the Rt. Rev. John Henry 
Hopkins, D.D., of Vermont, Bishops Mc- 
llvaine, Whittingham, Williams, Talbot, 
Coxe, and Clarkson took part in the conse¬ 
cration. 

Bishop Kerfoot’s Episcopate extended over 
fifteen years, though for nearly eighteen 
months before his death he was disabled by 
sickness from performing his accustomed 
duties. He died, after a long illness, at 
Meyersdale, Somerset Co., July 10, 1881 a.d. 
During his administration the Diocese devel¬ 
oped both strength and growth. The effects 
of closer supervision and more frequent 
Episcopal services were speedily felt. At 
the end of two years, in his Convention ad¬ 
dress of 1868 a.d. , he was able to report that 
the amount raised for Diocesan and City 
Missions was six times as great as before 





PLURALITY 


597 


POLYGAMY 


Division, i.e., $6000; that the Clergy had 
increased from 33 to 49; that the number of 
Communicants had grown 50 per cent, (from 
2000 to 3000), and that the Confirmations 
had increased threefold. Besides, $100,000 
had been expended in Church building. 

Again, in 1871 a.d., he summarizes the 
growth of the Diocese for the six years of sep¬ 
arate Church life and the six years previous 
to the Division for comparison, showing the 
increase in offerings for Diocesan Missions 
was in the ratio of 6 to 1; in Communicants 
of 5 to 3 ; in Confirmations of 5 to 2. Up to 
that time there had been at least $500,000 
spent in Church building; and during the 
same period of six years 22 new churches had 
been built, 17 of them being entirely new 
organizations. The amount of labor which 
Bishop Kerfoot performed can be appre¬ 
ciated only by an examination of his yearly 
journal. 

The progress of the Diocese may be esti¬ 
mated by the following comparison of sta¬ 
tistics for the first year of Diocesan life, 1866- 
67 a.d., with those of the last Convention 
year, 1881-83 a.d. : 



1866. 

1883. 

Baptisms.. 


1012 

Communicants.. 


6206 

Confirmations. 


506 

Sunday-School Teachers 

and 


Scholars. 

. 3679 

6200 

Contributions. 


$191,250 

Clergy. 


53 

Parishes.. 


58 


The Church Institutions were, 1. The 
Church Home, having as inmates 5 aged 
women and 71 children. 2. The Bishop 
Bowman Institute, a Church School for 
Girls. 3. The Bishop Kerfoot Library, be¬ 
queathed by the first Bishop of the Diocese for 
the use of the clergy. There is also a flourish¬ 
ing Boys’ School, Trinity Hall, at Wash¬ 
ington, Pa., under Church, but not Di¬ 
ocesan, control. After Bishop Kerfoot’s 
death, a special Convention was called to 
meet at Trinity Church, Pittsburg, October 
19, 1881 a.d. , to elect a successor. At this 
Convention, on the fifth ballot, the Rev. 
Cortlandt Whitehead, D.D., Rector of the 
Church of the Nativity, South Bethlehem, 
Pa., was elected by the clergy, and the next 
day confirmed by a vote of the Parishes. 

Dr. Whitehead accepted the election, and 
was consecrated St. Paul’s Day, January 
25, 1882 a.d., in Trinity Church, Pittsburg. 
Under his care the Diocese has kept up its 
previous progress. It has heartily responded 
to his efforts for its development and growth, 
and the statistics already given from the last 
Journal of the Convention give ample evi¬ 
dence of the success of his administration. 

Rev. M. Byllesby. 

Plurality. The holding of one or more 
benefices. It was an abuse that grew up in 
the Middle Ages, and has been productive 
of much evil, since a clergyman sometimes 
obtained a very large income from the hold¬ 
ing of several Parishes the duty for which 
he had to remit to curates, at insufficient 


salaries, while he received all the profits 
without doing the work for them. In this 
country, however, at present the stipend in 
many parishes is so small that it is a matter 
of necessity for a clergyman to undertake 
the care of more than one to eke out a sup¬ 
port. 

Polygamy. The marriage by one man of 
several wives at one time. This was a cus¬ 
tom of very early existence. The first in¬ 
stance we have is in Genesis iv. 19, where 
Lamech took two wives. The reverse also 
occurs among some rude tribes, where one 
woman had several husbands. The Law 
allowed the marriage of several wives. Be¬ 
fore this Abraham, Jacob, Esau, and Ish- 
mael had married several wives. Before the 
coming of our Lord there seems to have 
been no positive precept against polygamy. 
It was not only allowed, but in the case of 
King David taking Saul’s wives it was a 
State act, implying that he had become 
seized of all the property of his predecessor. 
So Absalom defiled his father’s wives for a 
like reason. Yet with all this practice the 
tendency of the Jewish Scriptures was 
against polygamy. Solomon, with his three 
hundred wives and seven hundred concu¬ 
bines, yet does not allude to polygamy in 
his writings. Its evils were then as many 
and as great as we now see them to be in the 
modern cases of the Turk and of the Mor¬ 
mon. The moral and the legal consequences 
are all bad, and must always be so. But 
beyond this the home life, which is so very 
important, is injured, if not practically de¬ 
stroyed. After the Captivity the Jews ap¬ 
pear to have dropped polygamy. No case is 
recorded among them in the Evangelists. 
Our Lord did not have to forbid it directly, 
since it was not at all common in His day. 
He assumed that there was but one wife. 
So too St. Paul. He assumes that there is 
but one wife. He does not seem to suppose 
that such a thing is allowable. “ Let every 
man have his own wife, and every woman 
her own husband,” is the rule. His com¬ 
parison of Christ and the Church is upon 
the ground of the single wife. The Roman 
civil Law also made polygamy an offense. 
The heathen Greeks were far laxer. The 
early Fathers are very clear and pointed, 
both in stating the prevalence of it, its abso¬ 
lute prohibition by the Church, and the 
strict enforcement of monogamy. 

The evils which are produced by polyg¬ 
amy are destructive of morals, as it minis¬ 
ters to the debasing lusts and passions of our 
nature. It is based essentially upon them. 
The average man rises no higher than his 
moral level, and if by the indulgence of the 
lower appetites, not only lust, but selfishness, 
and, together with other and correlated evil 
habits, a man’s character is thus hampered, 
the development of pure social ethics is also 
hampered. But not only private morals, 
but also the legal rights of the offspring are 
affected by it. The tenure of property, the 
right of succession, the relation of kindred, 











PONTIFICAL 


598 


POPE 


and the descent of families would all be af¬ 
fected by it in our present state of complex 
civilization. And-the very source of all the 
purity and honor of the state, the domestic 
life, would be polluted by it. 

Pontifical. The Pontifical is a book con¬ 
taining the offices peculiar to a Bishop. In 
the Latin and Greek Churches there are sev¬ 
eral offices which a Bishop celebrates which 
are not retained in the Anglican Church. 
In the Anglican Church the Pontifical is 
that part of our Prayer-Book (however, not 
an integral part of it) which contains the' 
form and manner of making, ordaining, and 
consecrating Deacons, Priests, and Bishops, 
the Litany and the Communion Service, the 
Form of Consecration of a Church or 
Chapel, and the Office of Institution of 
Ministers. Its offices can only be performed 
by a Bishop, except the last, which by dele¬ 
gation from the Bishop can be discharged 
by a Priest. In this Pontifical is not in¬ 
cluded one other office which pertains to the 
Bishop, the order of Confirmation, but this 
office was probably placed where it is to set 
forth the succession of spiritual acts directly 
connected with each man’s life, and by which 
offices he receives the gifts the Church has 
to give him. 

Pope (Latin Papa “Father”), was origi¬ 
nally the title of all Bishops. There is no 
evidence that St. Peter was ever Bishop of 
Borne; in fact, the Eoman Church in the 
year 96 a.d. appears to have had only a col¬ 
lege of presbyters at its head. The earliest 
lists of the Iioman Bishops, by Irenseus (202 
a.d.), contain names only, no numbers ; and 
the numbers added in the fourth century 
by Eusebius, Jerome, and the Liberian cata¬ 
logue of Popes, are contradictory and there¬ 
fore of little if any value. Various circum¬ 
stances combined at length to favor the pre¬ 
eminence of the Bishops of Borne: the 
labors and martyrdom of St. Paul at Borne; 
his epistle addressed to the Boman Chris¬ 
tians ; the prominence of the city as the 
metropolis of . the world, etc. The first 
Boman Bishop who claimed authority be¬ 
yond the confines of his own particular 
Church was Victor (189 a.d.). In a dispute 
concerning the time of observing Easter he 
peremptorily demanded a council to judge 
the Asiatic Bishops, and threatened or ac¬ 
tually pronounced a disruption of all com¬ 
munion with those who opposed his views 
in the matter. Eusebius (II. E., v. 24) says, 
“ Victor, the Bishop of the Church of Borne, 
forthwith endeavored to cut off the churches 
of all Asia, together with the neighboring 
churches, as heterodox, from the common 
unity. And he publishes abroad by let¬ 
ter, and proclaims, that all the brethren 
there are wholly excommunicated.” 

Leo I. may be regarded as the first Pope, 
viewed from the stand-point of a later reali¬ 
zation of the papal idea in the history of 
Latin Christianity. Borne had been the 
capital of the world ; her Bishop was the 
head of the universal Church, and the suc¬ 


cessor of the chief of the Apostles. As such, 
he ruled with Apostolic authority, inherit¬ 
ing from St. Peter supreme power. Leo 
condemned all heretics, and was especially 
severe towards the Manicheans. In the 
affair of a sentence pronounced by Hilarius 
of Arles against the Bishop of Besanqon, 
he addressed a letter to the bishops of the 
province of Vienne, denouncing the resist¬ 
ance of Hilarius to the authority of St. 
Peter, and releasing them from allegiance 
to the See of Arles. Instigated by Leo, the 
Emperor Valentinian III. promulgated an 
edict condemning the contumacy of Hila¬ 
rius “ against the primacy of the Apostolic 
throne, confirmed alike by the merits of St. 
Peter, the chief of the Apostolic order, by 
the majesty of the Boman city, and by the 
decree of a holy council.” Through Leo’s 
influence an order proceeded from the same 
emperor, to the effect that any bishop who 
refused to attend the tribunal of the Pope, 
when summoned, should be compelled to do 
so by the governor of his province. The 
primacy of St. Peter was boldly asserted as 
perpetual, the Bishop of Borne being the 
successor of that apostle through all time. 
The collected sermons of Leo are the first 
preserved to us from a Boman Bishop, and 
besides these discourses, ninety-six in num¬ 
ber, we have from him many epistles. 

Gregory I., also called “ the Great” (590- 
604 a.d.), while destitute of real scholastic 
acquirements, was nevertheless the author 
of numerous writings,—more than any other 
pope, with perhaps a single exception. He 
was a rigid ascetic, yet an exceedingly am¬ 
bitious and persevering prelate, and some¬ 
thing of a politician as well. Conspicuous 
among his productions is his Exposition of 
the Book of Job,—the work of a devout 
mind rather than of a profound theologian. 
His liturgical labors are also worthy of note, 
as under him the ritual of the Church was 
greatly improved. The authority assumed 
to be inherent in the successors of St. Peter, 
and by so much wanting in the Episcopate, 
was not only most decidedly claimed by 
him, but was practically illustrated. He 
revived the appellate jurisdiction of the 
Boman see,— e.g., a deposed Spanish bishop 
appealed to Borne, and Gregory commis¬ 
sioned a legate of his to examine the case 
and render a decision accordingly. Also, 
the bishops of France were requested by 
him, whenever any contention arose, to 
obey Virgilius of Arles as his authorized 
representative. The Council of Sai'dica 
(347 a.d. ), composed of 100 Western bish¬ 
ops, and 73 bishops from the East,—Hosius 
of Cordova presiding,—had adopted a canon 
whereby an appellate jurisdiction was con¬ 
ceded to the Bishop of Borne. While yet a 
monk, Gregory’s attention was directed to 
Britain as a promising field for missionary 
effort, and after succeeding to the pontifical 
chair he sent Augustine, a monk, to that 
country with some thirty assistants,—after¬ 
wards increased in France to forty—osten- 




POPE 


599 


POPE 


sibly for the purpose of converting the 
pagans there. Gregory was doubtless actu¬ 
ated by a measure of the same missionary 
spirit which he manifested earlier, yet there 
is sufficient evidence of a determination on 
his part to advance the jurisdiction of the 
Holy See. The familiar story of his seeing 
a number of fair captive boys from the dis¬ 
tant isle in the market-place of Rome, and 
thereupon expressing a desire for the con¬ 
version of their countrymen,—indulging at 
the same time in a fanciful play upon words, 
—should probably be relegated to the leg¬ 
endary. Though according to him consid¬ 
erable missionary zeal, we are compelled to 
regard in him a degree of ambition for the 
furtherance of his patriarchal jurisdiction. 
Augustine was consecrated the first Arch¬ 
bishop of Canterbury by Virgilius, Bisbop 
of Arles, and in due time received the Pal¬ 
lium from Gregory, whereby the primacy 
of the Pope over the Frankish bishops was 
asserted. In a conference with the British 
bishops, Augustine proposed that they should 
conform to the Roman customs in the cele¬ 
bration of Easter ; also, in the rite of Bap¬ 
tism, etc. Replying thereto, they declared 
that they were “obedient subjects of the 
Church of God, and to the Pope of Rome, 
and to every godly Christian, to love every 
one in his degree, in perfect charity, and to 
help every one of them, by word and deed, 
to be the children of God. And other obe¬ 
dience than this we do not know to be due 
to him whom you name to be Pope, nor to 
be father of fathers ; and this obedience we 
are ready to give, and to pay to him and 
to every Christian continually.” Besides, 
they were “ under the government of the 
Bishop of Caerleon-upon-Usk,” the old 
Welsh archbishopric. In short, the whole 
history of Augustine’s establishment in 
Britain represents Gregory in the attitude 
of attempting to destroy the autonomy of 
an independent Apostolic Episcopate. 

For the next hundred years or more the 
successors of Gregory I. appeal to have 
gained no considerable increase of their ec¬ 
clesiastical power. Honorius I. (625-38 a.d.) 
having declared himself a Monotbolite, was 
condemned as a heretic by the sixth General 
Synod, convoked by Constantine Pogonatus 
at Constantinople, 680 a.d. He was not there¬ 
fore regarded as an infallible Pope. Gregory 
III. (731-41 a.d.) appealed to Charles Mar¬ 
tel (Mayor of the Palace) for protection 
against the powerful invading Lombards, 
who, said the Pope, were “ ravaging by fire 
and sword the last remains of the property 
of the Church, which no longer suffices for 
the sustenance of the poor, or to provide 
lights for the daily service” (740 a,d.). The 
keys of the tomb of St. Peter had already 
been sen^to the mighty Frank as a symbol 
of allegiance. Stephen II. (752 a.d.) 
crossed the Alps, visited Pepin in person, 
and implored his interposition to restore the 
domain of St. Peter. The king promised 
the desired aid, and was afterwards anointed 


by the Pope. After Stephen’s return he 
sent letters to Pepin beseeching him to save 
the beloved city of Rome from the unceas¬ 
ingly hostile and thoroughly hated Lom¬ 
bards. A similar request was made by Ha¬ 
drian I. (772-95 a.d.) to Charlemagne, who 
having conquered the king of the Lombards 
visited the Holy City, did homage to the 
throne of St. Peter, and ratified the donation 
of Pepin, which is said to have embraced 
the whole of Italy, the Exarchate of Ra¬ 
venna, from Istria to the frontier of Naples, 
including the island of Corsica. Hadrian’s 
death occurred in 795 a.d., and his succes¬ 
sor, Leo III., hastened to recognize the su¬ 
premacy of Charles by sending to him the 
keys of the city of Rome, and those of the 
sepulchre of St. Peter. Charles was subse¬ 
quently crowned by Hadrian and pro¬ 
claimed Caesar Augustus. Thus all Western 
Christendom became consolidated under one 
monarchy. During this period the lustre of 
the Popes was greatly increased by the 
Frankish alliance, by the munificent dona¬ 
tion to the head of the Church, and by the 
acceptance of the imperial crown from the 
hands of the pontiff. Charlemagne could 
doubtless have subjected the papacy to the 
State had he desired to do so, but he pre¬ 
ferred evidently to have an ally in the Pope, 
such in fact was the position of the latter at 
this time. 

During several centuries it was undecided 
as to which of the two powers—the secular 
or the spiritual—should have the supremacy. 
At length, however, a contest arose which 
settled the question : a nearly complete vic¬ 
tory was gained for the spiritual power, and 
a full realization of the essential idea of the 
papacy was the result. Yet this was in sub¬ 
stance no new phenomenon if the fundamen¬ 
tal principle of the papacy be considered; 
for long before this it was declared that the 
Bishop of Rome was the supreme guide and 
governor, as of the clergy so also in affairs 
secular. The Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, 
which appeared about the end of the eighth 
century, purported to be the productions of 
the early Bishops of Rome. According to 
these false decretals every Bishop was amen¬ 
able to the immediate tribunal of the Pope, 
and to that only. To the Church was ac¬ 
corded so exalted a position that to subordi¬ 
nate her to the state seemed highly improper 
and inadmissible. The spiritual power was 
to be perfectly untrammeled ; but in that 
the secular and the spiritual could not be 
definitely separated, and everything secular 
has its spiritual side, it was natural that to 
the spiritual power should be given the pre¬ 
eminence. Immediately after the death of 
Pope Alexander II., Hildebrand, an arch¬ 
deacon, while conducting the funeral cere¬ 
monies in the Lateran Church, was pro¬ 
claimed Pope (1073 a.d. ), and was enthroned 
in the chair of St. Peter as Gregory VII. 
According to a decree of Nicolas II. (the 
second Lateran Council, 1059 a.d.), after the 
nomination of a Pope by the cardinals, and 




POPE 


600 


POPE 


the ratification of the same by the clergy and 
the people of Rome, it was necessary to ob¬ 
tain the assent of the Emperor. Henry IV. 
of Germany was now appealed to for such 
assent, but he dispatched a messenger to in¬ 
quire why the Romans had proceeded to an 
election without consulting him. However, 
his assent was subsequently given. Gregory 
began at once a vigorous warfare against 
simony and the marriage of the clergy. 
“ He was no infant Hercules,” says Wilman ; 
“ but the mature ecclesiastical Hercules 
would begin his career by strangling these 
two serpents; the brood, as he esteemed 
them, and parents of all evil.” The decree 
of a Synod held in Rome within the first year 
of his pontificate declared invalid all sacra¬ 
ments administered by simoniacal or mar¬ 
ried priests. To Philip I., king of France, he 
wrote a letter reproving him for oppressing 
the Church. “ Either let the king repudiate 
this base traffic of simony, and allow fit per¬ 
sons to be promoted to bishoprics, or the 
Franks, unless apostates from Christianity, 
will be struck with the sword of excommuni¬ 
cation,” and the bishops were instructed to 
excommunicate him incase he failed to obey 
their admonitions. Gregory’s first inter¬ 
course with England was in the form of an 
arbitrary letter to Archbishop Lanfranc re¬ 
specting the Abbey of St. Edmondsbury, over 
which he claimed jurisdiction. In a letter 
to William the Conqueror he asserted his 
right to the levying of Peter’s pence through¬ 
out the kingdom. The claim was admitted, 
but to the demand of fealty William replied, 
“ I have not, nor will I swear fealty, which 
was never sworn by any of my predecessors 
to yours.” - The kings of Spain were told by 
the Pope that their entire realm was not only 
within the spiritual jurisdiction of the Holy 
See, but was her property. It was with the 
Empire that Gregory pressed his most sig¬ 
nificant and far-reaching contest. He ex¬ 
acted a ready acquiescence, on the part of 
the temporal power, in the prerogative of the 
cardinals to elect a Pope ; and all claims on 
the investiture of the prelates and other 
clergy were to be abandoned. Moreover, 
the Pope was to have and to exercise the 
right of dictating in matters of State when¬ 
ever in his opinion there should be cause for 
his interference. Gregory admonished Henry 
IY. to rule more wisely, to abstain from 
simoniacal presentation of benefices, and to 
render obedience to his spiritual superior. 
These monitions were well received, and the 
clemency of the pontiff was sought. 

At a Council held in Rome, 1075 a.d., 
Gregory abrogated the right of investiture 
hy the temporal ruler, and at a Synod held 
in Mentz, the papal legate displayed the 
mandate of the Apostolic See requiring the 
Bishops to compel their clergy either to re¬ 
nounce their wives or to cease from exercising 
the functions of the ministry. Henry IY. 
was afterwards summoned to Rome to an¬ 
swer to the charges against him ; on the 
other hand, the king called an assembly of 


Bishops at Worms, and it was there decided 
that Gregory should be no longer obeyed as 
Pope. This was followed by the convening 
of a Council in the Lateran palace, at which 
Henry was excommunicated and deprived 
of his kingdoms,—of Germany and Italy. 
After this he sought absolution from the 
Pope, but his military successes strength¬ 
ened his position, and he was crowned by 
the antipope Guibert. Subsequently, Greg¬ 
ory repaired to Salerno, where he died an 
exile. The controlling principle in the pon¬ 
tificate of Gregory was the total submission 
of the secular power to the spiritual. 

The metropolitans, who had been required 
by the Council of Frankfort (742 a.d.) to 
seek the pallium at the hand of the Pope, 
promising obedience to his commands, had 
now to take an oath of fealty to him as the 
universal Bishop. 

During the pontificate of Paschal II. (1099 
-1118 a.d.) the question of investiture was 
especially prominent, and was the cause of 
a bitter contest between the papacy and the 
temporal power. Paschal excommunicated 
Henry IY., who had already been under 
the ban of Gregory YII. and Urban II. 
(1088-99 a.d.). Henry’s son intrigued against 
him at the head of a considerable party, and 
refused to submit unless the Emperor would 
become reconciled with the Church. No 
reconciliation was, however, effected, and 
Henry died excommunicate. At several 
Synods held by Paschal, investiture by lay 
hands was condemned. An attempt was 
subsequently made to settle the question by 
a treaty, according to which Henry Y. on 
the day of his consecration was to concede 
the investiture of all the churches, while, on 
the other hand, the Church was to surrender 
possession of the royalties conferred by the 
empire. The Prince Bishops of Germany 
objected strenuously to this, and Paschal 
was compelled to yield,—as he said, to save 
the city of Rome. A Council at Yienna 
(1112 a.d.) excommunicated the Emperor, 
condemning at the same time investiture by 
lay hands, and Paschal ratified the decrees. 
Henry afterwards advanced upon Rome, and 
the Pope died in exile (1118 a.d.). Under 
Calixtus II. (1122 a.d.) a compromise was 
arranged in the form of a concordat, whereby 
the Emperor resigned forever the investiture 
by the ring and crosier, and recognized the 
liberty of elections. In return it was agreed 
that elections should take place in his pres¬ 
ence or that of his representatives, and that 
the new Bishop should receive his tempo¬ 
ralities from the Emperor by the sceptre. 
(See Hallam, Mid. Ages, chap. vii. 1.) 

Hadrian IV., Nicholas Breakspeare (1154- 
1159 a.d.) was the only Englishman elevated 
to the papal chair, the dignity of which he 
maintained with the boldness and courage 
of a Hildebrand. To Henry II. of England 
he granted the kingdom of Ireland, at the 
same time holding that all islands when 
Christianized belonged to the jurisdiction 
of the Roman Pontiff. In return for this 




POPE 


601 


POPE 


grant Hadrian exacted Peter’s pence. The 
Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, was sol¬ 
emnly crowned by him at Rome, yet the 
Pope’s imperious attitude towards this war¬ 
like and powerful sovereign induced the 
latter to put forth an edict forbidding the 
clergy from all intercourse with the Apos¬ 
tolic See. A reconciliation was effected, 
but it was soon followed by further quarrels. 
At length Hadrian addressed a paternal and 
very condescending letter to Frederick, ac¬ 
cusing him of irreverence and a disregard 
of the fealty he had sworn to St. Peter. 
The strife continued until ended by the 
death of Hadrian, as he was preparing for 
more decisive measures, including the ex- 
communication of Frederick. 

Innocent III. (1198-1216 a.d.) was one 
of the greatest of the Popes, second only to 
Gregory VII., than whom he certainly 
seems to have been more successful. In his 
inauguration discourse he said, “ Ye see 
what manner of servant that is whom the 
Lord hath set over His people ; no other 
than the vicegerent of Christ, the successor 
of Peter. He stands in the midst between 
God and man ; below God, above man ; less 
than God, more than man.” Innocent en¬ 
tered vigorously upon the restoration of 
Italy from the domination of the Germans, 
and the regaining of the papal territories. 
In the long, and at times sanguinary, con¬ 
flict relative to the imperial throne, he in¬ 
terposed as supreme arbiter. He said, “ It 
belongs to the Apostolic See to pass judg¬ 
ment on the election of the Emperor, both 
in the first and last resort; in the first be¬ 
cause by her aid and on her account the em¬ 
pire was transplanted from Constantinople ; 
by her as the sole authority for this trans¬ 
planting, on her behalf and for her better 
protection; in the last resort because the 
emperor receives the final confirmation of 
his dignity from the Pope; is consecrated, 
crowned, invested in the imperial dignity by 
him.” Otho IV. became the undisputed 
Emperor, and was crowned by Innocent in 
St. Peter’s Church, Rome. His subsequent 
course was, however, such that the Pope ex¬ 
communicated him, and required the Arch¬ 
bishops of Ravenna, Milan, and Genoa, and 
all the Bishops of Italy to publish the ban. 
A fierce and fateful contest was waged by 
Innocent and Philip Augustus, King of 
France, who had married Ingeburga, the 
sister of Canute IV. of Denmark, and had 
speedily rejected her, taking another for his 
wife< The matter had been brought before 
Pope Coelestine, but he had not the courage 
to deal with it. Innocent, his successor, 
threatened now to place the realm of Philip 
Augustus under an interdict—suspending all 
sacred offices, except the baptism of infants 
and absolution by the clergy—if he refused 
to submit to the monitions of the papal leg¬ 
ate. The command was unheeded, where¬ 
upon the papal legate summoned a council 
at Dijon, which pronounced the king and 
his territories to be under the ban,—all re¬ 


ligious offices from that time ceasing. Thus, 
by the imperative order of Innocent thou¬ 
sands of souls were deprived of the means 
of grace,—to such an extent had the disci¬ 
plinary power of the Popes been developed. 
Finally the King was compelled to yield to 
the demand of Innocent, and several prel¬ 
ates who had favored the obstinate ruler 
were obliged to seek absolution at the feet 
of the haughty and resolute pontiff. The 
arbitrary and fearless spirit of the Hilde- 
brandian type of the Papacy was here dis¬ 
played. The Church ruled the State. 

Gregory IX. (1227-41 a.d.) had a new 
compilation made of the Papal Decretals, 
and promulgated them as the great statute 
law of the Universal Church. Also, for 
neglecting, to undertake a crusade to Pales¬ 
tine, thus to fulfill a condition upon which 
the imperial crown was bestowed (by Ho- 
norius III.), the Emperor of Germany, 
Frederick II., was excommunicated by the 
Pope, and his subjects were absolved from 
their allegiance. Within the next year the 
Emperor sailed for the Holy Land, but as 
he was excommunicate, the movement was 
regarded by Gregory as the profanation of 
a crusade. In all his quarrels with Freder¬ 
ick the authority of the pontiff was boldly 
asserted; there was again a fierce conflict, 
in which the absolute sovereignty of the 
Church was the governing principle on the 
side of the successor of St. Peter. Not only 
did the Popes usurp the rights of bishops, met¬ 
ropolitans, and princes, but they claimed the 
prerogative of convoking Councils and 
confirming their decrees. None of the 
passages from the letters of the Pontiffs and 
from conciliar acts usually adduced by Roman 
Catholic writers in evidence of the partici¬ 
pation of the Roman See in the calling of 
the general synods of Christian antiquity 
are, however, found to stand the test of a 
thorough examination.* Consequently this 
favorite theory with the Roman Church 
turns out to be entirely groundless, and that 
it is so can excite no surprise when its origin 
is considered. It originated in the sixteenth 
century, and essentially in opposition to the 
Protestantism of that time. Certain Prot¬ 
estants pointing to the calling of the early 
councils by the emperors disputed the right 
of the Popes to convoke them. Bellarmine, 
in his Disputations, endeavored to show that 
their convocation belonged in fact not to the 
Emperor but to the Pope, and though some 
councils had been called by the former, on 
the other hand several had been convened 
by the latter ; at all events, that no general 
council had been announced a solo impera¬ 
tive, that is, without the consent and author¬ 
ity of the Roman Pontifls; that although 
the first five general synods in particular 


* A remarkable monograph on this subject appeared 
recently from the pen of Prof. Dr. Francis Xavier Funk, 
of the Roman Catholic faculty of the University of 
Tubingen, a translation of which, made by the author 
of this article, was published in the Church Eclectic for 
May and June, 1883 a.d. 





POST-COMMUNION 


602 


PRAISE 


had been announced the Emperors, yet 
it was only expontificum sententia et consensu. 
In a later period the theory of the partici¬ 
pation of the Popes in the calling of synods 
was invested in somewhat ditferent language 
only ; but its origin certainly does not com¬ 
mend it. It owes its existence to partisan 
polemics, and to an almost equally partisan 
apology. True, JBellarmine's procedure is 
intelligible from the adverse position of 
Protestantism, but it is not the less without 
foundation. Instead of simply rejecting the 
conclusion which the Protestants drew from 
certain facts, he denied the facts themselves, 
or at least, endeavored to render them of 
doubtful authority. Therefore the most of 
his arguments were rightly abandoned even 
by those who maintained essentially his 
view. The other arguments from which 
support in this regard is usually derived— 
whether produced by Bellarmine or later 
writers—are fundamentally unreliable. As 
evidence that approbation or confirmation 
has been conferred by the Popes various 
passages are appealed to, in which no more 
is really said than that the Roman See ac¬ 
cepted the councils. In this wise could the 
Popes speak, though they had consented to 
the councils through their legates only. In 
the same way could all the rest of the 
Bishops speak, and must indeed have spoken, 
if they were so situated as to be able to ex¬ 
press themselves with regard to their posi¬ 
tion towards a synod; and as little as we 
may now be disposed to take the word rela¬ 
tive thereto in the sense of a confirmation 
so little may the latter have occurred. With 
expressions of this sort neither more nor less 
is to be shown than that the Roman See 
simply accepted, that is, did not reject. Non¬ 
rejection is, however, very far from being 
identical with approbation. In short, of 
the testimony which is commonly brought 
forward in behalf of the Papal Confirma¬ 
tion of the general councils, nothing can be 
found which will bear a critical examina¬ 
tion. On the contrary, several synods so 
expressed themselves with reference to their 
relation to Rome as directly to exclude 
papal approbation. Rev. H. H. Loring. 

Post-Communion. That portion of the 
Communion Office which follows the recep¬ 
tion of the elements. It includes the prayer 
of thanksgiving, the Gloria in Excelsis , the 
Collects (when they are used), and the bene¬ 
diction. The early Liturgies also dismissed 
the faithful with an office of prayer, often 
one of great beauty. But the later the 
Liturgy the more likely it is that the Post- 
Communion has been made more ornate. 
A strict construction of the rubric probably 
would not authorize the present use of the 
Collects appended to the Communion Office. 

Postil. Homilies, or short expositions, 
upon the Gospels principally. The word 
came from the words post ilia, verba , as the 
comment followed after the passage of Scrip¬ 
ture selected. There were a good many 
Postils published, some of which are quite 


valuable. Tavener, a writer of the signet in 
Henry YIII.’s time, published a volume of 
them, out of which were taken the Homilies 
for Good-Friday and Easter-day found in 
the Book of Homilies. Nicholas de Lyra 
(1320 a.d.) wrote two series of Postils, 
which deservedly had great influence. They 
were printed first about 1471 a.d. 

Praise. The bounties of God’s Provi¬ 
dence and the wonders of His grace call 
for a return in ceaseless praise. “ All Thy 
works shall praise Thee, O Lord ; and Thy 
saints shall bless Thee” (Ps. cxlv. 10). 

Heaven is a place of ceaseless praise. The 
seraphim of Isaiah’s vision, and the living, 
creatures beheld by St. John, were constantly 
crying “ Holy, holy, holy,” before God. 
Though centuries had passed since the 
Prophet’s sight of Heaven, the evangelist 
hears the same music. The Church on 
earth joins with angels and archangels in 
this blessed work. In Psalms and Hymns, 
in Te Deum and Benedicite , and Gloria in 
Excelsis , she imitates the heavenly host. 
The Prayer-Book is a book of praise, and 
layman as well as clergyman is bidden to 
honor God with heart and voice. The 
Family Morning Prayer begs “ that we may 
fervently join in the prayers and praises of 
Thy Church.” Praise is the daughter of 
gladness. When Creation was finished “ the 
morning stars sang together, and all the 
sons of God shouted for joy” (Job xxxviii. 
7). When Christ was born the angels 
sang. When the Wise Men saw the star 
over Christ’s cradle “ they rejoiced with 
exceeding great joy” (St. Matt. ii. 10). 
There must be no thought of self in praise. 
The song of man to God must be full and 
free, like that of the bird. It must be uni¬ 
versal, as in Ps. cxlviii. 12, 13, “ Young 
men and maidens; old men and children,” 
are exhorted to “praise the name of the 
Lord.” The thought culminates in the one 
hundred and fiftieth, or closing Psalm, where 
in six verses the word praise is repeated thir¬ 
teen times and ten instruments of music are 
called for, as Bishop Patrick notes. But 
the last verse widens the command to every¬ 
thing that hath breath, and then makes its 
application, “ Praise ye the Lord.” 

ISt. Francis de Sales speaks of the larks 
who sing louder as they soar higher, so the 
human soul needs to rise from this earthly 
atmosphere to lose itself in beholding the 
glory of God. Even martyrs, dying in 
agony, have learned to praise God in the 
fires of affliction, as the tortured Euplius, 
torn by the cruel rack, could still exclaim to 
him who attempted to persuade him to ab¬ 
jure Christianity, “ I adore Christ.” Even 
under the torture he cried, “ Thanks be to 
Thee, O Christ. Help me, O Christ. For 
Thee do I suffer thus, O Christ.” As 
strength failed he repeated these or other 
exclamations with his lips, when his voice 
could no longer utter them. Surely there 
was a glad burst of praise when that voice 
was regained in Paradise. 





PRAYER 


603 


PRxlYER 


The doxology ascribed to Polycarp as 
among his last words is another evidence 
of how the thought of God’s glory may 
overcome human trials. It reads thus: 
“ For this, and for all things else, I praise 
Thee, I bless Thee, I glorify Thee, by the 
eternal and heavenly High-Priest, Jesus 
Christ, Thy beloved Son, with whom, to 
Thee, and the Holy Ghost be glory, both 
now and to all succeeding ages. Amen.” 
He who would thus be ready to praise God, 
even in a painful death, must make his 
“ daily life a psalm.” To such this life will 
be too short to declare all the praises of God. 

Rey. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Prayer has always been universally rec¬ 
ognized and required as an essential part, 
and, indeed, the most prominent part, of 
Divine worship. It is the first suggestion 
of a sense of God’s power and man’s de¬ 
pendence on Him, and thus we find that 
every form and system of religion, however 
low and imperfect its conception of God 
may be, makes prayer a necessary feature of 
all its acts of worship. We must be careful to 
remember that prayer means a great deal 
more than the mere asking for something 
that we want. This is its leading idea, but 
is really neither the whole nor the highest 
part of prayer. In fact, the obtaining of our 
requests must necessarily not be the princi¬ 
pal object of prayer, for the reason that there 
can be no true prayer without a spirit of 
submission to the wisdom and beneficence 
of God, which leaves it with Him to grant 
or refuse our petitions as may be most for 
our good. If we study our Lord’s exam¬ 
ple, we may from that obtain the clearest and 
truest perception of what prayer is. We 
find Him habitually spending much of His 
time in prayer as a means of communica¬ 
tion with His Father, asking at times for 
that which He knew must be His, as when 
He prays that God would glorify Him with 
the glory which He had with Him before 
the world was (John xvii. 5), and again 
asking in an agony of supplication for 
that which He knew could not be granted, 
and which it was not His will to re¬ 
ceive, as when He prayed in Gethsemane 
that the cup of suffering might pass from 
Him. That these were prayers of His hu¬ 
man nature does not alter the fact, since 
the submission of that nature to His Fa¬ 
ther’s will was the object of His assuming 
it. Hence we learn that one great object of 
prayer is to bring the human mind into di¬ 
rect communication with God, without ref¬ 
erence to the granting of its petitions. Nor 
must the subjective influence of such an act 
be allowed to pass out of view, the elevat¬ 
ing and calming effects of such august in¬ 
tercourse being one of the most important 
and valuable objects of prayer. Apart from 
any direct answer and from any objective 
influences of the Holy Ghost, we have thus 
a most efficient means of cultivating Faith, 
Humility, Love, Reverence, and many other 
mental and emotional conditions essential to 


religious life. Again, prayer is in itself the 
direct acknowledgment, and the only direct 
acknowledgment possible toman, of the sov¬ 
ereignty of God, and therefore it is due to 
Him as an act of homage. Jt must include 
praise and even sacrifice, because the very 
act of offering these to the sovereign implies 
the request that He will permit and accept 
them. But necessary as is this aspect of 
prayer, the whole character of Christianity 
would be changed if prayer were only hom¬ 
age. The Christian prays as a child to his 
Father, upon whose personal love he relies, 
and with whom he has no other means of 
communication. He asks for the rain and 
the sunshine, which God sends freely to the 
just and the unjust, the unthankful and the 
evil alike, because he does not wish to re¬ 
ceive them as either the unjust or the un¬ 
thankful, but as his Father’s child. He 
has been taught by his Master to ask God 
for his daily bread, although he must earn 
it by his own efforts, because he cannot live 
like the lower animals on food taken where 
it is found at the promptings of instinct, but 
must resort to complex processes dependent 
upon many laws which he recognizes as 
made and administered by his heavenly Fa¬ 
ther, whom he recognizes as the source and 
Giver of even that sustenance which the 
lower creatures unthoughtfully enjoy. This 
filial character of prayer is not derived, 
however, from the broad sense of God’s 
fatherhood as the Creator or the Sovereign, 
but from the special sonship which comes of 
union with God’s well-beloved and only-be¬ 
gotten Son. Hence all Christian prayer is 
made in the name and for the sake of Jesus 
Christ our Lord. 

The question of how Prayer can be effica¬ 
cious,—how the will of man can influence 
that of God, sometimes causes a great deal 
of unnecessary trouble and confusion. That 
there is a psychic force through which one 
human mind comes en rapport with another 
and influences its action is probably true, 
and this as yet only suspected law may in 
some way concern the method by which 
Prayer is conveyed to God. But the truth 
is that this is a matter with which we have 
nothing whatever to do. We know and 
can know absolutely nothing of God ex¬ 
cept through His revelation in Holy Scrip¬ 
ture. There we find Him revealed as the 
Hearer of Prayer, and we find Prayer pre¬ 
scribed by Him as an Ordinance, together 
with His promise to answer it. This puts 
all such questions upon precisely the same 
footing as all other revealed Truth, and we 
might as well attempt to explain the eternity 
of God or the mystery of the Trinity. The 
Christian believes Prayer to be efficacious 
because he believes the Bible to be God’s 
word, and upon all such points he cannot 
argue with an infidel objector or meet his 
questions, because they move in entirely dif¬ 
ferent planes. It is this fact which makes 
absurd and disingenuous all challenges to 
test the efficacy of Prayer by scientific ex- 




PRAYER 


604 PRAYER EOR THE DEAD 


periments. “ Take,” says one, “ two wards 
in the same hospital. Pray for the patients 
in one, but not for thbse in the other, and 
abide by the result.” We might as well 
attempt to measure distance by weight, or 
test the soundness of a logical proposition by 
the laws of applied chemistry. Prayer lies 
entirely outside of science, and has no con¬ 
ceivable connection with its laws and meth¬ 
ods. To ask such a test is to demand a mani¬ 
fest impossibility, for the promise of answer 
is to believing Prayer. “ Whatsoever ye 
shall ask in prayer, believing , ye shall re¬ 
ceive” (Matt. xxi. 22). Prayer, therefore, 
cannot, from its very nature, be made mat¬ 
ter of experiment. But if it is said, “ We 
ask only Elijah’s test,” the answer is, “ These 
are not Elijah’s days, and Elijah is not here.” 
The question of Special and Direct Answers 
to Prayer is of far greater practical interest. 
Are we to expect such, or not? We see at 
once that this involves the question of Special 
Providences, and in reply it is sufficient to 
say that true Christian faith is as far removed 
from superstitious credulity as from skepti¬ 
cism. A broad-minded heathen poet has 
said, “ I have learned that not every wonder 
worked by nature is sent from high heaven 
by the angry gods” (Hor. Sat. i., vi. 102-3), 
nor does any reasonable Christian believe 
that the daily bread which he prays for 
comes as a direct gift from God. But Chris¬ 
tianity and reason alike teach the direct per¬ 
sonal oversight and administration by God 
of His own laws and His personal care for 
the wants of His creatures. No one can 
expect miracles to be wrought at his request, 
nor petitions to be granted the consequences 
of which to others he could not possibly fore¬ 
see. But no faithful praying man can fail 
to have experienced the prompt responses 
which so often come through perfectly 
natural, though unexpected means, pro¬ 
ducing the desired result. He asks in full 
recognition of the element of uncertainty in¬ 
volved, in submission to God’s wisdom, and 
obtaining his desire he gratefully acknowl¬ 
edges it as from his Eather’s hand. But 
what, it may be asked, of unanswered Prayer, 
in view of the many and positive promises 
which the Scriptures contain assuring a cer¬ 
tain response ? The reply is very simple. God 
has certainly promised to grant all things 
which are asked in trusting faith, but He 
has not promised when or how He will grant 
them. Times and compensations are alike 
reserved by Him to be settled by His own 
wisdom and’ beneficence, nor must it be for¬ 
gotten that Prayer belongs essentially to that 
life which is not limited by time or mortality. 
As a father may withhold what a son re¬ 
quests in order that his inheritance may be 
the greater, so God may refuse the perish¬ 
able good which we ask of Him only to in¬ 
sure a richer heritage of blessing in the life 
hereafter. 

Rev. Robert Wilson, D.D. 

Prayer for the Dead. There is a vast 
difference between prayer to the dead and 


prayer for the dead. It was found in all 
the Liturgies from the earliest date. It was 
not a prayer for a change from a state of con¬ 
demnation to one of pardon. There is no in¬ 
timation that such a change could be effected 
after death. As the tree falleth so must it 
lie, but it was believed that living and dead 
were in one communion, that death was a 
quickening of the soul into greater life, that 
the soul could pass from glory to glory, and 
that it had not wholly dissevered its partici¬ 
pation in those gifts which were imparted 
to it here. So at the solemn celebration of 
the Holy Communion there was a commem¬ 
oration of the dead, and a prayer that they 
might be in the refreshment of joy and bliss, 
and that they might be sharers in the glory 
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Specially in 
each Diocese, the chief of those who had died, 
the more noted martyrs, the late Bishops, 
and then special individuals were named from 
a roll, and a prayer offered for them and for 
the whole body of those who had died in the 
true Faith. 

The practice has been defended on very 
insufficient Scriptural grounds, and many 
passages have been adduced as indirectly 
sanctioning it from the New Testament. 
But the fact that it was used from the first, 
that there is no intimation in any way that 
it was doubted as proper, that to be left out 
of the diptychs was one of the penalties used 
against some who broke the Church’s disci¬ 
pline, all point to the consensus that brings 
its use up to sub-Apostolic times. It could 
hardly be called an abuse or an innova¬ 
tion. It must have for its basis, then, some¬ 
thing in our own nature. It proclaims 
that death is not a severance of ties. It is, 
to say the very least, a pious and comforting 
use. It is admitted in principle by the 
closing petitions in the Prayer for the 
whole state of Christ’s Church militant, 
“And we also bless Thy Holy Name, for 
all Thy servants departed this Life in Thy 
faith and fear, beseeching Thee to give us 
grace so to follow their good examples that 
with them we may be partakers of Thy heav¬ 
enly kingdom.” In the Prayer-Book of 
1549 a.d. this passage closed thus : “We com¬ 
mend unto Thy mercy (O Lorde) all other 
Thy servauntes which are departed hence 
from us with the signe of faithe, and now 
do reste in the slepe of peace. Graunte 
unto them, we beseeche Thee, Thy mercy 
and everlastyng peace, and that at the 
daie of the general resurreccion we and 
all thy which be of the mistical body of Thy 
Sonne, may altogether bee set on His right 
hand and hear that His most joyful voice, 
‘ Come unto me, O ye that be blessed of my 
Father, and possesse the kingdome whiche 
is prepared for you from the begining of the 
worlde.’ ” This was dropped out (together 
with some sentences just preceding, which 
are not here quoted) in 1552 a.d., and the 
words now in use were substituted only in 
1662 a.d. These words, it will be noted, 
strike the same tone which the closing 





PRAYER-BOOK 


605 


PRAYER-BOOK 


prayer in the burial service utters, showing 
that the Church has not lost (if for many 
reasons she has hitherto chosen to partly 
lay aside) this ancient custom. 

Prayer-Book, The American. It is not 
the purpose of this article to treat of the 
sources or the history of the Prayer-Book of 
the Church of England ; it must be confined 
to an outline of the history of the service-book 
of the American Church. Until the Revolu¬ 
tion, the services used were those of the 
English Books, and it would appear that very 
strict conformity to them was practiced, for 
we read of some who had scruples as to 
reading the closing exhortation in the office 
for the Baptism of Infants, on the ground 
that it was almost an impossibility that the 
sponsors would ever be able to bring the 
child to a Bishop to be confirmed. When 
the war of Independence broke out, some 
of the clergy persisted in the use of the State 
prayers until their services were possibly 
stopped; others omitted them altogether, 
and others adapted them to the case of the 
new civil authority, the people sometimes 
insisting, as did those at New London, Conn., 
“that no person be permitted to enter the 
Church, and as a pastor to it, unless he openly 
prays for Congress and the free and inde¬ 
pendent States of America, and their pros¬ 
perity by sea and land.” But no other 
changes were favored in any quarter. In 
Virginia, where the Church was established 
by law, the Prayer-Book was altered by the 
State Convention, on the 5th of July, 1776 
a.d., “to accommodate it to the change in 
affairs,” but no other alterations were 
allowed. Things remained in this condition 
at the close of the war. An informal con¬ 
vention of delegates from eight different 
States which met in New York in October, 
1784 a.d., agreed to certain “ fundamental 
principles,” one of which declared that the 
Episcopal Church in the United States of 
America should “adhere to the liturgy of 
the said Church [of England] as far as shall be 
consistent with the American Revolution and 
the constitutions of the respective States;” 
and it was agreed that a formal convention 
should be held in September of the next 
year. Before that time Bishop Seabury 
had returned from Scotland, where he had 
received consecration to the Episcopate. 
He met his clergy at Middletown on the 
2d day of August, 1785 a.d., and on the 5th 
a committee, consisting of the Rev. Messrs. 
Bowden and Jarvis, of Connecticut, and 
the Rev. Mr. Parker, of Boston, was ap¬ 
pointed to act with the Bishop in proposing 
such changes in the Prayer-Book as should 
be thought necessary. Certain alterations 
were agreed upon, and those relating to the 
tate prayers were published by Bishop 
eabury on the 12th day of August. The 
others were to be reported to the clergy of 
Connecticut, and also to the conventions 
of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New 
Hampshire; in September the latter body 
adopted most of the proposed changes, 


with a few others, but voted that their use 
should be postponed till it should be seen what 
the Churchmen in the other States were 
likely to do; and at last, July 20,1786 a.d., 
it was left to the discretion of the parishes 
to adopt the changes or to keep to the old 
liturgy. It is sufficient to say of these 
alterations that they were “ in most respects 
identical with those contained in the ‘ Pro¬ 
posed Book,’ ” which will presently be men¬ 
tioned. The Connecticut clergy were found 
to be averse to any changes, and apparently 
they took no action on the proposed amend¬ 
ments. The convention which met at 
Philadelphia, September 27, 1785 a.d., con¬ 
tained representatives of seven States to the 
south of New England. The mind3 of 
many of the delegates had been turned to 
the question of revision, and some of them 
were practically agreed upon the form which 
it should take. The Rev. Dr. (afterwards 
Bishop) White presided; but the chief 
part in the work of revision was taken by 
the Rev. Dr. VTlliam Smith, of Maryland. 
The convention adjourned on the 7th of 
October, after attending a service at which 
“ the liturgy, as altered, was read.” Yet 
the changes were not formally adopted, and 
probably the convention felt that it had no 
authority in the matter; they were only 
“ proposed and recommended;” and it was 
left to a committee to edit and print the 
book. In the following spring (the prothon- 
otary’s certificate bears date April 1, 1786 
a.d.) the book was published, it being 
plainly stated on its title-pages that it was 
“ the Book of Common Prayer as revised 
and proposed to the use of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church.” This is the book now 
known as the “Proposed Book,” though 
many English authorities—it having ap¬ 
peared in two reprints— quote it as the 
American Book. It has no more right to 
the name than that of 1637 a.d. has to be 
called the Scotch Book, or that of 1689 a.d. 
the English Book. 

Besides alterations made necessary by the 
change in the form of civil government, 
and certain verbal amendments, the most 
important differences from the English book 
were the following: the Absolution in the 
daily service was headed, “ A declaration 
concerning the forgiveness of sins;” the 
Benedictus was omitted, except for dis¬ 
cretionary use on the 31st day of the month ; 
the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian were 
omitted, and the clause “ He descended into 
Hell,” was omitted from the Apostles’ Creed ; 
the Gloria in Excelsis was permitted to be 
used at the end of the Psalter for the day; 
parents were allowed to act as sponsors ; 
the sign of the Cross might be omitted in 
baptism, if desired ; the word “ regenerate” 
was omitted from the latter part of the bap¬ 
tismal office; the marriage service was 
shortened, as in our present book ; the form 
of committal to the ground in the burial 
service was altered to nearly its present 
form; the absolution in the visitation of 





PRAYER-BOOK 


606 


PRAYER-BOOK 


the sick was given in the same words as in 
the communion office ; a form for the vis¬ 
itation of prisoners was taken from the Irish 
Book of 1711 a.d. ; the answer to the sec¬ 
ond question in the Catechism was changed 
to these words: “I received it in Baptism, 
whereby I became a member of the Chris¬ 
tian Church;” the Commination service on 
Ash-Wednesday was discontinued, and its 
prayers ordered to be said after the Litany; 
and selections were made from the Psalms 
for daily use, omitting (with others) the so- 
called “damnatory clauses.” No sooner 
was this proposed book published than “it 
was evident,” as Bishop White said, “ that, 
in regard to the liturgy, the labors of the 
convention had not reached their object.” 
Though some of the Diocesan Conventions 
approved it nearly as it stood, New York 
and New Jersey did not accept it; and the 
English bishops, to whom application had 
been made for the Episcopates, wrote ob¬ 
jecting, with grief, to the omission of two 
of the creeds, and the excision of a clause 
from the other. Moreover, the book was 
very unsatisfactory to the Churchmen in 
Connecticut. When the convocation of 
that diocese met on the 22d of (September, 
Bishop Seabury, in his charge, besides ex¬ 
pressing an opinion adverse to the merit of 
the changes in the services, called attention 
to the fact that they had been made without 
waiting till action could be had with the 
concurrence of bishops, as a thing unprece¬ 
dented in the Church ; and he “ set forth 
and recommended” to the use of his people 
a Communion Office almost identical with 
that in use by the Scotch bishops, from 
whom he had received his consecration. A 
General Convention of the (so-called) South¬ 
ern dioceses met in October, 1786 a.d., but 
nothing was done with the proposed book, 
except to obviate the objections of the Eng¬ 
lish bishops, by restoring the Apostles’ 
Creed, and inserting the Nieene Creed as 
an alternative for it. At last, October 2, 
1789 a.d. , the Church in this country was 
united in one Convention, with the Bishops 
as a separate house. Action was at once 
taken in regard to the Prayer-Book. The 
Bishops (Drs. Seabury and White alone 
were present) entered upon their work as 
proposing alterations in the English book. 
The lower house in theory considered itself 
as framing an entirely new book; but prac¬ 
tically there was no difference in the matter. 
The Proposed Book was ignored, at least in 
its objectionable features. The bishops orig¬ 
inated the review of some offices, and the 
lower house that of others ; and all was 
arranged to the decided satisfaction of all 
concerned. And it is to be remembered 
that nothing was admitted into the book of 
1789 a.d. which was not approved by both 
Bishop Seabury and Bishop White. 

Almost all the changes made show that 
they were not adopted without considera¬ 
tion ; those which were brought over from 
the Proposed Book seem to have been such 


as must have appeared to the minds of most 
men necessary to the times; and many 
apparently minor matters, such, for instance, 
as the accurate use of the words “ minister” 
and “priest,” witness to much thought 
before the convention and much carefulness 
at the time. It is not necessary to note here 
all the changes from the English Book. The 
state prayers were, of course, modified; 
many repetitions were omitted; verbal al¬ 
terations were made in numerous places ; and 
selections of Psalms were set forth, chiefly, 
as it would appear, for the relief of those who 
did not like to use the damnatory psalms in 
public worship. An alternative absolution 
was introduced into the daily offices; the 
Venite was made up of parts of two psalms ; 
the Benedictus was shortened; substitutes 
for the Magnificat and the JS 7 unc Dimittis 
were formed from the Psalter; the use of the 
Nieene Creed was made discretionary with 
that of the Apostles’ Creed, and the Atharia- 
sian Creed was omitted; the mediaeval form 
of absolution was omitted from the visitation 
of the sick, our Lord’s summary of the Law 
was allowed to be read after the command¬ 
ments in the Communion office ; and an al¬ 
ternative Preface was allowed for Trinity- 
Sunday. Bishop Taylor’s works furnished 
the revisers with the five special prayers 
which follow that to be used “ in time of 
great sickness and mortality,” and with the 
thrqp last prayers in the office for the visita¬ 
tion of the sick. The service for the visita¬ 
tion of prisoners was taken, as in the Pro¬ 
posed Book, from the Irish service of 1711 
a.d., that for Thanksgiving-day, from the 
Proposed Book itself; the Family Prayers 
from some which had been drawn up by 
Bishop Gibson, of London. But by far the 
most important change was that introduced 
through the influence of Bishop Seabury, the 
adoption of the Scotch form of the Prayer 
of Consecration in the Communion office, 
with a verbal modification, which was doubt¬ 
less proposed by the delegates from Mary¬ 
land. This form, which differs from any 
ever used by the Church of England, has a 
distinct and formal Oblation and Invocation 
following the words of Institution,—the 
primitive order, first appearing in English 
in Stephens’s service about 1700 a.d., adopted 
by the Non-Jurors in 1718 a.d., and taken 
from them by the Scotch Church. Bishop 
White readily assented to the insertion of 
this form, and it was accepted by the house 
of deputies “ without opposition, and in 
silence if not in reverence.” It should be 
noted, perhaps, that there was a misunder¬ 
standing as to the printing of the words in 
the Apostles’ Creed about which there had 
been so much discussion, but it was settled 
by a vote of the Convention of 1792 a.d* 
The new book went into use October 1, 1790 
a.d. Its standard edition was established by 
Canon in 1820 a.d., another in 1838 a.d., 
another in 1844 a.d., after a most careful 
and valuable report from the pen of the Rev. 
Dr. T. W. Coit, and another in 1871 a.d., 






PRAYER-BOOK 


607 


PRAYER, FAMILY 


having a large number of minute changes 
from the former standards. Provision has 
been made for translations of the book into 
several modern languages ; but the Church 
cannot yet be said to have a standard edition 
except in English. 

At the Convention of 1792 a.d. an Ordi¬ 
nal was adopted, differing from the English 
chiefly in having the Litany printed by 
itself and also the Communion office added, 
with the word “ Bishop” instead of “ Priest” 
in the rubrics, and in the provision of an al¬ 
ternative form in the ordination of priests. 
In 1799 a.d., the form of consecration of a 
Church was added to the Prayer-Book, the 
service being adapted from that drawn up 
by Bishop Andrewes in 1620 a.d. The 
Articles were set out in 1801 a.d. In 1804 
a.d., the office of Institution (then called 
Induction) was adopted, being substantially 
one drawn up by the Rev. Dr. 'William 
Smith, of Connecticut, and accepted by the 
clergy of that Diocese in 1799 a.d. The 
form of prayer to be used at the meetings of 
conventions, put into its present place in 
1835 a.d., was taken in great part from a 
paragraph in the homily for Whitsunday. 
Also, in 1835 a.d., the word “right” was 
substituted for the word “ north” in the last 
rubric before the Communion Service. The 
Bishops have from time to time, either of 
their own motion or at the request of the 
house of deputies, expressed their opinion as 
to the meaning of rubrics or the proper 
method of conducting the service. Thus, in 
1821 a.d. , they gave, as their interpretation 
of the last rubric in the Communion office, 
that the preaching of a sermon, did not re¬ 
move the obligation to read the Ante-Com¬ 
munion service ; in 1832 a.d., they gave their 
opinion as to the proper postures for priest and 
people in the Communion office ; in 1835 a.d., 
they advised that the customary Collect and 
Lord’s Prayer before the sermon be omitted, 
that the General Confession be said by the 
people with, and not after, the minister; and 
in 1865 a.d. a committee of their house pro¬ 
posed a rule as to postures in the offices for 
baptism and confirmation ; in 1868 a.d., a 
like committee recommended that on Sundays 
being also holy-days, both Collects should 
be read, with the epistle and the gospel for 
the Sunday. The first movement in the 
way of securing shortened services was made 
by the house of bishops, on motion of Bishop 
Hobart, in 1826 a.d. The proposed plan 
was approved by the house of deputies of 
that year, but it was so strongly opposed 
throughout the Church, that the next Con¬ 
vention dismissed the consideration of the 
subject. The memorial of the Rev. Dr. 
Muhlenberg and others to the Bishops in 
1853 a.d. asked for a relaxation for the 
rubrics in certain cases, and led to a declara¬ 
tion by that house in 1856 a.d., that the 
Morning Grayer, the Litany, and the Com¬ 
munion Service were separate services, that 
on special occasions the clergy might use 
such parts of the Prayer-Book and such 


lessons of Scripture as they judged to tend 
most to edification, and that the several 
Bishops might provide special services for 
peculiar cases. The memorial, however, led 
to no legislation on the subject. 

In 1868 a.d. , the Bishops, in reply to 
another memorial for greater latitude in the 
use of the Prayer-Book, unanimously voted 
that “ such latitude” as was asked “could 
not be allowed with safety, or with proper 
regard to the rights of our congregations.” 
The matter of shortened services was again 
discussed in 1877 a.d., and led to the pro¬ 
posal by the next Convention that the rati¬ 
fication of the Book of Common Prayer 
should be so amended as to give the desired 
liberty ; but the proposal failed of adoption 
in 1883 a.d. Meanwhile, in 1880 a.d., a 
committee of seven Bishops, seven Presby¬ 
ters, and seven laymen, was appointed to 
consider the question of alterations in the 
Prayer-Book “ in the direction of liturgical 
enrichment and increased flexibility of use.” 
The report of this committee, embodied in 
the “ Book Annexed,” was discussed in 1883 
a.d. , and as amended then is to come for 
action before the Convention of 1886 a.d. 
Into the details of this proposed revision it 
is beyond the scope of this paper to enter. 

A word should be added as to the tables 
of lessons. Those in the Proposed Book 
were quite different from those in the Eng¬ 
lish Book, and appear to have been proposed 
by Bishop White. In 1789 a.d. a new table 
was adopted for Sundays, but the others 
were taken with few changes from the Pro¬ 
posed Book. In 1877 a.d., the constitution 
having been so amended as to allow a sin¬ 
gle Convention, under certain restrictions, 
to make changes in the “ Lectionary,” per¬ 
mission was given to use the table of lessons 
adopted by the English Church in 1871 a.d., 
and also during Lent, a specially prepared 
table of lessons ; in 1880 a.d., a joint com¬ 
mittee prepared new tables both for Sun¬ 
days and holy-days, and for the general cal¬ 
endar, the use of which was made discre¬ 
tionary; and in 1883 a.d., these tables, with 
certain amendments, were adopted in place 
of those of 1789 a.d. 

It may be added that the provision in the 
Constitution, that any change in the Book of 
Common Prayer (the Lectionary being now 
excepted) shall have the approval of two 
successive General Conventions, having been 
submitted to the Dioceses in the intervening 
years, dates from 1811 a.d. 

Authorities: Journals of Conventions, 
Bishop White’s Memoirs of the Church, 
Bishop Perry’s Hand-Book of the General 
Convention and Introduction to the Ameri¬ 
can Edition of Procter’s History of the 
Book of Common Prayer, Bishop Seabury’s 
Communion Office, Bishop Brownell’s Fam¬ 
ily Prayer-Book. 

Rev. Prof. S. Hart. 

Prayer, Family. There is no duty which 
should be more faithfully discharged than 
this of household prayer. It lies at the root 





PREACHING 


608 


PREACHING 


of all household religion. And the home is 
divinely intended to he the true training- 
place in devout and holy life. No excuse, 
then, of inconvenience, and of hurry, and 
preoccupation should be allowed, but of all 
the duties the head of a family discharges, 
this of gathering the members of the house¬ 
hold around the home altar should be most 
rigidly discharged. Its influence upon the 
household life is very marked, the extent of 
its sanctifying work can never be known. 
It sanctifies the head of the House as dis¬ 
charging his priestly office. It consecrates 
those under him. Every man is a priest in 
his own house was the true remark of one 
of our Bishops when he directed his host, a 
Layman, to fulfill this holy duty. It teaches 
the children by example and by act to be¬ 
lieve that they are bound together in God’s 
household. It conveys to them a part at 
least of the godly instruction they should 
receive. So careful is the Church to have 
this attended to that there was included in 
our American Prayer-Book an admirable 
form of Family Prayer, abridged from the 
Prayers composed by Dr. Gibson, Bishop of 
London, the famous Canonist. It should 
be made a conscientious duty in every house¬ 
hold of the Church to have family prayer 
with all due regularity. A blessing rests 
upon the household whose custom it is. 

Preaching. The chief public work of the 
clergyman as God’s embassador and His 
Herald. Its outward form may vary as 
circumstances and the needs of the times 
vary. But it remains as a permanent duty 
upon the Herald to declare the will and the 
offers of the Great King, and it is equally a 
duty upon the citizens to listen to that will 
and to heed the offers made to them. There is 
a good deal of confused and imperfect in¬ 
formation about preaching which could be 
readily placed in right order if we but 
heeded two or three facts. The right, the 
duty of the Bishop and the Priest, and by 
special commission the Deacon also, is in¬ 
alienable and it is imperative. “ For though 
I preach the gospel, I have nothing to glory 
of : for necessity is laid upon me ; yea, woe 
is unto me, if I preach not the gospel” (1 Cor. 
ix. 16). This duty was at first exercised by 
the Bishop, and later by him committed to the 
Priest, but the responsibility was with him. 
It was not till much later that the Deacon 
was licensed to preach. But this duty con¬ 
sidered with regard to the Laity places 
upon them the need of hearing, and being 
instructed in, the will of God, and also their 
right to claim this instruction. We have so 
placed the sermon, which is the usual form 
which preaching takes, at the close of the 
service, that its importance is overlooked. 

The sermon is no part of the service proper 
unless there is a celebration. Anciently, 
while it occupied the same place relatively 
to the Holy Communion, it preceded all but 
the reading of Scripture and the few col¬ 
lects which were used for the mixed congre¬ 
gation. Then it was not preceded by a 


long service. It would be well that some 
rearrangement could be effected by which 
the sermon could be separated from the ser¬ 
vice and be delivered to the congregation as 
with all authority,—a message to them or a 
comment upon some part of that message. 
There is also another consideration : custom 
has compelled a sermon a Sunday and often 
a couple of lectures a week. While no 
Priest should be allowed to shirk his duty, 
and he would not conscientiously do so, 
there are frequently so great demands made 
upon his time and energy by Parochial work 
that he has no time to prepare himself fitly 
to deliver the message intrusted to him. 
Yet it is demanded of him “to say some¬ 
thing” when he has had no opportunity to 
prepare “ something to say.” The dignity 
of his office, the respect due to the congre¬ 
gation, the honor of Him whose embassador 
he is, demand that he shall take all due dil¬ 
igence to prepare and deliver his procla¬ 
mation with the effectiveness it deserves. 
Apart from mere personal ability, the vast 
difference in the modes with which the same 
topics are preached to the people lies chiefly 
in the unreadiness of the preacher. We do 
not make enough of preaching, and yet we 
so place it that we belittle it as an office, and 
its effectiveness does not depend upon the 
nobleness proper to it as an act, but to the 
cleverness or ability of the speaker. There 
should be an effort for a better balancing of 
the two. This is very much in the hands 
of the laity, since they can, if they choose, 
readily have the long service dissevered from 
the sermon and the sermon placed in the 
afternoon, leaving a short exhortation—a 
practical “ postil ”—for the morning, and so 
permitting the clergyman to give to each 
service the proper tone. The accidents of 
the time may often make it necessary to 
preach a sermon upon some topic whose 
proper treatment may be wholly different 
from the tenor of the service for the day. 
The effect of a joyous festival service may 
be neutralized by the delivery of a practical 
sermon whose drift may be penitential. 
This, however, is not so generally marked. 
But when the Priest has to deliver a mes¬ 
sage and to enforce its commands and only 
half an hour to do this in, his message can 
hardly be delivered with full effect. The 
separation of the two would therefore give 
more time for a thorough discharge of this 
duty. Again, it is a matter of great im¬ 
portance that the layman should understand 
his duty in listening to sermons. At the 
baptism of a child the charge is to the spon¬ 
sor, “ and chiefly ye shall take care that he 
shall hear sermons.” It is considered a 
valuable part of the instruction which the 
Church provides. Our Lord has also given 
a hint upon this duty of attending to ser¬ 
mons : “ Take heed what ye hear. With 
what measure ye mete it shall be measured 
to you, and unto you that hear shall more 
be given.” Our spiritual knowledge and, 
too, our discernment cometh from the heed 






PREBENDARY 


609 


PREDESTINATION 


we give to our instructors. But it should 
also be compared with St. Paul’s warning 
upon this very duty of preaching. Urging 
St. Timothy to greater zeal and thorough¬ 
ness in preaching, the Apostle goes on: 
“For the time will come.when they will 
not endure sound doctrine ; but after their 
own lusts shall they heap to themselves 
teachers, having itching ears; and they shall 
turn away their ears from the truth, and 
shall be turned unto fables” (2 Tim. iv. 3, 
4). An examination of the passage will 
throw much light upon the Church’s princi¬ 
ples, which involve both the questions how 
sermons should be listened to and what 
teachers should be heard. The Church’s 
law upon this topic is set forth in the XXIII. 
Article: “It is not lawful for any man to 
take upon him the office of 'public ■preaching 
or ministering the sacraments in the con¬ 
gregation before he be lawfully called and 
sent to execute the same, and those we 
ought to judge lawfully called and sent 
which be chosen and called to this work by 
men who have public authority given unto 
them in the congregation to call and send 
ministers into the Lord’s vineyard.” And 
the convocation of 1571 a.d. enjoined : “ In 
the first place, let preachers take care that 
they never teach anything in the way of 
preaching, which they wish to be retained 
religiously and believed by the people, ex¬ 
cept what is agreeable to the doctrine of the 
Old and New Testaments, and what the 
Catholic Fathers and ancient Bishops have 
collected from that same doctrine.” 

Prebendary (Lat. prsebenda). A clergy¬ 
man attached to a cathedral or collegiate 
Church, who enjoys a prebend in considera¬ 
tion of his rendering stated services. His 
stall is a prebend’s stall, and differs from a 
canonry in that a canon has a right as a 
proper officer of the Church to share in its 
government. But a prebend receives an in¬ 
come for certain duties he is to discharge in 
the Church. He is appointed by the Bishop 
generally, but the Queen has also prebends 
in her gift. (Vide Cathedral.) 

Predestination. Election, foreknowledge, 
and fore-ordination are words which occur 
very frequently in the writings and spec¬ 
ulations of theologians ; and the subjects 
which they denote must occur in some 
form or other to every one who dili¬ 
gently studies his Bible or thinks on 
“the ways of God with man.” The Bible 
speaks of God as foreseeing the events of 
history and showing, to some extent at least, 
the end from the beginning. It represents 
Him as determining certain things long be¬ 
fore they come to pass. In some cases He 
has promised what was not to come about 
for many centuries. At other times the 
Bible represents Him as threatening certain 
evils,—as calamities or punishments that are 
not to be realized for many generations. 
All this clearly implies foreknowledge, and 
a purpose with power to contrast events so 
far and in such a way as to be able to ac¬ 

39 


complish that which He has promised or 
threatened. On the other hand, the writers 
always address men as free agents,—as 
choosing, or as able to choose, what they will 
do; they also represent them as held re¬ 
sponsible by God for the consequences of 
their own acts, and this accords with the 
belief and consciousness of mankind. Every 
one feels that he can choose how he will act, 
can choose the right and avoid the evil, to a 
large extent. And whether he is able to do 
in all cases what he sees to be right, and 
chooses to do, or would choose to do, if he 
could do it or not, yet he feels responsible 
for his choice, and experiences remorse or a 
sense of shame and regret for what he has 
done that is wrong. And in this way it 
comes about that there seems to be a contra¬ 
diction between a doctrine of Revelation 
and a fact of experience, which fact is also 
in harmony with much of the most explicit 
and most emphatic teaching of Holy Scrip¬ 
ture. 

A moment’s consideration must satisfy us 
that the subject is, in some respects at least, 
beyond human comprehension. God is 
a Being of infinite intelligence,'and His 
“thoughts” must in many respects “ be far 
above, out of our sight.” He has Himself 
warned us of the danger of attempting or 
expecting to comprehend all of His ways, 
and His reasons for them. Thus He says 
(Isa. lv. 8, 9), “My thoughts are not your 
thoughts, neither, are your ways My ways. 
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, 
so are My ways higher than your ways, and 
My thoughts than your thoughts.” We 
see an illustration of the principle, enough 
both to understand it and to conceive of its 
truth, in the comparison we can make at 
any time between ourselves and the children 
that we have under our care. With im¬ 
mature and undeveloped minds, their in¬ 
telligence is far below our own. We under¬ 
stand many things that are mysterious and 
entirely incomprehensible to them. We 
know the reason for many things that must 
for them rest entirely upon authority and 
positive command. We see and knowhow 
many things are accomplished that are quite 
incomprehensible, and some altogether im¬ 
possible to them. But we must remember that 
while they are as yet far below us in intelli¬ 
gence and power of comprehension, we our¬ 
selves are but as children in comparison of 
that infinite Mind who ordains and com¬ 
prehends all things. If we acknowledge 
God to be infinite in wisdom and in power, 
we must admit that He has plans, and ways, 
and means for accomplishing them incom¬ 
prehensible to us. Hence when speaking 
of our phase or aspect of them, it must be 
expected that He will say what is perfectly 
comprehensible to us, when we look at that 
aspect of the subject only. While, never¬ 
theless, when speaking of the subject from 
some other point or with reference to some 
other phase of it, whether of doctrine or duty, 
He will say what, though perfectly intelli- 





PREDESTINATION 


G10 


PREDESTINATION 


gible and credible in itself, does seem incon¬ 
sistent with what He had said before or on 
another occasion with reference to the same 
facts. 

What we are thus expressing in our re¬ 
lations to God and in our study of His 
word, our children are constantly expressing 
in our dealings with them. Let us listen to 
them and study their thoughts and we shall 
be able, if not to understand the mysteries 
of His Providence, to reconcile ourselves to 
the need of walking by faith and trusting 
that God in His own time and way will 
make the mystery and seeming contradic¬ 
tion entirely plain. At all events, the study 
will satisfy us, if we are reasonable in our 
demands and expectations, that so long as 
God is in Heaven and we on earth, as 
He is infinite and we finite in our powers 
and intelligence, there must be points and 
statements in His revelations and commands 
to us that we cannot comprehend, and that 
if we would walk in the way that leads to 
God and to Heaven, we must walk in faith 
and wait for a fuller development and more 
maturity of our faculties before we can com¬ 
prehend all the relations and reasons of that 
rule of life and way of salvation that God 
has provided for us. There are also several 
important facts that may be of use to us in 
our meditations and speculations on this 
subject. In the first place, mere knowledge 
of what one is doing is no interference with 
the liberty of the person who does it. I am 
writing now, and some one is standing by 
and sees me doing so. I intend to do some¬ 
thing to-morrow, and my friend not merely 
knows this,.but the very way in which the 
act will be done. Rut in neither case does 
his knowledge interfere with my freedom to 
act or not. Rut it is said, the future act is 
not certain. Whereas in the future which 
God predicts the acts must be certain, and 
so the freedom of the agent or agents that 
are to co-operate is so far limited. Rut by 
way of obviating this objection two things 
must be considered. In the first place, it 
would seem as though the infinity of God 
would preclude the element of time which 
comes in to embarrass the speculation as we 
entertain it. To illustrate what we mean, 
consider for a moment that each one of us 
is finite, we see all objects from the point 
where we are ; one thing is on the right, and 
then on the left, one is before us, another is 
behind. Rut now, suppose that God is in¬ 
finite and everywhere present. He will see 
all those objects that are around us and 
which appear to be around us, because we 
can see them from one point only, from all 
points at one and the same time. In rela¬ 
tion to Him there can be no left, no right; 
nothing is afore another: all are embraced 
in His omnipresence. So too with thoughts : 
we are finite, we have one thought now ; we 
had one a little while ago, and another will 
follow the present one. We can entertain 
but one thought in our minds at a time. 
But for the infinite mind this must be other¬ 


wise. All thoughts (for it takes up all 
thoughts to make up omniscience) are and 
must be present to His Mind at all times 
and all at the same time for Him. Whatever 
is past, present, or future to us must be 
present in thought or as idea at all times, 
and the matter of time, and time relations 
involving forekn owl edge, predestination, 
prediction, and such like phenomena, must 
be very different in their relations to God 
from what they are to us, and very different 
from anything we can conceive or compre¬ 
hend. Must not their /oreknowledge in 
reference to God be the same as knowledge 
is in reference to us? We simply ask the 
question. It does not become us to dogma¬ 
tize or to assent positively in a matter of 
this kind. It must be conceded to be one 
of ‘‘the secret things that belong unto God, 
while only those that are revealed belong 
unto us” (Deut. xxix. 29). 

The second consideration is the fact that 
in the course of God’s Providence He is 
often seen to work results by means which 
seem to us most unlikely, and (so far as 
human purposes and intentions are con¬ 
cerned) by those acts of men which were 
intended to produce a very different result. 
Of this the history of the world, as well as 
our own experience, are full of illustrations. 
We have the declaration of the Rible that 
this was the case in regard to the sale of 
Joseph into Egypt by his brethren. What 
their motive was we know. Rut Joseph 
says (Gen. xlv. 5), “ God did send me before 
you to preserve life.” Again, God is repre¬ 
sented in Isaiah (x. 5 sq.) as saying of the 
King of Assyria, he is the “ rod of Mine 
anger, and the staff in their hand is Mine 
indignation. I will send him against an 
hypocritical nation, and against the people 
of my wrath will 1 give him a charge. . . . 
Howbeit, he meaneth not so, neither doth his 
heart think so; but it is in his heart to de¬ 
stroy and to cut oft' nations not a few.” In 
the case of Judas, the betrayer, and those 
who conspired with him to produce the 
Crucifixion of our Lord, we have another 
example. Without something of the kind 
the atonement would hardly have been 
made. Rut at all events, the result was far 
from what those who took part in it expected 
or desired. So, too, when at the time of 
our Lord’s rising from the grave, the ene¬ 
mies of His religion bribed the «oldiers that 
watched the grave to deny that He had 
risen, and afterwards straitly charged the 
Apostles not to preach His resurrection. 
They did the best they could, considering 
who and what they were, to put the cer¬ 
tainty of these facts and the foundation on 
which the Gospel rests on a sure basis and 
beyond the possibility of a reasonable sus¬ 
picion. We may reasonably doubt whether 
there could anything have been better ar¬ 
ranged to unify the testimony of every one 
in and about Jerusalem in behalf of the 
fact of the Resurrection,—the testimony of 
friends and of confessed believers, and those 





PRE-EXISTENCE OF CHRIST 611 


PR^ESANCTIFIED 


of His avowed enemies, bent to put a speedy 
end to the proclamation of the Gospel. 
What has been actually accomplished is to 
make the basis of testimony on which it 
rests unassailable ; the most certain and the 
most indisputable of all events that have 
occurred in human history or in human ex¬ 
perience. And yet there was clearly no 
interposition to change the intentions of 
the men or to interfere with their freedom 
of choice; but God did use these acts for 
His purposes, to further the accomplishment 
of that which He had foreordained should 
come to pass. 

In nature God works. From a religious, 
point of view we must regard all its phe¬ 
nomena as the works of His hand, the man¬ 
ifestations of His will and power. He 
causes the sun to shine, He moves the stars 
in their courses and the planets in their or¬ 
bits. He makes the rain to fall and the 
plants to grow. But in this sphere there is 
no freedom, no power of choice ; all is 
foreordination. Here we can learn what 
will take place, and in calling it Science we 
may obscure, ignore, or deny the fact that 
it is God’s work. But in this domain there 
is no conflict between what we regard as 
foreordination and foreknowledge ; or we 
seem to understand it is impossible because 
of fore-ordination, because all things are 
predestined in the very constitution of phys¬ 
ical nature. But with man and in the 
sphere of human action we meet with free¬ 
dom and the power of choice. And it seems 
to us that if there is freedom or power of 
choice, there can be no precise foreknowl¬ 
edge of the act we shall choose to perform. 
But I think we have seen that God has and 
exercises a power over the consequences of 
our acts so He can bring out of them re¬ 
sults that are very far from, and very un¬ 
like, what we had foreseen or intended they 
should effect. Shall we say, then, that 
there is no foreknowledge of the specific 
acts we shall perform ? But only such a 
foreknowledge of whatever and of all that 
man does not perform and cannot control that 
He can foresee, be sure of, and predestinate 
. results and events that make up the promi¬ 
nent and the controlling facts of history, as 
well as the prominent phenomena of human 
life. We can hardly venture to do this. 
Whenever we attempt or ask a complete so¬ 
lution of these questions we are assuming a 
power of comprehending them which a mo¬ 
ment’s consideration must show us that we 
do not possess. It is enough for us to know, 
and it is perhaps all that we can know, that 
God worketh all things according to His 
will, and that in doing this He often bring- 
eth the counsel of princes to nought and 
maketh the wrath of man work to promote 
His praise. Rev. W. D. Wilson, D.D. 

Pre-Existence of Christ. Vide Eter¬ 
nal Generation. 

Preface. The Preface is usually restricted 
to describe the offering of thanks that pre¬ 
cedes the Sanctus. But it should also in¬ 


clude the preceding portions. In the earlier 
Liturgies the portion extending from the 
Versicle “ Lift up your hearts” (Sursum 
Cordal to the words “ Holy, Holy, Holy,” 
bore tne name of the Preface. Taking this 
extension as then correct, the Yersicles are 
preparatory steps that lift the souls of the 
worshipers as up the ascent of a glorious 
temple till the Priest begins the solemn 
words, “ It is very meet and right and our 
bounden duty,”—the form in use in the East 
and the West. The Eastern form of the 
Preface is longer and more rhetorical, and 
it is invariable in each Liturgy. But the 
Western form is very short, compact, and 
stately, and there is a varying Proper Pref¬ 
ace for the several great Festivals. These are 
in the Mozarabic Liturgy very numerous, 
and often of exceeding beauty ; in the other 
Liturgies, as of Milan and Gaul, they were 
not so numerous nor so fine. The English 
Church has only retained five out of the 
many which originally were in her Missals, 
and which about the end of the twelfth cen¬ 
tury were reduced to ten. Three of these 
five are taken derivatively from the ancient 
sacramentaries of Gelasius (490 a.d.) and 
Gregory (596 a.d.), but directly from the 
Salisbury Missal, the most popular and the 
best of the Liturgies in use in England be¬ 
fore the Reformation,—the Prefaces for Eas- 
ter-day, Ascension-day, and Trinity-Sunday. 
In our American Book we have an alternate 
Preface besides. The Christmas and Whit¬ 
sunday Prefaces appear to have been writ¬ 
ten at the time of the Reformation. The 
alternate form in our Prayer-Book seems 
also to belong to our American Fathers. 
They are noble compositions, containing 
manifold meanings in their pregnant phrases, 
and replete with the very loftiest spirit of 
prayer. None can be conceived of as better 
fitted to be uttered before the glorious words, 
‘ Therefore with Angels and Archangels, 
and with all the company of heaven, we laud 
and magnify Thy glorious name! ever¬ 
more praising Thee and saying.” Properly, 
and according to ancient rule, the Priest 
alone should make this grand oblation of 
praise, and then at this point the People 
should make their offering conjointly with 
him, “ Holy, Holy, Holy.” 

Prelate. A term meaning the oflice of 
one having jurisdiction over others. The 
word now is synonymous with Bishop, but 
it is not accurate to confine it to this sense. 
For the authority of a Bishop, see the 
word. 

Praesanctified, Liturgy of. In some parts 
of the early Church it was not permitted to 
consecrate the Eucharist in Lent save on 
Saturday and Sunday. Therefore, as fre¬ 
quent communions through the week were 
usual, the consecrated elements were reserved, 
and hence the name for the service when 
there was a Communion : the Liturgy of the 
praesanctified,—that is, a Liturgic form in 
which theactual consecration of the elements 
is omitted, since this had already been effected, 





PRESBYTER 


612 


PRESENTATION 


but in which there is the proper offering of 
worship, praise, and reception of the ele¬ 
ments by the Communicants. The modern 
Latin practice is to omit only on Good-Fri- 
day a proper celebration. But the Greeks 
continue the older rule. 

Presbyter. In the English Version of 
the New Testament it is always translated 
Elder. It was used by the Septuagint trans¬ 
lators to designate the chiefs of the people, 
whether of the families, or of the tribe, or 
of the nation ; they also so named the Elders 
who received the gift of prophecy. The 
word then passed into New Testament usage. 
One tradition says that the seventy sent forth 
by our Lord became the elders under the 
Apostles. A t any rate, the institution of this 
rank is not recorded as is that of the dea¬ 
cons, but is assumed. They were placed by 
SS. Barnabas and Paul in every city where 
they gathered converts. The name Presby¬ 
ter is literally “ the elder hence one whose 
age invests him with respect, thence an of¬ 
ficer, because of his experience and wisdom. 
The word Presbeuo meant to be an embassa¬ 
dor (2 Cor. v. 20; Eph. vi. 20); hence the 
august and weighty officer of an embassador 
is attached to the Eldership. It is not that 
the Presbyter is chosen for his gravity or 
worth merely, but as fit to share in the noble 
embassy which Christ has given His Apos¬ 
tles, and so to share in their mission. The 
Presbyter had also in the New Testament 
usage a second title, Episcopos, which was 
afterwards transferred and made to denote 
the Apostolic office of the successors of the 
Apostles. But there is a glory added to the 
title, for in the Vision of St. John’s Reve¬ 
lation the four-and-twenty Elders crowned 
and enthroned are sharers with the heavenly 
multitude in the heavenly worship, and 
themselves offer a special thanksgiving, as 
well as join in the praises of the redeemed, 
and the angels to Him who sitteth upon the 
Throne and to the Lamb of God. This 
honor belongs to the order whose title is so 
glorified. ‘It is by a fit instinct, then, that the 
word Presbyter is retained throughout the 
Church to denote the officer appointed by the 
Apostles to aid in their work. It has been 
contracted into the word Priest (vide Priest), 
but both words are in common use side by 
side. (Vide Elder.) 

Authorities : Bishop Onderdonk’s Episco¬ 
pacy tested by Scripture, Marshall’s Notes 
on Episcopacy. 

Presbyterium. The part in the church 
occupied by the Presbytery. The earliest 
arrangement placed the Bishop’s throne 
against the Eastern wall and behind the 
altar, which was placed farther out. On 
each side were the seats for the Presbyters. 

But when this arrangement was aban¬ 
doned in the West,—if indeed it ever largely 
obtained at all there,—the Presbyterium 
was a part of the choir, or beyond the choir 
and part of the sanctuary. But in the East 
it must refer to the part behind the altar. 

Presence of Christ. The Presence of 


Christ is manifold. He is in the Presence 
of Presences, the Holy of Holies, as our In¬ 
tercessor, and there is His proper seat and 
presence. But He has promised to be in the 
midst of the two or three who are gathered 
together in His name, to be present with His 
Apostles to the end of the world. He is in 
His Church as its Head, and is in each mem¬ 
ber of the Church. In these respects He is 
present mystically. He is present as the 
giver of baptism, and as the gift of baptism. 
For as many as have been baptized into 
Christ have put on Christ. There is, 
then, a presence in this sacramental gift of 
Christ. 

Again, He has said, this is my Body, this is 
my Blood, of the consecrated elements of 
Bread and Wine in the Holy Communion, 
and here, in whatsoever way He may be 
present, it is sacramentally. Then we may 
define the Presence of Christ to be three¬ 
fold : His Proper Presence, as the Son of 
God, and as Mediator and Intercessor, at 
the right hand of His Father. His mys¬ 
tical presence in His Church, His Apostles, 
and His members. And His presence in the 
sacraments. ( Vide Real Presence.) 

Presentation of Christ in the Temple. 
A Feast-day, usually called the Feast of the 
Purification (February 2); but this is wrong, 
since the Feast was instituted in honor of our 
Lord, and so the Greek Church understands 
it, the title for the feast meaning the meeting, 
— i.e., of Simeon and Anna with the Virgin 
Mother and her Son. It was probably insti¬ 
tuted by the Emperor Justinian, about 526 
a.d., and was received throughout the whole 
Church. The Collect is from the Gregorian 
sacramentary, and is worthy of study as pre¬ 
senting so compactly the purpose of the 
feast. As the Epistle and Gospel are those 
appointed in the ancient Lectionary, the 
Church of England has clung closely to the 
old use. The Scripture for the Epistle is 
according to the Western use, but the Gos¬ 
pel (practically the same everywhere) fol¬ 
lows the Eastern use in reading a longer 
portion. The change of the title from that 
of the “ Presentation” to that of the Purifi¬ 
cation may most probably be due to the 
leading thought of the Purifying that our 
Lord has instituted here, as set forth both 
in the Epistle from Malachi and in the 
words of Simeon. (Vide Candlemas.) 

Presentation to a Cure. The right of 
the Patron, or of the person who has pur¬ 
chased that right, to present a clerk to the 
Bishop to be instituted in a cure. As par¬ 
ishes are founded very differently in this 
country, this right resides in the vestry or 
in those persons of a parish who may he 
delegated to exercise it. It cannot be too 
often reiterated that the Office of Institution 
is the fundamental law, and the proper in¬ 
ferences to be drawn from it, and the cir¬ 
cumstances it presupposes, should dictate to 
the vestry the mode of procedure, which is 
too often overlooked in the usual way a rec¬ 
tor is called and received in a parish. 




PRIEST 


613 


PRIEST 


Priest. It is proposed, in this article, to 
consider whether the Christian Church has a 
true Priesthood, not figurative, but real, and 
whether that Priesthood has sacrifices, in the 
proper sense of the word, to offer, and if so, 
what their nature. The two hang together, 
and must he considered together. A Priest 
must have somewhat to offer; a sacrifice 
necessitates some one to make the offering. 
In order, therefore, fully to present the sub¬ 
ject we shall here say something first of the 
nature of sacrifice, and then of the Priesthood. 

I. OF SACRIFICES. 

A sacrifice is literally that which is made 
holy or dedicated to God. There is also 
always implied the idea of thereby pleasing 
God or propitiating His favor. It would be 
aside from our purpose to give any history 
of sacrifice outside of the Jewish and Chris¬ 
tian dispensations, even the former briefly, 
as helping to understand the latter. 

The Mosaic Sacrifices .—The “gifts and 
sacrifices’’ offered by the Mosaic priesthood 
were divinely appointed types of the one 
great sacrifice of the Son of God, to be once 
for all offered in the fullness of the time. 
They were both animal ( zebach ), therefore 
bloody, and vegetable (miwcAa), unbloody, 
and may all be classed under three heads, 
viz. : 

a f The Sin-offerinfr (chaUalh). , l Expiatory 

‘ { The Trespass-offering ( asham ). j 

B. The Whole-Burnt-offering (’olah ). Dedicatory. 

C. The Peace-offering (shelem). j yeg^ble } ^ UCHARISTIC * 

And used in connection with the others : 

D. Incense (kelorelh). Intercessory. 

Briefly of each : 

(A) The great features of the sin and 
trespass-offerings were (1) The offering the 
victim to the Lord by the laying on of the 
hands of the offerer, with, in some cases, 
confession of sins. (2) The sprinkling of the 
blood before the Divine Presence. (3) The 
partial burning on the great Brazen Altar. 
(4) The carrying outside of the camp in the 
skin, and the complete burning of the re¬ 
mains. None of it was to be eaten by the 
offerer (Lev. vi. 30). 

It stood forth as Expiatory. In it was 
remission by “the blood of sprinkling.’’ 
Therefore, on the great Day of Atonement, 
it preceded all others, preparing the way for 
them. Through it alone Priest and People 
were made worthy to approach the Divine 
Presence, as pardoned sinners. 

(B) The Burnt-offering was as follows: 

(1) The victim was to be presented by the 
laying on of the hand of the offerer, by 
whom it was then to be slain; (2) the blood 
was sprinkled by the Priest about the brazen 
altar; (3) the carcass was properly cut up 
“according to the manner ;”(4) the whole 
was to be consumed by fire upon the altar. 
The blood was not to be taken within the 
Sanctuary, none of the flesh was to be eaten. 
This sacrifice was a Whole-offering , dedicated 


entirely to God, and represented the dedica¬ 
tion of the offerer himself to God. 

(C) The Peace-offering , sometimes called 
the Meat-offering, differed essentially from 
the others. This consisted of either an ani¬ 
mal or a vegetable offering, generally of 
both. (1) The animal was offered and slain ; 

(2) the blood was sprinkled upon the altar ; 

(3) certain portions only, as the fat and 
liver, were burnt upon the altar; (4) the 
rest was eaten by the Priest and the offerer 
with their friends, as a Holy Feast of 
Thanksgiving , for which the sin- and burnt- 
offerings—the atonement and dedication— 
had prepared the way. With the animal 
of this Peace-offering, as an essential part, 
sometimes even brought by itself alone , were 
the vegetable offerings of Frankincense and 
of Fine Flour, with beaten Oil and Wine. 
A handful of these last, with all the incense, 
was to be burned, together with the parts of 
the victim, on the altar, “ as a memorial;” 
the rest was baked and eaten with the flesh, 
or roasted or boiled, as being part of the Peace¬ 
offering ; a solemn act of Thanksgiving and 
a Memorial before the Lord. 

With all these sacrifices incense was to be 
offered, as a separate act, representing the 
intercessory prayer of the Priest for himself 
and people. 

The sacrifices, then, present three features : 
the Propitiatory , the Dedicatory , and the 
Thanksgiving; the latter involving, also, 
communion with God, in the eating together 
by Priest and people of that which had been 
offered to God ; and as such may be con¬ 
sidered that for which the others prepared 
the way, therefore the highest act of 
worship. 

It must be noticed, also, that one thing 
is common to all, death by the shedding of 
blood, or in the case of the vegetable offer¬ 
ing, by destruction ; the wheat being ground 
into fine flour, the oil and wine crushed 
from the fruit, and all consumed by fire or 
eating. 

Now these complex ceremonies did not 
owe the efficacy they possessed to any value 
in themselves, but solely to something they 
as types or shadows represented. The 
Epistle to the Hebrews clearly sets this forth 
(Heb. x. 1), and St. Paul thus puts it: 
“ They were the shadow of things to come, 
but the body is of Christ” (Col. ii. 17). 
He was truly the sin-, the burnt-, and the 
peace-offering. His blood, shed on the 
cross, atones for sin ; He gave Himself, and 
with Himself His people, a willing offering 
entirely to God; “He is our peace,” and 
gives Himself to be feasted on, as the true 
bread of life, the wine of God ; and His in¬ 
tercessions are the true incense offered before 
the Mercy-seat on High. He is also the 
true High-Priest, called of God ; and as 
man and in man’s behalf offering Himself 
the victim for man; and taking His body 
wounded and pierced into heaven before 
God, presenting it for man in atonement for 
sin, and therefore He is revealed in heaven 




PRIEST 


614 


PRIEST 


as “ a Lamb, as it had been slain” (Rev. v. 
6). In Him, therefore, all these Mosaic 
sacrifices find their fulfillment and end. 
There is no more, i.e., no further sacrifice 
for sin. None other can be needed. “ This 
man after He had offered one sacrifice for 
sins forever, sat down on the right hand of 
God.” “ By His one offering He hath per¬ 
fected forever them that are sanctified.” 
“Through the offering of the body of 
Jesus Christ once for all.” Not once for 
all men, but l^dra^ once only “ denoting the 
absolute cessation of an act under the idea 
that it has been perfectly performed” (Heb. 
x. passim). In the words of the Prayer- 
Book: “His one oblation of Himself once 
offered, was a full, perfect, and sufficient 
sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the 
sins of the whole world.” The substance 
being come the figures are done away, th^ 
old Mosaic sacrifices are ended ; they are to 
us of value as teaching of the true sac¬ 
rifice. 

II. THE PRIESTHOOD. 

Christ is not only the sacrifice, but also 
the true High-Priest, “ who is set on the 
right hand of the throne of the Majesty in 
the heavens ; a minister of the sanctuary, 
and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord 
pitched, and not man” (Heb. viii. 1, 2), 
“ where He ever liveth to make intercession 
for us.” In Him the Aaronic Priesthood 
is, if we may so say, absorbed. It came in 
Him to an end, for when no more such sac¬ 
rifices are required, no such Priesthood is 
needed. But Christ’s Priesthood is ever¬ 
lasting. In heaven He is the sin-offering, 
the whole-offering, the thank-offering, ever 
presented for man, and which cannot be re¬ 
peated. The benefits thereof of pardon, ac¬ 
ceptance, and communion He as High-Priest 
ever sent down to man by the Holy Spirit. 
But His Priesthood is not that of the old, 
but of the new covenant, or rather it in¬ 
cludes the two. “He does all that the old 
Priesthood could not do for the weakness 
and unprofitableness thereof.” He adds to 
this the Priesthood of the better covenant 
in His blood, of which He is the surety; 
even the eternal Priesthood “ after the order 
of Melchisedec” (Heb. vii. 21, 22), thus de¬ 
scribed : “ This is the covenant that I will 
make with them after those days, saith .the 
Lord ; I will put my laws into their hearts, 
and in their minds will I unite them ; and 
their sins and iniquities will I remember no 
more. Now where remission of these is, 
there is no more offering for sin” (Heb. x. 
16, 17). Christ, then, is the High-Priest of 
the Church which is called by His name and 
is His body. By virtue of His one sacrifice 
He obtains for it remission of sins. Making 
it one with Himself, He offers it to God, to 
do His will. The true peace-offering, He 
gives it His own Body and Blood, to sustain 
its new life by this communion with Him¬ 
self, as He said to His disciples, “ He that 
eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, 


dwelleth in Me, and I in him” (St. John vi. 
56). 

But in accordance with God’s dealings 
with man, in pity to his weakness, to 
strengthen his faith and enable him to 
apply for all these benefits, Christ has 
been pleased in the New Covenant, as under 
the Old, to appoint means of grace, outward 
visible signs and proofs of that which He 
does for us. A Priesthood was needed to 
minister these on Christ’s behalf to man, 
and to act for man towards Himself. A 
Priesthood, not like that of Aaron, which 
was fulfilled in Christ, but like His own, 
after the order of Melchisedec. A ministry 
of Reconciliation, Blessing, and Peace. 
None the less a real Priesthood because 
spiritual; therefore, indeed, of a higher 
order than the old, with real offerings, more 
real and valuable than those of Aaron, be¬ 
cause not shadows of good things to come ; 
retaining such features of the Old Covenant 
as under the New are needed. 

(I.) It is a Real Priesthood. “ As 
my Father hath sent me, even so send I 
you,” is its commission (St. John xx. 21). 
Writes St. Paul: “God hath given to us 
the ministry of reconciliation. Now, then, 
we are Ambassadors for Christ” (2 Cor. v. 
18, 20). And to the Romans he writes: 
“That I should be the minister of Jesus 
Christ to the Gentiles, ministering the 
gospel of God, that the offering up of the 
Gentiles might be acceptable, being sancti¬ 
fied by the Holy Ghost” (Rom. xv. 16). 
On which Dr. Bloomfield, in his note, re¬ 
marks, that he describes his ministry to the 
Gentiles in “ formula derived from the 
Jewish religion, in order the more strongly 
to impress on the Jewish Christians the 
dignity of his Apostleship ; calling himself, 
not dm/covof, a minister, but ’keirovpybq, a 
sacred minister; and saying his office is, not 
KTjpvooeiv, to preach, but lepovpyelv rb evayyilcov, 
— i.e., to preach the Gospel as a Priest of 
the New Covenant (literally, ministering as a 
Priest the Gospel). So -irpootyopa and Tjyiaoyewj, 
sacrificing and sanctified , a little after, are 
likewise terms borrowed from the Temple 
service.” 

As Ambassadors for Christ, called by 
the Holy Ghost, His ministers represent 
and act for Him; as taken from among 
men, and chosen by men, they act for men, 
and thus are as truly Priests as were the 
Aaronic, according to the word, “ For 
every High-Priest taken from among men 
is ordained for men in things pertaining to 
God” (Heb. v. 1). 

(II.) It offers True Sacrifices. A 
priest must have somewhat to offer. What 
offering does the Christian Priesthood make ? 

(A) Remissory; or theMinistry of Recon¬ 
ciliation. —The Christian Priest makes no 
typical sacrifice expiatory of sin ; nor does 
he repeat the sacrifice by offering Christ to 
the Father in the mass, as the Romanist 
pretends ; but he offers to God for and with 
the people their confession of sins, and ho 




PRIEST 


615 


PRIEST 


declares to them officially, as from God, the 
remission of sins, through the sacrifice of 
Calvary, which remission is conveyed by the 
Holy Ghost to the individual soul, accord¬ 
ing to the commission of the risen Lord, 
“whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted 
unto them” (St. John xx. 23). He adminis¬ 
ters Baptism for the remission of sins. He 
offers to God for the people the memorial of 
the one great sin-offering, with prayer that 
thereby they may obtain remission of sins. 
Surely when the Priest, leading the congre¬ 
gation with penitent hearts and lively faith 
to the throne of grace, offers a confession of 
sin, and pleads by the memorial of His Body 
and Blood which Christ has commanded to 
be made, His one sacrifice of Himself for the 
sins of the whole world, this memorial and 
this lifting up of hands and hearts is a 
Priestly act, a true sacrifice, accepted by 
God for Christ’s sake. 

(B) Intercessory. —The Priest prays for 
and with the people ; this takes the place of 
the old Incense-burning (Rev. v. 8). Christ 
receives and makes these prayers His own, 
offering them before the throne. As the 
frankincense of old accompanied every sac¬ 
rifice, so the prayer of faith gives value to 
all Christian ministrations. 

(C) Dedicatory. —The Christian Priest not 
only urges men to give themselves up to 
God, through Christ, but offers the sacri¬ 
fice on their behalf and receives it officially 
on God’s. This is an important feature of 
the sacraments. In Baptism, the minister 
receives the child or person, dedicates to 
God’s service, and on God’s behalf an¬ 
nounces remission of sin, and a new birth 
as God’s child; this is repeated in Confir¬ 
mation, and renewed from time to time in 
the Holy Communion, in which “ we offer 
and present unto Thee, O Lord, ourselves, 
our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, 
holy, and living sacrifice unto Thee.” 
Which sacrifice, we believe, is accepted by 
God because a voluntary one, and chiefly 
because presented for us by our great High- 
Priest in heaven, who has already atoned 
for its imperfections; and by His inter¬ 
cession makes it worthy to be received. 
This is a Priestly act of the most solemn 
nature. 

(D) Eucharistic. —This is the peculiar 
feature of the Melchisedician Priesthood to 
which all others are preparatory, the offer¬ 
ing, consecrating, and giving of the Bread 
and Wine, for His memorial, who said, 
“ Take, eat; this is My Body. Drink ye all 
of this; for this is My blood of the New 
Covenant.” “ Do this in remembrance 
of Me.” This the true Peace- and Meat- 
Offering, on which we by faith feed, as on 
Him, the one sacrifice, and so are in com¬ 
munion with God. This the true Thank- 
offering, “ our sacrifice of praise and thanks¬ 
giving.” This unites in itself the four acts 
of the old ritual, Remission, Intercession, 
Dedication, and Eucharistic,—feeding for 
Communion. 


(E) But there is a higher feature of the 
Christian Priesthood peculiar to it, unknown 
to the Mosaic. It is under the dispensation 
of the Holy Spirit, obtained for it by its 
ascended Head, in whom His promise is 
fulfilled, “ Lo, I am with you alway.” 
“ Wherever two or three are gathered to¬ 
gether in my name, there am I in the midst 
of them.” It is this gives value and efficacy 
to all their acts. This the special feature 
of the New Covenant. This is a gift from 
God to man, bestowed ordinarily with or by 
means of the ministrations of the Christian 
Priest. “ Be baptized for the remission of 
sins and ye shall receive the gift of the 
Holy Ghost.” Thus it is connected with 
baptism. “ Through laying on of the Apos¬ 
tles’ hands the Holy Ghost was given” 
(Acts viii. 18). Thus it is connected with 
confirmation. And it is in the Holy Com¬ 
munion that we receive Christ, through the 
Holy Spirit, and by that same Spirit are 
sanctified. 

It remains to show briefly that what has 
been said of the Christian Priesthood and 
Sacrifices is in accordance with the teaching 
of our Church, as set forth in her Commun¬ 
ion Office. 

(1) We have the humbly presenting and 
placing upon' the Holy Table “ the alms 
and other Devotion^ of the People.” Then 
the placing upon the same “ the Bread and 
Wine,” with the prayer to God “most 
mercifully to accept our alms and oblations , 
and to receive our prayers.” (2) The con¬ 
fession of sins by Priest and People, with 
the absolution, denoted a Priestly act be¬ 
cause to be said by a Priest only. (3) 
The song Holy, Holy, Holy, ottered by 
all as a sacrifice of Praise. (4) The Prayer 
of Humble Access, another Incense-burn¬ 
ing. (5) The solemn special Priestly func¬ 
tion in the solemn repetition of the Lord’s 
words, “This is my Body,” “This is my 
Blood,” and of His acts in the taking, 
breaking, and blessing of the Bread; and 
taking and blessing of the Cup, doing this 
as a memorial of Him, as a showing forth 
of His death. (6) The oblation or offer¬ 
ing of these “ holy gifts” thus consecrated 
to the Father, in what we may call sacri¬ 
ficial words, “We, Thy humble servants, 
do celebrate and make here, before Thy 
Divine Majesty, with these Thy holy gifts , 
which we now offer unto Thee , the memo¬ 
rial Thy Son hath commanded us to make;” 
and again, “ And we earnestly desire Thy 
fatherly goodness, mercifully to accept this 
our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving;” 
yet again, “ And here we offer and present 
unto Thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and 
bodies, to be a reasonable , holy , and living 
sacrifice unto Thee,” “and although we 
are unworthy, through our manifold sins, 
to offer unto Thee any sacrifice, yet we be¬ 
seech Thee to accept this our bounded 
duty and service.” (7) The devout recep¬ 
tion by the Priest himself, and then his de¬ 
livering to the people of the Communion in 





PRIMATE 


616 


PRIMER 


both kinds. (8) The solemn Benediction in 
the name of the Blessed Trinity. 

.Here are eight ways in which the Church, 
following the Ancient Liturgies, sets forth 
plainly the Priestly character and sacrificial 
acts of her ministers ; uniting thus in one 
the Prophetic and Priestly functions. And 
it has been shown that for so doing she 
“ Has most certain warrant of Holy Scrip¬ 
ture.” We are not wrong, then, in calling 
our Ministers true Priests, and in saying 
that they offer sacrifices, not figurative, but 
real, and none the less so because most truly 
spiritual. “ For if the ministration of 
death. . . . was glorious, . . . How shall 
not the ministration of the spirit be rather 
glorious?” Rev. E. B. Boggs, D.D. 

Primate. A synonym for metropolitan. 
It is a term taken from the civil govern¬ 
ment, but its bounds of pow r er were slowly 
defined. The primacy was one at first of 
honor and of seniority, but as the Church 
grew and Synods became necessarily more 
frequent, and the presidency over them, and 
the right of precedence in them, more im¬ 
portant, the Primacy which belonged 
naturally to the civil metropolis attached to 
the See of that Capital. In Africa the rule of 
presiding by right of seniority held, and the 
oldest Bishop, as in our own arrangement, 
was Primate of the Province. The East 
had a slightly different arrangement from 
the West; the Province was under a Metro¬ 
politan and the Metropolitans under a Pa¬ 
triarch. But the West later had Patriarchs 
distributed as numerously as in the East, and 
so the Metropolitans were the chief Bishops. 
The Primacy was created under the Carlo- 
vingians to supply this defect, and the otfice 
became in one sense permanent; but as the 
Popes who helped to establish it found it in 
their way, in the matter of appeals, and as 
the Metropolitans did not like to have any 
one over them, the Primacy became but lit¬ 
tle more than titular. In the English 
Church the title was but little more than 
titular when, as a settlement of the quarrels 
between York and Canterbury, the Pope 
gave to York the Primacy of England, and 
to Canterbury the Primacy of all England. 
But latterly this Primacy of Canterbury 
has given the Archbishop a great deal of 
weight, both in England and elsewhere, and 
he is looked up to as the first Clergyman in 
England, and as having the Presidency in 
all gatherings of the Bishops of the Angli¬ 
can Communion. But a Primacy is far 
different from a Supremacy. So far as the 
West is concerned the Primacy of the whole 
Church in the West could be in the Bishop 
of Rome, but his usurpation of the title and 
creation of the powers of Pope, and a con¬ 
sequent claim to Supremacy, has led to the 
forfeiture and loss of his Primacy. Papal 
Supremacy is inconsistent with and con¬ 
demned by all the facts of a true Apostolic 
Primacy. 

Prime. The service said at the first 
hour,—at sunrise. The Monastic service 


of the English use contributed to the office 
of Daily Morning Prayer the Creed, the 
short Litany,—O Lord, shew thy mercy 
upon us, etc. O Lord, save the King. R. 
And mercifully hear us when we call upon 
thee. Y. Endue thy ministers with right¬ 
eousness. R. And make thy chosen people 
joyful. V. O Lord, save thy people. R. And 
bless thine inheritance. V. Give peace in our 
time, O Lord. R. Because there is none other 
that fighteth for us, but thou only, 0 Lord. 
Y. O God, make clean our hearts within us. 
R., etc. The restoration of the Versicles and 
Responses here given into our American 
Service is one of the proposals now before 
the Church from the Committee on the 
Enrichment of the Prayer-Book. 

Primer. A book of Elementary Instruc¬ 
tion. In the history of the Prayer-Book it 
means an elementary book upon the main 
points of the Faith. Several such books 
were published from 1527 a.d. to 1564 a.d. 
A very early English Primer dates from 
1890 a.d. , but the first that really entered 
into the Reformation work was Marshall’s, 
1535 a.d. , which was apparently a private 
venture. It contained expositions of the 
Creed, Lord’s Prayer, Commandments, and 
the Ave Maria. It also contained the offices 
and Hours, the Seven Penitential Psalms, 
the Dirige, and the commendations taken 
from the Roman offices. But the next 
Primer, “ The Godly and Pious Institution 
of a Christian man,” was a step forward, 
both in contents and in authority (1587 a.d.). 
It was called the “ Bishop’s Book,” being 
authorized by the King, and having the 
signatures of the two Archbishops and 19 
Bishops, 8 Archdeacons, and 17 Doctors 
of Divinity and Law. It went much fur¬ 
ther than Marshall’s, though containing 
still some matters on Purgatory. The 
Primer of Bishop Hilsey, though published 
after his death, in 1539 a.d., had also a by¬ 
part in the coming work of preparing a New 
Use. It gave the basis of our present Calen¬ 
dar of Lessons for Sundays and Holidays, 
and too, so far as modifications were admit¬ 
ted, for our Epistles and Gospels. The 
King receded somewhat from the position in 
the Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for 
any Christian man (1543 a.d.). But in 1545 
a.d. the King’s Primer, which incorporated 
the Litany, which (1544 a.d.) had been 
ordered in English, though formed upon 
the model of the previous Primers, was 
still greater advanced, though much was yet 
to be effected. In the reign of Edward VI., 
the King’s Primer was reprinted 1547 a.d., 
and in 1553 a.d. there was a new Primer of 
Private Prayers issued. This King’s Primer 
was also the basis of Queen Elizabeth’s first 
Primer (1559 a.d.). A second (1566 a.d.) 
was a good deal changed from this ; alto¬ 
gether the Primers had a good deal to do 
with the instruction and preparation for the 
work of Reformation. They taught a far 
more correct doctrine, still, fell short of what 
was needful, and they put forth what might 





PRIMITIVE CHURCH 


617 


PROCESSION 


be called tentative forms, which paved the 
way for the use of the Prayer-Book. Those 
of Elizabeth’s reign had, of course, not so 
much influence. After the one put forth in 
1571 a.d. no more were- issued. This form 
of instruction has since been done by the 
very common books of Devotion, which 
under other names have practically carried 
on the work begun by Marshall’s Primer. 

Primitive Church. This phrase, which is 
rather indeterminate, may be taken to refer 
to the period from the close of the Apostolic 
age to the holding of the Sixth General 
Council, 680 a.d. But in a narrower and 
more correct sense it may be taken to only 
include the Council of Chalcedon, 451 a.d. 
Reference is constantly made to this early 
period of the Church for several reasons. 
The government of the Church as then car¬ 
ried out must have been according to the 
establishment of it by the Apostles. There¬ 
fore all the writings of the sub-Apostolic 
Church are of great value in this respect. 
What Clement, the companion of St. Paul, 
and Ignatius, the convert of St. John and 
friend of SS. Peter and Paul, held and wrote, 
must much more really reflect the mind of 
the Apostles, and more accurately report 
what they did for the organization of the 
Church, than any inferences we can make 
from the letter of the New Testament. For 
Church polity the writings of those who 
conversed with the Apostles and of those of 
the second generation must be of far greater 
value than our speculations at present. 
Again, in doctrine, the fierce persecutions 
the first Christians had to endure were of 
service in making them cling but the more 
tenaciously to the doctrines of the Faith 
once delivered to the Saints. So what the 
ante-Nicene Fathers held (before 325 a.d.), 
their clear, simple statements and the defense 
made by the great doctors of the Church 
down to the Sixth General Council against 
heresies and false teaching, the writings 
of the great leaders in the contests of the 
Church, must be of worth to us in determin¬ 
ing how Holy Scripture is to be understood. 
It is clear, of course, that the Fathers are 
valuable to us as unbiased, honest witnesses 
of what was held and taught and defended by 
them as of vital importance to the Church. 
They cannot dictate to us their private opin¬ 
ions, some of which were untenable, but 
wherever they consent together in testifying 
that such were the doctrines of the Church, 
they are of great value. Again, in prac¬ 
tice, what they concur in testifying to be of 
Churchly practice in their day is of great 
importance to us. * 

Their mention of what the Liturgies were, 
how they conducted the services, how they 
observed Feasts, and Fasts, and Holidays, 
casts a good deal of light upon our own 
Prayer-Book, and guides us into a better 
appreciation of that beauty of holy worship 
which is our inheritance,—a historic inherit¬ 
ance we may not lightly part with. These 
great facts about the early Church, its gov¬ 


ernment, its faith, its practice, enable us to 
judge whether what we now hold in gov¬ 
ernment, in faith, in practice, is an innova¬ 
tion, something of a later age, an invention for 
convenience, or was from the first. For it 
is clear that any Body of co-religionists to 
claim to be a part of the Church Catholic 
must show that it has a historic continuity, 
that it is descended from the Church our 
Lord established at His Resurrection. For 
if it has broken the government He gave to 
the Apostles, or has lost the Faith He has 
deposited with them, it has forfeited its 
claim. Or if it has been formed and organ¬ 
ized in these latter days, it is not of the an¬ 
cient Faith. It has no links that bind it to 
the Cross of Christ. It has but a mushroom 
growth. Its definitions are only upon the 
basis of modern opinion. 

The appeal that the Episcopal Church 
makes to the New Testament and to the 
Primitive Church is free and honest. It 
challenges an examination by them. What 
does the New Testament teach? How did 
Clement, and Ignatius, and Polycarp, and 
Irenasus, and Cyprian, and Athanasius, and 
Jerome, and Augustine, and Cyril receive 
and transmit, the one to the other, the Doc¬ 
trines, and the Government, and the Worship 
of the Church? Upon their usages, upon 
their Faith, “historically the English, and 
then her daughter, the American Church, 
rest their claim to a part, a living, continuous 
part, in the Holy Catholic Church of Christ. 
What they showed that the Church held 
then we hold now, what they taught as the 
Church’s doctrine we teach now, and we do 
not fear the closest scrutiny into our claims 
by this test. 

More, we desire it, we urge it. Those who 
have thrown away Apostolic government 
cannot endure it. Those who have added 
to the Faith shrink from it. Of all bodies 
of the Christian world now, the Anglican 
Church and her daughter Communions 
alone can abide by the test of the Primitive 
Church. She therefore makes great use of 
it in her controversies, and she must, upon 
every legal maxim, demand that Her Or¬ 
ganization, and Her History, and Her 
Standards of Faith be judged by this touch¬ 
stone. 

Procession. It meant generally in the 
ante-Nicene days the going to church. But 
later, when Litanies were more common, the 
procession to the church in solemn state was 
used. In this the early Christians revived 
a custom from the pagan processions, which 
they did not deem contrary to their Faith. 

In the church, the clergy always left the 
vestry in order of rank, and so formed with 
their attendants a procession into the Sanc¬ 
tuary. But these processions in use in the 
Church service in the East were at the read¬ 
ing of the Gospel, which was carried in state 
from the Holy Table through the side chapel 
round into the Sanctuary again; and also at 
the bringing in of the oblations which are 
to be used at the celebration. The Deacon 






PROCESSION 


618 


PROPHECY 


has the paten placed upon his shoulder by 
the priest, who then takes the cup himself, 
and so they move out of the side chapel, 
which corresponds to our Vestry room, and 
pass through the church into the Sanctuary. 
In our own Church, processions in the 
church are directed at the consecration of a 
church and at the institution of a minister. 

Procession of the Holy Ghost. The doc¬ 
trine of the Third Person of the Holy 
Trinity regarding the mode of His Being. 
It is well to begin all statements of doctrine 
upon the Holy Trinity by saying that, no 
matter what deductions may be drawn from 
what we are taught, the doctrines themselves 
rest only upon revelation. Antecedently to 
revelation we can know nothing. There¬ 
fore to attempt to explain how the Holy 
Ghost from all eternal proceeded from the 
Father is mere folly. “If thou dost curi¬ 
ously inquire how the Son is begotten and 
how the Spirit proceedeth, I will inquire 
of thee as curiously how the soul and the 
body are conjoined.” (St. Gregory Nazian- 
zen, Orat. xx.) It is a part of the Nicene 
Creed, being set forth and appended to it by 
the General Council of Constantinople, 381 
a.d. : “ Who proceedeth from the Father.” 
In a Creed, or rather statement, of doctrine 
set forth by St. Epiphanius a little earlier, 
the same words occur: “ We,‘therefore, be¬ 
lieve in Him, that He is the Holy Ghost, 
the Spirit of God, the Perfect Spirit, the 
Paraclete Spirit, the Creator, proceeding from 
the Father, and received from the Son, and 
to be believed.” Again, the same Father 
saith, “ Always hath the Spirit proceeded 
from the Father and received of the Son ; 
for He is not different from the Father 
and the Son, but is from the same essence, 
from the same Deity, from the Father and 
the Son, with the Father and the Son” 
(Hser. 62, c. 4). The reverence of these 
quotations sets forth the spirit in which 
we must receive the statements of our Lord 
upon this revelation. “ But the Comforter, 
which is the Holy Ghost, whom the 
Father will send in My name, He shall 
teach you all things” (St. John xiv. 26). 
“ But when the Comforter is come, whom I 
will send unto you from the Father, even 
the Spirit of Truth, which proceedeth from 
the Father, He shall testify of Me” (St. 
John xv. 26). 

In these texts the Lord declares the mode 
of the subsistence of the # Holy Ghost. 
But He further declares the work of the 
Holy Ghost in the economy of man’s re¬ 
demption. He shall guide you into all truth. 
He shall receive of mine and show it unto 
you. And the Holy Ghost, therefore, is 
sent by the Son. The doctrine of the East¬ 
ern Church, that He proceedeth from the 
Father and is sent by the Son, is more 
close to Holy Scripture. Though indeed pro¬ 
ceeding eternally from the same self-existent 
Father, as the Son is the only-begotten of 
that Father, we may well say that they are 
consubstantial with the Father, and there¬ 


fore that, as of the same eternal essence, 
the Holy Ghost proceedeth from the Son 
also. Still, this is not so close to the Scrip¬ 
tures, but an inference from them, since He 
receives of the Father and the Son. This, 
however, does not justify the interpolation 
of the words “ and the Son” in the Creed 
(vide Filioque), though it does make the 
imploration, “ O God the Holy Ghost who 
proceedeth from the Father and the Son, 
have mercy upon us miserable sinners, a 
most proper and prevailing intercession, 
since by His mission from the Son He 
shares in our redemption. The doctrine, 
then, of the Holy Ghost proceeding from 
the Father (and, too, in a Divine sense, 
also from the Son) is of the Faith, and is to 
be most religiously believed. ( Vide Holy 
Ghost, Filioque, Spirit.) 

Proctor. (Lat. Procurator.') An officer 
who represents in judgment the parties 
who empower him (by warrant under their 
hands, called a proxy) to appear for them to 
explain their* rights, to manage and instruct 
their cause and to demand judgment. 

The Proctors of the clergy represent them 
in Convocation. The Deans, Archdeacons, 
and Proctors of the several Chapters sat in 
it ex officio , but the Parsons, Vicars, and per¬ 
petual Curates in each Diocese,, who alone 
had the right of being represented, chose 
two Proctors to represent them. This is in 
the Convocation of Canterbury. But in the 
Convocation of York two Proctors are sent 
from each Archdeaconry. 

The title Proctor is given also to certain 
officers of the colleges who have a care over 
the morals and quiet of the universities. 

Procuration. A compounding by a pay¬ 
ment of money for the charges due for en¬ 
tertainment of a Bishop when upon a Visita¬ 
tion. The Procuration was not due without 
an actual Visitation. 

Prophecy. The general meaning of the 
word is the foretelling events by the revela¬ 
tion or inspiration of the Holy Ghost,— 
“who spake by the Prophets.” Prophecy 
was a part of the economy of God the Father 
in teaching, first, men in general, then the 
Patriarchs, then by special Messengers, His 
chosen People, and, lastly, ourselves J»y the 
One great Prophet, Jesus Christ. So a 
prophecy was given by God Himself of the 
Deliverer, “ Enoch, the seventh from Adam, 
prophesied” (Jude v. 14). So Noah in his 
blessing Shem and Japhet and in cursing 
Ham acted as a prophet. Abraham re¬ 
ceived direct revelations of Him who should 
be the Heir of the world. Isaac and Jacob 
were inspired with the spirit of Prophecy, 
in delivering their several blessings. The 
prophetic word was withheld till Moses was 
endowed with it. But through him it took 
a wider and deeper tone. The Spirit of 
prophecy gave present instructions, as in the 
case of the Seventy, who prophesied, but to 
him it was reserved to foretell the future. 
And here, singularly as in our Lord’s own 
prophecy of the end of the world, Moses’ 





PKOPHECY 


619 


PKOPHESYING 


direct prophecy was of the destruction of 
Jerusalem. With him ceased again the 
spirit of prophecy till the time of Samuel. 
In the sense of prophetical teaching there 
had been no great interruption, but in the 
higher sense of the word the gift was re¬ 
stored in Samuel. The power of prophecy 
was a gift which depended wholly upon the 
wisdom and purposes of the Spirit. The 
subjects of prophecy were the most varied, 
as may be well supposed of Him for whose 
care nothing is too minute and for whose 
might nought is too great. They were all 
intended to have one aim, the preparation 
of the world for the coming of Christ, and 
according to the exigencies of the time in 
which they were delivered, so were ordered 
the minor accessories to this main theme. 

Egypt, Assyria, Greece, and Eome, the 
greatest kingdoms, were prophesied of. The 
Edomite in his stronghold, the Moabite be¬ 
yond Jordan, were warned in prophecy of 
their coming fate. The household of the 
King, the birth of a son, were all included. 
Wider than these was the prophecy of the 
last great Kingdom,—the Kingdom of the 
Messiah and the ingathering of the Gentiles. 
This we are now aiding to fulfill. The 
effect of prophecy upon the mind of men is 
deepened rather than lessened by Chris¬ 
tianity. Few prophecies yet remain unful¬ 
filled, but the study of prophecy and its 
fulfillment has but confirmed our faith in 
the certainty that those prophecies yet to be 
accomplished will not fail of a complete and 
literal fulfillment. The study of the proph¬ 
ecies has also another result. They have 
been so minutely carried out, even in cases 
where it was not apparently necessary to do 
so, that the devout student is led to believe 
in something more .than the mere general 
inspiration of the prophet. Take Jeremiah’s 
prophecy (Jer. li. 27-58), uttered seventy 
years before it was fulfilled, of the destruction 
of Babylon, and read it carefully and com¬ 
pare it with the secular accounts, and the 
reader will see how literally it was carried 
out. 

The minuteness, too, of the prophecy of 
Isaiah of Cyrus, who was to fulfill the 
prophecy of Jeremiah, “ That saith of Cy¬ 
rus. He is my shepherd, and shall perform 
all my pleasure, even saying to Jerusalem, 
Thou shalt be built, and to the temple, thy 
foundations shall be laid,”—for by the decree 
of Cyrus the work on each went so far,—is 
remarkable. The subject is too broad for so 
small a space as is allowed here. But a law 
of prophecy may be noted at this point— 
The manifold application of prophecy. The 
seventy-second psalm was of Solomon, but 
it passed behind him and depicted the Mes¬ 
siah. Out of Egypt have I called my Son, 
was of Israel in the first place, but of Christ 
afterwards. Of Judah’s blessing the full 
meaning could only enter in the Lawgiver 
Shiloh, the Lord Jesus Christ. And 
through this predictive element comes the 
secondary, but no less important, one of es¬ 


tablishing our faith in the moral government 
of God, as well as in His ordering all things 
according to His purposes. For it is one 
thing to admit His sovereignty, and another 
to acknowledge the moral law of this sover¬ 
eignty. 

Prophecy ceased with the Kevelation of 
St. John the Divine, and the gift has not 
been bestowed since upon men, nor is there 
any real need of it, as there is no real need 
now of miracles. We are now fulfilling 
prophecy, aiding in completing it. As our 
Faith is founded upon a completed prophecy 
for our strengthening, so for our trial, it in¬ 
volves a yet incomplete prophecy, which is 
also a part of our prayer. “ He shall come 
to judge the quick and the dead,” sums up 
the limit of prophecy, and the petition, Thy 
Kingdom come, is essentially the same 
thing. But there are yet several unfulfilled 
predictions before this consummation. The 
conversion of the Jew, the practical unity 
of the Church and the gathering of all peo¬ 
ple into it, and, it may be added, the restor¬ 
ation of Jerusalem to the Jew, are main 
points of prophecy tl\at lie yet in the his¬ 
tory of the future. That they may be at 
hand no one can assert who reads the surface 
signs of the times, and yet, beneath the out¬ 
ward course of the political and the relig¬ 
ious world, we see and feel deeply that there 
is at work the power of God’s Spirit, which 
at any time can bring about their comple¬ 
tion. And, too, it must be remembered that 
He who combines all things to work together 
for good, doeth it for the greatest good of 
the greatest number, and, too, knoweth 
when men’s hearts are best prepared to re¬ 
ceive His acts. There is a mercy in the very 
delays in the accomplishment of the proph¬ 
ecies. 

Prophesying. In the New Testament 
this word usually means the public instruc¬ 
tion and the worship rather than pre¬ 
diction. There were prophets, of course, in 
the Apostolic Church endowed with the 
knowledge of the future. Such was Aga- 
bus. It was more nearly our modern idea 
of preaching than that which we under¬ 
stand by Apostolic preaching. The Apos¬ 
tles were heralds, and so proclaimed the 
Gospel to all men,—its terms of mercy and 
its grand inclusiveness. But other subordi¬ 
nate officers could very properly resume 
these subjects and enforce them in the con¬ 
gregations of the faithful, and could urge 
the obligations of that holy religious life 
and the lofty morality of the Gospel. Proph¬ 
esying was a gift, a charisma, and treated 
as such, as being especially suited to the 
needs of a new work. The possessor of it 
was treated with special consideration, and 
yet it happened that his conduct would lead 
to others slighting the usefulness of the 
charisma. Directions upon this are given 
very fully by St. Paul in the fourteenth 
chapter of 1 Corinthians and elsewhere. It 
is extended by some expositors to include the 
singing of the worship. 




PROPHET 


620 


PROPITIATION 


Prophet. The prophets of the Old Testa¬ 
ment were nearly all in some way or other 
prophets of Christ. If not in word yet 
in type, as in the cage of Jonah, whose 
prophecy is yet a history, whose history was 
a type of our Lord, and whose sole prophecy 
in the short sentence, “ Yet forty days and 
Nineveh shall be destroyed,” led to that re¬ 
pentance on the part of the Ninevites which 
has become the pattern of all preaching of 
repentance. Some of the prophets only ap¬ 
pear once and then disappear from the sacred 
record,—a single message apparently, and 
then the messenger is discharged. Others 
again, as Elijah, bore a very prominent part 
in the political history of the nation. Elijah 
was the type of St. John the Baptist, who 
came in the power and grand sternness of the 
older prophet. But it is true that nearly 
all of those of whom any continuous account 
is given were in some way instruments in 
the preparation of the nation for the coming 
of the Messiah. Of these, the leading 
prophets, Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, 
and Daniel, are the chief. Isaiah is indeed 
so full that he is called the Evangelical 
prophet. Next in extent of the prophecy, but 
not by any means less important in the con¬ 
tents of his prophecy, comes Daniel, then 
Jeremiah, and then Ezekiel, and, lastly, 
Moses. But it is to be understood that this 
ranging of them is only in the number and 
extent of their prophecies, for we may note 
that Moses gave but one principal prophecy 
of Christ, and that one which only de¬ 
scribes his prophetic office ; and yet so deep 
was the prophecy fixed in men’s memory, 
that when St. John the Baptist began his 
preaching he was asked, “Art thou Elijah, 
art thou that prophet?” and of Christ, very 
many rightly believed that He was that 
prophet. They exercised a general advisory 
power. Ahijah, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, 
Jeremiah, are notable instances of this, and 
this office of advice, warning, and of au¬ 
thoritative interference was very seldom 
resented. The career of Elijah was very re¬ 
markable, as exercising a singular influence 
at a marked period of the history of Israel. 

Was it necessary that the prophet should 
know the full extent and importance of his 
prophecy ? That could hardly be. He was 
but the messenger, and did not need to know 
the import of his message. It was enough 
if he delivered it accurately, and in fact, 
there were many things to prevent his full 
conception of the prophecy. It was not in 
the Jew to realize all that was meant by the 
reception of the Gentile into the Covenant. 
He could not realize the conditions under 
which it afterwards became possible and 
passed into history; as now we cannot 
realize how the Jew is to be restored, for we 
cannot forecast accurately the political con¬ 
ditions under which alone it can be effected. 
All we know is that it surely will be. 
Again, while the prophets all contributed 
to the sum of the prophecies on the Messiah, 
they did not do so in sequence. After the 


prophecy of the person of the Messiah was 
clearly established, then each of the prophets 
had some special trait in His mission or per¬ 
son to describe. One gives one point, another 
a different one, but they all spake as that one 
Holy Spirit gave to them, who was at the 
same time ruling and overruling the politi¬ 
cal and social development of men. They 
spake not of their own will, nor proclaimed 
their message as they pleased, but with a 
wisdom given from the Holy Ghost they 
unfolded for us visions of the things yet to 
be, speaking only of those things which 
were revealed to them alone by God for 
our sakes. 

The Jews grouped their prophets in the 
second of the triple division they made of 
the sacred books, the Law, the Prophets, and 
the Psalms. It is well worth adding that 
there can be no parting asunder of these as 
if they had no bonds. The Law contained 
prophecies, the Prophets illustrated and en¬ 
forced the Law. The Psalms, in the service 
of the Law, repeated the Prophecies and of¬ 
fered them in solemn worship to God. Com¬ 
paring several accounts and only giving cen¬ 
tral dates, we may suppose that the prophets 
would fall into something like this order: 
Hosea, 740 b.c. Joel, 800 b.c. Amos, 787 
b.c. Obadiah, 877 b.c. Jonah, 840 b.c. 
Micah, 722 b.c. Isaiah, 758 b.c. Nahum, 
660 b.c. Habbakuk, 630 b.c. Zephaniah, 
630 b.c. Jeremiah, 600 b.c. Ezekiel, 580 
b.c. Daniel, 580 b.c. Haggai, 520 b.c. 
Zechariah, 520 b.c. Malachi, 430 b c. This 
is probably as nearly correct as any arrange¬ 
ment that can now be made of them, since 
for two or three of them there is not suffi¬ 
cient indication or allusion to enable us to 
ascertain more than the approximate date at 
which they prophesied. 

We must refer to the Commentaries and to 
Smith’s Bible Dictionary for more extended 
information upon this most deeply inter¬ 
esting subject, since the questions that could 
be discussed are too many, and would lead 
us too far aside our purpose to permit them 
to be introduced here. (Horne’s Introduc¬ 
tion, Fairburn’s Prophecy: its Nature, 
Functions, and Interpretation, Lee on the 
Inspiration of Holy Scripture, Keith on 
the Prophecies,—a good book, but needing 
revision and addition.) 

Propitiation. The word occurs but twice 
in the English version (Rom. iii. 25; 1 John 
ii. 3). But the doctrine is of the foundation 
of our Faith. It means “ the price of ex¬ 
piation,” the “ expiatory offering,” and per¬ 
fectly represents the verse in Hebrews, “ He 
entered in once into the Holy Place, having 
obtained eternal redemption for us” (Heb. 
ix. 12). St. John uses the Greek word sig¬ 
nifying Propitiation, the act or effective 
cause of God’s being appeased, twice: once 
in the Comfortable words, and again in 1 
John iv. 10, putting there the act for the 
actor, and so identifying, as is often done in 
Holy Scripture, the responsibility of the 
actor for the act. But St. Paul uses the word 




PROSA 


621 


PROTOTYPE 


that signifies the mercy-seat, which word is 
of the same root as the one St. John uses. 
And St. Paul, by this word official, techni¬ 
cal, identifies our Lord’s entrance into the 
Presence of Presences with the sacrifices of 
the day of Atonement, and with the en¬ 
trance of the High-Priest into the Holy of 
Holies, and the sprinkling of the mercy-seat 
beneath the Cherubim with the blood of 
Atonement. In Christ is our covenant. 
His Law of Liberty is the interpretation of 
the Law on the Tables (2 Cor. iii. 3), and 
He is our Mercy-seat ( cf . Rom. iii. 25, with 
Lev. xvi. 12, 13). Those types, then, that 
had to be themselves separated were com¬ 
bined by ritual into one act, as Aaron the 
Priest, with the Blood of the sin-offering, 
made atonement upon the mercy-seat. All 
these separate types meet in Christ, who is 
our High-Priest forever, making an atone¬ 
ment with His own blood, and is the Mercy- 
seat, the Propitiatory from which forgive¬ 
ness is given to us. All these ceremonies 
centre upon Him who is our Advocate and 
our Propitiation. 

Prosa. Upon the close of the singing of 
the Allelujah the voice dwelt upon and pro¬ 
longed the cadence; this cadence later had 
words placed to the notes, and hence these 
were called a Sequence, or a Prosa. This 
custom dates from the ninth century. The 
words which were set to these cadences were 
often very beautiful and noble hymns. The 
Veni Creator Spiritus , Lauda Sion, and 
Dies irse , are Sequences, since they were 
written to the music of the prolonged ca¬ 
dence of the Alleluia. 

Protestant. The word Protestant came 
from the Protest of those Princes who pro¬ 
tested at the II. Diet of Spires (1529 a.d.) 
against the revocation of a resolution of the 
I. Diet of Spires (1526 a.d.), which had 
granted to each Prince authority to regulate 
the ecclesiastical affairs of his jurisdiction 
until a General Council could be summoned. 
They protested against the breaking of the 
agreement, and warned the Emperor of 
the troubles which would follow. This is 
the origin of a term which has been wholly 
changed in its application to modern Chris¬ 
tian bodies. If used simply to declare that 
the Church protests against error of every 
sort, it is proper enough. The Church of 
God protests against sin. She protests 
against heresy. She protests against false 
doctrine. She protests against usurpation. 
She protests against innovation. In this 
sense the Church must be protestant, and in 
no other. But when the term is made to 
include all who may be protestants against 
some doctrine they may fancy is wrong, and 
who claim it simply because they are not Ro¬ 
manists, then the term is misleading at least. 
Any body, of those who profess and call 
themselves Christians, that chooses, may 
protest against true doctrine, against ancient 
practices and worship, and claim to be 
Protestant. The Church cannot permit 
herself to be herded with these. The word 


is so extended as to mean principally those 
who hold mere negations of the Faith. It 
does not mean now an intelligent repudia¬ 
tion of Roman error and Papal usurpation, 
and an equally intelligent and earnest de¬ 
fense of the Catholic Faith and the Divine 
institution and authority of the Church. 
In these things the Church stands upon es¬ 
sentially different ground from the Protest¬ 
ant bodies around her, and Her position, 
which is perfectly clear and sound, seems 
to many even of Her own members to be 
anomalous and contradictory. It is not so, 
but it is rather the reverse. Under the title 
Church the foundation of the Church has 
been set forth, and to that we refer for in¬ 
formation, and it must follow that to be true 
to Her Lord, to the deposit of the Faith He 
has given Her, and to Herself as His Body, 
she must teach positive truth. Therefore, 
as controversies and attacks upon Her var} r , 
so Her position, ever the same, needs varying 
defenses. The protest against Rome has 
given Her Her title; but she as truly pro¬ 
tests against the negations, now popular, the 
paring away of the faith, the shrunken de¬ 
fenses of doctrine, the casting away of 
ancient rites and worship among those who 
delight to call themselves Protestants. 

Protevangelion. An apocryphal Gospel 
attributed to St. James. It was brought 
from the East by Protulus, who translated it 
from the Greek. 

Prothesis. In the Eastern Church, ( a ) the 
room in which the elements are prepared for 
the Celebration. It is partly a vestry room 
and partly a chapelry, and varies in the dif¬ 
ferent churches. In some it is really the 
Credence-table of the Western. In more 
costly and magnificent churches it is a 
chapel. 

( b ) The office of the Prothesis. It appears 
that the idea of the office was taken from 
the Tabernacle service, when the Table of 
the Shewbread was ordained. It is a solemn 
preparation of the elements in the Chapelry, 
or at the Side table, in quite a long service, 
after which the elements are taken in proces¬ 
sion through the holy doors to the Altar. 
This service is of great antiquity, as it is al¬ 
luded to in St. Cyril’s Catechetical Lectures 
delivered in 380 a.d. in Jerusalem, as if then 
it was a customary part of the service. 

Prothonotary. The chief of the notaries 
or scribes, the ecclesiastical officers who had 
various duties connected with collecting and 
registering the facts of Church affairs, often 
the recording the acts of the martyrs, the 
notes to be made of synodal decisions, the 
transcribing and preserving records, and 
similar functions. They were chiefly at¬ 
tached to the Church at 'Constantinople. 
They often discharged the double function 
of Registrars and Historiographers. 

Prototype. The pattern upon which a 
thing is formed. Moses received the proto¬ 
type of the Tabernacle from heaven. But 
the term has a theological sense, which re¬ 
moves it far above such a material use. 





PROVERBS 


622 - 


PROVERBS 


Adam was formed upon the prototype of the 
image of God. It is, then, a very important 
term, since it relates to our redemption in 
Christ. It has a bearing upon our Lord’s 
Human Nature, upon our Likeness in 
soul and body to Him, upon His restoring 
us, broken and tainted with sin, to His own 
likeness and righteousness, upon our im¬ 
mortal condition hereafter. How far have 
we fallen from that form in which we 
were created ? What gulf lies between us 
and that prototype, the Image of God? and 
has that gulf been bridged by our Lord ? 
The Scriptures are very explicit on some 
points, but totally silent' on others. Man 
was formed after God’s image. But in 
what way we wear that glorious Image we 
cannot now know, for God is a Spirit, and 
the conditions and Image of a self-existent 
Spirit we cannot understand. But as to our 
restoration in Christ the Scriptures are 
equally explicit, and it was their purpose and 
office so to be. Christ is the very Image of 
God, in the form of God, the Image of the 
Invisible God, and took upon Himself 
the form of a servant for our sakes. He be¬ 
came man, and the prototype became a par¬ 
taker of the nature of the type, and He by 
this act bound Himself to us and us to Him 
for our restoration. He is in us, in a real, 
true, restoring sense. By our transfigura¬ 
tion ( cf . Rom. xiv. 2, and St. Matt. xvii. 
2d) we are restored to that archetype, a res¬ 
toration which will not be completed till the 
body and soul shall be re-joined at the resur¬ 
rection. But the means thereto given us 
are many, and pertain to every form of our 
bodily and spiritual life. Our baptism is a 
new birth. Our confirmation is the sanctifi¬ 
cation of our bodies and souls as Temples of 
God. Our Services in His House place us 
in the gleam of His glorious presence. Our 
absolutions are constant restorations to His 
favor. Our communions the medicine of 
the soul and body now, and the food for 
our future restoration. Our benedictions 
put His holy name upon us. So that in 
the Holy Church we have the means and 
graces given us for a renewing, a remould¬ 
ing, a transforming of ourselves in heart 
and will, in soul and body, till we be com¬ 
pletely restored to that prototype in the 
splendor of the Image of God in which we 
were created. 

Proverbs. The collection of pithy, wise 
sentences into a single book. The word 
proverb has several meanings, of “ by¬ 
word,” “ sharp saying,” often witty, some¬ 
times sarcastic, always containing a practi¬ 
cal truth. Some proverbs have grown up 
among the people, some have been framed 
as maxims by men having deep insight and 
knowledge of human nature. Some have 
been framed of utterances which had orig¬ 
inally no connection with proverbial wisdom. 
The proverb may contain a half truth and 
so mislead, were it not counterbalanced by 
some other proverb which contains its cor¬ 
relative. 


Proverbs, the Book of Proverbs, is 
usually and hastily attributed as a single 
composition to King Solomon. The express 
statements in the thirtieth chapter, “ The 
words of the son of Jakeh,” and in the 
thirty-first chapter, “ The words of King 
Lemuel, the prophecy that his mother 
taught him,” at a glance show that it must- 
have received at least these two appendices ; 
but turning to chapter twent} r -five we read, 
“ These are also the proverbs of Solomon, 
which the men of Hezekiah, King of Judah, 
copied out.” And again, the tenth chapter 
begins briefly the Proverbs of Solomon. We 
find, then, at least five collections of prov¬ 
erbs, made at different times,—the first (ch. 
i.-ix. 18) claimed by Solomon ; the second 
(ch. x.-xxiv. 84) briefly headed as his; the 
third (ch. xxv.-xxix. 27) collected by the 
men of Hezekiah, and so far the whole bears 
Solomon’s name, but the other two appen¬ 
dices (ch. xxx. and ch. xxxi.) are by different 
men. Who Agur and King Lemuel were 
cannot be known, whether mere names 
placed there by the composer, or whether 
they were men living later than Hezekiah. 
But it is far more devout and reasonable to 
suppose that they were really men, for Holy 
Scripture does not need to borrow fictitious 
names to commend its writings. The Rab¬ 
bins say that these were names of King Sol¬ 
omon. It has also been claimed that only 
the second section (ch. x.-xxiv.) can be Solo¬ 
mon’s, since it is in a different style from the 
first. But the first verse is decisive of this, 
and the argument from style is a very 
doubtful one. There may be such marked 
disagreements in style that we cannot cer¬ 
tainly know that the composition under criti¬ 
cism could have been the work of the alleged 
author, but there is always something in and 
under the style itself, the tone of thought, 
which is determining. Hence from the very 
variety of the subjects discussed no such 
criticism can hold good. The Book of Prov¬ 
erbs,’then, is principally by King Solomon 
with these additions. Its contents, then, 
can be grouped into the five divisions 
pointed out above. The first is a description 
of true wisdom, beginning with the precept 
which runs through the whole of the Bible, 
“ The fear of the Lord is the beginning of 
knowledge” (Prov.), “of wisdom” (Psalm), 
and ends with a splendid description of wis¬ 
dom, which can only have its personification 
in Christ, and points in the closing verses 
with a terribly significant warning against 
the strange woman whose guests are in the 
depths of Sheol. The second section is made 
up of sententious, pithy verses, short, 
pointed, and clear, composed in the style of 
poetry, so common among the Jews, which 
brings out the antithesis of the thought, for 
example: 

“ A wise son maketh a glad father: 

But a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.” 

These proverbs are so simple and trans¬ 
parent in language that they seem as though 






PROVIDENCE 


623 


PROVIDENCE 


they need hardly to be uttered, yet in their 
very simplicity there is a depth of insight 
which can only come from one who, how¬ 
ever he misused it for himself, yet had re¬ 
ceived wisdom from on high. There are 
half truths uttered here and there, but there 
is always its correlate at hand in an ap¬ 
parently contradictory proverb. As in the 
well known proverb (Prov. xxvi. 4, 5), 
“ Answer not a fool according to his folly, 
lest thou be also like unto himwhich is 
balanced by “ Answer a fool according to 
his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.” 
There ar£ other contradictory proverbs, 
which led some of the Rabbins to doubt 
if the books were canonical, but the de¬ 
cision was characteristic. And even the 
Book of Proverbs they sought to make 
apocryphal because its words were contra¬ 
dictory the one to the other. And where¬ 
fore did they not make it apocryphal ? 
The words of the book lvoheleth (Ecclesi¬ 
astes) are not apocryphal, we have looked 
and found the sense: “here also we must 
look.” It is a mark of the Solomonic writ¬ 
ings that they are contradictory. But is not 
that the result of his strange contradictory 
career? Wise above all others, and using 
his divine gift wrongly, plunging into all 
human knowledge, and so into the depths 
of the double sins of pride and idolatry, his 
proverbs must have the same contradictory 
nature in them. It is objected that some 
proverbs are those of a man of business, or 
of a householder, or of an ordinary citizen, 
of a keen observer of, but not participant 
in, politics, and surely a king could not so 
write. The objection is strange, for if there 
are given proverbs upon all these ranks and 
businesses, they should be in the true line of 
the character represented, and one like King 
Solomon, able to stand apart and criticise 
himself as in Ecclesiastes, could surely write 
wise sayings from these several stand-points. 

There are about fourteen quotations in 
the New Testament from this book. - Our 
Lord quotes it once, but in a form which 
also occurs in the Law; St. Paul seven 
times, with probable allusions elsewhere. 
St. James four times ; St. Peter four times; 
St. John once, in his first epistle. For us 
this establishes the authority of the Book 
upon indisputable grounds. It was read in 
the public services of the Church ; and in the 
Calendar of our own Prayer-Book it is 
read both through the month of August in 
the daily service, and it is appointed for the 
Sundays after Trinity, beginning with the 
twenty-third. 

Providence. Providence means foresight. 
The term is generally used in a religious 
sense to signify God’s care over all things 
which He has made. The idea was not un¬ 
known to the heathen world. We see it in 
Homer’s golden chain reaching from heaven 
to earth. Cicero speaks of the providence 
of the gods. While Natural Religion gives 
some idea of the providence of God, His 
care, as opposed to blind Fortune and mere 


accident, is especially shown in the Word of 
Revelation. God controls all things so as 
to promote the highest good of the whole. 
“ The Providence of God displays omnipres¬ 
ence, omniscience, omnipotence, holiness, 
justice, and benevolence.” The telescope 
shows God’s wonder-working power in the 
heavenly bodies, while the microscope dis¬ 
closes new beauties in the vegetable king¬ 
dom and “ the insect world.” If nature 
could work of herself, then, as Sir Thomas 
Browne says, “ let our hammers rise up and 
boast that they have built our houses, and 
our pen receive the honor of our writings.” 
The mechanic preserves the object of his 
skill, the parent guides the child, so God 
preserves the universe. “By the word of 
the Lord were the heavens made” (Ps. 
xxxiii. 6). “ The Lord looketh from heaven ; 
He beholdeth all the sons of men” (yer. 13). 
The regularity of the seasons shows a gov¬ 
erning Mind. In moral life, the blessings 
of the righteous and the punishments of the 
wicked display the working of God’s hand. 
The final result will be seen at the Judgment- 
day. God’s care over the preservation of 
His Sacred Word and His Holy Church, 
and His dividing the nations of the world 
according to His will, and then condescend¬ 
ing to number the hairs of man’s head, and 
watch the sparrow’s fall, and paint the lily, 
are indications of the extent and minuteness 
of His Providence. The xci. Psalm nar¬ 
rates how God specially watches over the 
righteous, and gives them in charge of His 
angels. In the magnificent civ. Psalm all 
creation waits upon Him, and He opens His 
hand, and fills all things with good. In 
God “ we live, and move, and have our 
being” (Acts xvii. 28). In Hebrews i. 3, 
we behold God in the Person of Christ, 
“upholding all things by the word of His 
power.” St. James in his Epistle (chap. i. 
17) assures us that “ every good gift and 
every perfect gift is from above.” Even af¬ 
flictive dispensations may be a part of God’s 
providence, and end in good, as seen in the 
cases of Job, and in the history of Joseph’s 
humiliation and exaltation. In losses by 
death, where human judgment is puzzled. 

Even handicraft is to be traced to God’s 
providence. Bezaleel was filled “ with the 
spirit of God, in wisdom” to do the work 
of the Tabernacle, as well as his compan¬ 
ions (Ex. xxxi. 1-6). Of the plowman it is 
said that “his God doth instruct him in 
discretion” in breaking the clods and cast¬ 
ing in the wheat (Isa. xxviii. 24-29). 

The Christian idea of Providence is that 
all things, great and small, are under the 
ceaseless care and guidance of God. That 
while He calleth the stars by their names 
(Isa. xi. 26), and hath established the earth 
(Ps. cxix. 90), still, He humbleth Himself 
to hear the prayer of every fainting heart, 
and even the cry of the young raven (Job 
xxxviii. 41). 

# If God guides great events, small affairs 
must be also in His hand, for from appar- 





PROVINCES 


624 


PROVINCES 


ent trifles great things proceed. The doc¬ 
trine of a general Providence must imply 
that of a special one, though man is not 
always able to .trace the “ footsteps of God 
marching through time.” 

Authorities : Rev. James D. Butler, in 
Kitto’s Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature, 
McCosh on the Divine Government, Cham¬ 
bers’s Astronomical Discourses, Baring- 
Gould’s Post-Mediaeval Preachers. 

Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Provinces. When our Lord ascended 
up on high, He did not leave His entire au¬ 
thority with St. Peter, telling all the other 
Apostles that they should render implicit 
obedience in all things to him ,—which is 
the Papal theory; but He said, “As My 
Father hath sent Me, even so send I you ” 
(in the plural); and “ Lo, I am with you 
(plural again) alway, even unto the end of 
the world.” The entire Episcopate, there¬ 
fore, could it be assembled and speak unit¬ 
edly, would be to us as the Voice of the 
Holy Ghost Himself (“it seemed good to 
the Holy Ghost and to us.” Acts xv. 28). 
The definitions of the undisputed General 
Councils are substantially such utterances, 
and therefore they are of oecumenical and 
perpetual authority. Now there are only 
three possible theories in regard to the exer¬ 
cise of Episcopal power : 1st. That the Pope 
is the sole real Bishop, the others being only 
his deputies, and subject to his arbitrary 
power. 2d. That each individual Bishop 
has all power within himself, with no liabil¬ 
ity to correction or restraint from any 
other; which would make as many Popes 
as Bishops, and render real unity impossi¬ 
ble. 3d. That the power is in the Order , 
the authority of each individual being insep¬ 
arable from that of the Order, and every 
official action, therefore, being amenable to 
the superior authority of the Order , when¬ 
ever called in question by any. This is 
simply St. Cyprian’s famous rule : “ Episco- 
patus unusest , cujus a singulis in solidumpars 
teneiur In matters of ordinary occurrence 
it would be entirely impracticable to get 
the judgment of all the Bishops in the 
world, and therefore the Catholic Church 
has, from the earliest antiquity, been sub¬ 
divided into portions of convenient size, so 
that, in each, there might easily be joint 
action in the ordinary administration of 
Church discipline. In ascertaining the 
boundaries of these, the Church—having 
exactly the same reasons as the State for 
seeking convenience of action—uniformly 
accepted the State division of Provinces , 
conforming her ecclesiastical organization 
to the lines laid down by the civil govern¬ 
ment. Each Province had a number of 
Bishops and Dioceses,—seldom less than 
four or five,—often as many as fifteen or 
twenty. They were numerous enough to 
continue the Apostolic Succession of the 
Bishops in case of any vacancy; and, to 
show their essential equality, it was the 
rule that whenever there was a vacancy in 


their chief See, the other Bishops of the 
Province should unite in consecrating their 
own Metropolitan. 

The chief Bishop of the Province was, 
almost without exception, the Bishop of the 
Metropolis, or chief city, and therefore he 
was styled Metropolitan. The assembled 
Bishops of the Province represented the 
original College of the Apostles, and there 
was no ecclesiastical matter whatsoever, 
arising within the Province, which might 
not be appealed to their decision, from any 
part of the Province whatsoever. And no 
question could be carried out of thfi Province, 
to be settled elsewhere, unless perchance it 
was a question of Faith. Moreover, the 
assembled Bishops of the Province formed a 
Provincial Synod, with power to make 
Canons (subject to those of National or 
General Councils); and no single Diocese 
had any power of the kind. Where a na¬ 
tion was of small extent, or few in popula¬ 
tion, there might not be room for more than 
one Province within its bounds; and in 
that case the Province and the National 
Church were identical. But when the Na¬ 
tion was larger, it was subdivided into two 
or more Provinces, and all these Provinces, 
united, formed the National Church. And 
each National Church was organized under 
its own Chief Bishop, in accordance with 
the 31st of the Apostolical Canons:—“It 
is necessary that the Bishops of every Nation 
[■ekuctov edvovg] should know who is chief 
among them, and should recognize him as 
their head by doing nothing of great mo¬ 
ment without his consent,” etc. In the 
Church of Scotland, which is small, there is 
only one Province, and that Province is 
therefore the National Church. In England 
there are two Provinces, Canterbury and 
York, and it takes both of these, united, to 
make the National Church. In this coun¬ 
try we began, like Scotland, with Church 
people few and feeble. Our one Province 
was our National Church. As a Province 
of the Holy Catholic Church, our Provincial 
Synod (which we call the General Con¬ 
vention) has all the powers belonging to 
the ancient Provincial Synods, which it 
may choose to exercise. As to Doctrine, it 
is bound to accept, and does accept, the 
definitions of the Faith as set forth by the 
undisputed General Councils. As to Disci¬ 
pline and Worship it inherits, through the 
English Branch, the entire system of the 
Holy Catholic Church, with the alteration 
of such minor details as local circumstances 
may require; but its decisions on these 
points are not subject to the revision of any 
other authority. The erection and subdi¬ 
vision of Dioceses, the election and confir¬ 
mation and consecration of Bishops, the or¬ 
dination of Priests and Deacons, the entire 

legislation on Worship and Discipline,_ 

this, or as much of it as may seem advisable, 
is inherently in the hands of the General 
Convention, as being a Provincial Synod 
and a National Church, all in one. "Our 





PROVINCES 


625 


PROVINCES 


Presiding Bishop is recognized as our Chief 
Bishop, in full accordance with the 34th of 
the Apostolic Canons. 

But as our one Province has grown till it 
covers the immense territory of the United 
States, with sixty or seventy Bishops in the 
Provincial Synod, the conviction is being 
forced upon the minds of thoughtful men 
that we must have something intermediate 
between the General Convention and the 
single Diocese. Parts of the ancient work 
of a Province have become impossible with 
us. Anciently, the Provincial Synod was 
required to meet twice a. year , so as to hear 
promptly all appeals from any quarter that 
might be sent up. But our General Con¬ 
vention, having associated large numbers 
of clergy and laity with the Bishops, for 
better legislative action, has, from the first, 
felt itself disqualified for the exercise of 
Appellate powers, and we have been without 
any appeal whatsoever. Moreover, at first, 
the territory of an entire State was included 
in each Diocese. This was in accordance 
with the general practice of the Catholic 
Church, in accepting civil divisions as the 
proper boundaries of Ecclesiastical jurisdic¬ 
tions. But as the larger Dioceses have needed 
subdivision, this original principle has been 
unwisely departed from. New York has 
now five Dioceses, each of which is as inde¬ 
pendent of the other four as if New York 
had been subdivided into five separate 
States. The proper remedy for this is, not 
to abandon the subdivision of our larger 
Dioceses,—which is becoming more necessary 
every day,—but to understand that, with a 
National Church so extensive as ours is now, 
our original identity of a National Church 
with one single Province is outgrown: and 
while our General Convention remains as 
the voice of our National Church, we must 
have the organization of many separate 
Provinces in subordination to that chief au¬ 
thority. This cannot be done by one sud¬ 
den, transforming act: it must come by 
gradual growth. It cannot come by arbi¬ 
trarily binding together a number of Dio¬ 
ceses, each (from its foundation) embracing 
an independent State. In their Ecclesiasti¬ 
cal arrangements of Provinces (or what oc¬ 
cupy the practical position of Provinces) 
State lines have been ignored by Roman 
Catholics, Presbyterians, Methodists, and 
others. But that which is so peculiar and 
indestructible a feature of our National 
life must not be disregarded by the Church 
of America. The true remedy, therefore, 
is to look forward to the time when each 
State (with perhaps two exceptions) will be¬ 
come a Province. Illinois, with its three 
Dioceses of Chicago, Quincy, and Springfield, 
has already become a Province, name and 
thing, with its Provincial Synod and Court 
of Appeal. New York and Pennsylvania 
show that they are contemplating something 
of the same sort. In this form the change 
will be gradual, one State after another com¬ 
ing into line, as it is ready. The easiest way 

40 


to accomplish the result will be for a State 
Diocese to subdivide, at the first, into three 
or four Dioceses, continuing over its Dio¬ 
cesan Convention with only one change in 
its Constitution ; and that is, that whenever 
a question is taken 11 by Orders” the Order 
of Bishops—of whom there will then be 
three or four—shall have a separate and co¬ 
ordinate vote. 

The entire power of legislation (subordi¬ 
nate to that of General Convention) should 
eventually be left in the hands of these Pro¬ 
vincial Synods. The legislation of one 
small Diocese is so commonly the reflection 
of the peculiarities of its own Bishop for the 
time being, that it cannot win a sufficient 
solidity for permanent effect. But legisla¬ 
tion by a group of Dioceses, all springing 
from a common source (the original State 
Diocese), and with a separate approval of 
the Bishops as an Order, and with a Pro¬ 
vincial Court of Appeal to enforce that leg¬ 
islation by a consistent treatment in actual 
cases : all this would add effectiveness and 
stability to every part of our Church sys¬ 
tem. When there was a cheap and easy 
remedy provided (in the Court of Appeals) 
for any possible abuse, it would be safe to 
trust the Bishops with much more of adminis¬ 
trative power. Until then it would not be 
safe. Let us look ahead a few years, then, 
and see how a proper Provincial System 
would appear in action. Each large State 
(at least) would be a Province, having four 
or more Dioceses,—some, perhaps, from ten 
to twenty Dioceses. Each Diocese would 
have all the»rightsut has at present, except 
that of making and altering Constitution 
and Canons. It would elect its own Bishop, 
Secretary, Treasurer, Standing Committee, 
Deputies to General Convention, etc., and 
conduct its own Diocesan Missions. The 
Provincial Synod, containing all the Bish¬ 
ops of the Province, and clerical and lay 
members in proportion to the numbers of 
clergy and communicants in the Dioceses re¬ 
spectively, would have the sole power of 
legislation, subordinate to that of General 
Convention. The support and government 
of Educational and Charitable Institutions, 
and some organization by which the weaker 
parts of the Province might be helped by 
the stronger in the work of Home Missions, 
would also form subjects for Provincial ac¬ 
tion. The Court of Appeals would furnish 
a ready remedy for any grievance or abuse 
occurring anywhere in the Province. For 
all purposes except legislation, there might 
be a temporary union of State Dioceses to 
form a Province. But it should be essen¬ 
tial to any such temporary arrangement 
that any State Diocese should, ipso facto , 
become a Province as soon as it had three 
or four Dioceses of its own. In each Prov¬ 
ince, the Bishop of the chief city—conse¬ 
crated by the other Bishops of the Province 
—would be the Metropolitan or President 
of the Province ; and when the Dioceses in 
a State were sufficiently numerous, the 






PROVISION 


626 


PSALMS 


rights of confirming and consenting to the 
election of a Bishop, and the erection of 
new Sees, now exercised by the entire Amer¬ 
ican Church, should be secured solely to the 
Province concerned. The General Conven¬ 
tion should be left undisturbed just where it 
is now. Once in three years is not too often 
for it to meet. And every Bishop should 
attend, and every Diocese should be repre¬ 
sented in both orders. In all probability by 
that time each Diocese would be content to 
send only one or two deputies, instead of 
four of each Order. And the General Con¬ 
vention might, of its own accord, reserve to 
itself all legislation on intercommunion 
with other branches of the Church, all de¬ 
cisions on Doctrine, all legislation on the 
Prayer-Book and Ritual, and some chief 
points of Discipline, leaving all other mat¬ 
ters to the Provincial Synods. But even 
these possible changes are no necessary part 
of the Provincial System, which might be 
carried into effect, leaving General Conven¬ 
tion entirely unaffected. The change needed 
is to be wrought by elevating the State Dio¬ 
ceses into Provinces , and not by interfering 
with General Convention in any way. 

Rev. J. H. Hopkins, D.D. 

Provision. A usurped intrusion of the 
Pope upon the right of patronage to Eccle¬ 
siastical Benefices in England. It was an 
arbitrary intrusion, placing Italian clerks 
into English cures which they never saw, 
but from which they drew the revenues. It 
was stoutly resented by the Laity, and the 
statutes of provisors made under Edward 
III. (1355 a.d.) and Richard II. (1385 
a.d.) followed with some success the inge¬ 
nious devices for evasion by the Canon law¬ 
yers of the Roman Curia. Still, the Pope 
retained the power to set aside the canonical 
rights of the Ecclesiastical patrons, and to 
present to Benefices in their gift mero motu. 
Of course all this was stopped at the Refor¬ 
mation. 

Psalms, The. The Psalms are sacred 
poetry, although they do not have the poeti¬ 
cal form usually recognized in modern 
times. They have the peculiar form of He¬ 
brew poetry, which contained what may be 
styled “ thought rhythm” or “ parallelism.” 

The sentiment is so distributed that, as 
thought succeeds thought, it is connected 
with what precedes. Sometimes the links 
of connection are arbitrary, and sometimes 
they depend upon the repetition of a word 
or its antithesis. 

The use of poetic imagery is common as 
in modern poetry, and the language of emo¬ 
tion largely prevails. 

The Psalms treat of a great variety of 
topics. They were written not all at once 
nor by one author, but during a period of some 
centuries. They reflect the sentiments of 
their authors in that they were the outpour¬ 
ings of their hearts. It is this latter quality 
which makes them so well suited for the ex¬ 
pression of our own religious feelings. Love, 
joy, hope, trust, sorrow for sin, fear, and 


some others are common, or may be com¬ 
mon to all, and hence a man to-day may 
adopt the expressions used by him who lived 
many centuries ago. 

They are especially valuable now in the 
expression of Christian experiences, inas¬ 
much as they are the productions of men 
inspired by the Holy Ghost, and were 
designed to be of permanent value and of 
lasting use. While they were true as the 
outpouring of the soul’s emotions when 
written by David, or Ethan, or Asaph, they 
are equally true if they become the soul’s 
expressions to-day.. They set forth such and 
such things as true and in the connections 
when they were first composed, but beyond 
this they have a meaning which they were 
intended to have for later generations of men. 

Many versions of the Psalms have been 
made. The most prominent are the Sep- 
tuagint, the Vulgate, the English, and the 
German, besides the translations into all the 
dialects of men. Vast stores of learning 
have been used in the elucidation of their 
meaning, and in the tracing up of their his¬ 
tory, and with many a devotional writer they 
have been the favorite study. 

They have helped to quicken the devo¬ 
tions of the private Christian, and to swell 
the praises of the great congregation. The 
most earnest and pious students of sacred 
lore have regarded them as a treasury whence 
may be gathered precious truths concerning 
Christ and His Church which God the 
Holy Ghost has inspired. Many holy and 
learned expositors have striven humbly, but 
earnestly, and with deep faith to search the 
Psalms for the things which speak of the 
Heavenly Bridegroom and His Bride, and 
have found beneath the references to Israel 
and David, and the most common things, 
hidden allusions to One greater than all, 
and have brought sweetness out of the car¬ 
cass of the lion slain by the wayside. 

Among the many questions of interest 
which are suggested by the study of the 
Psalms are those which relate to their 
Canonical Position and Titles, their Author¬ 
ship, their Occasions, their Use in the Jew¬ 
ish Service, their Exegesis, their Prophet¬ 
ical Character, their Poetical peculiarities, 
and the Musical references attached to them. 

Of their use in Christian Worship, and 
their Christian Adaptations, something 
will be found under the heading “The 
Psalter.” 

The Psalms may be grouped under six 
general heads. Below will be found the 
names of the groups, with some illustrations 
under each. 

1st. Prayer and Penitence. —Psalms vi., 
xxv., xxxii., xxxv., xxxviii., li., lxiii., lxiv., 
cii., cix., cxl. 

2d. Thanksgiving. —ix., xviii., xxii., Ixxv., 
cxxiv., cxxix., cxxxv., cxxxvi., cxlix. 

3d. Adoration. —xxiii., xxxiv., c., civ., 
cxi., cxxxix., cxlvii., cl. 

4th. Instructive. —i., v., vii., ix., lxxxiv., 
cxix., cxxviii., cxxxiii. 




PSALTER 


627 


PSALTER 


5th. Prophetical. —ii., xvi., xxii., xl., 
xlv., lxviii., lxxii., lxxxvii., cx. 

6th. Historical. —lxxviii., cv., cvi. 

Commentaries upon the Psalms are numer¬ 
ous. Among the most valuable are Bishop 
Horne’s, Isaac Williams’s, “ The Psalms 
interpreted by Christ,” and Lange’s Com¬ 
mentary. While the scholar will of course 
study them in the original Hebrew, the 
English student will find valuable help by 
comparing the King James’ version with the 
Prayer-Book version; the latter being smooth 
and expressive, retaining with singular force 
the meaning of the original. Still further 
help will be found by examining some of the 
translations in which the peculiarities of 
Hebrew poetry are retained by means of 
Parallelisms, although no translation can 
preserve fully the distinctive traits of the 
original poetic form. 

Rev. G. W. Shinn. 

Psalter, The. The common name for the 
collection of Psalms as they are used in 
divine service is the Psalter. They are fre¬ 
quently spoken of as The Psalms of David, 
because David composed the larger number 
of them. The other authors to whom some 
are ascribed are Solomon, Moses, Hezekiah, 
Ezra, Ethan, and Asaph. The authorship 
of others is unknown. 

Many of them were used in the Temple 
service of the Jews, while Solomon’s Temple 
was standing, but others came later, after the 
return from the captivity. All of the 150 
were used in divine worship by the Jews 
during the four centuries preceding the com¬ 
ing of Christ, and were at once adopted as 
part of the ritual of the Christian Church 
when it was established, and have continued 
in use in the Church during all these eigh¬ 
teen Christian centuries. 

The Psalter was early divided into five 
parts, as may be seen by the doxologies at 
the end of the 41st, 72d, 89th, and 106th 
Psalms, but the principle upon which the 
division was made by the Jews is not very 
evident. 

In the Christian Church this division was 
disregarded, and there grew up various modes 
of using them. In later ages some were ap¬ 
pointed for certain days and seasons, and 
finally, in the English Church, they were dis¬ 
tributed through the month for Morning and 
Evening Prayer, beginning with the first on 
the first day of the month and ending with the 
last on the thirtieth day, with special selec¬ 
tions for certain seasons. There are various 
modes of saying or singing them in divine 
service. Sometimes they are sung as a 
chorus, by the choir and people, but as often 
sung antiphonally. In places where they 
are not sung they are read responsively by 
the minister and people. 

The Prayer-Book version of the Psalter is 
not the same as the King James’ Version as 
found in our Bibles. It is taken from the 
first authorized version of our English Bible, 
put forth in 1540 a.d. 

The use of the Psalms in Christian wor¬ 


ship has always been a very marked feature. 
The Psalter is the great Song Book of the 
Church. There are some general principles 
worthy of note, and which will show the fit¬ 
ness of the Psalms for use in Christian as¬ 
semblies. The first of these is the fact that 
God designed the Jewish Church to be in 
many things the type of the Christian 
Church. 

In the history of the Jewish Church we 
have accounts of its deliverance from bond¬ 
age, of its being led through the wilderness, 
of its crossing the Red Sea and the Jordan, 
of its settlement in Canaan, of its conflicts 
with the people of that land, and of the grad¬ 
ual development of its ritual and laws. 

In each of these particulars it typified sim¬ 
ilar things pertaining to the Christian 
Church. There are deliverances from bond¬ 
age of sin and the world, wearing marchings 
through trials, feeding upon food fuom 
heaven, conflict with foes, and the growth 
of the divine life and energy in the souls of 
believers. 

Transfer, then, much of what is said 
about Israel to the Christian Church, and it 
will be found to be as true as if written only 
to-day. 

The second principle is that Moses, David , 
and Solomon were in some particulars types 
of Christ Moses was the leader from bond¬ 
age, David the founder of the prosperity of 
the kingdom, and Solomon the wisest of 
kings and the man of peace. 

In whatever there was of excellence in 
these works, and in the character of the 
workers, there are contained predictions of 
Him who is the leader of His people, the 
Wisdom of God, and the Prince of Peace. 

The third principle is that some of the 
Psalms are direct prophecies of Christ and 
His Church, and others have a double fulfill¬ 
ment, first in the things near at hand, and 
then in those under the Christian dispensa¬ 
tion. 

This application of the Psalms was made 
by Christ and His Apostles on various oc¬ 
casions. Thus, for example, He predicted 
the treachery of Judas in words from the 
49th Psalm, while on the cross He poured 
out His lamentation in words from the 22d. 
When St. Peter spoke of His resurrection 
he quoted from the 16th Psalm. 

The fourth principle is, that the Psalms 
are the expression of the religious expe¬ 
riences of men in general. They are the out¬ 
pourings of the heart in gladness and in 
sorrow, in penitence and in faith, in hope 
and in fear. 

A very simple adaptation of the Psalms 
to Christian uses may be made by transfer¬ 
ring mentally the figures used to their pres¬ 
ent Christian equivalents, thus: 

Afflictions of David = Afflictions of 
Christ. 

David by name and Character = Type of 
Christ. 

Enemies of the King = Enemies of 
Christ. 




PUBLIC WORSHIP 


628 


PUBLIC WORSHIP 


House of Aaron == Christian Ministers. 

King’s daughter = The Church. 

Moab, Edom, and others == Enemies of 
the Church. 

Sanctuary = The Christian Church. 

Sacrifices = Christ’s one offering. 

Sins of Israel = Sins of Christians. 

Rev. G. W. Shinn - . 

Public Worship. The desire to worship 
pervades the heathen as well as the Chris¬ 
tian world. So strong is it that men have 
adored gold and silver images, the work of 
their own hands, or even animals and veg¬ 
etables. The first idea of worship in a 
proper sense is that of the individual com¬ 
muning with God. Adam in Eden, Moses 
on Mount Sinai, Abraham in the starry 
night (G^n. xv.), are examples of primitive 
religion. The mountain-top, the sea-side, 
or the arched grove are fitting places to 
adore the Creator. But men must associate 
for such a purpose to quicken each other in 
devotion. They must be sheltered from the 
weather, and it is desirable that beautiful 
buildings should be erected to the honor and 
glory of God. Plutarch says, “ It is possi¬ 
ble to find cities without walls, without 
letters, without kings, without wealth, 
without coin, without schools and thea¬ 
tres, but a city without a temple, or that 
useth no worship, prayers, and so forth, no 
one ever saw.” He believed that a city 
might more easily be built without a 
foundation than a community of men retain 
any cohesion without religion. The wor¬ 
ship of Moses is shared by others when they 
see God (Ex. xxiv. 9, 10). Common, public 
worship is a duty and a privilege. The 
children of God’s family come before their 
Heavenly Father for absolution and bene¬ 
diction, and for receiving spiritual food, and 
acknowledging benefits received. Public 
service should be formal and orderly, 
decent and reverent (1 Cor. xiv. 40). Each 
one should be early at church, if possible, 
to get the full benefit of the service. There 
should be no whispering. A Jewish teacher 
taught this in a comparison: if a man were 
resenting a petition to a king he would not 
e talking to his neighbor, much more 
should we come reverently before God. 
Worship implies self-abasement, confession, 
supplication, contemplation of God, and 
desire for communion with Him through 
Christ, by the aid of the Holy Spirit. 
As frequent taking of bodily food is neces¬ 
sary, so frequent worship is needed to renew 
spiritual life. It was our Saviour’s custom 
to worship in the Jewish Synagogue (St. 
Luke iv. 16, 43). On the Mountain of the 
Transfiguration He prayed with His disciples, 
(St. Luke ix. 28, 29; see also xi. 1). He 
promises His presence where two or three 
worship Him (St. Matt, xviii. 20). The 
Apostles combined in worship (Acts i. 13, 
14, 24, and ii. 1, and St. Luke 24, 53). At 
Pentecost the Holy Spirit descended among 
faithful worshipers. Not to forsake assem¬ 
bling ourselves together is a Scripture in¬ 


junction (Heb. x. 25). St. Paul wills “ that 
men pray everywhere” (1 Tim. ii. 8). Pub¬ 
lic worship is an open profession of faith in 
Christ, and love for Him. It keeps up a 
sense of religion. It is a means of receiv¬ 
ing instruction and partaking in worship, 
and receiving the Holy Sacraments, and it 
is a good example to others. 

Proper teaching influences unbelievers to 
join in Christian worship (1 Cor. xiv. 
25). The service should be solemn : God is 
“ greatly to be feared in the assembly of the 
saints and to be had in reverence” (Ps. 
lxxxix. 7). Public worship is to bo cheerful 
“ with gladness” and “ singing” (Ps. c.). It 
must be spiritual, as “God is a Spirit” (St. 
John iv. 24). The humble soul is the temple 
of God (Isa. lvii. 15; 1 Cor. vi. 19). God 
is to be worshiped “ in the beauty of holi¬ 
ness” (1 Chron. xvi. 29; Ps. xxix. 2, and 
xcix. 9). Gold, and silver, and brass, and 
stone were marvelously wrought together 
in the Jewish Temple to make it a suitable 
place for the worship of the all-glorious 
God. To it the longing eye of the Jew 
turned in prayer wherever he might be (1 
Kings viii.; Ps. v. 7, and xiii. 8 2). A picture 
of united worship before the building of the 
►Temple, but when it has been prepared for, 
occurs in 1 Chron. xxix. 20. Josephus 
says that the Jew would sooner cease to 
breathe than to worship. In the Tabernacle 
service the thought of a present God was ever 
before the Israelites, “ as at the moving of 
the ark Moses prayed, Rise up, Lord. . . . 
And when it rested, hesaid, Return, O Lord, 
unto the many thousands of Israel” (Numb, 
x. 35, 36). In the Jewish worship the chil¬ 
dren w'ere not forgotten, they heard the 
prayer of the Tabernacle service, and they 
also stood in the courts of the sacred Tem¬ 
ple. They were “ planted in the house of 
the Lord,” and so they flourished “in the 
courts of our God” (Ps. xcii. 13). So 
should they “ bring forth fruit in old age” 
(v. 14). Would to God that the children of 
Christian parents were all to-day found with 
their fathers and mothers in the Church of 
God, then might we hope the early habit 
would breed a life custom, and they would 
“ dwell in the house of the Lord forever” 
(Ps. xxiii. 6). The great day of early Chris¬ 
tian worship was the Lord’s day (Acts xx. 
7; 1 Cor. xvi. 2). Wednesday and Friday 
became special Church days, the former in 
remembrance of Christ’s betrayal, and 
the latter of His crucifixion. Saints’ Days 
keep in remembrance the dead in Christ. 
Pliny in describing primitive Christians 
says, “that they affirmed of their worship 
that they met in the early morning, and 
sang a hymn by turns to Christ as God.” 
The poor persecuted saints kept up their 
responsive worship when death stared them 
in the face. When persecution ceased, the 
anthem and prayer rose in vast cathedrals, 
and kings and queens were qursing fathers 
and mothers to the Church. So* the song 
begun in Eden has floated through ages, 






PULPIT 


629 


PURITANS 


and Tabernacle, and Temple, and Syna- 
gogue have given way to the Christian 
Church, and we hope for a time when every 
knee shall bow to Christ, and a redeemed 
world shall praise Him as God. 

Such is heaven’s worship as seen by St. 
John. The Lamb of God is its centre (Rev. 
v. 5, 6). An inner circle of worshipers is 
formed by the four living creatures and the 
four-and-Lwenty elders with harps and 
“ golden viols” filled with “ the prayers of 
the saints.” They sing the new song to the 
glorified Christ. Outside of this circle is 
another of thousands of angels, singing 
“ Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to re¬ 
ceive power.” Beyond these is a “third 
sphere,” containing all created living things 
“in heaven and on earth, and under the 
earth, and in the sea,” and they join in 
praising the Lamb of God. If such is the 
occupation of heaven, those who hope to 
enter that blessed abode should learn the di¬ 
vine song on earth, “ When ye exalt Him 
(God), put forth all your strength, and be 
not weary ; for ye can never go far enough” 
(Ecclesiasticus 43, 30). An ancient writer 
declares that the responses of the primitive 
Church sounded like thunder. Bishop White 
in his lectures on the Catechism (Dissn. 13) 
shows how favored we are in a service which 
gives the people so much Scripture reading, 
and a responsive service, and a proper 
bodily worship. Let us rightly use our good 
heritage. 

Authorities: Life of Isaac Walton pre¬ 
fixed to Walton’s Lives, Buck’s Theolog. 
Diet., John Howe’s Living Temple, Gilfil- 
lan’s Sabbath, Lardner’s Introd., Liddoii’s 
Bampton Lectures. Bey. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Pulpit. The first mention of a pulpit is 
in Nehemiah viii. 4, from which Ezra read 
the book of the Law to the people. In the 
early Eastern Church the Ambon was the 
pulpit, at least St. Chrysostom used it so, 
though the Bishop usually preached sitting 
in his chair. Later it became more com¬ 
mon. The word Pulpit came to the Church 
from the theatre. It was the stage on which 
the actors performed their parts. This 
would indicate to us the raised platform, 
whether of wood or of stone, which is now 
in use, is of Western origin; and since the 
arrangement of the Eastern Churches was so 
different from those of the Western Basili¬ 
cas, it is very probable that it was so, the 
Eastern Church using a movable frame 
{analog eiori), which apparently was the 
proper place for the Epistle and Gospel. 
Often there were two analogeia ,—one for 
each Scripture. The pulpit is usually upon 
the Gospel side, though not necessarily so. 

Purgatory. The Roman figment of a 
purgatory has had its rise first in an opinion 
which some of the Fathers held that there 
was a cleansing from all but mortal sins, 
either by death itself, or after death, and 
this was based upon a deep sense of the 
loathsomeness of sin and our own imperfect 
efforts at repentance, and upon the obscure 


words of St. Paul in 1 Cor. iii. 13-15, but 
it was only an opinion. St. Augustine 
(398 a.d.) expressed it very cautiously, 
giving the opinions of some, and goes on to 
say, “ I will not argue about it, for perhaps 
it may be true.” He treats it as a mere 
opinion and no more. St. Chrysostom 
thinks the fire St. Paul speaks of is of trial 
and not of cleansing, and so it is destructive. 
But Gregory I. (590 a.d.), in his dialogues 
upon the dead, gave form and popularity to 
the opinion which grew up vaguely in this 
interval of two hundred years. 'The opin¬ 
ion never got a foothold in the Eastern 
Church, and when in 1439 a.d., at Flor¬ 
ence, the Greek Bishops in their political 
distress, being pressed by the Turks, and 
needing. Western aid for their defense, were 
induced to agree to the doctrine of a purga¬ 
tory, but had first to ask what it was. The 
reply, asserting the efficacy of prayers and 
intercessions for the dead, went on to say, 
“ But whether purgatory is a fire, or a mist, 
or a whirlwind, or anything else, we do not 
dispute to.” Yague as this was, when the 
action of the Bishops was called home, it 
was indignantly repudiated by the whole 
East, with the other definitions which the 
Bishops had agreed to. The XXII. Article 
rightly calls it “a fond thing, vainly in¬ 
vented, and grounded on no warranty of 
Scripture, but rather repugnant to the word 
of God.” ( Vide Browne, XXXIX. Articles, 
Tomlin’s Elements of Theology, Blunt’s 
Diet, of Doct. and Hist. Theology.) 

Purification of Saint Mary the Virgin. 
Vide Presentation of Christ in the 
Temple. 

Puritans. The Novatians of the third 
century were styled Cathari or Puritans, on 
account of their strict discipline and high 
requirements as to the excellence of Chris¬ 
tians. While such a Purist spirit may be 
traced in the history of the Church, in mod¬ 
ern times the name Puritans has been 
given to a party in the English Church in 
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 
which tried to introduce Genevan doctrine 
and Calvin’s discipline in place of the sys¬ 
tem of the English Reformation. The name 
was first used about 1564 a.d. (Fuller’s Ch. 
Hist., ix. 63) for a party in the English 
Church, but afterwards it was applied to the 
Separatists, who left her fold. These Sepa¬ 
ratists afterwards took various names, In¬ 
dependents, etc. The Puritan idea was a 
floating element in the Church of England 
for two centuries before the name was given. 
In the latter part of the reign of Henry 
VIII. the Calvinistic system was arranged. 
Calvin had some influence in England in 
the reign of Edward VI., and some of his 
followers obtained positions in the English 
Church, viz., Peter Martyr, Martin Bucer, 
and others. The Puritans desired to over¬ 
throw Episcopacy and alter the Prayer- 
Book. They objected to Church vestments, 
and sponsors and the sign of the cross in 
Holy Baptism, and the wedding-ring, and 





PURITANS 


630 


QUICUNQUE YULT 


the observance of Festivals or Holy-days, 
and the Cathedral worship and antiphonal 
chanting and responsive service and the use 
of organs and Confirmation. Hooker’s great 
work on Ecclesiastical Polity was drawn 
out by the Puritan controversy. The Jesuits 
are said to have ofliciated as Puritan preach¬ 
ers to sow discord. In the reigns of Queen 
Elizabeth and the Stuarts the troubles were 
much mixed with governmental affairs. 
The Long Parliament abolished the use of 
the Prayer-Book, but after the Puritan 
triumph they were broken by Sectarianism 
into various bands. They highly appreciated 
their own tunes, but despised much that 
was ancient, and destroyed “national heir¬ 
looms.” 

The “joyful noise” and “ pleasant harp” 
of Ps. lxxxi., the praise of “ young men, 
and maidens, old men, and children” (Ps. 
xiv. 8), and the “trumpet” and “high- 
sounding cymbals” (Ps. cl.), hardly de¬ 
scribe a Puritan service. God’s natural 
works in the beautiful sky, and varied land¬ 
scape, the singing birds, the motion and re¬ 
joicing of young animals and children show 
that the Creator made a glad world. Joy 
is to be a ruling power in religion, even in 
affliction. “ Rejoice in the Lord alway, 
and again I say rejoice” (Phil. iv. 4). 
While the Church has her Ash-Wednesday 
and Good-Friday, she must also sing her 
glad songs on Christmas and Easter. While 
a system may be condemned noble men in 
that system must be honored, and Coleridge 
rightly says, “The diffusion of light and 
knowledge through this kingdom by the ex¬ 
ertions of Bishops and clergy, by Episco¬ 
palians and Puritans, from Edward VI. to 
the restoration was as wonderful as it is 
praiseworthy, and may be justly placed 
among the most remarkable facts of his¬ 
tory.” The stanch Churchman, Dr. John¬ 


son, pronounced all of Baxter’s works good, 
and John Howe, the author of the “ Living 
Temple,” has no mean standing in the Chris¬ 
tian world to-day. We have reason to thank 
God that in this new world the civil differ¬ 
ences in governmental matters have disap¬ 
peared, and that the descendants of Cavaliers 
and Puritans are combining to build the 
walls of the American Church wide and 
broad. The Dioceses of Massachusetts and 
Connecticut show that the differences of 
past ages may be forgotten, and that men of 
various forms of thought and education may 
kneel at a common altar, and the union is 
strong, for the Church’s commission is to 
bring all men into one mind and into one 
household. 

Authorities: Blunt’s Diet, of Doc. and 
Hist. Theology, Staunton’s Ecc. Diet, on No¬ 
vations, Mosheim’s Ecc. Hist., Coleridge’s 
Aids to Reflection. Blunt refers to Fuller’s 
Ch. Hist., Neal’s Hist, of the Puritans, The 
Troubles at Frankfort, and Bishop Ban¬ 
croft’s Dangerous Positions and Proceedings. 

Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Pyx. As in the early Church consecra¬ 
tion of the elements was made only in the 
Church, and from thence it was taken or 
sent to the sick if need be, or was carried to 
the Hermits and Monks in the desert, reser¬ 
vation of the Consecrated Bread and Wine 
was common. This necessitated a fit recep¬ 
tacle for their proper conservation. ( Vide 
Reservation.) Such vessels have been 
preserved which date back to the fourth 
century. Their shape was various, as prob¬ 
ably some costly carved case made for other 
purposes was afterwards set apart for this. 
These were called pyxes, from pyx, a fist. 
Where there is no reservation allowed, and 
where consecration of the elements is al¬ 
lowed in a sick-room, there is no need of a 
Pyx. 


♦ ♦ 


Q. 


Quadragesima (or TeocsapaKooTT ]), mean¬ 
ing forty days, is generally used to signify 
the whole period of Lent, but often used for 
the first*Sunday in Lent, from analogy with 
the three Sundays preceding it. As Sun¬ 
days were omitted from the number of fast¬ 
ing days, the six weeks preceding Easter 
were reduced to thirty-six days of abstinence, 
so that to make up the number of forty days, 
which Origen declares in the third century 
to have been consecrated to fasting before 
Easter, four days from the week preceding 
have been added, and Lent begins on Ash- 
Wednesday. 

Quicunque Vult. The first words of the 


Psalm which is generally known as the 
Creed of St. Athanasius. It is rather a strong 
formula of the Faith than a Creed ; and as 
it is constructed in a series of rhythmic sen¬ 
tences, it has been called a Psalm. It has 
been claimed for Hilary of Arles (440 a.d.) 
by Dr. Waterland, but later researches have 
shown that while some of the terms can be 
traced to Augustine (400 a.d.), and frag¬ 
ments of it were in use as a theological 
formula by 700 a.d., yet its present form 
appears practically about 870 a.d. Its date 
may be placed as between 813 a.d., when a 
portion now incorporated into it was used 
by Paulinus of Aquileia, and 870 a.d., when 







QUINCY 


631 


QUINCY 


we find it publicly used. It passed into 
daily use at one time in England. It must 
be used on certain special feast-days, Christ- 
mas-day, Epiphany, St. Matthias, Easter, 
Ascension, St. John Baptist, St. James, St. 
Bartholomew, St. Matthew, St. Simon and 
St. Jude, St. Andrew, and on Trinity-Sun- 
day. The American Church removed it 
from the Prayer-Book principally because of 
the strong clauses with which it begins. 

Quincy. The Diocese of Quincy, one of 
the three constituting the Province of Illi¬ 
nois, is small in area and young in history. 
It embraces that part of the State lying west 
of the Illinois Biver, and south of the coun¬ 
ties of "Whiteside and Lee. There are 13,700 
square miles and a population of 750,000. 
Up to the year 1877 a.d. it was a part of 
the Diocese of Illinois. Division of the old 
Diocese had long been a subject of anxious 
solicitude on the part of both Bishop and 
Convention. 

At the thirty-third Annual Convention, in 
1870 a.d. , Bishop Whitehouse pointed out 
the need for division, and a committee of 
thirteen was appointed, who presented two 
resolutions, which were adopted, requiring, 
first, that two new Dioceses should be erected 
according to bounds intimated in the Bish¬ 
op’s address, and, secondly, that the matter 
be referred to the next Convention for the 
necessary action to accomplish it. Of this 
committee the Bev. Samuel Chase, D.D., 
one of the earliest and strongest friends of 
division, was chairman. 

At the next Convention a plan for di¬ 
vision was proposed for dividing the State 
transversely into three Dioceses. These 
might be called, geographically, northern, 
middle, and southern. 

This action was reported to the General 
Convention of 1871 a.d., and consent asked. 
The House of Bishops declined to give their 
consent, and the request was withdrawn, by 
permission, from the lower House. 

Though no definite action was taken, the 
subject of division found mention in each 
succeeding Convention and Bishop’s address 
up to 1874 a.d. In August of this year 
Bishop Whitehouse died, and the whole at¬ 
tention of the Diocese was turned to the se¬ 
curing of a successor in the Episcopate. In 
September Dr. McLaren was elected. The 
same Convention re-expressed the determi¬ 
nation of the Diocese for division, and ap¬ 
pointed a committee “to prepare plans, or 
such modifications of existing plans as 
should seem most expedient.” 

The Convention of 1876 a.d. continued 
the committee, reaffirming the old resolu¬ 
tions, with the additional clause, “It is the 
sense of this Convention that one new juris¬ 
diction should be erected within the present 
limits of the Diocese at the earliest practica¬ 
ble day.” 

At the Convention of 1877 a.d. the Com¬ 
mittee on Division having reported their in¬ 
ability to come to any satisfactory conclu¬ 
sion, a series of resolutions was offered calling 


for division into three Dioceses and fixing 
bounds nearly as at present established. 
These were readily adopted, and for the sec¬ 
ond time the Diocese of Illinois had arrived 
at a definite plan for division. 

The chief difficulty all along had been the 
matter of Episcopal support for the proposed 
two new Bishops. The difficulty in the 
Diocese of Quincy was met in this way. In 
the city of Quincy were two parishes, one 
of them having a large stone church. These 
two congregations by formal action bound 
themselves to furnish $3500 annually to 
the Bishop and to an assistant clergyman. 
The congregation of St. John’s Church fur¬ 
ther deeded all their Church property to the 
Bishop and to his successors for Cathedral 
purposes. Both congregations also bound 
themselves to give to the Bishop all their 
revenues, to be used by him, with the advice 
of his Chapter, in the furtherance of Church 
work in the Diocese and city of Quincy. 

Following this action in the proposed See- 
city, a meeting of clergy and laity was held 
in September at St. Mary’s School, Knox¬ 
ville, and an additional pledge of $1000 
made. 

When the General Convention of 1877 
a.d. met, the proposed new Diocese of Quincy 
had the following showing to present: 

Consent of the Diocese of Illinois and of 
its Bishop; population, 700,000; commu¬ 
nicants, 1300; clergy, 20; Parishes, 15; Mis¬ 
sions, 8; average annual assessment for 
four years, $1131; contributions the last 
year to Diocesan Missions, $680; pledges 
for the Episcopate, with a cathedral prop¬ 
erty $60,000 in value, $3500. 

After the case was understood—it was 
presented for Quincy by the Bev. Dr. 
Leffingwell, of St. Mary’s School—little or 
no difficulty was encountered. On the 10th 
day of October, the seventh day of the 
session, the matter came up for decision. 
After reading the papers in the case, and 
the message of the House of Bishops giv¬ 
ing their consent to division on the lines 
imposed, on motion of Mr. Burgwin, of 
Pittsburg, the lower House concurred ; thus 
the long-sought-for division was at last ac¬ 
complished. 

The Diocese of Springfield was set off at 
the same time. By this action Illinois was 
divided according to her original wish into 
three separate jurisdictions, though with 
different lines of division from those first 
proposed ; Illinois (Chicago in 1883 a.d.), 
lying north, Springfield south, and Quincy 
southwest. 

The Bishop of Illinois at once issued a 
call for a Primary Convention for the new 
Diocese of Quincy, and on the 11th day of 
December (in the proposed cathedral and 
See-city) the Convention met. At the 
opening service Bishop McLaren celebrated 
the Holy Communion, and the Bev. Dr. 
Chase preached the sermon. At the organ¬ 
ization thirteen clergy were present, and 
fifteen parishes represented. The first act 








QUINCY 


632 QUINQUAGESIMA SUNDAY 


was formally to determine the name of the 
new Diocese; this was declared to be “the 
Diocese of Quincy.” A standing committee 
was elected, the Diocese placed under the 
oversight of the Bishop of Illinois, and 
then the Convention adjourned to the next 
day with a special order, after opening, 
for the election of a Bishop. On the follow¬ 
ing day, by a unanimous vote, the Rev. Dr. 
Harris, the present Bishop of Michigan, 
was elected. 

Intimately associated with the project of 
division, all along, had been the idea of the 
establishment of an Illinois province formed 
from the jurisdiction contained in the old 
Diocese. As soon as Dr. Harris had been 
elected, this first Convention, in its new 
relations, re-expressed the old conviction as 
to the desirability of the Province. The 
Convention then adjourned. 

Dr. Harris having declined his election 
to the Episcopate, a special Convention was 
called for February 26, 1878 a.d., to elect 
again. 

The Convention met on the day appointed 
at the Cathedral, Quincy, and the Bishop of 
Illinois not being present, the Rev. T. N. 
Benedict was elected President. Dr. Chase 
had died on the 15th of January. Thirteen 
clergy were present and 16 parishes repre¬ 
sented. Four names were put in nomina¬ 
tion, those of the Rev. Dr. Leffingwell, 
of the Rev. Cyrus F. Knight, Lancaster, 
Pa., of the Rev. Cortland Whitehead, Beth¬ 
lehem, Pa., and of the Rev. Dr. Locke, of 
Grace Church, Chicago. 

Twelve ballots were had without result; 
on the thirteenth the Rev. Mr. Knight was 
nominated by the clergy. The laity failed 
to confirm, and after a long series of inef¬ 
fectual ballots the Convention adjourned to 
the next day. On reassembling, balloting 
continued to the foi'ty-fourth ballot, when 
the Rev. Alex. Burgess, S.T.D., was nomi¬ 
nated by the clergy and confirmed by the 
laity. Resolutions in reference to the death 
of Dr. Chase were passed, and the Conven¬ 
tion adjourned. 

Dr. Burgess, in due time, signified his ac¬ 
ceptance, and was consecrated first Bishop 
of Quincy, in Christ Church, Springfield, 
Mass., May 15, 1878 a.d. 

The first Annual Convention, the new 
Bishop presiding, was held in the Cathedral, 
Quincy, on the 28th of May following. 
Beside the regular routine business the 
chief matter of record was the appointment 
of a committee to act with similar commit¬ 


tees from the other Dioceses in the State in 
establishing the proposed Province. 

The second Convention, which met on the 
27th of May, 1879 a.d., adopted the canon 
establishing the Province and elected dele¬ 
gates to the preliminary council. At this 
Convention the organization of the Cathe¬ 
dral and Chapter was also announced. 

In the year 1880 a.d. the Rev. T. N. 
Benedict died. In the fall of this year 
the General Convention granted most of the 
powers asked for by the Province of Illinois. 
In December, at Springfield, Ill., the Dio¬ 
cese of Quincy, through its representatives, 
entered into full Provincial relations with 
the other Dioceses in the State. In the 
three years succeeding the Diocese has gone 
on with its work. No marvelous things 
have been done, except as the Lord’s doings 
are always marvelous. Following is a con¬ 
trasted statement of statistics and a list of 
the present officers of the Diocese : 



1877 a.d. 

1883 a.d. 

Families. 

. 476 

1000 

Communicants. 

. 1300 

1800 

Parishes, 15) 

. 23 

33 

Missions, SJ" 


Clergy. 

. 20 

30 


In Six Years. —Baptisms, 888; confirmed, 
813 ; ordained, 16; churches consecrated, 
6 ; offerings, $210,000. 

The Diocese has three institutions: St. 
Mary’s Girls’ School, Knoxville; Home- 
wood School for Boys, Jubilee; Lindsey 
Hospital and Home, Quincy. 

Officers of the Diocese , 1883.—The Rt. 
Rev. Alex. Burgess, S.T.D., Bishop; The 
Rev. Edward H. Rudd, B.D., Secretary; 
The Rev. C. W. Leffingwell, D.D., Regis¬ 
trar and President of the Standing Com¬ 
mittee; Mr. Wm. F. Robertson, Treasurer; 
Mr. J. W. Marsh, Chancellor. 

Rev. E. H. Rudd, B.D. 

Quinquagesima Sunday. The Sunday 
before Ash-Wednesday. How early the 
three Sundays before Lent were set apart 
before the time of Gregory the Great (596 
a.d.) it would be difficult really to deter¬ 
mine, since he reformed the previous prac¬ 
tice. The present collect for this Sunday 
superseded the ancient one in the Salisbury 
use in 1549 a.d. It is a noble proof of the 
devout temper of the Reformers and the 
thorough appreciation they had of what 
constituted the proper contents of a collect. 
The Epistle and Gospel are the same as those 
used universally throughout the Western 
Church. 










RATIONALISM 


633 


RATIONALISM 



Rationalism. One of the most attractive 
of modern heresies. It is an attempt to ac¬ 
count for the supernatural, whether in Reve¬ 
lation, Religion, or natural phenomena, by 
explanations which debase them to the level 
of each man’s reason. It is the pride of 
human understanding. In denying revela¬ 
tion or the necessity of it, it practically 
denies God, for such is ordinarily the con¬ 
clusive result for men, for if God does not 
communicate with us why need to heed 
Him? It denies religion, for if we are not 
to believe in the supernatural, of what use 
is Faith to the mass of men ? It denies 
God in nature and makes all things the re¬ 
sult of a vast chance, that by chance hit upon 
a chance law and property of natural things, 
and so chanced to fall into the chance of 
some order. Its canons of investigation 
and criticism are all based upon the funda¬ 
mental rule that nothing is to he accepted 
unless it can be reduced to the grasp of the 
searcher’s reasoning power. 

And the applications of this law lead to 
the wildest criticisms and to the vaguest of 
speculations which in daily life would be 
called utter folly. If reason alone can fur¬ 
nish us with all knowledge, and revelation is 
condemned as absurd, yet, rationalism can 
never be rid of the knowledge which Revela¬ 
tion has given, or of the influences it has in¬ 
troduced, or of the discipline it has given to 
human capacity. But it is evident that reason 
cannot reach to subjects not within its sphere, 
which yet are known to exist beyond and to 
rest upon a different basis. Rationalism 
ignores the limitations of the law of reason¬ 
ing from similars when the elements of the 
second are indicated, but as parallel only in 
given points, and claims that there must be 
either absolute parallelism or there is no 
existence in the second subject. So far as 
parallel reasoning can carry us, Revelation 
is consonant in its proportions. When we 
cannot reason by comparison, positive 
revelation tells us what God would teach 
us. Rationalistic criticism having a low, 
imperfect canon of investigation, becomes 
but a destructive criticism it cannot replace. 

Indirect replies to the assaults of this criti¬ 
cism as applied to the Sacred Canon are 
given in the introductions to the several 
books, but a noble defense of Revelation is 
found in the Letter of the Bishops on Ra¬ 
tionalism, issued in 1877 a.d. It is well 
worth a careful study, as well as are the re¬ 
marks upon it that are scattered on the pages 
of other earlier and later Pastorals. The 
attacks made by it upon the evidences of 
Christianity and the defenses are rapidly 
reviewed in that article to which we refer. 
But Rationalism is not wholly occupied with 


the Sacred Canon or with evidences. It 
would drag down to its level the fairest 
hopes of men which are formed upon the 
Incarnation and the Revelation that Christ 
our Lord has made. If the restless, ever- 
inquiring reason could be contented with 
only the material world, possibly we would 
be able to avoid all speculations. 

But the whole range of topics which at¬ 
tract the reason includes so many which 
pass beyond the things seen to the unseen, 
which cannot be shunned, that those which 
relate to divine things follow by natural se¬ 
quence from apparently mere material things. 
No scientist worthy of the name but at once 
ranges himself either for or against the va¬ 
lidity of a revelation with more or less eager¬ 
ness. It is the result of our very nature, 
and should be a full refutation of the claims 
for the sufficiency of mere reason. For if 
the denial of the fact of a revelation were 
valid, why should the scientist trouble him¬ 
self further with the visions of those who 
believe in divine communications? But 
rationalism, however speciously veiled, has 
for its main objects the getting rid of the 
responsibilities that a revelation and the 
doctrine of a superintending care of God 
involves, the destruction of the demands of 
conscience, and the indirect relaxation of 
those strong social bonds religion makes im¬ 
perative, and which curb mere willfulness. 
More or less clearly these results are placed 
before them as the ultimate result of their 
work. Its fruits are 9 , ghastly infidelity, 
which would deny all accountability; a 
credulity in other things far more absurd 
to the reason than the objects of faith can 
possibly appear to it; a crude speculation 
irresistibly forcing itself into and dictating 
upon subjects which God alone has revealed ; 
a system of philosophy more fatal to human 
hopes than even the heathen had framed; a 
creed which has for its main formula, “ I do 
not know.” 

Honest and sincere inquiry and a reverent 
spirit must always be welcome. Revelation 
has nothing to fear from it. More truly it 
has -nought to fear from any speculations 
whatever, but those who accept it and are 
bound up in the welfare of those near and 
dear to them fear for their peace and happi¬ 
ness who are caught in the meshes of such 
a rationalism. There are many topics in 
the range of such sacred subjects as involve 
the gravest consequences by their rejection, 
upon which a free and searching, but just and 
reverent inquiry would be very welcome. But 
hasty and rash conclusions, and immature 
theories and irreverent and scoffing inquiries, 
awake but aversion in the mind of the rever¬ 
ent and thoughtful believer. They react 






KATE 


634 


KEAL PRESENCE 


healthily upon the mass of thinking men, for 
there is a deep element of religiousness in 
us, hut they do not serve any good end, but 
rather destroy unwary souls. Parts of this 
topic have already been discussed under the 
heads of Agnosticism, and Doubt, and Pen¬ 
tateuch, and indirectly under numerous 
other titles throughout this work. 

Rate. There is much confusion in the 
popular mind as to what are meant by the 
Church rates in England. All property at 
first had a lien upon it for the repair of the 
Parish church and the kindred costs under 
that head. This is also a rebate upon the 
salable value of that property. It comes, 
therefore, under the same head as taxes in 
estimating the value of an estate, therefore 
a church rate which is publicly assessed after 
due notice at a public meeting, and is laid by 
the Church-wardens, is as honest a claim upon 
it as are the taxes due the town, and the 
county, and the State. To reclaim against 
them is simply to seize upon so much addi¬ 
tional property, for the estate is valued at a 
given sum, less the principal, of which the 
rate is the interest; precisely as if men were to 
refuse to pay taxes and so raise the market 
value ot their estates. The details of the 
levy for these rates and the different items 
for which it is raised are of no importance 
to us here. 

Reader. In the early Church the reader 
was a regular officer in the Church. He was 
set apart for his office, after a nomination by 
the congregation testifying to his fitness, 
by imposition of hands. This was in the 
hands of the people. The Bishop accepted 
and set apart the man the congregation 
chose for themselves. The office is accounted 
a minor office, not one of holy orders. ( Vide 
Orders.) In the English Church the 
public official appointment by the Bishop 
has been revived in the present day, but 
while the office has been generally laid aside 
there, it was never wholly lost. In our own 
Church the necessities of the time have 
brought out and established a modification 
of the office, and it is recognized in the 
Canons, but there is no public appointment 
as in the ancient Church, a ceremony which 
is desirable, since it would give that sanction 
and authority to the office which really be¬ 
longs to it, and which is disregarded too 
much by the congregation. The Canon is 
very clear and precise as to the Duty of the 
Lay-reader. 

“ Of Lay-Readers. 

“ $ i. A Lay Communicant of this Church 
may receive from the Bishop a written 
license to conduct the service of the Church 
in a Congregation convened for public wor¬ 
ship as a Lay-Reader ; but such license shall 
not be granted for conducting the service in 
a Congregation without a minister which 
is able and has had a reasonable oppor¬ 
tunity to secure the services of an ordained 
minister. Such license may be given by the 
Bishop of his own motion for service in any 


vacant Parish, Congregation, or Mission; 
but where a Rector is in charge, his request 
and recommendation must have been pre¬ 
viously signified to the Bishop. Such license 
must be given for a definite period, not 
longer than one year from its date ; but may 
be renewed from time to time by the Bishop’s 
indorsement to that effect. The license of 
any Lay-Reader may be revoked at• the dis¬ 
cretion of the Ecclesiastical Authority. 

“ $ ii. A Lay-Reader so licensed shall not 
act as such in any Diocese other than his 
own, unless he shall have received another 
license from the Bishop of the Diocese in 
which he desires to serve. If he be a stu¬ 
dent in any Theological Seminary, he shall 
also obtain the permission of the presiding 
officer of such institution. 

“ g iii. Every Lay-Reader shall be subject 
to such regulation as may be prescribed by 
the Ecclesiastical Authority. In all matters 
relating to the conduct of the service and to 
the Sermons or Homilies to be read, he shall 
conform to the directions of the minister in 
charge of the Parish, Congregation, or Mis¬ 
sion in which he is serving, or when there is 
no minister in charge, to the directions of the 
Bishop. He shall not use the Absolution, 
nor the Benediction, nor the Offices of the 
Church, except those for the Burial of the 
Dead and for the Visitation of the Sick and 
of Prisoners, omitting in these last the Ab¬ 
solutions and Benedictions. He shall not 
deliver Sermons of his own composition, but 
he may deliver addresses, instructions, and 
exhortations in vacant Parishes, Congrega¬ 
tions, or Missions, if he be specially licensed 
thereto by the Bishop. He shall not as¬ 
sume the dress appropriate to clergymen 
ministering in the Congregation. He shall 
not without urgent reason read any part of 
the Service except the Lessons when a 
clergyman is present. This Canon shall not 
prevent students in any college or seminary 
from reading such parts of the Chapel 
Services as may be assigned to them from 
time to time by the Presiding Officer.” 

The Lay-Reader of the present day is 
merely intended to serve only under some 
stress, but anciently the Reader had his ap¬ 
pointed place and share in the Services, the 
Psalms, and Lessons. 

Real Presence. A phrase used to express 
the special Presence of Christ in the Holy 
Communion, in distinction from those who 
hold that there is no such special Presence, 
but that the Communion is in memory of 
the death of Christ, who Himself is not 
present, but is in heaven. Those who hold 
this -view are called Zwinglians from the 
Reformer of that name, though it is doubt¬ 
ful if Zwinglius so taught. 

While the great number of Christians be¬ 
lieve in the Real Presence, there is a very 
wide difference of opinion as to the manner 
and nature of such Presence. These may 
all be classed under three divisions. 

1. Transubstantiation .—The change of the 
substance of the Bread and Wine into the 




REAL PRESENCE 


635 


REAL PRESENCE 


natural flesh and blood of Christ, the same 
body that was born of the Virgin Mary. 
This is the doctrine of the Church of Rome. 
The term transubstantiation was not used be¬ 
fore the twelfth century; and the doctrine 
it teaches was unknown before the ninth 
century. About the year 831 a.d. a Monk, 
Pascnasius Radbert, appears to have been 
the first writer who taught it. It was vio¬ 
lently denied by other writers, especially by 
Ratram, whose book is still extant. But the 
doctrine suited the superstitious spirit of the 
Middle Ages and the metaphysical refine¬ 
ments of the schoolmen, and gradually ob¬ 
tained favor. The term and the full formula 
of the doctrine were first authoritatively ex¬ 
pressed by the Council of Lateran, 1216 a.d., 
and so became an Article of Faith of that 
Church; and by the famous Council of 
Trent was finally set forth in these words: 

“ If any one shall say that in the very holy 
sacrament of the eucharist the substance of 
the bread and of the wine remain together 
with the body and the blood of our Lord 
Jesus Christ; and denies that wonderful 
and singular conversion of the whole sub¬ 
stance of the bread into the body, and of 
the whole substance of the wine into the 
blood, till only the form (or appearance) of 
bread and wine remaining : which change 
the Catholic Church very fitly calls transub¬ 
stantiation, let him be anathema.” (Cone. 
Trid., Sessio. xiii., cap. viii. Canon ii.) 

A subtle distinction was made by the 
schoolmen between the “ substance” and the 
“accidents,” by which latter they meant 
the touch, taste, smell, the “form or appear¬ 
ance,” which they held were distinct from 
the real substance of a thing ; so that while 
the latter might be essentially changed the 
former might remain the same. Thus they 
accounted for the undeniable fact: that to 
the senses, in outward form of taste, touch, 
look, the bread and wine were unchanged. 
These they held were mere accidents and 
could remain the same ; while the reality of 
the substance was truly changed into the 
corporal body and blood of Christ. 

This doctrine of Transubstantiation was 
not held by the early Church, though some 
figurative expressions of certain writers 
have been quoted as teaching it, contra¬ 
dicted, however, by other words of the same 
authors. It was repudiated at the time of 
the Reformation by the Church of England, 
and is in Article XXVIII. declared to be 
“ repugnant to the plain words of Scrip¬ 
ture, overthroweth the nature of a sacra¬ 
ment, and hath given occasion to many su¬ 
perstitions.” This Transubstantiation, then, 
is not the true doctrine of the Real Pres¬ 
ence. 

(2) Consubstantiation .—This is called the 
Lutheran doctrine. It denies any change 
in the substance of the bread and wine, but 
teaches that with and in these elements are 
the natural Body and Blood of Christ, not 
spiritually, but corporally present. It was 
illustrated thus : That as in hot iron there 


is the nature both of iron and heat, each re¬ 
maining unchanged, so in the Eucharist 
there is both the bread and wine and the 
Body and Blood of our Lord. The objec¬ 
tion to this doctrine of the Real Presence is 
that it makes that presence a corporal one. 
But the Corporal Body of Jesus ascended 
to heaven and there remaineth. 

(3) The Spiritual Real Presence. —This is 
the teaching of the early Church and of the 
Church of England and of our own : “ The 
Body of Christ is given, taken and eaten, 
in the Supper, only after a heavenly and 
spiritual manner, and the mean whereby it 
is received and eaten in the Supper is faith” 
(Art. XXVIII.). If “given, taken and 
eaten,” it must be present; that which is 
absent cannot be “ given and taken.” In 
the Communion Service we return thanks 
that we have been fed “ with the spiritual 
food of the most precious Body and Blood 
of Thy Son our Saviour, Jesus Christ.” 
He must, then, have been present: we could 
not feed on an absent body and blood ; but 
it is not corporally, but spiritually and sacra¬ 
mentally, i.e ., mysteriously, present. None 
the less real because spiritual ; spiritual as 
not corporal. The promise is, “ where two 
or three are gathered together in my name, 
there am I in the midst of them” (St. Matt, 
xviii. 20). This must be especially true 
when the disciples are gathered together to 
do that which Christ commanded to be done 
in memory of Himself, and to receive that 
which He declared to be His Body and His 
Blood. And this can be nothing less than 
a true real presence. We believe, then, that 
there is such a Real Spiritual Presence of our 
blessed Lord at the Holy Communion. But 
here we reverently pause. We may not 
pretend to explain the how , the when , the 
where of that presence, we may not define 
or localize it as some vainly pretend to do; 
some holding that the Presence is after con¬ 
secration on the altar with the Elements, 
others that it is, as Hooper says, “ in the 
worthy receiver of the Sacrament.” The 
Scriptures, the Early Fathers, our own Lit¬ 
urgy, have not attempted to solve this mys¬ 
tery ; let us imitate their wise reserve and 
confess that it is a holy mystery above our 
comprehension. We cannot do better than 
to use the words of Hooker : “ What these 
elements are in themselves it skilleth not, it 
is enough that to me which take them 
they are the body and blood of Christ, His 
promise in witness hereof sufficeth, His word 
He knoweth which way to accomplish ; why 
should any cogitation possess the mind of a 
faithful communicant but this, O my God, 
Thou are true, O my soul, thou art happy ?” 

Eucharistic Adoration. —This is a fitting 
place to speak of what is called Eucharistic 
Adoration, or the worship of Christ as 
present on the Altar in the Eucharist. There 
are objections to this way of putting it. 
That there is with the Holy Communion 
the highest act of worship may not be 
doubted. But it is not to be addressed to 




HEAL PRESENCE 


636 


RECONCILIATION 


Christ as then lying on the Altar, for that 
is nowhere commanded nor taught by 
Scripture or the Church. When the Lord 
instituted this Sacrament, He does not say, 
This is My Body, worship it, or Me in it, but, 

“ Take, eat; this is my Body,” and so of the 
cup. Says St. Paul, “as oft as ye eat this 
bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the 
Lord’s death till He come” (1 Cor. xi. 26). 
They do not say worship, but eat. For 
Christ is present to give Himself to the 
faithful soul, with all the benefits of His 
passion. Yet it is very true that, as St. 
Augustine writes, “No one eats that Flesh 
except he first adore.” Adore the Holy 
Trinity, not Christ alone as locally there 
present in the flesh, but Father, Son, and 
Holy Ghost. And it is worthy of special 
notice how in the Liturgy of our Church, 
founded as it is on the ancient ones, there* is 
no special adoration addressed to the Pres¬ 
ence of the Son. It is all to the Father, 
through the Son, by the Holy Ghost. A 
careful examination of the Communion 
Service is very instructive, as showing 
how entirely what is called Eucharistic 
Adoration is avoided. Sursum Corda , 
“ Lift up your hearts,” is the ancient cry. 
“We lift them up unto the Lord,” is the 
response. The Tersanctus which follows is 
addressed “Unto Thee, O Lord, Holy 
Father, Almighty, Everlasting God.” 
The Prayer of Humble Access prays the 
gracious Lord, to grant that we may “eat 
the flesh of Thy dear Son,” etc. The Con¬ 
secration Prayer is offered to the Heavenly 
Father, and He is invoked to so bless and 
sanctify with His Word and Holy Spirit, 
His gifts and creatures of bread and wine, 
as to make us, receiving them according 
to His Son’s institution, partakers of His 
most blessed Body and Blood.” And finally, 
after reception, it is God we thank for 
feeding hs “ with the spiritual food of the 
most precious Body and Blood of Thy Son, 
our Saviour, Jesus Christ.” There is 
not in the whole service one Act of Adora¬ 
tion or one prayer addressed to Christ as 
being in the elements or present on the 
Altar. The Gloria in Excelsis does, indeed, 
invoke the Son as the Lamb of God ; but it 
is addressed to Him, “Thou that sittest at 
the right hand of God the Father.” The 
negative testimony of the Church is very 
strong, that Christ is really spiritually pres¬ 
ent in the Eucharist to be received ; but not 
to be specially and separately adored. 

It may be well to insert here from the 
English Prayer-Book a part of “ The 
Declaration on Kneeling,” or “ Black ru¬ 
bric,” as it is generally called, because, 
though not found in our book, it sets forth 
the doctrine of that Church on this subject; 
“ and this Church is very far from in¬ 
tending to depart from the Church of Eng¬ 
land in any essential point of doctrine, dis¬ 
cipline, or worship” (Preface to Prayer- 
Book). “ It is here declared, That thereby 
( i . e ., in receiving the communion kneeling) 


no adoration is intended, or ought to be 
done, either unto the Sacramental Bread or 
Wine there bodily received, or unto any 
Corporal Presence of Christ’s natural 
Flesh and Blood. For the Sacramental 
Bread and Wine remain still in their very 
Natural Substances, and therefore may not 
be adored (for that were Idolatry, to be 
abhorred of all faithful Christians), and the 
Natural Body and Blood of our Saviour 
Christ are in heaven, and not here; it be¬ 
ing against the truth of Christ’s Natural 
Body to be at one time in more places than 
one.” Kev. E. B. Boggs, D.D. 

Realism. “ Kealism, as opposed to Nomi¬ 
nalism, is the doctrine that germs and -spe¬ 
cies are real things, existing independently 
of our conceptions and expressions ; and 
that, as in the case of singular terms, there 
is some real individual corresponding to 
each, so in common terms also, there is 
something corresponding to each ; which is 
the object of our thoughts, when we em¬ 
ploy the term.” (Whately, Logic, Bk. iv. 
ch. v. 71.) 

“ Realism as opposed to idealism, is the 
doctrine that in perception there is an im¬ 
mediate or intuitive cognition of the exter¬ 
nal object, while according to idealism our 
knowledge of an external world is mediate 
and representative, i.e ., by means of ideas.” 
(Sir Wm. Hamilton, Reid’s Works, note C, 
Edin. Rev., vol. iii. pp. 175-181.) 

Vide Krauth’s Fleming’s Vocabulary of 
Philosophy, on Nominalism and Realism ; see 
also Cousin’s Modern Philosophy. 

Recantation. Vide Abjuration. 

Reconciliation. In a former article on 
Atonement, the Justice of God, His Truth, 
the establishment of the Law, and the Pow¬ 
erlessness of man to recover were set forth, 
the Atonement of our dear Lord as a satis¬ 
faction for sin, and the majesty of a broken 
Law, and as an at-one-ment, between the of¬ 
fended Creator and Sovereign and His dis¬ 
obedient subject, was shown. In speaking 
of our Heavenly Father as an offended 
Creator we lose sight 6f the fact, that He so 
loved the world that He gave His only-be¬ 
gotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him 
should not perish, but have everlasting life. 
The eternal Counsel of redemption was 
framed in love, the execution of it in Mercy 
and Love. In the Sacrifice upon the Cross, 
in the Blood of Christ shed for our souls, 
the perfect redemption of the human race 
was effected in Him who became our second 
Adam. And the reconciliation, the power 
for which was granted because of His Atone¬ 
ment, gives to our Lord a direct power of 
Lordship over those who are His brethren. 
God was in Christ reconciling the world 
unto Himself. Our Lord stands forth as 
the Second Sinless Adam. And as in the first 
Adam all die as a race penalty, so by the 
spiritual birth of baptism into Christ all 
live, for God the Father doth not impute 
to them their trespasses; for He hath made 
Him to be sin for us who knows no sin that 






RECONCILIATION 


637 


REDEEMER 


we might be made the righteousness of God 
in Him. In this new Covenant our Lord, 
then*becomes our new head. He is our 
bondsman. He is the Maker-at-one, and 
Intercessor. He takes us under His protec¬ 
tion, and our reconciliation is made through 
Him and by Him. To Him we are bound. 
Therefore our Baptism though in the Name 
of the Holy Trinity yet is in Christ. We 
become new creatures therein. We have 
put on Christ. We are named with the 
new name of Christians. We are no longer 
under an attainder, but have the rights of 
citizenship and the liberty of freemen in 
Him. No longer strangers, but of the House¬ 
hold of God. Not mere servants no matter 
how fully cared for, but Sons of God, and 
therefore we receive no wages as servants, 
but as sons we inherit. In this first act of 
reconciliation Our Blessed Lord stands forth 
as the Reconciler of those who humbly sue 
for pardon, with the outstretched hands of 
repentance and Faith, with a loving Father 
whose Justice and Majesty inflicted a right¬ 
eous penalty for a broken Law, but who was 
ever ready to receive with outstretched arms, 
yea more, to plead with us that we His lost 
sheep might return, and prove that He was 
more than willing by the sending, the giving 
of His only Son, our loving Lord. It was 
with this plea the Apostles went forth to all 
nations: ‘‘ We are embassadors for ^Christ, 
as though God did beseech you by us: we 
pray you in Christ’s stead, Be ye recon¬ 
ciled to God” (2 Cor. v. 20). 

The whole series of acts from the Atone¬ 
ment on the Cross to the Covenant made 
ftnd sealed by His Resurrection are set forth 
again in the weighty words of the Apostle 
in Rom. v. 8-10: “But God commendeth 
His love toward us, in that, while we were 
yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more, 
then, being now justified by His blood, we 
shall be saved from wrath through Him. 
For if, when we were enemies, we were recon¬ 
ciled to God by the death of His Son, much 
more, being reconciled, we shall be saved 
by His life.” Then our Baptism effects 
this reconciliation, which is also an adop¬ 
tion {vide Adoption), and bringing us into 
this membership of Christ, places us in His 
Kingdom, which is His Church, which He 
purchased with His precious blood. Our 
membership in His Church is the pledge of 
His having effected a reconciliation in our 
behalf. It is our election which we have to 
make sure (2 Pet. i. 10). It is this joyful 
reconcilement that forms the Good News, 
the Gospel of Christ. It was prepared for 
by the sacrifices given to Adam, to the Patri¬ 
archs, to the children of Israel. It was 
typified and taught in the many acts of God 
to His people, in the rest of the Seventh 
day, in the presence of His Glory with them, 
in the cleansing from pollution. It is urged 
again and again by the Old Testament 
Prophets as the plea for the return of Israel 
to their Faith. But this leads to the further 
consideration: This reconciliation is a per¬ 


manent fact unless we cast it away ; but its 
joy (“ And not only so, but we joy in God 
through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom 
we have now received the reconciliation.” 
Rom. v. 11) may be marred, and we become 
finally estranged by carelessness, willfulness, 
over-confidence, and the manifold tempta¬ 
tions to which we are exposed. To meet 
this danger our Lord gives us the Holy 
Ghost in Confirmation to be His Advocate 
with us, and our Leader, Guide, and Con- 
solator. He has left the restorations of the 
Holy Communion, the Absolutions of His 
Church, and He has also committed to Her 
the discipline by which we may be reconciled 
to Him. This danger of breaking this peace, 
the trials and temptations to which we are 
exposed, the warnings against the seductions 
to evilj the examples of the past, the holy 
virtues to be, gained, the grounding of our 
souls in the faith and love of Christ, our 
being in a constant state of Conversion, all 
these are the subject of the pleading, the 
urging, the counsel, the warning of the 
Apostles, with which they all close their 
several Epistles, and not only of the Apos¬ 
tles, but of the Lord Himself. 

Rector. There is a legal difference in the 
English Church between a Parson, a Rector, 
and a Vicar. The Parson is the represen¬ 
tative of the Church in her corporate ca¬ 
pacity. He performs all spiritual functions 
in her name ; he can sue and be sued as Par¬ 
son. He claims all temporalities as Parson. 
( Vide Parson.) A Vicar “ is one who hath 
a spiritual promotion or living under the 
Parson, and is so denominated as officiating 
vice ejus in his place or stead, and such 
promotion or living is called a Vicarage, 
which is a part or portion of the Parsonage 
allotted to the Vicar for his maintenance 
and support.” (Burn, Eccl. Law, sub voce.) 
But a rector appears to be but another name 
for a Parson. And in this country the as¬ 
sistant minister is somewhat in the position 
of the Curate or Vicar in the degree of the 
work in the parish assigned to him. But in 
the Parish there is only the Rector, and ac¬ 
cording to Blackstone the title Parson is 
more honorable,, and beneficial, and legal. 
Our Canons have these titles for the spiritual 
head of the Parish : Rector, Minister, Stated 
Minister, but minister is the usual term used 
there. The title clergyman is also used, but 
apparently (as is the case with the word 
minister) to designate one in his spiritual 
office, and not generally the holder of a 
Parish. 

Recusant. The term used to describe 
those who refused the ministrations of the 
Church of England. But it was usually em¬ 
ployed to describe the Roman schismatics 
in England. 

Redeemer. The full force of our Lord’s 
title is lost to us by the secondary use of it, 
or rather the overlooking of the type of it in 
the Jewish Polity. The Redeemer had a two¬ 
fold function, (a) He was the redeemer of 
forfeited family estates, the next of kin who 




REDEMPTION 


638 


REFORMATION 


could take when the next heritor declined, 
as Boaz did for Ruth when the next of kin 
refused to marry Ruth, that he might hold 
the estate. ( b ) The same nearest of kin or of 
blood was also the avenger of blood, accord¬ 
ing to the early institution which Moses 
regulated and confined. (Mozley, Ruling 
Ideas in Early Ages.) This is not the place 
to carry out the application of this type to 
our Lord’s redemptive act and the beauti¬ 
ful type of the provision of the City of 
Refuge, but in these provisions of the Mosaic 
law we find active energizing powers in the 
national life, whose term of Redeemer (Goel) 
kept before the minds of the people that 
the Messiah was the next of kin to redeem 
us from sin and the avenger of the blood of 
the Saints and the City of Refuge and the 
High-Priest whoever liveth and under whom 
we have an eternal security. (.Vide Jesus.) 

Redemption. It covers the whole series of 
redemptive acts, but means chiefly the ran¬ 
som of sinners from the consequences of sin, 
by the humiliation, sufferings, and death of 
Christ, who is hence called our Redeemer. 
I. The idea of redemption is therefore that 
of buying back again from a condition of 
slavery. That condition has come upon 
mankind universally by original sin and is 
perpetuated by actual sin. For both orig¬ 
inal and actual sin entail ties of obedience 
to the tempter. “ Know ye not, that to 
whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, 
his servants ye are to whom ye obey; 
whether of sin unto death, or of obedience 
unto righteousness?” (Rom. vi. 16.) It is 
from such a bondage that Christ has re¬ 
deemed and is redeeming sinners, Redemp¬ 
tion from original sin and pardon from 
actual sin being each accorded on account of 
the Ransom which He has paid. II. Hence 
the idea of redemption contains also that of 
claim to the service of the redeemed on the 
part of the Redeemer. “ Being then made 
free from sin, ye became the servants of 
righteousness” (Rom. vi. 18). He that is 
called, being free, is the servant of Christ. 
“Yeare bought with a price; be not ye the 
servants of men” (1 Cor. vii. 23). The Re¬ 
deemer has not only redeemed us to freedom 
by His Ransom, but has also bought us for 
His own Service, that bondage which is per¬ 
fect freedom. (Blunt’s Diet, of Doct. and 
Hist. Theol., sub voc.) 

Reformation, The. The Reformation of 
the Church of England was not the mere 
isolated movement of an insular kingdom. 
It arose from a feeling of abhorrence and of 
passionate opposition to the frightful cor¬ 
ruptions and abuses of the Papacy in the 
fifteenth century, which pervaded the minds 
of many holy men in all those countries in 
Europe which were subject to the Roman 
obedience. That feeling found energetic 
and simultaneous expression on the Conti¬ 
nent and in England. It was felt as a 
power in the partial Reformations effected, 
and the still greater ones attempted in the 
Councils of Pisa, Constance, Basle, and Flor¬ 


ence. It spoke with clear and trumpet 
tones in the works and the preaching of 
Miltitz, Conrad of Waldhausen, and John 
Huss, their disciple, on the Continent, at the 
same time that the intrepid and gifted 
Wiclif translated the Bible into English for 
the people, and dealt his powerful blows 
against the intolerable domination of the 
Papacy in England. These “ Reformers 
before the Reformation” did not limit their 
efforts to the removal of the external evils 
under which the Church and the kingdom 
groaned. They labored to promote an in¬ 
ward and spiritual life of love and devotion 
to God as the necessary condition of all 
moral improvement and reform, and as the 
only effectual power by which both doctri¬ 
nal corruptions and practical abuses could 
be removed. Although they did not discard 
all the dogmas of Rome which were subse¬ 
quently rejected by the Reformers in the 
sixteenth century, nor claim complete ex¬ 
emption from its authority, they had 
adopted some doctrines whose logical result 
would be to undermine the whole Papal 
system. 

The corruption of doctrine and discipline, 
which had been increasing in the Western 
Church since the transfer of the Papacy to 
Avignon, culminated at the close of the 
fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth 
century. It might seem that England, 
farthest removed from Rome, and with 
the advantage of occupying an insular posi¬ 
tion, would have been better able than the 
other Kingdoms of Europe to resist the 
encroachments of the Papacy upon her 
national and ecclesiastical immunities and 
rights. But in truth, although from time 
to time her Kings, and some of her best 
Bishops, lifted loud protests against the ex¬ 
actions of the Pope, no country in Europe 
came more completely under the Papal 
domination than England, and in none were 
the Bishops and clergy more thoroughly 
secularized. “At this period [the begin¬ 
ning of the sixteenth century] perhaps more 
than at any other, the clergy in England 
were completely occupied with secular em¬ 
ployments. The Archbishop of Canterbury 
was Lord Chancellor until relieved of that 
post by Wolsey. Wolsey held together, or 
in succession, the sees of Tournai, Lincoln, 
York, Durham, Winchester, while all the 
time he was acting simply as a lay states¬ 
man. The Bishops of Bath, Worcester, 
Llandaff, and Hereford were foreigners and 
non-residents. Fox, Bishop of Winchester, 
was Lord Treasurer; Ruthall, of Durham, 
Secretary of State; Tonstal, of London, 
Master of the Rolls. And among the lower 
clergy, a great proportion was employed in 
diplomatic or civil offices. These being for 
the most part near the source of preferment 
had accumulated a great number of bene¬ 
fices. A list of twenty-three clergymen of 
this period had been drawn out, who on an 
average held eight benefices apiece. In ad¬ 
dition to these ecclesiastical abuses, the 





REFORMATION 


639 


REFORMATION 


social state of England at the beginning of 
the sixteenth century was thoroughly rotten. 
Executions for robbery were constant, and 
mendicity prevailed to such an extent that 
statute after statute of the most terrible 
severity was needed to check it.” (Perry’s 
History of the Church of England from 
the Reformation, etc., p. 5.) 

In the fall of 1511 a.d. a memorable ser¬ 
mon was preached by Dean Colet, of St. 
Paul’s Cathedral, before the Convocation of 
Canterbury, in which he exposed with great 
fidelity and earnestness the dreadful abuses 
which prevailed in the Church, and traced 
them directly to the faithlessness and vices 
of the clerg 3 r . His own pure and lofty 
character rescued this representation from 
the charge of presumption. He warned 
them plainly that unless a reformation were 
first wrought in the character and lives of 
t.he Bishops and clergy, no increased strin¬ 
gency in applying discipline would avail to 
remedy the crying evils of the time in 
Church and State. He presented a vivid 
picture of the utter and shameless secularity 
of all orders of the clergy. With unspar¬ 
ing fidelity he exposed their “ greediness 
and appetite for honor and dignity in the 
Church,” their “stately countenance and 
high looks and lordly living,” their devo¬ 
tion “ to sports and plays and banquets and 
hunting and hawking,” their absorption in 
secular pursuits, their nepotism, simony, and 
non-residence, and the corruption of the 
Bishops’ Courts and the Provincial Councils. 
In short, in his arraignment of them he 
seems to describe the presence of all possible 
clerical vices and the absence of all clerical 
virtues. Like priest like people ! He tells 
them that they are largely responsible for 
the prevailing vices of the laity. “ For¬ 
sooth, if ye keep the laws, and i/ ye reform 
first your life to the rules of the Canon laws, 
then ye shall give us light, that is to say, the 
light of your good example, and we seeing 
o.ur fathers so keeping the laws, will gladly 
follow the steps of our fathers. The clergy 
and the spiritual part once reformed in the 
Church then may we with Just order pro¬ 
ceed to the reformation of the lay part; which 
truly will be very easy to do if we be first 
reformed. For the body followeth the soul; 
wherefore if the priests who have charge of 
the souls be good, strait the people will be 
good. Our goodness shall teach them more 
clearly to be good than all other teachings 
and preachings. Our goodness shall compel 
them into the right way, truly more effect¬ 
ually than all your suspendings and cursings. 
Wherefore if you would have the lay people 
to live after your wish and will first live 
yourselves after the will of God, and so (trust 
me) ye shall get in them whatever ye will.” 
(Blunt’s Reformation, vol. i. 14, 17.) 

In the early part of the reign of Henry 
VIII. there were some eminent men who 
deeply felt that Church and State were in a 
process of disintegration, through the intol¬ 
erable corruption and tyranny of the Church 


of Rome, and that some remedy must be 
found or anarchy and ruin would ensue. 
They are sometimes called Reformers, but 
may more truly be designated as the fore¬ 
runners of the Reformation. For none of 
them aimed at the source of the prevailing 
evils, which was to bo found in the constitu¬ 
tion of the Papacy, but labored only to check 
the exorbitancies of her admitted preroga¬ 
tives and powers, and encroachments upon 
those national rights in Church and State 
which were fundamental, and had been 
claimed and enforced through successive 
centuries, and had never been officially sur¬ 
rendered by the nation during the darkest 
period of the Roman domination. Of ’those 
forerunners of the Reformation there were 
several classes. Warham, Archbishop of 
Canterbury, was a representative of that 
class of devout prelates who were devoted 
to the Roman see, and who were at the same 
time vigilant to check any attempts to reform 
its doctrines or to repress its practical super¬ 
stitions, and only anxious to introduce disci¬ 
plinary reforms, and to bring the adminis¬ 
tration of the Papal power within limits 
which would be consistent with the national 
liberties and rights. There was another 
class of eminent scholars, called the human¬ 
ists, devoted to the revival of classical learn¬ 
ing and to educational reforms in the cur¬ 
riculum of studies prescribed in the Univer¬ 
sities. They were men of great cultivation 
and refinement, to whom the superstitions 
of the vulgar, and especially of the monks, 
were repulsive, because they were gross and 
offensive to their tastes, rather than shock¬ 
ing to their religious sensibilities. The 
most celebrated of these were Dean Colet, 
Erasmus, and Thomas More. Erasmus did 
immense service to literature, but from his 
timid and compromising temper rather 
hindered than helped the more earnest spir¬ 
its in Germany and England, who were 
laboring for doctrinal Reform and for the 
revival of spiritual life and earnestness in 
the Church. Sir Thomas More in his earlier 
years, when he wrote the “ Utopia,” strongly 
advocated religious toleration ; but later in 
life he became a thorough advocate of the 
supremacy of the Pope, and died at the 
stake for maintaining it; and so earnestly 
did he repent of his youthful speculative 
toleration that he directed that the follow¬ 
ing sentence should be engraved upon his 
monument: Furibus , homicidis , hereticisqtce 
molestus. Dean Colet, like Erasmus and 
More, a thorough scholar, was far more 
earnest in character, and in his lectures upon 
St. Paul’s epistles animadverted so plainly 
upon the departure of the Church of Rome 
from the theology of St. Paul as to have 
incurred suspicion of Lollardism, and to 
have awakened anxious misgivings in the 
mind of his friend Warham, the Archbishop 
of Canterbury. 

But the most conspicuous of all those who 
have been called Educational Reformers 
was the great Cardinal Wolsey. There can 




REFORMATION 


640 


REFORMATION 


be no doubt that Wolsey, a scholar, a lover 
of learning and of learned men, was thor¬ 
oughly in earnest in the work of intellectual 
reform. Rut that his zeal in this cause was 
entirely apart from any intention or ex¬ 
pectation or hope that it would influence 
the doctrine, or curtail the power of the Pa¬ 
pacy in England, is equally clear. It was 
with the eye of a statesman rather than 
of a theologian that he looked upon the de¬ 
graded condition of the Church of England. 
There is no evidence of religious motive in 
the large foundations and endowments for 
learning which he established. As the 
virtual administrator of the government, 
the abuses that prevailed in the Church 
seemed a reflection upon his statesmanship, 
as their removal he knew would be ac¬ 
counted to his honor. He would lift the 
Church out of intellectual debasement in 
order that its revived intelligence might be 
employed in its own vindication. He would 
cleanse the Church from some of its exter¬ 
nal defilements, but he would not change 
its structure. He would allow all the super¬ 
stitious symbolism and paraphernalia and 
ceremonialism of the Roman worship to re¬ 
main, but he would have the dust and cobwebs 
brushed off from the statues of the saints, and 
the faded letters of their legends gilded anew, 
and would give increased pomp to their 
services and processions, by clothing their 
priests in new robes of glory and beauty. 
All this fresh lustre given to the unchanged 
Church would be reflected upon himself. 
It is incredible that one whose master-pas¬ 
sion was the love of power, and whose plans 
had been steadily directed to the one object 
of securing the triple crown, would at the 
same time labor to limit the abuses which 
gave it supremacy over all thrones and 
kingdoms and churches, and made it the 
highest prize which it was possible for hu¬ 
man ambition to obtain. 

How much of latent Lollardism survived 
the persecution of Henry Y. and subsequent 
kings until Henry VIII. it is difficult to 
judge. From the number of enactments 
passed against them from the death of 
Wiclif it is natural to infer that they were 
numerous. A contemporary chronicler, 
Knighton, gives decided testimony to their 
rapid increase after the death of Wiclif. 
He affirms that “ Wiclif’s followers were 
multiplied like suckers from the root of a 
tree,” and “ that a man could scarcely meet 
two people upon the road without one of 
them being a Wiclifite.” “There was a 
third party in the country,’’says Mr. Froude, 
“unconsidered as yet, who had a part to 
play in the historical drama composed at 
that time merely of poor men; poor cob¬ 
blers, weavers, trade apprentices, and humble 
, artisans, men of low birth and low estate, 
who might be seen at night stealing along 
the lanes and alleys of London, carrying 
with them some precious load of books 
which it was death to have, and giving their 
lives gladly, if it must be so, for the brief 


tenure of so dear a treasure.” (Froude, vol. 
i. 168.) It is not from this class that lead¬ 
ers of a religious Reformation could be 
looked for in a kingdom so aristocratic as 
England. While it was much less depend¬ 
ent upon the personal passion and will of 
King Henry than it has been represented 
by Roman historians to have been, it is no 
doubt true that the proceedings of the King 
rallied and extended the latent opposition to 
the Papacy which had existed in England 
for the previous two hundred years. And no 
doubt, also, the Reformation gained ascend¬ 
ency all the sooner because of the King’s op¬ 
position to the Pope, and because it enlisted 
the higher and governing classes in its sup¬ 
port. In Germany it originated from below 
and worked its way upward. In England, 
on the contrary, it originated from above 
and worked its way downward. Hence, 
also, we may perceive the reason why in the 
one case Episcopacy went down and in the 
other was retained. The hierarchy in Ger¬ 
many, possessing more than anywhere else 
privileges and temporal immunities and ad¬ 
vantages which were dependent in large 
measure upon the Papacy, threw themselves 
in opposition to the Reformation. In Eng¬ 
land, Bishops found it to their interests to 
adhere to the crown ; and a sufficient num¬ 
ber of them were found to throw themselves 
into the Reformation to save the order and 
perpetuate the succession. (Dr. C. .M. But¬ 
ler, Ecclesiastical History, vol. ii. p. 390.) 

Henry VIII. ascended the throne with 
such personal and political advantages as 
soon gave him an immense popularity. 
His political position, through the skillful 
management of his father, was secure. His 
title was undisputed. He inherited no wars. 
He succeeded to the immense treasures ac¬ 
cumulated by his penurious father. He had 
no hatreds, public or private, to gratify, no 
injuries to avenge, no feuds to cherish, no 
onerous benefits to repay, no clamorous par¬ 
tisans to satisfy. It is difficult to conceive 
a more auspicious succession to a crown. 

Nor were his personal advantages and his 
apparent merits less. The brutality of his 
character in later life makes it difficult to 
conceive of him as he was in his bright 
youth. For he seemed to possess all the 
characteristics and accomplishments which 
give the promise of a glorious reign. His 
education was far in advance of most of the 
princes and nobles of his time. He was but 
eighteen years of age, a pattern of manly 
beauty, expert in all athletic exercises, and 
with a frank and bold address, a ready wit, 
and a bluff humor, which often passes for 
goodness of heart, when it may be in fact 
nothing more than the expression of self- 
complacency. The Italian and Venetian 
envoys at his court enlarge with enthusi¬ 
asm upon the beauty of his person and his 
varied acquirements. The Venetian embas¬ 
sador, Giustiniani, writes, “ He is not only 
very expert in arms, but gifted with mental 
accomplishments of every sort. He speaks 





REFORMATION 


641 


REFORMATION 


English, French, Spanish, and Latin; 
understands Italian well; plays on almost 
every instrument; sings and composes 
fairly ; is prudent and sage, and besides, is 
so good a friend to the State that we con¬ 
sider it certain that no Italian sovereign ever 
surpassed him in this respect.” We cannot 
wonder at the high anticipations which were 
entertained of his future when we read such 
eulogies from a foreign envoy, whose duty it 
was to present a faithful portrait to his gov¬ 
ernment of the new king, that they might 
know precisely what sort of a man he was 
with whom they would have to deal. “ Such 
was the man,” says Geikie, “ whom Wolsey 
at more than double his age had in his hands 
to make or mar.” 

But these bright anticipations were soon 
dispelled. In no true sense was he found to be 
“ sage.” He soon squandered the enormous 
treasures left by his father in every species of 
luxury and extravagance, and especially in 
play. He began early to play the part of 
despot, and recognized no limitations to his 
power in his Parliament or privy council. 
They were both regarded as merely his 
counselors and agents ; and by the pressure 
of his arbitrary will he reduced them in a 
few years to that position. As neither he 
nor Wolsey undertook any remedial legis¬ 
lation for the benefit of the people, their 
condition became, or rather continued to be, 
deplorable. Henry VII. reached no higher 
wisdom than that of plundering his subjects 
under the forms of law ; and Wolsey and 
Henry pursued the same policy of plunder 
without the sanction of law ; and neither of 
them learned that even if the highest aim 
of government were to secure large revenues 
from the people, the surest way to secure 
this result would be to leave to them at least 
the instruments by which wealth was to be 
produced. 

The first prominent event of interest in 
the reign of Henry in the way of Reforma¬ 
tion was a bill which was passed in Parlia¬ 
ment in 1513 a.d., subjecting all robbers 
and murderers to the civil power, and ex¬ 
empting from it among the clergy only 
Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. The bill 
created the most violent excitement among 
the clergy. Although it subjected only the 
four lower orders to the civil law, it was 
loudly clamored against as a breach of im¬ 
memorial and legalized clerical privilege. 
The question was argued before the king and 
council with great heat on both sides ; but 
no change was made in the provisions of the 
statute (Burnet, pp. 10, 11.) 

It was when this question was angrily 
discussed that the case of Hunne, a citizen 
of London, greatly increased the excitement. 
Hunne was a merchant tailor of London, 
whose infant child died in the parish of 
Whitechapel, where it had been put out to 
nurse, and the priest of that parish and the 
priest of his own both demanded a “ mortu¬ 
ary fee.” 

This was the name of an oppressive claim 
41 


for the second best horse or other animal be¬ 
longing to a dead person, if he had been rich, 
or the clothes which he had worn, if he had 
been poor. In the case of an infant the de¬ 
mand was for “the bearing-sheet,” and as 
two were demanded in the present instance, 
one was justly refused. Being cited to ap¬ 
pear before the spiritual court, Hunne sued 
the priest under the statute of premunire. 
Upon this, Hunne, who had given expres¬ 
sion to violent feelings towards the clergy, 
was accused of heresy. The Bishop or his 
Commissary could in a charge of heresy 
proceed without any previous proof of its 
probability or certainty, and accordingly he 
was committed to the Lollard’s tower, and 
was soon after found dead in prison. The 
finding of the coroner’s j-ury was to the ef¬ 
fect that he had been made away with, and 
afterwards hanged, and that Dr. Horsey, 
chancellor of the Bishop of London, was ac¬ 
cessory to the murder. But the Bishop of 
London, in contempt of this decision, or¬ 
dered Hunne’s body to be burnt for heresy. 
Dr. Horse}' was put on trial, but as no posi¬ 
tive proof was given of his complicity in the 
crime, he was allowed to escape. But the 
incident was significant and memorable for 
the amount of bitter feeling against the 
clergy which it revealed. An appeal was 
made by the Bishop of London -to Wolsey 
that the trial might be removed from Lon¬ 
don to some impartial place, “for assured I 
am,” he adds, “that if any chancellor be tried 
by any twelve men in London, they be so 
maliciously set in favorem liereticae pravitatis 
that they will condemn any clerk though he 
be as innocent as Abel.” 

St. Paul’s Cross was used as an ecclesiasti¬ 
cal rostrum from which sermons having a 
political bearing were often preached. A 
similar question arose in reference to the rela¬ 
tion of the civil to the ecclesiastical power 
as that which was involved in the case of 
Hunne soon after the liberation and acquit¬ 
tal of Dr. Horsey. While Parliament was 
in session in 1515 a.d., the Abbot of 
Winchelcome preached a sermon at the 
Cross, in which he denounced the act by 
which the four lower orders of the clergy 
were made amenable to the temporal courts 
in civil causes. He added that all who had 
assented to that act had incurred the cen¬ 
sures of the Church,—a reckless statement, 
which involved in his condemnation the 
King and Lords and House of Commons. 
The lay members of both houses petitioned 
the King to repudiate the principle pro¬ 
claimed by the Abbot. Henry accordingly 
held a special council at the Blackfriars in 
order that thp subject might be discussed 
before him and his councillors. Dr. Stand- 
ish, Warden of the Franciscans in London, 
contested the position of the Abbot. Some 
time after this the Convocation was reported 
to have called Dr. Standish to account for 
what he had said before the King. It was a 
rash proceeding, for such communications 
were always held as privileged, and to ques- 





REFORMATION 


642 


REFORMATION 


tion them or reprove them when the King had 
not done so was regarded as both unbecom¬ 
ing and an infringement of the Royal pre¬ 
rogative. The answer of the Convocation 
is obscure and equivocal; but in the midst 
of much subservient verbiage and many 
protestations of fidelity to the king, it is seen 
that the Convocation adhere to their conten¬ 
tion that “ the punishment of clerks should 
not appertain to secular Judges.” Accord¬ 
ingly, the King answered in a formal and 
stately speech, the purport of which could 
not be misunderstood. “ By the permission 
and ordinance of God we are King of Eng¬ 
land, and the Kings of England in times 
past had never any superior but God only. 
Therefore know you well that we will main¬ 
tain the right of our crown and of our tem¬ 
poral Jurisdiction, as well in this as in all 
other points, in as ample manner as any of 
our progenitors have done before our time. 
And as for your decrees, we are well assured 
that you of the spirituality go expressly 
against the words of diverse of them, as hath 
been showed you by some of our council ; 
and you interpret your decrees at your 
pleasure, but we will not agree to them more 
than our progenitors have done in former 
times.” This incident is important as fore¬ 
shadowing that discussion respecting the 
Royal prerogative which ended in the 
clergy’s Act of Submission.” (Blunt, Ref., 
vol. i. 395-400.) 

It does not appear that up to this period 
of Henry’s reign there was anything in the 
king’s views, or in those of his powerful 
minister, Wolsey, to incline either of them 
to measures favorable to Reformation. The 
former had just won the title of defender of 
the faith from the Pope for his work against 
Luther, and the latter was laying his plans 
with a view to succeed to the Papal chair/ 
Fuller expressed his doubts of the King’s 
giving himself time from his pleasures for 
so elaborate a production, and attributes the 
work to Bishop Gardiner. “Some other 
gardener,” he writes, “ gathered the flowers, 
while the King wore the posey.” Nodoubt 
the King would save himself much of the 
drudgery of investigation ; but that he ar¬ 
ranged the materials and constructed the 
argument has not been questioned. Henry 
was much gratified with the commendations 
of the Pope, and boasted that he had called 
it “a certain admirable doctrine sprinkled 
with dew of ecclesiastical grace.” (Strype’s 
Memorials, vol. i. pt. 1, p. 55; Collier, iv. 
31, 88, an abstract of the King’s book.) 

King Henry’s book not only revealed the 
fact that there was no little Lutheranism in 
England, but awakened curiosity to read 
works which had enlisted a Royal antagonist 
for their confutation. It is evident too that 
before the writings of Luther were dissem¬ 
inated in England, or were written,—as 
earty indeed as 1511 a.d.,— a number of poor 
people were called upon to abjure certain 
opinions as to the necessity of sacraments, 
the power of the priesthood, the efficacy of 


pilgrimages, and the worshiping of saints. 
After the dissemination of Luther’s works, 
Warham writes with much anxiety to Wol¬ 
sey (1521 a.d.), concerning the spread of 
Lutheranism in some of the colleges of Ox¬ 
ford. He fears that both the Universities 
are contaminated. Longland also, the 
King’s confessor, writes earnestly to the 
Cardinal on the same subject and in the same 
vein. The Cardinal sends for a certain 
number of Oxford divines to come to him in 
London. They agree upon a solemn paper 
of condemnation of Luther’s tenets, and it 
is affixed on the dial of St. Mary’s Church. 
A more impressive ceremony followed. 
The Cardinal prepared a solemn holocaust 
of heretical books, to which he gave every 
possible accessory of publicity and pomp. 
Attended by thirty-six abbots, mitred 
priors, and Bishops, he repaired to St. 
Paul’s and heard a sermon from Fisher, 
Bishop of Rochester. Then the condemned 
books were ranged before him in baskets, 
and a huge fire having been lighted, the 
baskets were emptied into the flames. But 
books were not exterminated by fire. They 
were more multiplied and disseminated than 
before. Soon was added to them the most 
valuable of all books, the New Testament, 
translated by Tyndale, and printed at 
Worms. Although the price of the book 
was necessarily high, numbers of the work¬ 
ing classes became possessed of it. So that 
it would seem from these facts that a large 
number of doctrinal dissentients from the 
Roman Church in the year 1527 a.d. were 
to be found in England. The fact is exceed¬ 
ingly important in connection with the 
statement so often ignorantly or maliciously 
made, that there would have been no Ref¬ 
ormation of England but for the love of 
Henry for Anne Boleyn. It is perfectly clear 
that there was a strong, deep, underlying 
opposition to the Papacy, and an earnest 
desire for Reformation, long before Henry’s 
feelings were enlisted,—not in the desire to 
reform the Church, but to break aw r ay from 
thraldom to the Papacy, and become him¬ 
self in effect Pope in his own dominions. 

Into the details of the long and tan¬ 
gled proceedings connected with Henry’s 
separation from Queen Catherine and his 
marriage with Anne Boleyn, it is not possi¬ 
ble, in this brief sketch, to enter. The main 
facts of the case are well known ; but upon 
their significancy and effect there was at the 
time, and there still is, much and wide dif¬ 
ference of opinion. The undisputed facts 
are these. After the death of Arthur, King 
Henry VII.’s eldest son, the marriage of his 
widow (Catherine of Arragon) to Henry, 
then in his fourteenth year, was authorized 
by the Pope. But Henry protested against 
the marriage, either from the prompting 
of Archbishop Warham or from his own 
scruples. But by this proceeding on the 
part of Henry the way was prepared in ad¬ 
vance for the subsequent movement of sep¬ 
aration from the Queen. But, notwith- 





REFORMATION 


643 


REFORMATION 


standing these avowed scruples, Henry was 
married to Catherine, under what influences 
does not appear, six weeks after his accession 
to the throne. It was on the occasion of 
the negotiations for the marriage of the 
Dauphin of France, and subsequently of the 
King of France himself, with the princess 
Mary, that the question of the validity of 
Henry’s marriage was revived; and it was 
while these negotiations were in progress 
that his scruples were, or professed to be, 
renewed. Even if Henry felt no real scru¬ 
ples of conscience, he must have been not a 
little annoyed by having the question raised 
whether he had not been living in adultery 
for nearly a score of years, and whether his 
only surviving child were not illegitimate. 
Atrocious and brutal as was the conduct of 
the King in the progress of the transactions 
which ended with his marriage to Anne 
Bolej-n, it is but historical justice to admit 
that it was before he had known her that 
these scruples, real or feigned, arose. The 
King himself declared four years after, to 
Simon Gryneas, that he had entertained these 
scruples for seven years, and had abstained 
for three years from conjugal intercourse 
with his wife. He professed to consider 
the death of his male children a judgment 
on him for his marriage with Catherine. 
He communicated his doubts and scruples 
to the Pope. But Clement VII., being 
then virtually a prisoner of Charles V., was 
not prepared to give an unequivocal answer 
to the King. After a study of Thomas 
Aquinas, Henry’s doubts, real or assumed, 
were increased, and he required the Arch¬ 
bishop of Canterbury to obtain the opinion 
of the Bishops of England as to the lawful¬ 
ness of his marriage. With the single ex¬ 
ception of Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, 
they all declared that the marriage was un¬ 
lawful. The King solemnly declared subse¬ 
quently to the Legatine court that neither 
Cardinal Wolsey nor Longland had sug¬ 
gested these scruples, but that they had 
arisen unprompted in his own mind. He 
had indeed urgent political reasons to wish 
to have the affair settled and to have a male 
child. For, if Mary should be married to 
the French King, then, in case of his death, 
his Kingdom would revert to France, or 
become a prize struggled for by the French 
King and the next heir to the throne, the 
King of Scotland. 

The vacillating conduct of the Pope on 
this occasion was the result of political 
rather than of religious considerations. He 
was trammeled in his relations to the Em¬ 
peror Charles V., the uncle of Queen Cath¬ 
erine, and favored or discountenanced the 
divorce according to the varying interests 
and necessities of his position. There never 
had been, on moral or religious grounds, 
any difficulty in obtaining from Popes dis¬ 
pensations to marry within the prohibited 
degrees, nor even for obtaining divorces for 
personal or political purposes. At this very 
time Catherine’s sister, Isabel, was wedded 


to Manuel, King of Portugal, although she 
had been previously the wife of Don Al- 
phonso, his brother, and although all the 
parties were within the prohibited degrees. 
When Clement was a prisoner in the hands 
of the Imperialists at Rome, he would com¬ 
mit himself to nothing which would seem 
to favor the cause of Henry. But after his 
escape to Orvieto he reluctantly consented 
to appoint a commission to investigate the 
case. Cardinal Campeggio was sent to 
England, authorized to decide the question 
in conjunction with Cardinal Wolsey, also 
appointed a legate by the Pope for that 
purpose. Campeggio brought with him a 
bull to confirm the sentence of the Legates. 
But it was necessary to proceed with great 
circumspection with regard to the bull of 
dispensation by which Henry had been au¬ 
thorized to marry Catherine. It would not 
do to invalidate the Papal authority in the 
past by the mode of exercising it anew. 
Hence it was necessary to make it out to be 
a case in which the Pope, in granting a 
dispensation, was taken by surprise^ and upon 
a misapprehension of the facts. The Pope’s 
complications with the Emperor made it 
necessary for him to prevaricate and delay. 
Hence, although he had intrusted Cam¬ 
peggio with a bill of divorce, which he was 
to show to the King and then to destroy, he 
was in an agony of anxiety until he learned 
that it had been burned. 

The Legatine court for the trial of the 
case was not opened until the 1st of May, 
1529 a.d. After the refusal of the Queen 
to acknowledge its authority, or to appear 
before it a second time, it was adjourned 
until October. The Cardinal Campeggio in 
vain endeavored to persuade the Queen to 
retire to a convent. Six months passed away 
in fruitless consultations, purposely pro¬ 
tracted by Campeggio, as to the course that 
should be pursued. But the King became 
exceedingly impatient at these delays. He 
now made no secret of his purpose to wed 
Anne Boleyn when the divorce or j act of 
separation should be pronounced. His dis¬ 
satisfaction with Wolsey because he had 
not succeeded in procuring his divorce led 
to that great minister’s dismissal and dis¬ 
grace. He was deprived of his chancellor¬ 
ship, and most unjustly subjected to the 
penalties of the statute of premunire for 
acting as legate for the Pope, although he 
accepted that office with the King’s consent, 
and Henry had acknowledged the authority 
of that court by personally submitting him¬ 
self to its jurisdiction. After discharging 
the duties of Archbishop of York for about 
a year, he was arrested for high treason, and 
on his journey to London to be committed 
to the Tower he sickened upon the way and 
died at Leicester. His memorable saying, 
“ that if he had served God as he had the 
King, he would not have given him over so 
in his gray hairs,” is one of the most im¬ 
pressive testimonies in history to the fact 
that of guilty greatness the root is rottenness 





REFORMATION 


644 


REFORMATION 


and the blossom dust. He was a man of 
magnificent talents, of splendid tastes, of 
large designs, but the attempt to make him 
out in any true sense a Reformer, and to 
have been moved in all his grand undertak¬ 
ings by noble and unselfish motives, can 
be made plausible only by assertions which 
deny facts, and by omissions which would 
overwhelmingly confute this new reading of 
his life. The futility of higher education, 
to which Wolsey devoted so much energy 
and such munificent gifts, as a means of 
moral and spiritual reform was evident, from 
the fact that the greatest corruptions and 
abuses prevailed in the highest places among 
men—and he was the most conspicuous of 
them all—who were highly endowed and 
educated. 

It was at this period, when all the King’s 
efforts to bring about his separation from 
Queen Catherine had failed, that Cranmer's 
agency in the matter was invoked by the 
King. It seems that Cranmer was em¬ 
ployed at Waltham as a tutor to the sons of 
a Mr. Cressy, when the King was making a 
progress through the kingdom, and that he 
paused for a few days at that place. Bish¬ 
ops Fox and Gardiner, in the suite of the 
King, called upon Cranmer, and the con¬ 
versation naturally fell upon the subject that 
was then agitating all England,—the King’s 
divorce. Cranmer suggested that the ques¬ 
tion should be referred to the foreign uni¬ 
versities, and (which was far the most im¬ 
portant part of his advice) that it should 
then be acted upon and decided by holding a 
Court in England. The King was delighted 
with the suggestion, and sent for Cranmer, 
and, pleased “ with the modesty and learn¬ 
ing of the man,” ordered him to present his 
views in writing. This work was done by 
Cranmer in the house of the Earl of Wilt¬ 
shire, the father of Anne Boleyn. In that 
paper Cranmer contended that if the uni¬ 
versities and divines should declare in favor 
of the divorce, the Pope would find it diffi¬ 
cult to avoid giving a decision in accordance 
with that judgment; or if he should still 
refuse, the marriage would then be proved 
illegal and void, and could be so pronounced 
by a national tribunal. It was bold ground 
to take, for there was involved in it the 
assumption that the voice of the Church, 
represented by the universities and the di¬ 
vines, was of higher authority than that of the 
Pope. 'When the question was thus referred 
to the universities, it was found that Oxford, 
Cambridge, the Sorbonne, and nine other 
foreign universities, returned a favorable 
answer, and declared that marriage with a 
brother’s widow was contrary to the law of 
God, and therefore null from the beginning. 
It having proved impossible to procure from 
the Pope a bull annulling the marriage, 
Henry acted upon the suggestion of Cran¬ 
mer and the universities, and was married 
to Anne Boleyn in the autumn of 1532 a.d. 

Just at this juncture Archbishop Warham 
died, and the King at once appointed Cran¬ 


mer to the vacant see. When he was con¬ 
secrated he swore obedience to the Pope, 
with the proviso that this oath should not 
affect the duty which he owed to his God, 
and King, and Country, nor prevent him 
from attempting such a Reformation as it 
should appear to be his duty to promote. 
This oath, with these conditions, he solemnly 
repeated three times,—at the chapter-house 
of the cathedral, at the high altar, and when 
he assumed the pall. These conditions were 
added evidently in view of the measures to 
which, by the expression of his opinions, he 
was virtually committed. The sentence of 
divorce which he pronounced was not with¬ 
out its serious logical difficulties. If the 
marriage of Catherine had not been null 
from the beginning, then Henry by his 
marriage with Anne Boleyn before the di¬ 
vorce was pronounced was guilty of bigamy. 
If the marriage of Catherine had been null 
from the beginning, there was no occasion 
for a decree of divorce. 

This oath of Cranmer to the Pope in con¬ 
nection with reservations which seemed to 
nullify it, has been severely censured. But 
though it may not be considered in itself a 
manly and ingenuous proceeding, yet when 
it is looked at in the light of the circum¬ 
stances in which the Archbishop was placed, 
it will appear to be capable of extenuation, 
if not of complete vindication. At first Cran¬ 
mer strenously declared that he would not 
take the oath. “ But,” says Burnet, “this 
having been communicated to some of the 
Canonists, they found a temper which agreed 
better with their maxims than with Cran- 
mer’s sincerity.” This temper, or reconcil¬ 
ing expedient, was the protest which they 
persuaded Cranmer to make at the time of 
taking the oath. Here we see that Cranmer 
was determined not to take the oath, but 
that the Canonists and Casuists persuaded 
him that he might take it with a good con¬ 
science if he would accompany it with a 
protest. We may say truly that he ought 
not to have taken the oath with the protest, 
because by the former he assumed obliga¬ 
tions which he could not discharge in con¬ 
sistency with the latter. But in estimating 
the moral quality of the act as performed 
by him, it must be remembered that he at 
first refused to take the oath ; that he was 
persuaded by others eminent for their char¬ 
acter and knowledge that he could do it 
with a good conscience; that his age and his 
studies had familiarized his mind to such cas¬ 
uistical reconciliation of conflicting duties ; 
and that he made not a secret and men¬ 
tal, but an open and emphatic protestation. 
At the most and worst it was a weakness, 
and not a baseness nor a crime. 

The divorce pronounced by Cranmer con¬ 
stituted a direct rupture with the court of 
Rome. It was followed by a bill which 
abolished the supremacy of the Pope and 
asserted that of the King, and declared that 
the children of Anne should be heirs to the 
throne. The title “ head of the Church,” 




REFORMATION 


645 


REFORMATION 


even with the explanations attached to it, 
was not granted without some hesitation. 
"When the King demanded a subsidy of the 
Convocation in 1531 a.d., the document 
which named the amount which it was pro¬ 
posed to grant to him contained this expres¬ 
sion : “ of the English Church and clergy of 
which the King alone is protector and head.” 
This expression was offensive to the Lower 
House. Their objection was thus expressed : 
“ Lest perchance after a long lapse of time 
the terms so generally included in the Arti¬ 
cle might be strained to an obnoxious sense.” 
They begged that the expression might be 
modified. The King being consulted pro¬ 
posed this form : “ He alone is protector 
and supreme head after God of the English 
Church and clergy.” The clergy stilt ob¬ 
jected, and at length the King sent down 
another form : “ of the English Church and 
clergy of which we recognize his Majesty 
the singular protector, the only and 
supreme Governor, and, so far as the 
law of Christ permits, the supreme 
head.” This was accepted and adopted. 
This title, explained by contemporaneous 
expositions, such as that of “ the necessary 
erudition of a Christian man,” goes much 
further than a mere claim of jurisdiction 
over spiritual persons and causes in civil 
cases. The act itself, in direct terms, appears 
to be a transfer to the King of supreme 
spiritual authority, and to obliterate all dis¬ 
tinction between his civil and spiritual juris¬ 
diction. It is as follows : “ The King shall 
have full power and authority to visit, re¬ 
press, redress, reform, order, correct, re¬ 
strain, and amend all such errors , heresies , 
abuses, whatsoever they be, which by any 
manner of spiritual authority ought or may 
be reformed or redressed.” It should be 
added to this statement that by no monarch 
of Great Britain has a claim like this to full 
spiritual authority been subsequently made, 
nor would such a claim have ever been ad¬ 
mitted by any divines of the Church of 
England, except perhaps by a small group 
in the reign of Charles I. 

But the most portentous stretch of power 
was made by the King, on the suggestion of 
Cromwell, who had taken the place of 
Wolsey in the confidence of the King. 
Cromwell represented to him that the clergy, 
by accepting Wolsey’s acts, had become 
accessory to them, and thus subjected them¬ 
selves to the penalties of premunire. By 
the decision of the judges it was actually 
decided that all the laity and clergy of the 
kingdom had forfeited their lands, their 
goods, their liberties and lives, by their sanc¬ 
tion of the proceedings of Wolsey. As 
the clergy were wholly in the power and 
at the mercy of the King, the Convocation, 
at the suggestion of Cromwell, was invited 
to sue for pardon and offer a composition. 
The Convocation of Canterbury on the offer 
of £100,000, and that of York on a com¬ 
promise of nearly £20,000,—enormous sums 
for that period —were, by an act of Parlia¬ 


ment, called the “ Clergy Submission Act,” 
graciously pardoned by the “ King’s mercy 
and tenderness.” The acknowledgment of 
the King’s supremacy and the offer of this 
large sum of money secured the King’s gra¬ 
cious forgiveness. It was a shameless speci¬ 
men of rapacity on the most unreal pretenses. 
For when the clergy acquiesced in the pro¬ 
ceedings of Wolsey, in the Legatine court, 
they did thereby but acquiesce in the will of 
the King. The King then held all their 
lives and possessions forfeit for acting in ac¬ 
cordance with his own will and after his 
example. By the principle on which this 
decision was based Henry himself would 
have forfeited all*his possessions, for no one 
of his subjects had more distinctly acknowl¬ 
edged the Pope’s supremacy than himself. 
He allowed himself to be arraigned and to 
have his case pleaded in the court of Campeg- 
gio, to the disgust of his subjects for his un- 
kingly self-humiliation. This treatment of 
the clergy was an act of baseness, tyranny, 
and hypocrisy which even he himself in his 
long and cruel reign never surpassed. 

“ The clergy’s Act of Submission” which 
soon followed (25 Henry VIII., chap, xix., 
1533 a.d.), has probably had more influence 
in placing the clergy in a humiliating posi¬ 
tion, and in limitating the legitimate power 
of the Church as an independent national 
Church, than any other or all others in the 
long list of the enactments of the British 
Parliament. While it does not take away 
the power of the Church in convocation, 
it enables the King to prevent the exercise 
of that power. For the convocation can 
assemble only on the King’s writ; it can 
legislate only on points specified or approved 
by him ; and its canons are void of authority 
unless they receive the Royal sanction. 

After this period, until the adoption of 
the Six Articles, the King and Kingdom’s 
independence of the Pope continued to be 
claimed and sustained, although no advance 
was made in doctrinal reformation. The 
great Sir Thomas More and the saintly 
Bishop Fisher were executed because, though 
willing to acknowledge the King’s suprem¬ 
acy, they were unwilling to declare the 
marriage of Anne legal, and that of Cather¬ 
ine illegal. The effect of this was to make 
the children of Anne illegitimate and in¬ 
capable of succession to the throne. Other 
executions for heresy speedily followed. 
Bilney, a clergyman of Cambridge, Byfield, 
a monk, Tewksbury, a citizen of London, 
and Bainham, a lawyer, were burnt as re¬ 
lapsed heretics. The most distinguished 
clerical victim to this persecution was Frith, 
a young man of great learning and piety 
who had successfully maintained a contest 
with Sir Thomas More on the doctrine of 
the Eucharist. The chief resistance to the 
King’s supremacy was on the part of the 
friars. In consequence of their persistent 
and outspoken opposition a general visitation 
of the monasteries was instituted, and Lord 
Cromwell was appointed at first “Vicar- 




REFORMATION 


646 


REFORMATION 


General,” and afterwards “ Lord Viceger¬ 
ent,” to carry out this decision. The King 
on this occasion acted upon the theory of 
his absolute spiritual supremacy, which, as 
we have seen, was proclaimed in the Act. 
He suspended the exercise of the Episcopal 
authority of the Bishops during the visita¬ 
tion, and afterwards restored it to them in 
words of which the following is the pur¬ 
port: “Since all authority, civil and eccle¬ 
siastical, flows from the Crown, and since 
Cromwell, to whom the ecclesiastical part 
has been committed, is so occupied that he 
cannot fully execute it, we commit to you 
the license of ordaining, proving wills, and 
using other ecclesiastical jurisdiction; and 
we allow you to hold this authority during 
our pleasure, as you must answer it to God 
and to us.” No King or Queen of England 
would now use such language ; but the war¬ 
rant for it still remains in the act of suprem¬ 
acy. (Short, \ 201.) 

During this period there were publica¬ 
tions and controversies which proved that 
the principles of the Reformation and op¬ 
position to the doctrines of the Church of 
Rome were making progress among the peo¬ 
ple. In the year 1528 a.d., “ The Supplica¬ 
tion of the Beggars,” a violent attack upon 
the superstitions of the Papacy, and espe¬ 
cially of the doctrine of purgatory, appeared 
in England. It was the production of Simon 
Fish, a gentleman of Gray’s Inn, who had 
incurred the resentment of Wolsey and 
taken refuge abroad with Tyndale. It re¬ 
ferred to the doctrine of purgatory as that 
by which the religious houses, monasteries, 
and chantries were sustained. It aims to 
be a witty and satirical production, and pre¬ 
sents a frightful picture of the licentiousness, 
drunkenness, and degradation of the clergy 
and the monks ; and its invectives against 
them are so savage that its attempts at wit 
are quite stifled by them. Yet its influence 
on the public mind was so great that it was 
answered by Sir Thomas More, in a work 
entitled “ The Supplication of Souls.” As 
“The Supplication of Beggars” had repre¬ 
sented them as making a lamentable cry for 
alms, of which they had been defrauded by 
the monks and clergy, so Sir Thomas makes 
“ the silly souls” in purgatory send forth a 
lamentable cry lest Christian people should 
cease to pray and offer alms for them; and 
thus leave them forever in their dreary and 
painful prison. Another work, “ The Prac¬ 
tice of the Papistical Prelates,” unfolds the 
story of the oppressions, worldliness, and im¬ 
purity of the higher clergy. Other contro¬ 
versies in a more doctrinal vein were carried 
on by Tyndale and More, and by Cranmer 
in his “ Book of Directions.” But this prog¬ 
ress of the spirit of doctrinal Reform was 
offensive to the King. A dreadful example 
and warning of the danger of holding heret¬ 
ical opinions was given in the trial and ex¬ 
ecution of fourteen Anabaptists, two of 
whom were burned at Smithfield, the re¬ 
maining twelve being sent to be executed in 


the chief towns in England, to give a strik¬ 
ing proof of the orthodoxy of the King and 
of the fatal results of heresy. Thus did the 
King press his rebellion against the Pope to 
its utmost limit, while he attempted to hold 
the people back from a revolt against the 
doctrines of the Roman Church. 

In addition to Tyndale’s translation of the 
New Testament, the whole Bible, translated 
by Coverdale, was published in 1535 a.d., 
and put under his Majesty’s protection and 
allowed to be circulated. In the same year 
the first Reformed Primer, or book of private 
devotions, appeared. It contained, besides 
its implied positive teaching of the truth, a 
condemnation of some of the superstitions 
and popular practices of the period. 

Something has been said of Cardinal Wol- 
sey’s great endowments for the promotion of 
learning. The dissolution of' the minor 
monasteries in 1525 a.d. furnished him with 
the means of rendering this, his one great 
service to the Church and the realm of Eng¬ 
land. At the close of Henry’s reign, chiefly 
through the agency and example of Wolsey, 
who began the work, about eleven hundred 
of the twelve hundred religious houses which 
were in England at the accession of the 
King were dissolved. The visitations of 
these houses revealed a condition of revolt¬ 
ing immorality in most of them, the disgust¬ 
ing details of which are recorded in Strype’s 
memorials and Fuller’s history. It was the 
design of Cranmer that the revenues of those 
houses which were dissolved after the fall 
of Wolsey should be devoted to the endow¬ 
ment of Bishoprics and free schools of 
learning; but this design was very imper¬ 
fectly realized. A large part of these rev¬ 
enues was squandered among the courtiers, 
and much of them was applied to the cur¬ 
rent expenses of the government. But that 
which was accomplished shows how much 
might have been done if this fund had been 
sacredly applied to the objects for which it 
was pledged. Six Bishoprics and fifteen 
chapters were established and provided for, 
and several hospitals and twelve colleges 
were built and endowed. Successive disso¬ 
lutions of different classes of monasteries were 
made in 1525, 1535, 1536, 1537, 1540, and 
1545 a.d. 

It is not practicable in this sketch to de¬ 
scribe in detail the remaining events in the 
reign of Henry ; nor is it necessary in order 
to understand the position of the govern¬ 
ment, the clergy, and the people in reference 
to a Reformation of the doctrine and dis¬ 
cipline of the Church. The cause of Refor¬ 
mation no doubt met with a blow by the 
death of Queen Anne. She was first con¬ 
demned for adultery, and then divorced 
on the ground of precontract with Lord 
Perc}^,—decisions which are contradictory 
of each other. The almost universal ver¬ 
dict of history upon Queen Anne acquits 
her of guilt, but not of indiscretion and 
levity and familiarity with persons of the 
other sex of high and low degree unbeeom- 






REGALE 


617 


REGENERATION 


ing a Queen, or any woman of dignity and 
virtue. After the King’s marriage with Jane 
Seymour, Parliament passed an act of suc¬ 
cession, which made the children of Queens 
Catherine and Anne illegitimate; but in 
case of no issue by Lady Jane, left the King 
at liberty to designate his heir by letters 
patent or by his will. By the convocation, 
which met June 9, 1536 a.d., “ Articles of 
Religion were agreed upon, which Fuller 
calls a draught of twilight religion.” In 
them the Scriptures and Creeds were declared 
standards of the faith, the operation of sav¬ 
ing faith was truly stated, Purgatory and 
the worship of images and saints were pro¬ 
scribed. “ The Pilgrimage of grace” (1536 
a.d.) was a formidable insurrection which 
occurred in the North of England. It pro¬ 
fessed to be a religious movement, and was 
excited by Priests in consequence of the 
Anti-Papal policy of Henry, and especially 
by the dissolution of the monasteries. The 
insurgents numbered 20,000, and were with 
difficulty put down by the Duke of Norfolk. 
Under the continued reaction of the mind 
of Henry and the influence of Papistical 
divines the Six Articles were enacted, 
which reaffirmed all the chief Papal dog¬ 
mas, except that of the Pope’s supremacy. 
The dogma of transubstantiation was an¬ 
nounced in its most stringent form, and the 
penalty of death denounced against the 
denial of it. Cranmer refused to sign these 
Articles, and was protected from suffering 
the penalty of his refusal by the interposition 
of the King. And then followed the death 
of Queen Jane, the marriage of Henry to 
Anne of Cleves, from whom he was soon 
separated because she did not please his. 
taste, the fall of Cromwell, because he had 
brought about this marriage, and the subse¬ 
quent marriage of the King to Catherine 
Howard, and her speedy execution because 
of her previous licentious life; and finally, 
his union with his last wife, Catherine Parr, 
who narrowly escaped death for her sus¬ 
pected heresy. 

Henry died January 16, 1547 a.d. The 
chief points of Reformation gained through 
his reign were: 1. The destruction of the 
Pope’s supremacy. 2. A restraint upon 
some of the grosser idolatries of the people. 
3. The Bible and the Creeds declared to be 
the rule of faith. 4. The translation of the 
Bible and its use authorized by the govern¬ 
ment. 5. The dissolution of the monasteries. 

Rev. Prof. C. M. Butler, D.D. 

Regale. The royal privilege in France to 
enjoy all revenues from vacant Bishoprics, 
and to present to such cures and dignities as 
were without an incumbent during such va¬ 
cancy. This vacancy could occur by con¬ 
viction of crime as well as by death, and 
lasted till the new Bishop took the oath of 
allegiance. If a Bishop were created Car¬ 
dinal, then, too, his revenues accrued to the 
King till the new Cardinal -repeated the 
oath of allegiance. Again, this privilege 
lasted thirty years in the right of patronage, 


so that if the Bishop appointed to a vacant 
cure or dignity, yet the King could within 
that time remove the incumbent and substi¬ 
tute his own nominee, and this was absolute. 
The regale was finally, after many struggles, 
curtailed as to the right of patronage. 

But as this right was, in the Tridentine 
Churches, the subject of concordats between 
the Papacy and Crown, so in England and 
in all independent Churches it was vested in 
the Crown, and formed the basis of the royal 
supremacy. It must be understood that it 
was the principle, not the detail of French 
usage, which is here referred to. 

Regeneration. A new birth, or being 
born again, or from on high, which our 
Lord told Nicodemus, is necessary for 
entrance into the kingdom of God. And 
He connects it with Baptism as the means, 
adding, “ Except a man be born of water 
and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the 
kingdom of God” (St. John iii. 3, 5). Its 
nature cannot be better set forth than in the 
words of the Catechism, “It is as death 
unto sin, and a new birth unto righteousness, 
for being by nature born in sin, and the 
children of wrath, we are hereby made the 
children of grace.” By the natural birth, 
we are the children of Adam, inheriting a 
fallen nature ; by the spiritual birth we are 
made the children of God, adopted into His 
family, brought in His Church under the in¬ 
fluence of His Holy Spirit, then given us; 
a new spiritual life begins in us, with the 
certainty, if it be nourished and rightly de¬ 
veloped, that it will grow up in holiness 
into the life everlasting. Regeneration 
means, therefore, a change of condition, a 
being “ called to a state of salvation through 
Jesus Christ our Saviour.” It is not a 
moral change, for the sinful nature “ doth 
remain, yea, in them that are regenerated.” 
But it makes man capable of a moral change 
and spiritual growth in holiness. By it God 
“hath delivered us from the power of dark¬ 
ness, and hath translated us into the king¬ 
dom of His dear Son” (Col. i. 13). “Being 
born again, not of corruptible seed, but of 
incorruptible, by the word of God, which 
liveth and abideth forever” (1 Pet. i. 23).- 

Of this new birth, or Regeneration, 
Baptism is the Sacrament, for it was “or¬ 
dained by Christ Himself as a means 
whereby we receive the same, and a pledge 
to assure us thereof.” 

That the Church so teaches the quotation 
from the Catechism, given above, shows. 
Also, in the Baptismal Office, we are taught 
to pray for the child or person, that “he 
coming to Thy holy Baptism, may receive 
remission of sins by spiritual regeneration ,” 
“ that he may be born again.” After the 
Baptism, the minister is instructed to de¬ 
clare that “this child or person is regener¬ 
ate , and engrafted into the body of Christ’s 
Church and to return thanks to the mer¬ 
ciful Father “ that it hath pleased Thee 
to regenerate this infant with Thy Holy 
Spirit, to receive him for Thine own child 




REGENERATION 


648 


REGENERATION 


by adoption, and to incorporate him into 
Thy Holy Church." And Article XXVII. 
declares that “ Baptism is a sign of Regen¬ 
eration or New Birth, whereby, as by an in¬ 
strument, they that receive Baptism rightly 
are grafted into the Church; the promises 
of the forgiveness of sin, and of our adop¬ 
tion to be the sons of God by the Holy 
Ghost, are visibly signed and sealed." 

But is the Church justified in using such 
language? The word “Regeneration" is 
found only twice in the New Testament. 
Once it refers to the second coming of 
Christ (St. Matt. xix. 28); the other is in 
Titus iii. 5 : “ Not by works of righteousness 
which we have done, but according to His 
mercy He saved us, by the washing (or 
laver) of regeneration, and renewing of the 
Holy Ghost." Here it can mean nothing 
but Baptism, for there is no other washing 
with water for remission of sins. But though 
the exact word be so seldom used, that which 
it means is frequently expressed in other lan¬ 
guage in connection with Baptism. Our Lord 
said to Nicodemus, a man must be born of 
water and of the Spirit. St. Paul writes : 
“ Know ye not, that so many of us as were 
baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized 
into His death ? Therefore we are buried 
with Him by Baptism into death ; that like 
as Christ was raised up from the dead by 
the glory of the Father, even so we also 
should walk in newness of life" (Rom. vi. 
3, 4). “ Buried with Him in Baptism, 

wherein also ye are risen with Him through 
the faith of the operation of God" (Col. ii. 
12). “ By one Spirit are we all baptized 

into one body;" “Now ye are the body 
of Christ" (1 Cor. i. 12, 27); “ As many of 
you as have been baptized into Christ 
have put on Christ ;" “ For ye are all one 
in Christ J esus ;" “ And if ye be Christ’s, 
then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs ac¬ 
cording to the promise" (Gal. iii. 27-29). 
These quotations suffice to show that the 
Lord and His Apostles regarded Baptism 
as conveying regeneration. Other passages 
will be found under the head of Baptism. 

The testimony of ancient writers is to the 
same effect. Justin Martyr, one of the earli¬ 
est of Christian writers, thus describes Bap¬ 
tism in his Apology to the Emperor Trajan. 
After mentioning the preliminaries of in¬ 
struction, of faith, of prayer, of fasting, he 
proceeds: “ Then they are taken by us 

where there is water, and are regenerated 
after the same manner in which we ourselves 
were regenerated. For in the Name of God, 
the Father and Lord of the universe, and 
of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, and of the 
Holy Spirit, they then receive the wash¬ 
ing with water." (Apol. i., cap. 61.) So Hip- 
polytus, another early writer, says, “ Do you 
see, beloved, how the prophet spake before¬ 
time of the purifying power of baptism ? 
For he who comes down in faith to the laver 
of regeneration and renounces the Devil, 
and joins himself to Christ, . . . he returns 
a son of God and joint-heir with Christ." 


(Discourse on the Holy Theophany, 10.) 
It would be easy to give a long list of quota¬ 
tions to the same effect, but these suffice to 
show that the Prayer-Book re-echoes the 
voice of Holy Scripture and of the early 
Church. 

It may interest some of our readers to 
know that the Anglican Church is not the 
only Reformed communion which teaches 
this doctrine. The Westminster Confes¬ 
sion of Faith, which is the standard of Pres¬ 
byterians, in chapter xxviii., Of Baptism , 
declares : “ Baptism is a Sacrament of the 
New Testament, ordained by Jesus Christ, 
not only for the solemn admission of the 
party baptized into the visible Church, but 
also to be unto him a sign and seal of the 
covenant of grace, of his ingrafting into 
Christ, of regeneration , of remission of sins, 
and of his giving up unto God through 
Jesus Christ, to walk in newness of life." 
So also the Confession of Faith of the Synod 
of Dort, which is that of the Reformed 
(Dutch) Church : “As water washeth away 
the filth of the body, when poured upon 
it, and is seen upon the body of the bap¬ 
tized, when sprinkled upon him ; so doeth 
the blood of Christ, by the power of the 
Holy - Ghost, internally sprinkle the soul, 
cleanse it from its si-ns, and regenerate us 
from children of wrath unto children of 
God." (Article xxxiv.) And in their Cate¬ 
chism the question is asked, “Why, then, 
doth the Holy Ghost call baptism 1 the wash¬ 
ing of regeneration/ and' ‘ the washing away 
of sins?’" u Answer : God speaks thus not 
without great cause, . . . but especially, that 
by this divine pledge and sign He may assure 
us that we are spiritually cleansed from our 
sins as really as we are externally washed 
with water." (xxvii.) 

But though Scripture and the Church 
thus testify that this is the proper use of the 
word regeneration, some good Christians 
have been greatly offended at it. One great 
reason for this is, that they understand the 
word in a different sense from that received 
by the Church. They confound “ regener¬ 
ation" with renovation, and “ Conversion," 
or “ Change of heart," as they call it, and 
some, even with “Sanctification." But 
there is a great difference. The new-born 
child has in him all the faculties of the 
man, both mental and physical, but unless 
these are nourished, educated, developed, by 
the use of the proper means, it would prac¬ 
tically be as though he had them not, and 
the new life would soon die out. So the 
new spiritual life may be given to the 
child, but unless nourished by the use 
of the means of Grace, and if neglected 
by a renewing through repentance and Con¬ 
version, it will avail nothing. To use the 
words of another, “Regeneration and Con¬ 
version are two distinct things. Regener¬ 
ation is God’s act, whereby He takes man 
out of his merely natural position and 
places him in a new and spiritual one. 
Conversion is God’s work in the man’s 




REGENERATION 


649 


RELICS 


soul, whereby he either prepares the man to 
accept Regeneration, or enables him to pre¬ 
serve the gift when given, or to recover it 
when the blessed privileges of it have been 
lost. Conversion is necessary either as the 
preparation for, or completion of, or restor¬ 
ation to, the state of Regeneration. Regen¬ 
eration is necessary either as the completion 
of, or preparation for, Conversion.” (T. J. 
Ball, Commentary on the XXXIX. Ar¬ 
ticles.) 

The Church by no means teaches that all 
baptized persons are thereby saved, or that 
the grace of baptism works altogether ex 
opei'e operato ,—i.e.,by inherent virtue in it, 
entirely independent of all co-operation on 
the part of the recipient. The new birth is 
indeed entirely the gift of God, in which 
the person has no more efficient part than 
has the new-born child in its birth. But 
God has chosen to annex to it certain con¬ 
ditions, as of Faith and Repentance, which 
in the Infant must succeed, in the Adult 
recede, the Sacred Rite; and unless these 
e present the life given is, so to speak, 
dormant, to be called into activity by their 
exercise. In the case of Infants these are 
promised for them by their sureties, whose 
duty it is to nourish and care for this spir¬ 
itual life, so that as soon as possible the 
child may itself perform them both, and so 
receive the full benefit of the divine gift, 
for which provision is made in Confirma¬ 
tion. But if they neglect to do this, “ to 
work out their own salvation,” then the 
spiritual life will pine away and become 
almost, though perhaps never entirely, ex¬ 
tinct, and Conversion and renewing of the 
Holy Spirit are necessary to restore its 
vitality. 

In the case of Adults baptized, they pre¬ 
viously profess these, repentance and faith, 
and an intention to lead a new life; and it 
is on the charitable assumption that they are 
sincere the Church declares them regener¬ 
ate. That the Church requires in all her 
members a true turning of the heart to 
God, a continued repentance, an earnest 
seeking after holiness, and all in humble 
dependence on the aid of the Holy Spirit, 
is shown in numerous passages of the 
Prayer-Book. Thus the Collect for Ash- 
Ayednesday: “ Create and make in us new 
and contrite hearts,” in that for Christ¬ 
mas : “ Grant that we being regenerate, and 
made Thy children by adoption and grace, 
may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit,” 
and again : “ Grant us the true circumcision 
of the Spirit; that our hearts and all our 
members, being mortified from all worldly 
and carnal lusts, we may in all things obey 
Thy blessed will.” No one who will study 
the Prayer-Book can misunderstand the 
teaching of the Church as to the necessity 
of a spiritual change of heart in all her 
members. 

The importance of the subject must ex¬ 
cuse the length of this article. In conclusion, 
we repeat, that much false teaching would 


be avoided by not confusing different terms 
and by putting things in their proper order. 
Repentance, Faith, Conversion, may pre¬ 
cede or follow Regeneration; Renovation 
and Sanctification must follow it, and are 
the proper result of the new life given in 
Baptism. Rev. E. B. Boggs, D.D. 

Register. The keeping of a Parish Regis¬ 
ter dates back only to the injunction of Lord 
Cromwell, in 1538 a.d. It was taken up by 
Edward VI. and Queen Elizabeth, in whose 
reign each minister at his induction had to 
make this formal pledge (among others): 
“ I shall keep the Register book according 
to the Queen’s Majesty’s injunctions.” By 
late statutes the older statutes have been 
modified, but the Canon (70th) is still in 
force. The Register must contain all Chris¬ 
tian weddings and burials. It must be kept in 
a Coffer provided with three locks and three 
keys, one to be the Rector’s, the other two to 
be given each to the two Church-wardens sev¬ 
erally, so that all three have to be present at 
the opening of the Coffer ; and entries were to 
be made in their presence and subscribed by 
the three together. The Register has always 
been of great value as evidence in the Courts. 
The provision in our own Church is clear 
and precise, but it is not hedged with a pen¬ 
alty, so that it is but little better than a 
strong recommendation, though a minister 
is bound in all honesty by his profession of 
obedience to obey its instructions. As the 
country grows in population the value of 
these registers increases. The Canon is as 
follows: Tit. i., Can. xiv., § v. “(1) Every 
minister of the Church shall keep a Register 
of Baptisms, Confirmations, Communicants, 
Marriages, and Funerals within his cure, 
agreeably to such rules as may be provided 
by the Convention of the Diocese where his 
cure lies ; and if none such be provided, 
then in such manner as in his discretion he 
shall think best suited to the uses of such a 
Register. (2) The intention of the Register 
of Baptism is hereby declared to be for 
other good uses, so especially for the prov¬ 
ing of the right of the Church membership 
of those who may have been admitted into 
this Church by the holy ordinance of Bap¬ 
tism. (3) Every minister of this Church 
shall make out, and continue as far as prac¬ 
ticable, a list of all families and adult per¬ 
sons within his cure, to remain for the use 
of his successor, to be continued by him and 
by every future minister in the same Parish.” 
There is a further duty (Tit. i., Can. xvii.) 
of compiling from the Register and the com¬ 
panion lists and parochial notitia the full 
statistics of the Parish, to be presented at 
the next Convention. The different Dio¬ 
ceses supply the blank forms for such lists 
and reports. 

Relics. The remains, or portions of them, 
of deceased saints, or something which be¬ 
longed to and was used by them, which 
were reverently kept at first, but which 
afterwards were superstitiously reverenced. 
I The early Christians took up the remains of 





RELIGION 


650 


RELIGIOUS 


the martyrs, and laid them away with rev¬ 
erent care, and they held their religious 
meetings in the cemeteries where these 
bodies were laid. But they did not go be¬ 
yond this, apparently. But after persecu¬ 
tion ceased, then a superstitious care for the 
relics of those who had suffered for the 
faith sprang up. But it was constantly 
protested against from St. Augustine’s time 
to our own, and imaginary miracles which 
were reported added greatly to this evil. 
Relics soon came to be highly valued, and 
to be eagerly sought after, and after a while 
relics were invented to suit the demand. It 
is too much aside from the plan of this work 
to do more than mention the subject. The 
discussion of it has formed a large litera¬ 
ture. In nearly every mediaeval writer, and 
in almost every chronicle of any length, some 
reference to relics and the transference of 
the remains of saints from their first resting- 
place to some church is made; and at last it 
grew to such a pitch that no church was 
properly equipped unless it had within its 
precincts the relics of some saint. This led 
to many impostures and to relic-mongering 
and to the stealing of them. There is still in 
the churches under the Roman obedience a 
great use made of relics. 

For curious details, see Smith’s Diction¬ 
ary of Church Antiquities ; also Littledale’s 
Plain Reasons against Joining the Church 
of Rome, where the references give the lit¬ 
erature upon the subject. 

Religion. It is perhaps best defined by 
an old definition which is not etymolog¬ 
ically correct,—The bond which binds us to 
God. The later and correct derivation,—The 
pondering on holy things, states only part of 
the truth. It does not cover the lofty aims of 
Religion. For it is the glory of our man¬ 
hood to be religious. It is a trust not 
always recognized. It is a right to appear 
before God, which is broken by sin. To re¬ 
pair it is the fruitless act of man, is the 
merciful gift of God, given as a trust, in¬ 
creasing in elevating, ennobling power as 
its extent and fullness has been added to 
from the time sacrifices were given to Adam 
till Christ brought in the last and perfected 
bond in Himself. In the Incarnation of 
our Lord religion is perfectly restored to 
us. He is our peace, He is the days-man 
who stands able to lay His hand upon both. 
In this view this bond is restored as of orig¬ 
inal right to every man who is baptized in 
Christ Jesus. The Religion of Christ 
perfects, and so supersedes all other forms of 
faith towards God. Our Lord is not merely 
our Mediator, not only our Atoner, but as 
God was in Him reconciling the world, so 
we by being baptized in Him have, as one 
of the restored rights once forfeited by sin, 
the right of being bound to God, having 
Him as our protector, and appealing to Him 
for aid, and endowed with the right to come 
before Him when we choose. Then Relig¬ 
ion involves all the spiritual life, as so referred 
to God. It is the life hid with Christ in 


God. It requires of us the careful use of 
all the means of grace, of all the acts 
which bring us to God, which strengthen 
our souls, which nourish us in all goodness, 
since we have not passed from the proba¬ 
tionary condition of the present, which in¬ 
volves Freedom of will. Whatever helps 
to holiness of living, whatever places us into 
closer relations with our God, whatever re¬ 
pairs the sin-frayed life in us which Christ 
has given us, that is of religion. All inner 
spiritual training, all sacramental approaches 
to God, all the outer defenses and guidance 
that the visible organization of the Church 
can give, the public services, the sermons 
and catechising, the exhortations, the re¬ 
ceiving of His doctrine and the confession 
of our faith in Him, all are needed. 

For- in all these Christ appears, in all 
these we through Him enter upon the joyful 
and blessed discharge of our religion. In 
Him it is a perfect act, and as more closely 
we draw to Him so more perfectly we live in 
new religion. Then holiness and religious¬ 
ness are our true and noble condition. We 
are, then, only rising to the true level of our 
blessedness in Christ. To relax any effort 
on our part and to reject any part of His 
teaching or of His work for us and in us, is an 
injury to our spiritual life. Religion, then, 
requires the careful development of all the 
details relating to these three chief points, 
Sacraments, Inner Life, Public Worship; 
they are directly interrelated, and the minor 
details which gather round each may be 
likened to the complex system of arterial 
circulation and of muscles and of nerves, 
which bind brain, heart, and lungs together 
as the essential points of where life resides 
and which must be sedulously guarded. 
Religion gathers into the proper discharge 
of its function all the powers and capacities 
of our nature. It receives and distributes 
to our spiritual wants all the gifts of God, 
manifold, subtle, and Varying, from the secret 
unconsciously felt influence of His Holy 
Spirit to the public and open ministrations 
ot His sacraments. In these things we live 
in our Lord, and by these we grow in grace 
and have our bounden duty and service ac¬ 
cepted. It should takeaway willfulness, re¬ 
press spiritual pride, stimulate us to greater 
activity, strengthen us to be mightier athletes 
in the spiritual contest. It follows that the 
perfectly religious life is one of intense 
activity, in the membership of His Visible 
Church, in the unity of the faith, in the use 
of the Sacramental Life, which binds us to 
Him. Less than this is so far defective. 
More than this is impossible, for the servant 
cannot reach to his Lord, much less pass 
beyond Him. But each in his rank and 
station of life can attain far more of it 
than we ever have done. 

Religious. It once meant all in holy 
orders,— i.e., vowed to a life of extraordi¬ 
nary religious devotion. But it has lost 
that breadth of usage in a measure, and re¬ 
fers now only to those under monastic vows 





RENOVATION 


651 


RENUNCIATION 


in the Roman Church, as monks and nuns, 
while the clergy not belonging to some order 
are called secular Priests. 

Renovation. As Creation is of the 
Eather, Regeneration of the Son, so we 
can also say Renovation is of the Holy 
Ghost. It is the summing up given in 
the Catechism : “ First, I learn to believe 

in God the Father, who hath made me 
and all the world. Secondly, in God the 
Son, who hath redeemed me and all man¬ 
kind. Thirdly, in God the Holy Ghost, 
who sanc.tifieth me and all the people of 
God.” So St. Paul writes to Titus: “He 
saved us by the washing of regeneration and 
the renewing of the Holy Ghost.” It is 
again set forth in the Epistle to the Romans 
(ch. xii. 2): “And be not conformed to 
this world, but be transformed by the renew¬ 
ing of your minds.” It is, then, the daily 
operation of the Holy Ghost upon the 
heart of the regenerate, renewing it by the 
willing co-operation of the will: “ Work out 
your own salvation with fear and trembling, 
for it is God who worketh in you both to 
will and to do, of His good pleasure.” This 
renovation proceeds, is checked, or lost, as 
we will to speed or to hinder or to cast it 
away, for God does not compel salvation, 
but urges, pleads, waits, and by all means 
short of taking away the responsibility of our 
will, brings us to a better estate of grace. 
Then the renewal is progressive, as growth 
after birth is progressive. It is of God, yet 
by misuse, by vice, neglect, imprudence, the 
health of the body is often lost, and the 
growth and development checked, and death 
ensues. The case is parallel in the spiritual 
life. The same heed to the use of means, 
the same dependence upon the Holy Ghost, 
the Lord, and Giver of Life, the same 
watchfulness over ourselves, the same care 
for our souls that we bestow upon the de¬ 
velopment of our intellect and education of 
our faculties, would strengthen and de¬ 
velop by the grace of the Spirit that renewed 
mind. The importance of Confirmation is 
infinite to the soul. It is the sum of all the 
gifts that our Lord gave His Church. The 
Gifts which He obtained for us by His Atone¬ 
ment and Resurrection are given by the Holy 
Ghost, and in this connection the latter part 
of the 18th verse of the lxviii. Psalm is very 
forcible, when we remember its use by St. 
Paul : “ Thou hast gone up on high, thou 

hast led captivity captive, and received gifts 
for men; yea, even for thine enemies, that 
the Lord God (i.e., the Holy Ghost, 
whom I will send from the Father) might 
dwell among them.” It is, then, bound up 
in the renewal of our spiritual life, and it is 
a fatal loss to reject it willfully. 

This renewal, as has been shown, we are 
to share in by our co-operating efforts, and 
we are to confirm by the use (through the 
Holy Ghost) of all the means of grace given 
to us. It is starving the soul to refuse them. 
It is destructive of life to reject them, since 
they are offered by Him who is sent to be our 


Sanctifier. In this connection occur to the 
memory the two passages in the Epistle 
to the Hebrews. I. (ch. vi. 1-6.) In this, as 
the laying on of hands refers to Confirma¬ 
tion, the public open gift of the Holy 
Spirit having been made, so the partakers 
of the Holy Ghost must refer to it also. 
The Apostle clearly states that the soul 
loses the power of renewal to repentance 
when it deliberately rejects, or rather throws 
away, the graces offered and once enjoyed. 
He does not say that there is no hope, but 
that the soul has lost the power of co-oper¬ 
ating by repentance and a living Faith, and 
it is a distinct act of long-suffering and 
mercy if the sinner is brought back to a 
state of repentance. II. (ch. x. 26-29.) Here, 
again, it culminates in rejection of the Holy 
Communion, and in doing despite to the 
Spirit of grace. In this also we must re¬ 
member that willful sin paralyzes the spir¬ 
itual Life, and so as we go on in the rejec¬ 
tion, so we will become more and more 
dead. For there is a loss of spiritual de¬ 
sire for holy things, though an intellectual 
appreciation of them may remain in. the 
soul. 

But turning away from this too imper¬ 
fect a hint upon a danger ever overhanging 
every soul, we revert to what was said be¬ 
fore upon renovation. It is a part of the 
dispensation of our Lord by His gift of the 
Holy Ghost for our growth and develop¬ 
ment here in all spiritual graces, that we 
may be fit for the spiritual places He has 
prepared for us. The viii. chapter of Ro¬ 
mans, then, sets forth the work and power 
of the Spirit involving our Resurrection 
by Him. The Epistle to the Galatians sets 
forth the fruits of the Spirit which are 
consequent upon a walk in the Spirit. The 
iv. chapter of the Second Epistle to the 
Corinthians declares that “ though the out¬ 
ward man perish, yet the inward man is 
renewed day by day,” and this line of 
thought recurs on through the Epistle. 

The Church’s doctrine, then, of the re¬ 
newal of our spiritual Life by the ever¬ 
present grace and help of the Holy Ghost, 
is but the orderly statement in one form of 
the many shapes in which the Scriptures 
teach it. It is correlated to the teaching 
upon the reconciliation which our Lord 
has made for us through Himself. For the 
Holy Ghost, the Paraclete, i.e., Advocate 
and Leader and Guide whom He sendeth, 
is the One who keeps our feet from falling. 
The Collect for Whit-Sunday, the prayer in 
the Institution Office, and the third prayer 
in the Visitation of the Sick, together set 
forth the devotional use we may make to 
our great profit of this work of the Sancti¬ 
fying Spirit. 

Renunciation. A giving up, a renoun¬ 
cing of something that was either believed 
or practiced before this abandonment of it. 
The chief renunciation is in the Baptismal 
Vows. Wherein the Person, or the S, on- 
sors for the Child, if he be an Infant, re- 





RE-ORDINATION 


652 


REPENTANCE 


nounce the devil, the world, the flesh, and 
promise to serve God faithfully all their 
days. For it is a principle of our nature 
that if a renunciation leaves a void in our 
thoughts or habits, there must be a filling 
up from some other source. Therefore we 
promise to serve Him for the rest of our life, 
for the renunciation is to be final, and any 
reverting to these sins after baptism must be 
heartily repented of and the life amended. 
These renunciations are of very great an¬ 
tiquity. They can be traced back to Ter- 
tullian’s age (177 a.d.), and they are prob¬ 
ably alluded to by St. Peter in the text, 
“ The like figure, whereunto even Baptism 
doth now save us” (not the putting away of 
the filth of the flesh, but the answer, i.e ., the 
reply to the question, of a good conscience 
towards God), by the resurrection of Jesus 
Christ. Renunciation applies to the abju¬ 
ration of heretical or schismatical tenets. 
(Vide Abjuration.) It is also used in the 
Canons of one who abandons the ministerial 
office. (Title ii. Canon v.) 

Re-Ordination. The receiving of ordi¬ 
nation a second time. It is not possible to 
receive orders a second time, any more than 
it is possible to receive baptism a second 
time. Baptism is a spiritual birth, and so 
cannot be reiterated. Orders convey an in¬ 
delible character (vide Character), which 
cannot be taken away. A person can re¬ 
nounce the Ministry, can abjure the Faith, 
can, for himself, abandon all previous po¬ 
sition. But he cannot be rid of the im¬ 
pression upon his life, nor of the authority 
once committed. The Church has the disci¬ 
plinary power of depriving a person of ex¬ 
ercising the powers she has conferred, but 
only the Giver of these powers, Christ 
Himself, can finally annul the grant. The 
Church’s authority extends only to disci¬ 
pline, not to entire abrogation. Therefore 
a person, if he has been ordained by Bishops 
of the Apostolic Succession, cannot be re¬ 
ordained. If he has not been so ordained, 
he has not received the authority which 
Christ left in His Church, and to confer 
this authority upon one already exercising 
a ministry is not re-ordination. For we 
must carefully distinguish between the au¬ 
thority a congregation gives to a man to 
offer prayers and intercessions for them and 
the authority from Christ given only by 
the Apostles and their successors, to minis¬ 
ter to their congregations in the things ap¬ 
pertaining to God. Therefore it is not a 
re-ordination to confer orders upon one not 
Episcopally set apart for the ministry. But 
it is re-ordination to do this to one previ¬ 
ously so orda-ined. If it is done at all it is 
a mockery, and the actors in it are guilty of 
a profanity. When, therefore, any minister 
of any one of the Christian bodies without 
the Church desires to take up the ministerial 
work, he has to receive ordination. The 
weighty Preface to the Ordinal sets forth 
these principles in compact and clear lan¬ 
guage. 


“ It is evident unto all men diligently read¬ 
ing Holy Scripture and ancient Authors 
that from the Apostles’ time there have 
been these Orders of Ministers in Christ’s 
Church,—Bishops, Priests, and Deacons ; 
which offices were evermore held in such 
reverend estimation that no man might pre¬ 
sume to execute any of them except he 
were first called, tried, examined, and known 
to have such qualities as are requisite for 
the same; and also by public Prayer, with 
imposition of Hands, were approved and 
admitted thereunto by lawful Authority. 
And therefore, to the intent that these Orders 
may be continued and reverently used and 
esteemed in this Church, no man shall be 
accounted or taken to be a lawful Bishop, 
Priest, or Deacon in this Church, or suffered 
to execute any of the said Functions, except 
he be called, tried, examined, and admitted 
thereunto according to the Form hereafter 
following, or hath had Episcopal Consecra¬ 
tion or Ordination.” 

The conclusions that are to be fairly 
drawn from this quotation are all in accord 
with the principle of the Nicene Canon on 
the ordination of those who came to the 
Church from the bodies who had parted 
from Him. Those who had no Apostolic 
orders in their organization were treated 
differently from those who, separating, yet 
kept the same orders, though schismatically 
used. 

Repentance. Repentance is called by the 
Fathers one of the two hands.we stretch out 
to God to implore His mercy and to receive 
His gifts. It presupposes some thing to be 
repented of. It presupposes a Person having 
a right to receive repentance and to grant 
pardon. The whole Christian doctrine upon 
Sin, its nature and power, and upon God’s 
love and mercy in forgiving this sin and 
removing its power and repairing its conse¬ 
quence, also demands the doctrine of repent¬ 
ance. The heathen did not fairly appre¬ 
hend the power of sin and the horror of 
sinfulness, though they knew what was sin, 
and felt its power; consequently, the words 
which we have freighted with a deeper 
meaning had only a surface application to 
the doctrine. “ To change one’s mind,” 
“to change one’s care,” “to change from 
shame or fear of punishment,” were their 
chief words, and had no exclusive reference 
to a repentance from sin such as Christian 
theology has given them. The Greek words 
come into the Gospels by the Septuagint Ver- 
sion of the Old Testament, which gave them 
to the writers of the New Testament. 

But it is necessary to examine the facts with 
regard to Repentance. First note that the 
Lord preached repentance because of His 
Church. “ Repent, for the Kingdom of 
Heaven is at hand.” This the Twelve and 
the Seventy were sent forth to preach ; for 
though the word Repent is omitted, yet the 
order to them to preach that the Kingdom— 
the Church—was at hand, involved this 
repentance, as we see by His own words, 





REPENTANCE 


653 


REPENTANCE 


and the same account in St. Mark. Again, 
St. Peter proclaiming the Kingdom to the 
audience on the Day of Pentecost repeated 
the Lord’s command: “ Repent, and he 
baptized every one of you in the Name of 
Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and 
ye shall receive the gift of the Holy 
Ghost” (Acts ii. 38). So St. Paul to the 
Athenians, “ but now [God] commandeth 
all men everywhere to repent” (Acts xvii. 
30). The contact of the Church with men in 
heathendom requires of them Repentance. It 
is evident that this means something more 
than what we now understand by Repent¬ 
ance, and yet something less. That they 
should at once comprehend it and discharge 
it in all its parts, as one within the Church 
should comprehend it, is not at all likely. 
It retained, then, its primitive sense more 
largely. Change the desires of your cares, 
change the objects filling your minds, the 
relation to your God is changed through the 
Atonement of Christ. The Kingdom of 
Heaven, the visible Church of God, receives 
you into covenant relations, the assurance 
of Immortality is held out to you. That 
He calls you through it, changes all things 
for you. 

That these things would be so a little con¬ 
sideration of the position of the Church to 
the world, and of relation of Him upon 
which she is built to the world, will show. 
So in these public addresses the Apos¬ 
tles did not define the fullness of repent¬ 
ance. But her work here is much confused 
because, having a mixed multitude in her 
audiences, now the second kind of repent¬ 
ance is brought more prominently forward, 
since this is the repentance demanded of a 
mind aroused, of a conscience quickened, of 
a soul that grasps something of the vastness 
of the salvation God has prepared in Christ. 
The Repentance of the unbaptized man who 
is drawn to the Church is mingled with an 
imperfect yet trusty Faith. If not as fully 
dwelt upon here, yet the truth that a deeper 
faith is developed step by step with a greater 
and more earnest repentance is not to be 
overlooked. For a repentance looketh to¬ 
wards God, for he that cometh to God must 
believe that He is, and that He is a re¬ 
warder of them that diligently seek Him. 
But to him believing this and received into 
His Body, there is a shrinking, yet a longing. 
“Peter fell down at Jesus’ knees saying, 
Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O 
Lord.” The soul cannot go away, it must 
come, but it shrinks back and feels it sinful¬ 
ness in the glorious power of God. But 
what are the steps of the repentance accept¬ 
able to God ? First is always placed a Fear 
of consequences and a compunction of con¬ 
science. This, indeed, is natural and one 
that we must feel; a fear of Him is a motive, 
for if we did not fear w r e could not be per¬ 
suaded. Our Lord Himself uses this as an 
argument for obedience, cleansing of soul, 
and Faith (Luke xii. 5). This fear is the 
beginning of wisdom, but it may not pause 


there. Compunctions of conscience rest in 
part upon memory, and these recall the past, 
and sorrow for the evil, bring this first step 
of a true repentance. “The sacrifices of 
God are a broken spirit,—a broken and a con¬ 
trite heart, oh, God, Thou wilt not despise.” 
Fear, then, that is only asorrow of the world 
is not a true fear. It must be a sorrow after 
a godly sort. It worketh carefulness, cleans¬ 
ing of the soul of evil habit, indignation 
against oneself for being so stained, fear 
that hath love in it, vehement desire, zeal, 
revenge against oneself. So far a true con¬ 
trition has all these mental stages,—more or 
less eager in different characters, but to be a 
true contrition equally real and influential, 
according to the capacity for and insight into 
spiritual things each soul possesses. 

But this contrition is not perfect if it does 
not renounce evil habits and false principles 
of action. This renunciation while resolved 
upon at once is not effected at once. A 
single resolution, however firm and per¬ 
sistently carried out, cannot undo at one 
stroke the education of the past, and unloose 
the habits that have twined themselves into 
the character, and besides, the evil of some 
habits lies not so much in the habits them¬ 
selves as in the consequences they produce, 
and this is not always evident. Renuncia¬ 
tion must, to be rightly carried out, be done 
with honest self-examination and a right 
valuing of self before God. Again, renun¬ 
ciation must go down into the selfishness of 
the heart. It must learn the hatefulness 
not only of actual sin but of sinfulness, and 
so it must go to the root of the evil. The 
last step is restitution. It is a giving back 
to God by confession of the fault what we 
have taken from Him, and also, which is 
really less costly but far harder to do, a 
confession of and an effort to restore so far 
as we can what we have deprived our neigh¬ 
bor of. Restitution is the test of the moral 
courage of the man, and the measure of the 
depth of his repentance, and the proof of the 
power of God over his heart and will. These, 
then, form the parts of a true repentance. 
Fear, and compunction, and sorrow for the 
past leading to Conti ition. Contrition bring¬ 
ing out Renunciation and self-examination, 
and these producing Confession and Restitu¬ 
tion. As was said, the increase of Faith is 
not dwelt upon, nor, again, the increase of 
love to God through our Lord, and a greater 
thankfulness as the person learns better what 
repentance means and how God’s mercy and 
love overshadows all his acts and he knows 
that the Holy Ghost is leading, quickening, 
renewing him in grace. We do not all fol¬ 
low out equally the steps here described, since 
the protection thrown over some is greater 
than over others ; nor do the complex in¬ 
fluences at work always permit every, one to 
apprehend them; and without guidance 
morbid minds have passed into despondency 
over their states. Many, too, brought up 
in godly Christian lives have not that to re¬ 
pent of that stains others’ souls. In all these 




REPROBATION 


654 


RESERVE 


cases, wherever there is earnestness and 
willingness, we may well believe that the 
Holy Spirit who divides severally to every 
man as He wills and who maketh interces¬ 
sion for us will bring each to a peaceful is¬ 
sue. We should remember St. Augustine’s 
praj^er that God would reveal to him his 
state that he might repent aright, and lest 
he should despair, that God would reveal His 
mercy also. But the results of a true re¬ 
pentance for sin must be permanent. Re¬ 
pentance is a principal part of Conversion, 
and this Conversion is a state so largely in 
our power. Therefore we should try to live 
in a repentant state, for so long as we live 
we are subject to the attacks of sin from the 
triple forms in which it approaches us. We 
are ourselves sinful and weak, and there¬ 
fore stained daily with petty and corrosive 
frets and failures ; these things wear away 
the spiritual life, and therefore we are taught 
in the beautiful prayer in the Visitation 
of the Sick, “Renew in (me), most loving 
Eather, whatsoever hath been decayed by the 
fraud and malice of the devil, or by (my) 
own carnal will and frailness.” The Services 
of Daily Prayer, and of the first part of the 
Communion, and of Ash-Wednesday, are all 
framed upon the deep and devout apprehen¬ 
sion of the doctrine of Repentance. There is 
a healthiness and honest manliness in them 
that should show every one how manly and 
noble an act in Christ’s religion Repent¬ 
ance is. And by her constant public use of 
the Confessions in these offices sets forth 
two grand facts of the Gospel committed to 
her : I. The parts of a true Repentance, so 
that every one of her children shall be in¬ 
structed in it. II. The state of Repentance 
and of Faith in which we must each live,— 
i.e., the true converted life to which the 
means of grace are life-giving. So her 
Doctors have ever called these two, Repent¬ 
ance and Faith, the hands of the spiritual 
life. They are the conditions upon which 
we are received into the state of grace and 
by which we can cling to the Cross of 
Christ. 

Again, it is necessary to note that though, 
of course, Remission of sin and restoration 
is promised by our Lord upon repentance, 
and is surely given, yet there is no neces¬ 
sary inherent connection between the two; 
and this is necessary to note, for many have 
said, “Since pardon is given upon repent¬ 
ance, I will wait and repent later, for 1 will 
be sure of forgiveness;”—a fatal error, for 
this principle defeats any true repentance, 
and so deludes itself to hope for a pardon 
that will be denied to a selfish mockery of 
sorrow. 

There are so many books of sermons and 
of devotion which set forth this whole doc¬ 
trine of the Gospel upon repentance, that it 
is needless to give references. But, probably, 
it may be well to refer to Taylor’s “ Holy 
Living” and “ Holy Dying.” 

Reprobation. The teaching held by some, 
that by the eternal council or decree of God 


a part of mankind are given over to all evil 
and doomed to eternal death. While it is 
a most sorrowful fact that some will reject 
His mercy, and, dying unrepentant, will 
sutler for their sins forever, yet it is against 
the express words of Revelation to suppose 
for an instant that this is by a foredoom, but 
only by a consequent of their action. Com¬ 
pare 2 Pet. iii. 9, and Rom. xi. 32, for this. 

Reredos. In many churches a screen is 
raised behind the altar, which is called a 
reredos. It is frequently carved and adorned 
with great magnificence. In England there 
are many very fine examples of the Reredos. 

Reservation, Mental. There was at one 
time, under Jesuitical teaching, a pernicious 
doctrine of “ Mental Reservation that is, 
that a promise, pledge, or other agreement or 
a statement could be made with a “ mental 
reservation,” which would make it, if under 
oath, tantamount to perjury. This was the 
teaching of a “ mental reservation.” If this 
had gained currency it would have been 
subversive of all honor and trust. But, 
happily, it was refuted and exhibited in its 
true colors. It was condemned in Eurip¬ 
ides by even the lax morality of the heathen, 
and it certainly could not be tolerated in a 
Christian. 

Reservation of the Consecrated Ele¬ 
ments of the Holy Communion. It was 

the custom of the early Church to consecrate 
only in the church, so the Communion 
had often to be given to the sick and to 
others, as martyrs, hermits, and distant 
members of the Church, who could not be 
present to receive. Those of the ordinary 
communicants who desired also could reserve 
a part of the Holy Bread and carry it home 
with them. (Vide Blunt and Smith’s Diets.) 
This reservation was a necessity, then, from 
such a law, but it led to abuses from an at first 
over-reverent, and next from a superstitious 
use of the consecrated Bread as an amulet 
or protection, and latterly because it was 
carried about in procession. The English 
Church at the Reformation forbade this res¬ 
ervation. A rule which, as having author¬ 
ity in all rites and ceremonies within her 
jurisdiction, she had a right to make, and 
this rule has been perhaps as faithfully ob¬ 
served as any other. And there is no real 
cause for reservation of the consecrated ele¬ 
ments, since she consecrates on any or every 
day of the year (vide Pr^esanctified), and 
orders it in private houses for the sick or 
permits it when otherwise necessary. 

Reserve. In the divine communication 
of the Truth it was always as men could 
bear it, yet the briefer or more elemental 
revelation contained within it the ground of 
the larger and fuller declaration of the same 
truth. As children are taught the elements 
of knowledge and these elements in a crude 
form, yet the child is not mistaught, but 
prepared for a fuller explication of them 
and their application in a more developed 
forni. So too our catechism gives the mini¬ 
mum of what the child is to know of Church 





RESIDENCE 


655 


RESPONSES 


truths. A larger and fuller statement is 
taught him as soon as he is able to bear it. 
We must act upon this law in mission work. 
In statement of elemental -principles it is 
proper and only honest to declare the truth 
and the whole truth, but we may doubt 
the propriety of descending to minute par¬ 
ticulars which could not be comprehended 
without previous training. With this law 
of applying elementary instruction we can 
compare God’s dealings with men. Take 
but the Law of development of the great 
revelation of the Messiah, the central fact 
of the world’s history. Given to Eve in a 
hidden form, developed still more to Abra¬ 
ham, repeated still more fully to Moses, 
brought into prominence by the prophets, 
placed as a part of the confession of faith 
in the Temple worship by the use of the 
Psalms, it was only gradually brought 
forward, till in the ripeness of the time 
Christ came, born of a woman that He 
•might redeem us all. So in our Lord’s 
own teaching He used a wise and just re¬ 
serve, till the proper time should come to 
bring it forward. This principle must run 
through all our teaching, but a wise and 
well co-ordinated plan of instruction will 
always permit the clergyman to bring for¬ 
ward and develop some fact or doctrine of 
the Church of which he had previously 
given the elementary instruction. 

Residence. The requirement that a Par¬ 
son should live in his Parish, or the cathe¬ 
dral official in the precincts, or the Bishop 
in his Diocese seems needless, but there have 
been so many examples of non-residence 
that the Canons had to take notice of it. 
From the Council of Sardica (347 a.d.) on 
this evil has forced itself upon the Church’s 
notice. The English Canon Law is clear 
and copious upon it. So far in our own 
Church there is in the Canons but the 
single enactment (Tit. i., Can. xv. $ xii.), 
“It is the duty of every Bishop of this 
Church to reside within his Diocese.” 

Resignation. The surrender of a trust 
or a charge, in due form, as of a Rector re¬ 
signing a parish or a Bishop his Diocese. 
The Rector’s resignation should be made 
both to the Bishop and to the vestry (vide 
charge in the Office of Institution, since the 
fact that the Office of Institution is in the 
Prayer-Book should make it in every Dio¬ 
cese where it is used the ruling authority in 
such a matter). The Ordinary is properly 
the authority to whom the resignation should 
be sent first, and then it should be sent to the 
Yestry. No resignation should take place 
without good reason on each side, since a 
hasty, unconsidered resignation may be fol¬ 
lowed by unforeseen and injurious conse¬ 
quences to either party. But the Church 
has ever been still more chary in accepting 
the resignation of a Bishop. It was a mode 
of describing the indissolubility of the bond 
into which the Bishop had entered towards 
the Diocese by saying He has married his 
Diocese. The Canons do not permit him to 


resign upon his own motion, but upon ex¬ 
amination of the circumstances by his brother 
Bishops. If his resolution has been made 
during the six months previous to the ses¬ 
sion of the General Convention he is to sub¬ 
mit it to the House of Bishops, who are there¬ 
upon to examine the case and to vote upon 
it. But if not within this time, then he 
shall inform the Presiding Bishop, who shall 
convene a majority of the House of Bishops 
after three months’ delay, and this majority 
of the whole house can determine the case, 
and the Presiding Bishop shall, if the resig¬ 
nation be agreed to, notify each Bishop of the 
Church of the said resignation. And the 
Bishop so resigning cannot be chosen to any 
Diocese, whether an old one or one erected 
after his resignation, and forfeits his seat in 
the House of Bishops. But he may perform 
Episcopal acts under authority of any 
Bishop who may choose to ask him to act 
for him in his Diocese. But his resignation 
does not release him from the authority of 
the General Convention or from obedience 
to the Canons. 

Responds. The Psalms or portions of 
Psalms between the lections of the various 
offices of the Church. They were so called 
from being antiphonally sung. They were at 
first sung by single voices, with a response 
from the whole choir. As these responds 
became very complicated they were cut off 
in Edward VI.’s Prayer-Book. The re¬ 
sponses to the Commandments are properly 
responds, and the only ones retained from 
the old system. 

Responses. The public worship of God, 
from the time of Moses, has always been 
responsive. Miriam’s story of triumph upon 
the shore of the Red Sea was responsive. 
The system of Psalms and Hymns of the 
Jewish worship was responsive. It was an 
integral part of all Liturgic worship, and 
is, in fact, after the pattern of the Heavenly 
worship (Is. vi. 3). This Liturgic Law 
passed into the Christian use from the 
Jewish services, and must necessarily have 
done so as soon as the Psalms were taken 
into public use. But it was very early 
placed in the Liturgy, especially in the ver- 
sicles of the Communion Service. “ Lift 
up your hearts.” “We lift them up unto 
the Lord.” “ Let us give thanks unto the 
Lord.” “It is very meet and right to do 
so,” have an antiquity and sacredness of use 
which can be traced to the days of those 
who had seen the Apostles of the Lord. 
But this Liturgic Law is itself founded 
upon the priesthood of the Laity. The’re 
is a mutual benediction in the versicle and 
response “ The Lord be with you.” “And 
with thy Spirit.” There is a common sacri¬ 
fice of praise in the antiphonal reading of 
the Psalter. There is a common act of in¬ 
tercessor}' prayer in the Litany. So that 
most fully are the people taught that they 
are priests with the offering from pure lips 
cf holy inspired, words. The priestly act of 
the people being thus acknowledged, used, 





RESTITUTION 


656 RESURRECTION OF CHRIST 


made the corner-stone of a large part of the 
worship, and so insisted upon, creates a re¬ 
sponsibility that rests upon the congrega¬ 
tion to discharge. We are bound, then, as a 
people with a priesthood, to use the respon¬ 
sive worship of our Prayer-Book. No¬ 
where else in the whole Church is this so 
fully recognized and carried out as in the 
English Communion. So that a congrega¬ 
tion in its official capacity, if we may so 
term it, in its holy relation to our Lord, 
in its position in the community, by using 
such intercession, and in its offering of 
praise, is bound to respond. Responses are 
not appointed merely for beauty and to 
heighten our devout feelings, and kindle 
our enthusiasm, and to keep a congregation 
ever in a living sense of worshiping, though 
these are all of them results from its use, 
but as the worship is presentative of our¬ 
selves, souls, and bodies, and representative 
of the people’s office in the community in 
which they are placed, responses become acts 
of the highest and most solemn import. 

The responses are often divided into four 
classes: I. Amen. II. The responses to 
the Versicles. III. The responses in the 
Litany. IY. The responds to the Com¬ 
mandments. 

Restitution. That part of a true repent¬ 
ance which requires probably the highest 
moral courage to carrj r out. “ Behold, 
Lord, the half of my goods I give to the 
poor,” was easy compared to the other part 
of Zaecheus’ pledge, “ If I have taken any¬ 
thing from any man by false accusation, I 
restore him fourfold.” 

Resurrection of Christ. The Yth Arti¬ 
cle of the Apostles’ Creed, “ The third day 
He rose again from the Dead,” and the Xth 
in the Nieene Creed, “ And the third day 
He rose again according to the Scriptures,” 
declare sufficiently the Faith of the Church 
upon this her challenge to the whole world. 
For if Christ be not raised our faith is 
vain, we are unforgiven; more, we believe 
and proclaim a lie, we mortify ourselves and 
ask others to do so upon a miserable delusion. 
“ But now is Christ risen from the dead.” 
His Resurrection was in a true sense the in¬ 
evitable completion of His incarnation as 
well as the central fact of the world’s his¬ 
tory. It was the miracle of all miracles, 
compared with which all others are of less 
wonder; for all others lead up to it directly 
or indirectly. It was prepared for by type, 
though.men lost the meaning of the types. 
It was foretold, though the predictions were 
misunderstood. It was asserted by Him 
who was to accomplish it. And in His 
Person who did so accomplish it, and in the 
results which follow through all time for all 
men from this Resurrection, results for good 
or for evil as men choose. It stands forth 
pre-eminent. These statements are not per¬ 
haps arranged in their historical order, but 
rather in the order in which we can best 
apprehend them. It will be the purpose of 
this brief article to show these five facts. 


A. It did complete the purpose of the In¬ 
carnation, for blessed as His presence even for 
the short public ministry of three and a half 
years was for men, yet it would have been 
most apparently as aimless, as inconsequent, 
as those who deny the Resurrection are 
forced to admit our life to be. To be her¬ 
alded by prophecy, to be announced by an 
Angel, to be borne sinless of a pure Yirgin, 
to be welcomed by Angels, to be a wondrous 
blessing to those about Him, to wield the 
mighty Power which was His as the eternal 
Son of God and then to die a felon’s death,— 
the very statement of these facts can but 
compel us to say, that if Christ be not 
risen, then a vast combination, effected by 
Divine powers upon stubborn wills made to 
serve for His coming, was for a compara¬ 
tively petty end. But His Resurrection per¬ 
fected with immortality the sinless body He 
had taken and the Human Soul He had joined 
to His Divine Essence, so that the Human 
Nature which He assumed and wore and' 
died in, He by His Resurrection made im¬ 
mortal, and so joined indissolubly to His 
Eternal Nature that it can never more be 
disjoined, but the Eternal Son of God be¬ 
coming immortal Son of man is now but 
one sole Person, the Lord Jesus Christ. 
So in a true sense His Resurrection perfected 
His incarnation. 

B. It was the crowning miracle. It was the 

true answer to the challenge, Physician, heal 
thyself. He needed no healing, but our na¬ 
ture which He took did, and He healed it 
by this Resurrection, as well as redeemed us 
by the Atonement, the Resurrection the 
Three Persons of the Glorious Trinity 
shared in. His soul truly leaving His body 
at His death upon the Cross, went into that 
place of departed spirits whither we all go, 
and there remained till the Father raised 
Him again (Gal. i. 1). And, too, “Whom 
God hath raised up, having loosed the pains 
of death: because it was not possible that 
He should be holden of it” (Acts ii. 24). 
He raised Himself as He foretold. “ Destroy 
this Temple and in three days I will raise it 
up” (St. John ii. 19) ; and again, “Therefore 
doth My Father love Me, because I lay down 
My life that I might take it again” (St. John 
x. 17). “ I have power to take it again” 

(St. John x. 18). Then the Holy Ghost is 
also present in the Act of Resurrection, as 
St. Paul saith joining our Confirmation to 
our hope of Resurrection. “ But if the Spirit 
of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead 
dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from 
the dead shall also quicken your mortal 
bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you.” 
Then the Holy Ghost by whom the Virgin 
became the Mother of Him who is our God, 
fashioning His mortal body, dwelling in 
Him, abiding with Him, was also thequick- 
ener of the Body of our Lord, “ who was 
quickened by the Spirit” (1 Pet. iii. 18). 
It was the Crown of all miracles, as it sur¬ 
passes all precedent, not that a dead man 
should be raised, but that he should raise 





RESURRECTION OF CHRIST 657 


REVELATION 


himself. Other miracles led up to it, as pre¬ 
paratives. Elijah and Elisha restored by 
prayer the souls to the bodies of children. 
The corpse that was cast into Elisha’s tomb 
revived upon the touch of the bones of the 
Prophet. Our Lord not only raised the 
dead (not merely in the three recorded in¬ 
stances, but in numberless others also), but 
gave the power to His Apostles when He 
sent them forth. They prepared men’s 
minds to receive the fact that He did raise 
Himself from the dead when this action was 
announced. If we accept this miracle, then 
we must accept all others. If we reject this 
miracle we more than reject all others, we 
reject Christ, we reject our own future Res¬ 
urrection ; we have no right to believe, but 
can only imagine the joys of a disembodied 
existence ; we practically reject a judgment, 
and so reject all future retribution ; we live 
unrepentant, die unforgiven. 

C. The Resurrection is not bound up 
merely in our hopes, but it had a wondrous 
retrospective power. It was prefigured in 
type, and so was taught, it may be dimly, 
still enough to show that they who lived be¬ 
fore it were to be participants in it. The Ark 
of Noah was a type of the Resurrection (1 
Pet. iii. 21). The sacrifice of Isaac was an 
act that not only typified the future giving 
of God’s Son, but also His Resurrection. The 
release of Joseph from prison and his exal¬ 
tation, Samson bearing the gates of Gaza, 
and the miraculous restoration of Jonah 
were also types. The effects of the sacrifices 
of the Law were the continuous types of a 
restoration that was only to be fully realized 
in the Resurrection of Christ. The Fathers, 
then, before the Incarnation had a living 
hope in the Resurrection of our Lord. 
To this end, too, pointed that mysterious 
preaching to the souls in prison. Not only 
was He witnessed to before His coming, but 
these witnesses had a share in the hope for 
which they testified. 

D. It was foretold. It seems strange that 
Christian Doctors should deny that passages 
in Holy Writ which can fairly bear such a 
meaning do not do so because they who 
uttered them did not so apply them. If 
this were a true exegesis few passages could 
be applied to our Lord. But they are all 
pregnant with meaning concerning Him. 
Job could say, “ I know that my Redeemer 
liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter 
day upon the earth” (ch. xix. 25). But we 
are not allowed to believe that this involves 
that Christ must first rise, for Job may not 
have known who that avenging next of kin 
—the Redeemer Christ —should be. St. 
Peter has given the definite interpretation 
to the words of David: “Thou wilt not 
leave my soul in hell, neither wilt Thou 
suffer Thy holy one to see corruption.” But 
we may * well" claim the words of Micah : 
“ The Breaker is come up before them : they 
have broken up, and have passed through 
the gate, and are gone out by it: and their 
king shall pass before them, and the Lord 

42 


on the head of them” (Micah ii. 13). And 
the Psalm that saith, “ But God will redeem 
my soul from the power of the grave, for 
He shall receive me” (Ps. xlix. 15; c/. v. 
7-9), and the prophecy of Hosea : “ I will 
ransom them from the power of the grave; 
I will redeem them from death. O death, 
I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be 
thy destruction” (Hos. xiii. 14). 

E. It has a very solemn relation to ourselves 
and our hopes. For since by His Incarnation 
He became man, by the new creation and 
the perfecting of His Human nature the 
Resurrection. He has become the Second 
Adam, the quickening Spirit in whom we 
re-live here and shall perfectly live here¬ 
after. He made it the critical test of belief 
in Him. It was after His Resurrection that 
no more doubt or questioning was permitted. 
It has to be accepted or rejected completely. 
Upon it He has founded His Church. It 
demands obedience, love, purity, and self- 
denial. He has not received unless it bear 
this fruit in the believer. And since the 
Person who accomplished it demands wor¬ 
ship because of it, then it requires faith in 
Him. This is not upon the mere act, as 
though because it has been done it will be 
again, and He is only the first fruits; but 
also because He has power to give this im¬ 
mortal life in and after the Resurrection He 
offers ; and He sends His Heralds to pro¬ 
claim before all men the conditions, the love, 
and the mercy of them, and the terrible con¬ 
sequences He cannot avert from those who 
reject Him and His Act. Therefore the 
Resurrection of Christ Jesus our Lord, on 
which so many doctrinal truths (as of Justi¬ 
fication and Sanctification, Grace and Elec¬ 
tion) turn, is a Fact accomplished by a Per¬ 
son who is the Eternal Son of God and 
Immortal Son of Man, and who personally 
bestows the gift of it and its manifold glories 
upon him who believeth in Him. 

Revelation. The one prophetical book 
of the New Testament. Its history may be 
shortly stated. It was written by St. John 
on the Isle of Patmos, when an exile there 
for the word of God and the testimony (i.e., 
martyrdom for the sakeof) of Jesus Christ. 
He was banished there, it is said, by Domi- 
tian, probably about 96 a.d. An earlier 
date has too many difficulties in it to be 
tenable. Its style, its quiet, unassuming 
supposition that the writer is so well known 
as to need no other words of introduction 
than “His servant John,” “John to the 
seven Churches,” “ I, John,” the position 
of the writer as one having authority in the 
Asian Churches, all point to the Apostle St. 
John as the author. The book was so re¬ 
ceived and so spoken of generally in the 
Church, till the wild fantasies of the Gnos¬ 
tics seized upon its prophecy of the thou¬ 
sand years’ reign, and distorted it so success¬ 
fully that some pretext was sought by many 
to reject its authority; and in the Greek 
Church many felt towards this book as the 
Latin Church did towards the Epistle to the 





REVELATION 


658 


KEVELATION 


Hebrews,—regarding it fis inspired, but not 
the work of St. John. Its proper place was 
indicated for it in time, and since the fifth 
century has never been disturbed till recent 
critics have tried to attack it on very insuf¬ 
ficient grounds. 

The Apocalypse is a very mysterious and 
wonderful volume. It may be roughly di- 
vided into two parts. After the introduc¬ 
tory verses, the first part is the Vision of 
the glorified Lord and His message to the 
seven Churches of Asia, part of the field of 
the Church where St. John had recently 
labored, and in which he was the last sur¬ 
viving Apostle. Each Angel of the Church 
is addressed by our Lord, who gives it some 
token of Himself with the significant for¬ 
mula, “ I know thy works,” and then each 
has his responsibility set forth, and his fail¬ 
ure or success in his work pointed out. Of 
these Angels we can very probably identify 
two,—Timothy at Ephesus and Polycarp 
at Smyrna,—and in both cases the admoni¬ 
tion sent to each fits in well with what we 
know of their characters. This first Vision 
closes very abruptly with the last message, 
and the second part opens with a vision 
whose splendor and pomp are only to be 
paralleled with the Visions of Ezekiel. The 
Door opens in heaven, and after a glorious 
revelation of the Throne, and of Him that 
sat thereon, of the Living Creatures around 
it in sleepless worship, of the four and twenty 
elders who adore Him, follow a series of 
visions of what was to be. The Lamb of 
God as it had been slain, standing in the 
midst of the glorious service of heaven, can 
alone unseal the-mystic book of seven seals ; 
and as each of the first four seals was opened 
there went forth a rider upon a horse with 
a special mission, the first conquering and 
to conquer, the second to take peace from 
the earth, the third to bring famine, the 
fourth wore the dread name of Death, and 
Hades followed with him. 

The fifth seal was a vision of the souls 
under the Altar. The sixth brought an 
earthquake. In the long pause that followed 
the redeemed were gathered. The seventh 
seal is not described, only an awful silence 
ensues. Here it is impossible to attempt any 
interpretation further than to state that these 
seals extend (according to the soundest in¬ 
terpreters) from the resurrection to the end 
of time ; some having a longer duration than 
others. The first seal referring to our Lord 
is not recalled, the other riders had orders 
given them ; they probably were withdrawn 
with the fall of the Koman empire. The 
sixth seal refers to the work of the Church 
and the ingathering of all nations. The 
subjects of the seventh seal are still hidden. 
Then followed the vision of the seven trum¬ 
pets. These are held to be parallel to the 
seven seals, but not necessarily beginning 
and ending each with the like seal. They dis¬ 
play the history of the Church and the world 
from another point. Before the seven Angels 
sound their trumpets (ch. viii.) the Angel 


at the Altar (Christ the Lord) offers up 
the prayers of the saints in his golden censer, 
and after this offering, filling the censer with 
fire from the Altar, He casts it to the earth, 
and voices and thundering and lightnings 
and an earthquake follow. In the Trumpets 
the imagery of the plagues of Egypt are 
partly used. The blast of the first Trumpet 
brings hail and fire mingled with blood 
upon the earth. The second Trumpet is 
followed by a burning mount cast into the 
sea, the third part of which became blood. 
The third Trumpet sounded and the Star 
Wormwood fell from heaven, embittering 
the third part of the waters. The fourth 
Trumpet brings such darkness upon sun, 
moon, and stars that not a third of the day 
shone upon the earth. A pause again, that 
the voice of these woes may be uttered over 
the earth. Then the fifth Trumpet was blown 
and a star fell (ch. ix. 1-11), to whom was 
given the key of the bottomless pit, and the 
first woe was loosed therefrom, the terrible 
plague of locusts,—which is generally inter¬ 
preted of the Mohammedan power. The sixth 
Trumpet sounded (ch. ix. 12-21), and the 
four mysterious Angels which were bound in 
the river Euphrates were loosed, with power 
to slay the third part of men ; a vast army is 
given to them, and they execute their dread 
mission, and yet those spared repented not 
of their sins. Ch. x. places a pause in the 
series by intercalating these two visions. 
First, the Angel vociferating the seven 
thunders, whose utterances St. John recorded 
and sealed. The little book in the Angel’s 
hand the Apostle was bidden to take and 
eat. 

Next follows the Vision of the Temple 
which he was directed to measure, and was 
shown the two witnesses, whose mission, 
career, and the glorious power given them, 
and their final triumph, is recorded. In 
these two visions is included the second woe. 
And now the peal of the seventh Trumpet is 
the victorious proclamation that the king¬ 
doms of the world are become the kingdoms 
of our Lord and His Christ. God is wor¬ 
shiped by the Elders, and adorations are paid. 
The temple of God opens, and therein is seen 
the Ark of the Testimony. The series of 
visions (ch. xii.-xiv.) which follow are upon 
the Church of God and her fate here, the 
opposing powers that arise, and their final 
fall. These visions are also in some, measure 
parallel to the Seals and Trumpets already 
recounted, and to the outpourings of the 
seven Vials that are to follow immedi¬ 
ately after. They exhibit especially the 
history of the Church as warred against by 
subtle spiritual powers of evil. The vision 
of the crowned angel, like to the Son of 
man, who was bidden to reap the harvest of 
the Earth, is synchronous with its whole 
history, till the Angel with the sharp sickle 
reaps the vintage of judgment. The Seven 
Angels with the seven cups of God’s wrath 
(ch. xv.) were preparing, but the Apostle 
has a preparative and comforting vision of 




REVELATION 


659 


RHODE ISLAND 


the victorious redeemed. To the Seven were 
given the cups by one of the Living Crea¬ 
tures, and the glory filled the Temple, so 
that no man could enter in till the plagues 
were accomplished. These two begin with 
the other seven, and recount but another side 
of the spiritual history transacting in the 
world. The first cup poured a noisome boil 
upon those who bore the mark of the bea^t; 
the second cup turned the waters of the sea 
into blood; the third also transmuted the 
waters of the springs and rivers ; the fourth 
cup poured upon it gave scorching power to 
the sun; the fifth brought darkness, the 
biting of the tongue with pain upon the 
unrepentant blasphemers against God; the 
sixth was poured out, and the river Eu¬ 
phrates was dried up, and three unclean 
spirits having power to work miracles went 
abroad deceiving and gathering the Kings 
of the Earth together for the great battle of 
Armageddon; the seventh cup closed the 
series with the sound of the great Voice 
saying, It is done. And now the Vision of 
Babylon, the counterfeit Church, is unrolled 
before us (ch. xvii.). Her power to deceive, 
her vast political power, and her terrible 
destruction by the horns of the beast upon 
which she rode. The majority of commen¬ 
tators, both ancient and modern, interpret 
this of Rome. The fall of Babylon (ch. 
xviii.) is then recited, with a glowing im¬ 
agery which recalls the diction of Jeremiah 
and Ezekiel. 

Here the Visions of earthly temporal 
transactions cease. The next is the Vision 
of the triumph of Christ and the prepara¬ 
tion for the marriage of the Lamb, and the 
glad summons to the wedding. But the 
Vision of Him that rode forth conquering 
and to conquer from the first seal is resumed, 
and the Word of God, the King of Kings, 
the Lord of Lords, is revealed as leading 
the Hosts of heaven to the final Victory 
over all His enemies; the binding of Satan, 
and the thousand years’ reign upon the 
earth, and destruction of all foes are re¬ 
counted. Then St. John in the last two 
chapters (xxi. and xxii.), with a beauty of 
language and a wondrous tone of love and 
triumph, recites to us the descent of the Bride 
of the Lamb from heaven. The holy eter¬ 
nal city is measured, its glory and mag¬ 
nificence are recounted, and in the last 
chapter he carries us back to the Garden of 
Eden, from whence four rivers issued, but 
now one upon whose bank grows the tree of 
life, of which they who keep the command¬ 
ments alone can have a right to eat. Then 
our Lord speaks as at the first, and this 
strange and wonderful prophecy closes with 
the words that express the yearning of every 
Christian heart: “Even so, come, Lord 
Jesus.” 

It is difficult to say any more with the 
scanty space allowed. But it may be added 
here that it seems strange that any Christian 
believing that the Holy Spirit speaks as 
He wills by man, can ever read this book 


without feeling its thorough inspiration. It 
cannot be entirely interpreted. Part of its 
fulfillment we, each in his place, are aiding 
to bring about now. There may be doubt 
about the accuracy of some of our interpre¬ 
tations of what we feel must have been ful¬ 
filled already. But deeper than these doubts 
is forced upon us the conviction that its very 
difficulties are of God. Its abrupt transi¬ 
tions, the resumption of, as it were, unfin¬ 
ished visions, the gathering into this book 
the diction of the Hebrew prophets and 
using it for nobler prophecies, the testi¬ 
mony of other earlier prophecies woven 
into this, is beyond human skill. And 
again, to make so prominent the history of 
God’s Church, its struggles, its open humili¬ 
ations in the world, and, too, its secret tri¬ 
umphs in the souls it gathers in, the 
spiritual comfort of those in tribulation, the 
messages from the glorified ascended Lord 
to His Church by His Apostle, a con¬ 
tinually recurring subject until it reaches 
the culmination in the marriage of the 
Lamb and His Church, is a proof of its in¬ 
spiration. As a master-musician who has a 
solemn hymn, a victorious anthem, and a 
lament to weave into one symphony, takes 
these themes, develops them each in part, 
and as the symphony broadens and deepens, 
ever recurs to, resumes, and interweaves tri¬ 
umphant fears and sad wailings and glorious 
adorations into one perfect whole and makes 
his work of human hopes reach holier aspi¬ 
rations, so there is no note in the scale of 
human feeling from despair and utter agony 
to the loftiest and finest raptures that the 
sanctified heart can feel towards its Re¬ 
deemer but the Apostle has been taught by 
the Holy Spirit to touch it for our comfort 
and strengthening. The Book is sadly 
neglected both in public and private read¬ 
ing, j^et it is the only book which has a 
blessed promise to its reader: “Blessed is 
he that readeth, and they that hear the 
words of this prophecy, and keep those 
things which are written therein: for the 
time is at hand” (Rev. i. 3). 

Rhode Island, Diocese of. The history 
of the Church in Rhode Island naturally di¬ 
vides itself into three periods : 

1. The Unorganized Period (nearly coin¬ 
cident with Colonial times), extending from 
the founding of the first parish, in 1698 A.D., 
to the first Diocesan Convention, in 1790 a.d. 

2. The Incompletely Organized Period, 
from 1790 a.d. to the election of the first 
particular Diocesan Bishop, in 1843 a.d. 

3. The Completely Organized Period, from 
1843 a.d. to the present time. 

The Colonial Church .—The advent of 
Episcopacy in Rhode Island was nearly, if 
not quite, coincident with the settlement of 
the State, in 1635 a.d. Probably somewhat 
previously to the arrival of Roger Williams, 
the Founder, or certainly not materially 
later, came the Rev. William Blackstone, a 
regularly ordained clergyman of the Church 
of England, and settled on the bank of the 




RHODE ISLAND 


660 


RHODE ISLAND 


river, still bearing his name, a half-dozen 
miles north of the present city of Provi¬ 
dence. It is recorded that he “ used fre¬ 
quently to come to Providence to preach the 
Gospel.” But as Mr. Blackstone died in 
1675 a.d., leaving no organic result of his 
labors, we must look to a later date for the 
true founding of the Church. 

The earliest enduring work was that which 
led to the formation of Trinity Church, 
Newport, and was begun in 1698 a.d. by 
the preaching there of the Rev. Mr. Lock- 
yer. The first principal patron and original 
founder of Trinity, and therefore the one 
entitled to the honor of being considered 
the Pounder of the Church in Rhode Island, 
was Sir Francis Nicholson, successively 
royal governor of New York, Virginia, 
Maryland, Nova Scotia, and Carolina. 

Previously to the close of the seventeenth 
century there were but two organized bodies 
of Christians in Newport, the Baptist and 
the Quaker, the same being substantially 
true of the other parts of the State. But 
it was found that the leading gentlemen of 
the town were favorable to this new under¬ 
taking. A considerable parish was soon 
gathered, and, by the aid of Governor Nich¬ 
olson, a “handsome, but not beautiful” 
church was completed, not later than 1702 
a.d. While this enterprise was under way, 
in the year 1701 a.d. was founded, in Eng¬ 
land, the association since long known as the 
venerable Society for the Propagation of the 
Gospel in Foreign Parts, and Trinity Church, 
Newport, was destined to be apparently the 
first point in New England to enjoy its fos¬ 
tering care and to become its largest bene¬ 
ficiary within that territory. 

On the solicitation of the wardens, through 
the Bishop of London, recognized as having 
jurisdiction in the colonies, the Rev. James 
Honeyman was appointed a missionary and 
sent over to Newport, in 1704 a.d., being 
accompanied by a valuable library of the 
best theological books of the day for the use 
of the church. Mr. Honeyman lived nearly 
a half-century as rector of Trinity, and was 
so fortunate as to see it grow large and flour¬ 
ishing. Iii 1709a.d., Queen Anne presented 
the church a bell. In 1724 a.d. there were 
about fifty resident communicants. In 1726 
a.d. a new church—the one still standing 
—was completed, “ acknowledged by the 
people of that day to be the most beautiful 
timber structure in America,” and the ad¬ 
herents of the Parish had increased to four¬ 
fold the number of the original promoters. 
In 1729 a.d. came Dean (afterwards Bishop) 
Berkeley to Newport, where he resided for 
several years, frequently preaching in 
Trinity, bestowing upon it several gifts, and, 
in general, exercising a powerful and salu¬ 
tary influence upon the young Church of 
Rhode Island. The venerable Society con¬ 
tinued its stipend to the rectors of the church 
in Newport until 1772 a.d., sixty-seven years. 
From 1698 to 1785 a.d. there were 2722 
baptisms, 485 marriages, and 861 burials. 


The second foothold of the Church in 
Rhode Island was gained in what was known 
as the Narragansett country, in the south¬ 
western portion of the State. Previously to 
the year 1700 a.d. a number of families at¬ 
tached to the Church of England had settled 
in the region, and were accustomed to hold 
occasional worship in private houses. In 
1706 a.d. the Rev. Christopher Bridge be¬ 
came their regular pastor, and continued to 
officiate among them for a year or more. 
The first church edifice, still standing, al¬ 
though not upon the original site, and not 
in present use, was erected in 1707 a.d. In 
1717 a.d. the Society for the Propagation 
of the Gospel in Foreign Parts appointed the 
Rev. William Guy missionary over the Nar¬ 
ragansett parish. The most distinguished of 
all the early ministers of St. Paul’s Church 
was the Rev. James McSparran, settled in 
Narragansett in 1721 a.d., on the urgent 
petition of the parish to the venerable So¬ 
ciety, and judged to have been “the ablest 
divine that was sent over to this country” 
by that body. For thirty-six years he con¬ 
tinued to preach the Word and break the 
Bread of life to this people with great faith¬ 
fulness and acceptability. During his pas¬ 
torate he baptized 538 persons, besides ad¬ 
mitting to membership in the church a con¬ 
siderable number already baptized. The 
successor of Dr. McSparran was the Rev. 
Samuel Fayerweather, who remained until 
the Revolution. 

The third parish founded in what is now 
Rhode Island, although not so at that date, 
was St. Michael’s,. Bristol. Feeble efforts 
towards the establishment of Episcopal ser¬ 
vices had been made in the early part of the 
eighteenth century, but it was not until 
1719 a.d. that they became effective. In 
response to an application to the Bishop of 
London and the Society for the Propagation 
of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, the Rev. 
James Orem was sent out as missionary, and 
found a comfortable wooden church already 
nearly completed, at a cost of fourteen hun¬ 
dred pounds. 

In the year 1722 a.d. the Society again 
provided a missionary in the person of the 
Rev. John Usher, who completed a fruitful 
ministry of more than a half-century in 
Bristol, dying there in 1775 a.d. 

Mr. Usher baptized 713 persons, officiated 
in the marriage service 185 times, and at¬ 
tended 274 funerals. In the earlier history 
of the Bristol church, before the town was 
set off from Massachusetts to Rhode Island, 
in 1746 a.d. , it is repeatedly recorded that 
men of the Church of England were im¬ 
prisoned for refusing to pay towards the 
support of the Presbyterian pastor of the 
town. 

The fourth and last colonial church of 
Rhode Island is St. John’s, Providence, 
known previously to 1794 a.d. as King’s 
Church. The Rev. Mr. Honeyman, of New¬ 
port, had preached repeatedly in Providence 
from as early a date as 1720 a.d. to 1722 a.d., 




RHODE ISLAND 


661 


RHODE ISLAND 


when, at one time, “in the open fields,” he 
addressed “ more people than he had ever 
before seen together in America.” The 
erection of the first church was begun upon 
St. Barnabas’ Day, in the latter year. In 
1723 a.d. the venerable Society supplied 
this infant parish with the Rev. George 
Pigot as a missionary, transferring him from 
Stratford, Conn. After several short pastor¬ 
ates, in 1739 a.d. the Rev. John Checkley, 
having just been ordained by-the Bishop of 
Exeter, at the age of fifty-nine, became rec¬ 
tory and so continued until 1753 a.d., being 
a missionary of the Society for the Propaga¬ 
tion of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. 

Mr. Checkley was followed by the Rev. 
John Graves, another missionary of the 
Society, who remained through the trouble¬ 
some times of the Revolution, refraining, 
however, from officiating after the Declara¬ 
tion of Independence, because not permitted 
to offer prayers for the king. 

Services were held, during this period, at 
several other points, and especially at Cow- 
esett, in Warwick, where the first Newport 
church was re-erected in 1728 a.d., and re¬ 
mained standing until about 1764 a.d., Dr. 
McSparran, Mr. Fayerweather, and Mr. 
John G-raves often officiating in it, but no 
other permanent parish was formed. Among 
the names to be honored as those of power¬ 
ful friends and promoters of the Colonial 
Church is that of the distinguished Hugue¬ 
not, Gabriel Bernon, the first signer of the 
petition for Trinity Church, Newport, one 
on the earliest list of vestrymen of theNarra- 
gansett Church, in 1718 a.d., and one of the 
first wardens of King’s Church, Providence. 

Another signal benefactor was Nathaniel 
Ray, Collector of the King’s customs at 
Newport and one of the Yestry of Trinity, 
as early as 1720 a.d. In addition to liberal 
gifts during his lifetime, he made large 
bequests, at his death in 1734 a.d., to that 
parish, as well as to St. Michael’s, Bristol, 
for the foundation of parochial schools. Al¬ 
though the long withholding of Bishops from 
America, on the part of England, left the 
Church in Rhode Island in a grievously im¬ 
perfect condition, yet it is not to be over¬ 
looked that her forced dependence upon the 
old country for ordination and oversight, and 
her continued allegiance to the Bishop of 
London, served to perpetuate a closer inter¬ 
course than would otherwise have prevailed 
between the mother and the daughter. 

Nor is it possible to overestimate the value 
of the aid and sj^mpathy afforded by the 
venerable Society for the better part of the 
eighteenth century,—an aid without which 
the-four feeble churches in this embryo Dio¬ 
cese could not have survived. In estimating 
the influences which prevailed at the birth of 
the Church of Rhode Island, we should not, 
likewise, forget the principle of religious 
liberty on which the State was founded, and 
by which the Church was to such an-extent 
inspired as never to have violated it in her 
treatment of other Christians. 


The general condition of the Church at 
the close of the Revolutionary war was most 
pitiable. Trinity, Newport, was for years 
without a pastor, her property in a state of 
dilapidation, her people discouraged, party 
spirit raging even within the parish, the edi¬ 
fice itself being occupied for several years 
by a minister of the “Six-Principle-Baptist 
Society” and his congregation. 

The Narragansett Church was unopened 
for worship for a dozen years or more, being 
used as a barrack for the American soldiery 
during the war. 

St. Michael’s, Bristol, was in ashes, having 
been burned in 1778 a.d. by a band of the 
British. King’s Church, Providence, after 
having been served by a number of clergy¬ 
men and laymen, among them a Baptist min¬ 
ister, was closed against its regular rector, the 
missionary still paid by the Society, who de¬ 
sired, at the restoration of peace, to resume 
his public ministrations. To the human eye 
the Episcopal Church in Rhode Island 
seemed ready to die, if not already dead. 

The Organization of the Diocese .—The 
natal day of the Diocese of Rhode Island 
was November 18, 1790 a d. By that time 
the parishes had begun to revive from the 
depression of the war, all having, for 
several years, enjoyed the services of a 
rector except Bristol, which, although the 
church had been already rebuilt, was still 
served b} 7 a lay-reader, the son of the faith¬ 
ful old rector. On the above-mentioned 
day there met in Newport the first Diocesan 
Convention, consisting of two clergymen 
and five laymen, representing all the par¬ 
ishes save St. Paul’s, Narragansett. The 
first business of the Convention was to con¬ 
stitute the new Diocese an integral part of 
the National Church by a resolution of ad¬ 
herence to the canons passed by the General 
Convention of 1789 a.d., and by another 
adopting the Revised Book of Common 
Prayer, whose use had become obligatory 
only the preceding month. The Rt. Rev. 
Samuel Seabury, D.D., Bishop of Connec¬ 
ticut, was, by vote, declared Bishop of the 
Church in Rhode Island. Already, how¬ 
ever, had he, soon after his return from his 
consecration in Scotland, in 1784 a.d., offici¬ 
ated in Rhode Island by an ordination in 
Newport and a confirmation in Providence. 
The Diocese continued under Bishop Sea¬ 
bury until his death, in 1796 a.d. In 1798 
a.d., Bishop Bass, Diocesan of Massachu¬ 
setts, was elected Bishop of Rhode Island, 
accepting the position and holding it until 
his death, in 1803 a.d. Bishop Benjamin 
Moore, of New York, was next elected, in 
1806 a.d., to the Episcopate of Rhode Island, 
but whether or not he accepted and exer¬ 
cised the trust does not seem to be recorded. 
In 1810 a.d. the Convention elected dele¬ 
gates to represent it in the proposed Con¬ 
vention of the Eastern Diocese, and to take 
part in the election of a Bishop who should 
have jurisdiction also in Rhode Island. This 
election resulted in the choice of Alexander 






RHODE ISLAND 


662 


RIGHTEOUSNESS 


Yiets Griswold, at that time rector at 
Bristol, who was consecrated in 1811 a.d., 
and continued to exercise the bishopric in a 
most meek and gentle spirit until his death, 
in 1843 a.d., having, however, removed to 
Massachusetts in 1829 a.d. 

The first parochial reports of which a 
record is preserved were presented to the 
Bishop at the Convention of 1813 a.d. The 
baptisms in the three parishes, at Bristol, 
Newport, and Providence, had amounted 
during the preceding year to 137, and the 
communicants numbered 312. Although 
the four Colonial parishes had all been 
established by the close of 1722 a.d., yet it 
was not until 1816 a.d. that a fifth (St. 
Paul’s, Pawtucket) was added to the list, if 
we except the Tower Hill Church, which 
failed to become a permanent organization. 
St. Paul’s was thus the only parish founded 
for more than a century,—from the estab¬ 
lishment of St. John’s, Providence, in 1722 
a.d. , to that of Grace Church, in the same 
city, in 1829 a.d. Henceforth, however, for 
the next ten years, there intervened a period 
of extraordinary growth, such as the Rhode 
Island Church never saw before, nor has 
ever seen since, as far, at least, as the 
number of new organizations is concerned, 
averaging three in each two years. At the 
time of Bishop Griswold’s death, in 1843 
a d., there were twenty-one parishes, of 
which four have since become extinct. In 
fifteen parishes (two or three of the largest, 
however, not reporting) the baptisms that 
year were 233, and the communicants num¬ 
bered 1276. 

The Completely Furnished Diocese under 
Bishops of its own .—After the decease of 
Bishop Griswold, it was felt that the time 
had come when Rhode Island should enjoy 
the exclusive services of a Bishop. A special 
Convention was accordingly called to meet 
at St. Stephen’s Church, Providence, on 
April 6, 1843 a.d., for the election of such 
an officer. It consisted of 80 members, of 
whom 21 were clergymen, being nearly 
twelvefold as many as took part in the first 
Convention a half-century before. The 
almost unanimous choice of the Convention 
fell upon the Rev. John Prentiss Hawley 
Henshaw, D.D., rector of St. Peter’s Church, 
Baltimore, who was consecrated during the 
ensuing August. Bishop Henshaw served 
the Diocese with eminent ability, energy, 
and devotion until his death, in 1852 a.d. 
His Episcopate was a period of large mis¬ 
sionary interest and activity, many new 
points, especially in the manufacturing dis¬ 
tricts, being occupied; not less than six, 
which grew into parishes, surviving to the 
present time as permanent stations of the 
Church. 

In addition to his Diocesan duties, Bishop 
Henshaw was also rector of Grace Church, 
Providence, an elegant edifice of stone, be¬ 
ing one of the first fruits of his labors. 

The present Bishop of Rhode Island, the 
Rt. Rev. Thomas March Clark, D.D., was 


elected to that office at a special Convention, 
on September 27, 1854 a.d., there being 21 
parishes represented, and 95 members, of 
whom 24 were clergymen, being present. 
During his Episcopate the numberof parishes 
in Rhode Island has doubled, and the num¬ 
ber of communicants nearly trebled. It has 
been a period of solid growth, not only in 
numbers, but in public estimation, until the 
Episcopal Church in Rhode Island, in in¬ 
fluence and dignity, stands second to no other 
religious body, in marked contrast to its 
lamentable condition a century since. 

Another feature of the present administra¬ 
tion has been the marked decline in party 
spirit in these latter years, and the attain¬ 
ment of a high degree of charity and tran¬ 
quillity. On the 6th of December, 1879 a.d., 
there was held in Grace Church, Provi¬ 
dence, amidst the most inspiring associations, 
the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the conse¬ 
cration of the Bishop. Almost the only 
element marring the pleasure of the occa¬ 
sion was the reflection that so many of those 
who participated in the election, a quarter- 
century before, had already passed from the 
earth, notably, among the clergy, the Rev. 
Dr. Crocker, long rector of St. John’s 
Church, Providence, the Rev. Dr. Taft, 
similarly identified with St. Paul’s Church, 
Pawtucket, the Rev. Dr. Crane, rector of 
St. Luke’s, East Greenwich, and the Rev. Dr. 
Waterman, rector of St. Stephen’s, Provi¬ 
dence. Only three out of the twenty-four 
remained alive and connected with the Dio¬ 
cese. One of the auspicious enterprises of 
this Episcopate has been the raising of so 
large an Episcopal fund as now, for several 
years, to have freed the Bishop from the 
necessity of serving a parish as rector, and 
thus enabled him to devote himself exclu¬ 
sively to the prosecution of his proper 
office. At the Annual Convention of 1854 
a.d. , the year of Bishop Clark’s accession, 
there were reported, parishes, 23; clergy, 
27; baptisms, 228; communicants, 2446; 
marriages, 141; burials, 291 ; teachers and 
scholars in Sunday-school, 2363 ; offerings 
and contributions for religious purposes, 
$6 / 11 . 31 . 

The statistics of the present year (1882- 
83 a.d.) are: Parishes, 44; churches and 
chapels, 49 ; clergy, 46 ; baptisms, 815 ; con¬ 
firmed, 412; communicants, 6995; mar¬ 
riages, 297; burials, 566; officers, teachers, 
and scholars in Sunday-school, 7361 ; con¬ 
tributions for missionary and charitable pur¬ 
poses, $55,722.14, for parish purposes, $112,- 
209.74; total of contributions, $167,931.88. 

Rev. D. Goodwin. 

Righteousness. The Hebrew verb from 
which the Old Testament idea of righteous¬ 
ness is derived means to be right or straight, 
“ as if spoken of a way.” In Ps. xxiii. 3, we 
have “ the paths of righteousness,” and in 
Isa. xxxiii. 15, the good man is “ He that 
walketh righteously and speaketh upright¬ 
ly.” Such an one “ shall dwell on high : his 
place of defense shall be the munitions of 




EIGHTEOUSNESS 


663 


EITUAL 


rocks : bread shall be given him ; bis waters 
shall be sure.” His “ eyesshallsee the King in 
his beauty” (vs. 16, 17). As righteousness 
signifies being righteous, it is most naturally 
an attribute of Almighty God. Abraham 
exclaims, “shall not the Judge of all the 
earth do right?” (Gen. xviii. 25.) And 
Elihu says, 1 “ will ascribe righteousness to 
my Maker” (Job xxxvi. 3). Eighteous- 
ness in man consists in a proper relation to¬ 
wards God, who is the Fountain of Justice. 
The man who “ shall abide” in God’s “ tab¬ 
ernacle,” and “dwell” in His “holy hill,” 
is “he that walketh uprightly, and worketh 
righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his 
heart” (Ps. xv. 1, 2. See Isa. lxiv. 5). Of 
the Christ the psalmist sings, “ Thou lovest 
righteousness, and hatest wickedness, there¬ 
fore God, thy God, hath anointed thee 
with the oil of gladness above thy fellows” 
(Ps. xlv. 7). While God commands that 
“ Just balances, just weights, a just ephah, 
and a just hin” (Lev. xix. 36) shall be used 
by His people, these things are but outward, 
and a person may use them from expediency, 
therefore true righteousness must go deeper 
than the outward act, and stimulate the 
soul and direct the motives. Isaiah speaks 
of the people “in whose hearts is” God’s 
“ law” (li. 17). When David hopes to behold 
God’s “ face in righteousness” (Ps. xvii. 15), 
he must refer to something higher than a 
mere policy of honest living. True right¬ 
eousness, then, must have relation to God. 
He sits “ in the throne judging right” (Ps. 
ix. 4). “ Eighteousness and judgment are 

the habitation of His throne” (Ps. xcvii. 2). 
If a man is conscious of his obligation to 
be like a righteous God, then his treatment 
of his neighbor will display a character 
which naturally results from such a sense 
of duty. Achish says to David, “ Thou hast 
been upright” (1 Sam. xxix. 6). David’s 
prayer to God is, “ Judge me, O Lord, ac¬ 
cording to my righteousness” (Ps. vii. 8). 
A part of righteousness is to honor father 
and mother and to love one’s neighbor as 
himself (St. Matt. xix. 19). Man has gone far 
away from original righteousness, he has 
broken God’s law, and robbed God by using 
his body and his goods contrary to the will 
of the Giver (Mai. iii. 8). The “tithes 
and offerings” have been wanting, and the 
spiritual service which gladly gives the out¬ 
ward offering has been lacking. But in 
robbing God we rob ourselves, for true hap¬ 
piness lies in religion. Not doing our duty 
towards God we are maimed in our feeble 
attempts to do our duty towards our neigh¬ 
bor, and have not the ability to give rights 
due to others because we are unrighteous 
ourselves. The sinfulness of man is, how¬ 
ever, to be met and overcome by the sinless¬ 
ness of Christ. “And this is His name 
whereby He shall be called, The Lord Our 
Eighteousness” (Jer. xxiii. 6). “Christ 
Jesus, who of God is made unto us wis¬ 
dom, and righteousness, and sanctification, 
and redemption” (1 Cor. i. 30). 


Man broke the law of God, Christ has 
fulfilled that law, and the second Adam has 
thus atoned for the sin introduced by the 
first Adam. Christ now stands as our 
sponsor, and we are accepted in Him and 
for His sake. “ God was in Christ, recon¬ 
ciling the world unto Himself, not imput¬ 
ing their trespasses unto them” (2 Cor. v. 19). 
The whole Christian idea of righteousness, 
therefore, relates to the believer’s position 
towards the Saviour. Jeremiah and St. 
Paul, guided by the same Holy Spirit, 
point to one Eedeemer, “ The Lord our 
Eighteousness.” Eev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Ring. A wedding-ring was made use of 
by Eomans, and to some extent by Jews, and 
it was adopted by Christians, who, however, 
in ancient times used it at the espousals, 
and not at the marriage. 

The Hebrew’s ring contained his seal, and 
so the signet-ring was a symbol of author¬ 
ity, as in the case of Joseph (Gen. xli. 42. 
See also Esther iii. 10; 1 Macc. vi. 15; St. 
Luke xv. 22; Jer. xxii. 24; Hagg. ii. 23; 
Eccles. xlix. 11). Eings used by women 
(Isa. iii. 21). Presented by men and women 
for the service of the Tabernacle (Ex. xxxv. 
22). The signet-ring was worn on the right 
hand (Jer. xxii. 24)* From Ex. xxviii. 11, 
it is thought “that the rings contained a 
stone engraven with a device, or with the 
owner’s name.” Massive Egyptian rings 
have been discovered, most of them of gold. 
The Greeks and Eomans had an abundance 
of rings. They were worn particularly by 
men. 

In St.. James ii. 2, the term translated 
“ with a gold ring” means “ golden-ringed,” 
implying “ the presence of several gold 
rings.” 

In the use of a ring in the investiture of a 
Bishop, it was a symbol of his espousals 
with his Church in Christ’s stead. 

Authorities: W. L. Bevan in Smith’s 
Dictionary of the Bible, Bingham’s Antiq., 
Bowden’s Greg. VII. 

Eev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Ritual. Modern scientific investigations 
show more clearly than ever the close con¬ 
nection between the body and the soul of 
man. It has always been found by expe¬ 
rience that each constantly influences the 
other, but it is only of late years that real 
scientific proof has been given of the per¬ 
petual action and reaction of soul on body, 
and body on mind and soul. God is a 
Spirit, and is to be worshiped in spirit and 
in truth ; but, since He is the God of Na¬ 
ture, and the God who, having wrought out 
salvation through the Incarnation of His 
Son, now applies the benefits of that salva¬ 
tion to men through the Sacraments, it is 
not surprising that the worship due to God 
is most effectually rendered by the soul when 
it is associated with an outward and bodily 
service; that is, with a certain amount of 
Eitual. 

The details of the Jewish Eitual were all 
laid down by God’s Eevelation, but under 





RITUAL 


664 


RITUAL 


the free dispensation of the Gospel. The 
working out of the minutiae of Christian 
Ritual has been left to the practical experi¬ 
ence and wisdom of the Church, as she 
speads from one continent to another, from 
the warm south to the cold north. The ideal 
of the Church’s unity is well shown, not by 
an iron uniformity in small matters, but by 
the substantial identity of things important, 
and a diversity in ceremonial law and usage. 
The XXXIV. Article well expresses the 
judgment of the Church that it is not neces¬ 
sary “ that Traditions and Ceremonies be in 
all places one and utterly like, for at all 
times they have been divers, and may be 
changed according to the diversity of coun¬ 
tries, times, and men’s manners, so that 
nothing be ordained against God’s Word.” 

The Ritual of public worship concerns 
three things : first, the divisions and ar¬ 
rangements of the church edifice and the 
character and position of the different arti¬ 
cles of church furniture; secondly, the dress 
of the various ministers and the adornments 
of the building and its contents; thirdly, 
the postures of the officiating clergy and of 
the congregation, the manual acts of the 
Sacraments, and the proper and orderly ren¬ 
dering of the words appointed for the dif¬ 
ferent services, or the performance of Divine 
worship as it affects the eye and the ear. 

The ritual law as to the “ Ornaments” 
of minister and church will be discussed 
under the article on Vestments. The di¬ 
visions and arrangement of the church edi¬ 
fice have varied considerably at different 
periods, but have in the main always exhib¬ 
ited a threefold division corresponding to 
the nave, or place for the congregation, the 
choir, or place for the inferior ministers and 
for the performance of the less sacred por¬ 
tions of the service, and the Chancel or 
Sanctuary, where the most solemn portions 
of the Liturgy, and in particular of the 
Holy Communion, were celebrated. The 
questions raised by the third class of things 
included under the head of Ritual are so 
numerous and so various that it is obviously 
impossible to discuss them, except in a very 
general wav> in a work of this description, 
but for the investigation of any detail cer¬ 
tain general principles may be laid down. 

In the first place, it may be said that pub¬ 
lic service is primarily commanded, not so 
much to benefit men by instruction or 
prayer as to do homage to God by worship 
and praise, though, of course, the secondary 
blessing is obtained if the primary duty is 
rightly performed. All the acts of the of¬ 
ficiating clergyman are therefore divided into 
two great classes : first, those where he stands 
as the representative of the one great High- 
Priest, and, secondly, those in which he is the 
leader of the people in their adorations and de¬ 
votions. In the celebration of the Eucharist 
it is evident that the Priest, in the teaching 
of the Sermon, in the reading of Scripture, 
in the Epistle and Gospel, the Command¬ 
ments and Comfortable words, in speaking 


the words of pardon, in the Absolution and 
of blessing in the Benediction, stands as the 
representative of God, and so turns towards 
the people, while during the Collects, the 
prayers of Consecration, Oblation, and In¬ 
vocation, the prayers of Intercession, the 
commemorations of the special and common 
Prefaces and the Thanksgivings, he stands 
as the leader of the people, who in their cor¬ 
porate capacity as the Church offer together 
their prayers and worship to God, and that 
he, therefore, turns his back to the Congre¬ 
gation as an officer turns his back to the 
men whom he leads into battle. 

In the second place, it is easy to see that 
the rubrics of the American and English 
Prayer-Books are very far from complete, 
are very much less complete than those of 
the Roman Missal or the Greek Liturgy of 
St. Chrysostom. To take a few simple ex¬ 
amples to show this, no directions whatever 
are given as to the position of the font in 
the church, the attitude of the congregation 
during the Epistle, the part of the church 
where the Confirmation service shall take 
place, the posture of the Celebrant while he 
administers the Communion to himself, the 
time at which the Priest shall return the 
baptized infant to the parents or godparents, 
the place where the Litany shall be said or 
sung, or the taking of the privately bap¬ 
tized child into the Minister’s arms when 
he is publicly signed with the mark of the 
cross. 

If, then, the Prayer-Book is so defective 
in Ritual directions, where are we to look 
for information to enable us to carry out the 
details of divine service properly? In the 
American Church seven sources of informa¬ 
tion are open to us : 

Eirst. The explicit directions of the ru¬ 
brics of our own Book of Common Prayer. 

Second. The explicit directions of the 
English rubrics where they have not been 
obviously and designedly corrected by our 
own Church. 

Third. The implied directions of rubrics, 
as, for example, that contained in the con¬ 
cluding direction of our Communion Office, 
which commands the reverent consumption 
of all that remains of the consecrated ele¬ 
ments. This rubric, on the one hand, plainly 
forbids Reservation, and when taken in con¬ 
nection with the known practice of the 
English Reformation period, and the prac¬ 
tical difficulty of consuming all the conse¬ 
crated wine, implicitly orders the cleansing 
of the Chalice by the introduction and 
drinking of a little water. 

Fourth. The directions and recommen¬ 
dations of the American Canons, and the 
English Canons in force at the time of the 
American Revolution. It is under this 
authority that we practice the bowing of the 
head at the mention of our Lord’s name in 
the Creed. 

Fifth. A careful consideration of the 
historical circumstances under which any 
given direction was inserted in the rubrics ; 





ROCHET 


665 


ROMANISM 


a thorough knowledge of the position of the 
Altar during the time of Charles I. and 
Charles II. would have prevented all con¬ 
troversy as to the “ Eastward position.” 

Sixth. The rubrics and customs of the 
Pre- Reformation Liturgies of England, 
where they have not been corrected or abol¬ 
ished by the successive editions of the re¬ 
formed Prayer-Book. 

Seventh. Continued custom and usage. 

It is obvious that these different means of 
information vary greatly in value, and that 
to balance the evidence on any point not 
decided by either the first or second source 
of information requires extended knowl¬ 
edge, ample time, good judgment, and free¬ 
dom from prejudice. Church history during 
the sixteenth century shows repeatedly that 
a considerable amount of ritual not provided 
directly by the Prayer-Book was taken for 
granted, but after the interruptions of the 
Civil War of the next century, and the 
long-continued disuse of various customs, it 
is practically necessary for the ordinary 
Priest or Layman to accept on any particu¬ 
lar point the general judgment of those who 
have made Ritual a special study. Passing 
over more technical and unattainable works, 
an excellent popular manual will be found 
in the little pamphlet “ Ritual Conformity,” 
published by Parker & Co., London, an 
interpretation of the rubrics drawn up by a 
conference of some of the best authorities of 
England, or, as in the case of Vestments, 
the reader may be referred to Blunt’s “ An¬ 
notated Book of Common Prayer” and 
other commentaries on the Prayer-Book. 

Canon xxii., Title i., of the Digest of our 
National Canons provides that on the com¬ 
plaint in writing of any two Presbyters of 
the Diocese that “ ceremonies or practices 
not ordained or authorized in the Book of 
Common Prayer, and setting forth or sym¬ 
bolizing erroneous or doubtful doctrines, 
have been introduced by any Minister during 
the celebration of the Holy Communion, it 
shall be the duty of the Bishop to summon 
the Standing Committee as his Council of 
Advice, and with them to investigate the 
matter.” If this investigation justifies the 
complaint, the Bishop is directed to admon¬ 
ish the Minister in writing, and, if he disre¬ 
gard this admonition, it shall be the duty of 
the Standing Committee to cause him to be 
tried for a breach of his ordination vow.” 

Edward M. Parker. 

Rochet. Vide Vestments. 

Rogation Days were instituted, it is said, 
by Mamertus, Bishop of Vienne, in France, 
452 a.d., upon the calamities which were 
said to have befallen his diocese,—an earth¬ 
quake, fire, and an incursion of wolves. The 
Bishop set apart the three days before As¬ 
cension-day as a solemn fast, during which 
processions, with Litanies, were to be made 
throughout the diocese. .This custom was 
taken up by other dioceses, and became com¬ 
mon throughout the West. While the old 
Collect, Epistle, and Gospel for Rogation 


days were not retained, they were themselves 
kept in the Calendar as private fasts, and 
a Homily “ for the days of Rogation week” 
in these parts is in the Book of Homilies. 
Hooker, in his “ Ecclesiastical Polity,” has a 
fine section (Book v. g 41) upon the whole 
subject of Litanies and Rogation days. 

Romanism. The word “ Romanism,” 
when correctly used, designates those erro¬ 
neous views and practices which the Roman 
Church has engrafted upon the Catholic 
Faith. 

Sometimes the word is incorrectly em¬ 
ployed by ultra-Protestants to indicate views 
and practices which, however primitive and 
Catholic, are no longer retained by them. 
Thus at one time Liturgical worship and 
Episcopacy were spoken of as parts of 
“ Romanism.” 

We must therefore be careful to distin¬ 
guish between the correct and the incorrect 
use of the word. The best help to ascer¬ 
taining what are the errors which the Roman 
Church has engrafted upon the primitive 
and Catholic Faith is found in the study of 
the XXXIX. Articles of Religion of our 
Church. 

These Articles were framed to set forth 
the doctrinal views of the Church in Eng¬ 
land after the Reformation, when that 
Church was purged of Roman errors, and 
restored to the primitive simplicity of the 
Faith as held in England long before Ro¬ 
manism became dominant. 

The Errors protested against in the Arti¬ 
cles are as follows: 

1st. That the Church may set forth new 
Articles of the Faith. Of late years the 
dogmas of the immaculate conception of the 
Virgin Mary, and the infallibility of the 
Pope “ docens ex cathedra,” have been set 
forth. Against all of this this Church pro¬ 
tests in her VI. and XX. Articles. 

2d. That the Latin language alone shall be 
used in public religious services. Article 
XXIV. declares that “ it is repugnant to the 
Word of God and to the custom of the prim¬ 
itive Church to have public Prayer in the 
Church, or to minister the Sacraments in a 
tongue not understanded of the people.” 

3d. That there are seven sacraments ,— 
Baptism, the Supper of the Lord, Confirma¬ 
tion, Penance, Orders, Matrimony, and 
Extreme Unction. 

This Church declares that there are only 
two Sacraments ordained by the Lord,— 
Baptism and the Supper of the Lord. The 
five called Sacraments by the Roman Church 
“ are not to be counted Sacraments of the 
Gospel, they have not like nature with these 
two, for that they have not any visible sign 
or ceremony ordained of God.” 

4th. That the substance of the Bread and 

Wine in the Lord’s Supper are changed into 
the veritable Body and Blood of Christ. 
This doctrine of Transubstantiation is denied 
in Article XXVIII., where it is declared 
that “ the Body of Christ is taken and 
eaten in the Supper only after a heavenly 





ROMANS, EPISTLE TO 


6G6 


ROMANS, EPISTLE TO 


and spiritual manner,” and by faith. The 
same Article condemns the reservation, car¬ 
rying about, Lifting up, and worshiping the 
consecrated elements. 

5th. That the lay-people should not receive 
the wine in the Sacrament of the Lord’s 
Supper. Article XXX. declares that both the 
parts of the Lord’s Sacrament by Christ’s 
ordinance and commandment ought to be 
ministered to all Christian men alike. 

6th. That in the Mass the priest offers 
CiiRiST/or’ the remission of the sins of the 
living and the dead. Article XXXI. declares 
that this is a blasphemous fable and a danger¬ 
ous deceit, for the one offering of Christ 
on Calvary was a perfect redemption, pro¬ 
pitiation, and satisfaction for all sins. 

7th. That the clergy must not marry. 
Article XXXII. says that it is allowable for 
them to marry at their discretion, as they 
shall judge the same to help them lead 
godly lives, there being no command in 
Scripture to marry or to abstain from it. 

8th. That the clergy should not be sub¬ 
ject to civil law. Article XXXVII. declares 
that the power of the civil magistrate ex¬ 
tends to clergy as well as to the laity in all 
things temporal, but not in things purely 
spiritual. 

9th. (1) That the souls of the dead are 
helped through Purgatory by the prayers and 
gifts of the living; by the intercession of the 
saints in heaven, and by the sacrifice of the 
mass. (2) That the treasure of merit stored 
up in the Church may be applied by the Pope 
to redeem souls from Purgatory and from 
temporal punishment. This is usually called 
the doctrine of Indulgence or Pardons. (3) 
That images and relics may be worshiped. 
Against all three of these errors Article 
XXII. is directed, and speaks of them col¬ 
lectively as a “fond thing, vainly invented, 
and founded upon no warranty of Scrip¬ 
ture.” 

What this Church, then, formally con¬ 
demns as “ Romanism” may be briefly stated 
as inventing new dogmas, using a tongue 
which the people do not understand, multi¬ 
plying Sacraments, Transubstantiation, de¬ 
nying the cup to the laity, declaring that 
Christ is offered in the Sacrifice of the 
Mass, forbidding the clergy to marry, de¬ 
claring the clergy free from obedience to 
civil law, Purgatory, Indulgences, and the 
adoration of images and relics. 

Rey. G. W. Shinn. 

Romans, Epistle to. It was written in 
the spring of 58 a.d., when the Apostle de¬ 
ferred his intended visit to carry the alms 
of the Churches in Macedonia to Jerusalem 
(Acts xx. 16). It is remarkable for its tact, 
delicacy of tone, courtesy, and for the great 
exposition of the doctrines of grace, justifi¬ 
cation, and election. It was addressed to a 
congregation which had not yet received the 
visit of any Apostle ; which was composed 
of a large proportion of Jewish as well as 
Gentile converts ; and which contained sev¬ 
eral of the Apostle’s kinsmen and many per¬ 


sonal friends. He knew much of its condi¬ 
tion from the constant intercourse which 
was natural between the Capital and all 
parts of the Empire, and, too, because of 
the several expulsions of the Jews who had 
settled there. These claims upon him led 
the Apostle to write to the Christians at 
Rome this noble Epistle. In a Church not 
founded by any Apostle, but composed of 
the different Christians who from various 
causes dwelt there, some of whom were of 
the three thousand converted at the Pentecos¬ 
tal outpouring of the Holy Ghost, some of 
evidently later conversion, Jews, Proselytes, 
and Gentiles together, there was much that 
would attract the Apostle, and would call 
forth his best skill in correcting erroneous 
doctrines and presenting the truth, especially 
as he had no authority over them as a 
founder. He would have to state to both the 
Jew and the Gentile the meeting-point, and 
common ground for them in the Gospel. 
This is done with great ability and without 
withholding a jot of the whole truth. The 
analysis of the Epistle which follows is not 
as close as it would be could more space be 
devoted to it. The main divisions are six, 
and extend somewhat as follows : 

I. After his salutation the Apostle natu¬ 
rally speaks of his desire to preach the Gospel 
in Rome, because he is a debtor both to Jew 
and to Gentile as the Apostle to the Gentiles. 
This Gospel is one to be received by Faith, 
since all are guilty before God ; then follows 
the most remarkable outline of the great sins 
of the heathen world traced by a master’s 
hand, truthfully, but with great delicacy. 
This leads him to show how all are con¬ 
cluded under the sentence of death, con¬ 
science proving this, since it proves that we 
all have sinned whether under the law or 
without the law. He pauses here—if it be 
a pause—to show the advantages of the Jew 
as the chosen of God, yet that all have 
transgressed (ch. i.-iii. 20). 

II. He then shows the preparation for res¬ 
toration in the mercy of God through the 
redemption of Christ, and our acceptance 
by Faith in His Atonement, that God might 
justif} r all alike through Faith in the Blood 
of Jesus, excluding the claim of wages for 
works, for no work can be done acceptable 
to Him (ch. iii. 21-31). Abraham’s ex¬ 
ample was shown by Faith, not of works ; 
so too David’s forgiveness was of God’s 
mercy. Abraham’s Faith was shown in 
his trust before circumcision, so that the 
Gentile too might heir through him (ch. 
iv.). 

III. The Apostle can now come back to 
the Justification in Christ. It is His love, 
His mercy, to us, “ for when we were with¬ 
out strength, in due time Christ died for 
the ungodly.” The Atonement is the source 
of our joy in God, and we have peace in 
Christ. For sinffrom Adam on to ourselves 
is condoned and forgiven in Him in whom 
is righteousness unto eternal life (ch. v.). 
So far the Apostle leads us without any but 





ROMANS, EPISTLE TO 


667 


ROOF 


the most general terms. But now he 
changes to a narrower but far more personal 
application. The sixth is the crucial chapter. 

IV. This justification by Faith, this right¬ 
eousness which is granted to faith in the 
Atoning Sacrifice of Christ which gives us 
life, is conveyed to us by Baptism, whereby 
we die to sin (ch. i.-vi.) and live unto God. 
Dead to the world, risen in Christ. This 
release from sin is as a release from slavery ; 
it is as a woman married to a brutal husband 
from whose power death has freed her, so that 
she can be married holily to one who would 
care for her rightly. So Christ has bought 
us and made us free, so Christ has released 
our souls from sin by destroying it and 
married us to Himself by Baptism (ch. vi.- 
vii. 6). 

V. Yet, as we are in the world, we must 
be struggling with the power of sinfulness, 
left as a probation and a discipline. We are, 
as it were, in the body of this death, from 
which Christ can and does free us (ch. vii. 
7-25). But there is aid given. 

VI. There is the gift of the Spirit to the 
Baptized, for Confirmation must follow 
Baptism. This ch. viii. is one of the most 
magnificent chapters written by the Apostle. 
The Sanctification by the Holy Spirit, in 
whom we have our Resurrection, by whom 
we can only pray aright, through whom 
cometh the restoration of all things, by 
whose working in our hearts is the call, the 
justification, the sanctifying glory. And 
here we have a glorious description of our 
closeness to God and His Son through the 
Holy Ghost, whereby, more than conquer¬ 
ors in Him, naught of this world can sepa¬ 
rate us from the love of God which is in 
Christ Jesus our Lord (ch. viii.). 

Here ends the proper doctrinal part of the 
Epistle, but St. Paul had in view the con¬ 
gregation he addressed, and he turns to his 
kinsmen according to the flesh. He would 
gladly perish for their sakes. 

VII. Why is the Jew rejected and the 
Gentile taken in? It would be enough to 
reply, God according to His sovereignty 
could choose as He would His instruments, 
so He can do as His Wisdom overruling and 
as in man’s sinfulness may direct. If the 
chosen seed did not believe in later days, 
they would be put aside, as preparation had 
been made by prophecy for such a contin¬ 
gency. Therefore the righteousness by the 
law failing, the righteousness which is by 
faith must be accepted. So, then, the Jew is 
put aside till he will turn, and the Gentile 
accepted. But the Jew is not wholly cast 
off, but will be received as soon as he is 
willing to have the veil removed. The 
Apostle touches upon the mystery of Pre¬ 
destination, and shows how God’s purposes 
cannot fail, and His instruments must obey 
Him (ch. ix-xi.). 

VIII. He now leaves off these high themes 
and proceeds to urge that if these are true 
and we live by them, then our lives must be 
a holy sacrifice unto God. In a series of 


very practical suggestions and advice upon 
the holy life, he introduces maxims and 
principles which are of universal obligation 
and apply to all times (ch. xii.-xv. 4). 

IX. He closes with a reference to the 
mingled congregation, not advising, but 
speaking of their mutual relations, because 
of the thanksgiving the Gentiles owe to 
God because of His mercy to them. And 
now, as he is hindered for the present in his 
purpose to visit them, he alludes again to 
his Apostolic mission to preach the Gospel 
to the Gentiles, and beseeches their prayers, 
that he may be delivered from the dangers 
he is about to encounter from unbelieving 
Jews when he returns to Jerusalem (ch. 
xv. 5-33). 

X. The last chapter (xvi.) is filled up 
with courteous salutations and messages to 
friends and kinsmen in Rome, and with 
a beautiful and characteristic ascription to 
God he ends the Epistle. 

It is a wonderful composition, whether 
we consider its grace and skill, or its doc¬ 
trinal teachings, or the broad sweep of the 
lofty thoughts and of the revelations given 
us through the Apostle. It is of value, too, 
as telling the fact that the Roman Church 
had no Apostolic founder, and must have 
been only strengthened by the later pres¬ 
ence of St. Paul, and possibly of St. Peter, 
who at this date was in the East. There are 
many questions that grow out of side state¬ 
ments of the Apostle, such as were perti¬ 
nent to, but not involved in, the main links 
of his argument,—those chiefly relating to 
election and grace,—which we have not 
room to discuss, but only mention ; thus we 
may also note that whereas this Epistle is 
often used now to defend extreme state¬ 
ments upon these topics, the Church used 
it for a general defense of the doctrine of 
the freedom of the will, and of the broad 
and full gifts of God’s grace. Much of the 
matter in this Epistle is related to the argu¬ 
ments in the Epistle to the Galatians. 

Authorities : Wordsworth’s Epistle of St. 
Paul, Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible, Cam¬ 
bridge Bible for Schools. 

Rood. A cross (rod). The Rood was the 
Cross placed upon the beam or across the arch 
of the Choir, or surmounted the Screen or 
lattice-work of the Chancel, which was car¬ 
ried up quite high. This was then called a 
Rood-Screen, for it was the carved screen- 
work which was finished by the Cross placed 
upon it. 

Rood-Loft. Often the screen was given 
more weight, was made of stone, and was 
turned into a gallery, gained by a well stair¬ 
case. It still, of course, bore the Cross, carved 
prominently upon it. It was large enough 
to be turned into a chapel with an Altar in 
it in some churches, and is now, wherever 
it has been preserved, made use of as an 
organ-loft. It is claimed that there are no. 
instances of the Rood-Screen or Rood-Loft 
earlier than the twelfth century. 

Roof. Vide Architecture. 





RUBRIC 


668 


RUBRIC 


Rubric. Literally, a direction or remark 
written in red letter. The word is borrowed 
from the phraseology of the old Roman Law¬ 
books, in which the titles, remarks, and 
sometimes the leading decisions were writ¬ 
ten in red ink. In the same way the regu¬ 
lations for the manner of performing the 
sacred offices of the Church were called 
rubrics, and were commonly written in red 
characters to make them easily distinguish¬ 
able from the text of the office itself. 
(Smith’s Diet, of Christian Antiquities, sub 
voc.) The body of the rubrics formed a 
compilation at first separate from the Liturgy, 
which contained comparatively few rubrics. 
There were regulations in force at one time 
ordering the Priest to report what ceremonial 
he used in the several offices of the Church. 
The office-books, however, gradually intro¬ 
duced more rubrics, and they were often so 
elaborate as to be confusing and contradic¬ 
tory. The mass of rubrics was constantly 
increasing, and the various Diocesan usages 
were adding to theconfusion. In England, 
the uses of Bangor, Hertford, "Winchester, 
Lincoln, Durham, and others clashed with 
the more popular use of Sarum; and the 
Roman use, though not in force, also was 
used. So that there was, as the Preface to 
the First Prayer-Book of Edward VI. 
declared, “ more business to find out what 
should be read than to read it when it was 
found out.” And one of the ends sought to 
be accomplished by this Book was that it 
should be a complete directory. “ Further¬ 
more, by this order, the curates shall need 
but none other books for their public service 
but this book and the Bible; by means 
whereof the people shall not be at so great 
charge for books as in time past they have 
been.” 

It was therefore to supersede all other 
preceding uses. All other rubrics were ab¬ 
rogated, and these only were to be in use. 
And proper provision was made for the due 
interpretation of any doubts,—“ And forso- 
inuch as nothing can almost be so plainly 
set forth but doubts may rise in the use and 
practicing of the same, to appease all such 
diversity (if any arise), and for the resolu¬ 
tion of all such doubts concerning the man¬ 
ner how to understand, do, and execute the 
things contained in this book, the parties 
that so doubt or diversely take anything 
shall always resort to the Bishop of the 
Diocese, who, by his discretion, shall take 
order for the quieting and appeasing of the 
same, so that the same order be not contrary 
to anything contained in this book.” And 
the Prayer-Book of 1552 a.d. adds: “And 
if the Bishop of the Diocese be in any doubt, 
then he may send for the resolution thereof 
to the Archbishop.” (Preface to the Eng¬ 
lish Prayer-Book.) This, then, cuts off the 
authority of all previous orders, ceremonials, 
or Pontificals, and makes the Prayer-Book 
the sole source for rubrical information and 
direction in understanding, doing, and exe¬ 
cuting the offices of the book. Ho rubrics 


from other sources can be introduced. Still, 
since these rubrics are in nearly every in¬ 
stance either translations or modifications 
of the older ritual, it follows that, to ex¬ 
plain them, recourse must be had to these 
rituals, but simply as illustrating or cor¬ 
recting our apprehension of the application 
of our own Rubrics. For Rubrics have a 
very peculiar position in the great body of 
Church Law. They are inherited; they 
cannot be changed without much delay, a 
thorough sifting, and by constitutional enact¬ 
ment. Other Laws and Canons are appli¬ 
cable only either to certain circumstances, 
provide for certain contingencies, enact 
penalties for certain offenses, or supply re¬ 
medies for certain defects, and therefore re¬ 
ceive special attention only upon given oc¬ 
casions. But the Rubrics are of unceasing 
use and practice in the solemn public and 
constantly recurring worship of the Church. 
They are prominently before every congre¬ 
gation in the land. They demand constant 
observance in what they prescribe, and they 
presuppose a proper preparation for their 
fulfillment. They may be classified as (a) 
those concerning the general but positive 
directions for the service, e.g ., the Rubrics 
for Morning and Evening Prayer; ( b ) those 
of the less frequent offices, or private offices 
which allow some liberty, e.g ., those of the 
Visitation of the Sick and Prisoners and 
Family Prayer, Offices at Sea, and (c) those 
directions which concern the general con¬ 
duct of the people as members of the Church, 
e.g., those who shall be admitted to Confir¬ 
mation and Communion, the disciplinary 
Rubrics prefacing the order for the Holy 
Communion: the Rubrics upon the Cate¬ 
chism put at the end of it. Nearly every 
Rubric will fall under one or other of these 
divisions. Those concerning the public wor¬ 
ship and the administration of the Sacra¬ 
ments and the several offices that may be 
demanded upon occasion, as those of Con¬ 
firmation, Institution, Ordination, form upon 
these respective topics as nearly complete 
directions as in the nature of the case could 
be required. There are gaps and deficien¬ 
cies in the code of Rubrics, it is true, but 
some of these will be accounted for farther 
on. ( Vide also Ritual.) 

It must be here noted that these Rubrics 
form a complex but beautifully compacted 
Order of Service upon certain* cl ear and well- 
defined principles, which set forth through 
them a harmonious order of worship. They 
thus form the Law upon the highest spirit¬ 
ual acts which Priest and people can join 
in, and so are of the strongest obligation. 
We should feel ourselves bound to carry 
them out strictly, and to provide such ar¬ 
rangements of the House of God, and such 
furniture and other conveniences that may 
enable us devoutly and reverently to cele¬ 
brate our Public Worship according to their 
directions. Since, then, so many are con¬ 
cerned in their punctual discharge, and they 
form so much of our spiritual training, their 




RUBRIC 


669 


RULE OF FAITH 


observance or neglect or transgression is 
keenly felt by most, and in the last two in¬ 
stances is of positive loss and detriment to 
all concerned. For the minister is under 
solemn promise to obey them, and the people 
receive the Prayer-Book as a part of their 
spiritual inheritance. For us in the Ameri¬ 
can Church the Rubrics are of the revision 
of 1789 a.d. ; but while omission of a rubric 
in a deliberate revision like this must be 
equivalent to repeal or abrogation, we can 
go for explanation of things not supplied, or 
for illustration or other guidance, to the 
English Revision of 1662 a.d., and thence 
to that of 1552 a.d., and thence to the First 
Prayer-Book of 1549 a.d. These are our 
guides in the study of our rubrical Law, and 
for historical data we should apply to the 
older body of Rubrical Observances in the 
pre-Reformation period. It is not possible 
here to go into any full discussion of the Ru¬ 
brics, but it should be pointed out how mate¬ 
rially the care for the proper arrangement of 
the Church gives point and sense to the Ru¬ 
bric, and how flexible in many regards they 
really are. The Rubric for the saying of 
Morning and Evening Prayer does not pre¬ 
scribe, but takes for granted that there is all 
proper provision of stalls and of seats made 
[vide Desk, Litany-Stool, Stall), and 
of a Lection for the Bible a proper place, 
whether a pulpit or desk, for the Sermon a 
credence-table in the chancel, and so of 
other necessary and accustomed furniture, 
vessels, and vestments. ( Vide Ornaments.) 

But in every code of Rubrics there is an 
amount of omission which requires some 
living authority, which shall decide what 
things are to be supplied or what are pro¬ 
hibited. In our own case, while the omis¬ 
sion of specific Rubrics in the English Prayer- 
Book amounts to a prohibition, the omis¬ 
sion to enumerate what is not enumerated 
in the English Prayer-Book cannot be con¬ 
strued as a prohibition, but rather the con¬ 
trary. Again, there is a minimum below 
which disobedience asserts itself, and a maxi¬ 
mum beyond which observance of the Rubric 
ceases. What these limits are and how far 
the place, the congregation, and the means 
for the due conduct of divine service modify 
use, and what interpretation should be put 
upon the Rubrics, belong to the Ordinary to 
decide. But it is by no means within the 
power of the Bishop to add to or to dimin¬ 
ish the Rubric, nor can he set it aside. 
Again, the right interpretation of the Rubric 
is parallel to the like interpretation of an 
ambiguous Canon or an ambiguous Law. 
The history and scope of the Rubric must be 
considered. And, as in the matter of godly 
admonitions ( q. v.), the Bishop has no right 
to forbid a practice proven to be strictly ru¬ 
brical, simply because it does not coincide 
with what he deems fit and reverent. And 
again, non-usage or contrary custom cannot 
stand for a moment against a plain Rubric. 
But he has a right to enjoin a cessation of 
practices that are yet in doubt till such doubt 


is resolved, and to forbid all strange and in¬ 
trusive practices interpolated into the ser¬ 
vice and which are injurious to or subver¬ 
sive of the Catholic doctrines of the Church. 
Obedience to such injunctions is a mark of 
a true love for Christ His Church. The 
Preface of the English Prayer-Book con¬ 
tains these pregnant words : “ And although 
the keeping or omitting of a ceremony in 
itself considered is but a small thing, yet 
the wilful and contemptuous transgression 
and breaking of a common order and disci¬ 
pline is no small offence before God.” 

The missionary character of the Church 
in this country and the exigencies of the 
hour, as well as our colonial history, have 
affected the tone and spirit of our rubrical 
observances. When the work is wholly 
missionary and the services cannot be ren¬ 
dered, no rubrical observance is possible. 
But the instant a congregation is formed the 
authority of the rubrical Law asserts itself, 
and the Laity are bound as parties to its 
observance and as holders of the means 
therefor, to supply all due and proper fur¬ 
niture, vessels, and vestments for carrying 
out its provisions in the several services and 
offices of the Prayer-Book, and for the en¬ 
forcement of such of its directions as the 
congregation or the several members thereof 
can and ought to observe, both in the regu¬ 
lar services and in the cautionary and dis¬ 
ciplinary Rubrics. In too many instances 
the Laity have taken no notice of their ob¬ 
ligations, and have allowed or even forced 
usages to arise which are contrary to this 
part of Church Law and order. A better 
knowledge and study of the Rubrics will al¬ 
ways lead to a better observance of them. 

Rule of Faith. By this is meant that 
measure of indubitable truth by which all 
statements in religion are to be tested. 

There may be opinions, fancies, views, in¬ 
terpretations, but nothing is to be set forth 
as absolutely essential in religion which is 
not according to the Rule of Faith. 

The principle laid down by Vincentius of 
Lerins, 434 a.d., is a safe one for all Church¬ 
men. It is this: “We must be peculiarly 
careful to hold that which hath been believed 
in all places, at all times and by all the faith¬ 
ful.” It is often quoted in its briefer Latin 
form thus: “ Quod ubique , quod semper , 
quod ab omnibus creditum est.” According 
to this principle we may determine the Rule 
of Faith by looking for universality, an¬ 
tiquity, and consent. 

Whatever thus gained the assent of be¬ 
lievers must have been based upon the teach¬ 
ings of the Master, whose command to the 
Apostles was : “Go ye, therefore, teach all 
nations, baptizing them in the name of the 
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Ghost ; teaching them to observe all things 
whatsoever I have commanded you.' 1 

In the effort to teach others what the 
Lord had commanded them there grew up 
of necessity a Creed, not formally set forth, 
or issued by Apostolic authority formally 





RULE OF FAITH 


670 


RURAL DEAN 


given, but a form of sound words which in 
its essential features has been accepted by 
Christians in all the ages all along as the 
Rule of Faith in the essential doctrines of 
Christianity. 

Irenaeussaid, “ thus the Church, scattered 
though it be throughout the whole world, 
hath received from the Apostles and their 
disciples faith in one God,” and then follow 
the several terms of the Creed, and he adds, 
“the faith of the Church is in accordance 
with it, her preaching and instruction and 
tradition are in harmony with it.” Ter- 
tullian says the rule of faith is altogether 
one, it alone is invariable and unalterable, 
namely, “ of faith in one God, the Creator 
of the world,” etc., and he goes on to 
enumerate the other articles of the Creed. 

For some years after the establishment of 
the Church there were no written records 
such as now constitute the Canon of New 
Testament Scriptures. The Faith was 
taught orally from one to another. It may 
be that the first records were liturgies in 
which the form of some words was pre¬ 
served. Fragments of these “liturgical 
germs,” as they may be called, are preserved 
in the Epistles of the New Testament. 

It pleased God, the Holy Ghost, to in¬ 
spire men to write accounts of the life and 
sayings of the Lord Jesus, of the planting 
of the Church, and to compose letters to the 
Churches. In these various compositions 
there were preserved the truths which had 
formerly been taught orally. The Church 
did not grow out of the Scriptures, nor did 
it gain its Faith primarily from them. The 
Church was founded, with its ministry, 
sacraments, ordinances, and doctrines, be¬ 
fore a line of New Testament Scripture was 
written. 

The Canon of the New Testament Scrip¬ 
tures was determined by the application of 
the simple principle to each book, Does 
this writing contain what is agreeable to 
the Faith which the Church has received? 
The Canon being once established, Holy 
Scripture was thenceforth to be appealed 
to as containing whatever was essential in 
Christian doctrine, and hence our Church 
in the VI. Article of Religion declares that 
“ whatsoever is not read therein nor may be 
proved thereby is not to be required of any 
man that it should be believed as an article 
of the Faith, or be thought requisite or ne¬ 
cessary to salvation.” No part of our belief, 
therefore, is to rest upon mere tradition. 
We are to appeal to the infinitely superior 
authority of Scripture, and to make it the 
only final resort. It is there that we can find 
the sure means of ascertaining the Rule of 
Faith, the teaching of Christ and His in¬ 
spired servants. 

A division may be made between what is 
the Rule of Faith with reference to essen¬ 
tials, and what has been the common belief 
of the majority of Christians in the ages all 
along with reference to points not essential 
to salvation. 


Sometimes this latter classification is con¬ 
founded with the former, and points are 
pressed as included within the Rule of Faith 
which really do not belong there. They 
may be agreeable to it, but not included 
within it, as essentials. 

The need of giving attention to this 
point is shown by considering the position 
of the Roman Church on the one hand, and 
modern denominations of Christians on the 
other. Rome widens the Rule of Faith by 
adding to the teachings of Scripture the 
traditions which had their origin in ob¬ 
scurity, and the decisions of Popes whom 
she declares infallible. Hence the Rule of 
Faith may be different (according to this 
view) from age to age. 

Modern Christian sects, on the other hand, 
deny, obscure, belittle, or omit portions of 
the Faith, and consequently do not present 
before us that indubitable truth by which 
all views are to be measured. 

It is the glory of our branch of the Chris¬ 
tian Church that in its ministry, sacraments, 
ordinances, creeds, and liturgy it aims to 
preserve the Rule of Faith as it was received 
everywhere, by all and in every place be¬ 
fore there were divisions in the Body of 
Christ. Rev. G. W. Shinn. 

Rural Dean was at first the same as 
the Arch presbyter; but he obtained his 
title of Decanus ruralis about the time of 
Charlemagne (800 a.d. circ.). The office 
was introduced into England about 1052 
a.d. , in the days of Edward the Confessor. 
Its development into the present office and 
functions of the English Rural Dean fol¬ 
lowed as the Church’s needs and work devel¬ 
oped. The functions of the office are well 
set forth in the oath of office, which was 
in some Dioceses anciently administered: 
“ I, A. B., do swear diligently and faithfully 
to execute the office of Rural Dean within 
the Deanery of D. First, I will diligently 
and faithfully execute, or cause to be exe¬ 
cuted, all such processes as shall be directed 
unto me, from my Lord Bishop of C., or 
his officers, or ministers by his authority. 
Item, I will give diligent attendance by 
myself or my deputy at every consistory 
court to be holden by the said reverend father 
in God, or his Chancellor, as well as to re¬ 
turn such processes as shall be by me or my 
deputy executed; as also to receive others 
there unto me to be directed. Item, I will 
from time to time during my said office dili¬ 
gently inquire, and true information give, 
unto the said reverend father in God, or his 
Chancellor, of all the names of all such 
persons within the said deanery of D. as shall 
be openly and publicly noted and defamed, 
or vehemently suspected of any crime or of¬ 
fense as is to be punished or reformed by the 
authority of the said court. Item, I will 
diligently inquire, and true information 
give, of all such persons and their names as 
do administer any dead man’s goods before 
they have proved the will of the testator or 
taken letters of administration of the de- 





RUTH 


671 


SABBATH 


ceased intestates. Item, I will be obedient 
to the right reverend father in God, J., 
Bishop of C., and his Chancellor, in all hon¬ 
est and lawful commands; neither will I 
attempt, do, or procure to be done or at¬ 
tempted, anything that shall be prejudicial 
to his jurisdiction, but will preserve and 
maintain the same to the uttermost of my 
power.” The} 7 convened rural chapters of 
all the instituted clergy or their curates as 
proxies for them, and presided as Prolocu¬ 
tors. The office of Rural Dean has only within 
the last forty years been revived in England. 
His powers are simply of inspection. It 
has been partially imitated in several Dio¬ 
ceses in this country by giving this title to 
the president of Convocation. It has always 
in its past history been found to be a con¬ 
venient rather than a necessary office. It 
has a good deal of interest attached to it, 
since it appears that at one time the Rural 
Dean was made a Chorepiscopus—or country 
bishop—with restraint, but this delegation 
of Episcopal powers was inhibited by Alex¬ 
ander III., 1089 a.d. But Archbishop 
Ussher in his scheme for a “ Moderate 
Episcopacy,” which he propounded just 
before the great rebellion (1640 a.d.), pro¬ 
posed to erect the rural Deaneries into Sees. 
The office, were it generally revived, could 
be made a very important adjunct to the 
work of the Church in this country. But 
in order that it should be efficient and ob¬ 
tain that weight which would make it in¬ 
fluential, it should be instituted by a com¬ 
mon consent of the Bishops and Dioceses. 
The observation of the old canonist Lind- 
wood upon Rural Deans in his day was, that 
they were rather after the custom of the 
country than founded by Canon Law. 
(Magis nituntur consuetudini patrize quam 
usui communi.) And this will probably be¬ 
long always to the office. (Burn’s Eccl. Law, 
vol. ii. p. 120.) 

Ruth. The short book of Ruth is perhaps 


one of the loveliest idyls extant in any lan¬ 
guage, apart from its canonical authority 
and from its historical importance in the 
Christology of the Old Testament. It is 
the record of the heathen ancestress of our 
Lord introduced into the line of His fore¬ 
fathers after their settlement in Canaan. 
The migration of Naomi and Elimelech to 
the land of Moab because of the famine, the 
marriage of Mahlon to Ruth, his death, and 
Naomi’s desire in her widowhood to return 
to Judah, all are told with the utmost sim¬ 
plicity and directness. The touching de¬ 
votion of Ruth, “ Whither thougoest I will 
go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge ; thy 
people shall be my people, and thy God my 
God; where thoudiest I will die, and there 
will I be buried. The Lord do so to me 
and more also if aught but death do part 
me and thee” (Ruth i. 16, 17), reveals the 
depth of loving character that fitted her to 
be taken into the chosen people. The nar¬ 
rative that follows, of Boaz and his generous 
treatment and protection of the homeless 
widow and her daughter-in-law, is in per¬ 
fect keeping with the time, the customs, and 
usages of the age to which it refers. But 
still more important is the record of the 
steps by which, upon the surrender of the 
nearest of kin, Boaz secured the right of 
purchase of the inheritance which- belonged 
to the family. It is a type of the Redeemer ; 
the “ Goel” which, as Boaz became by the * 
plucking off the shoe, Christ became by His 
redemption. “ Over Edom will I cast out 
my shoe : Philistia, triumph thou because of 
me” (Ps. lx. 8). 

The Book was most probably written dur¬ 
ing David’s lifetime, certainly not earlier 
than the latter days of Samuel. The cus¬ 
toms and slight notes of manner, the ab¬ 
sence of any prejudice against a stranger, 
the straightforward character of the narra¬ 
tive, the slight details that are preserved, all 
attest to its genuineness. 




S. 


Sabaoth. A peculiar title of Jehovah. 
The Anglicized word occurs only twice in 
King James’ Version, but it is a frequent 
appellative of God. The Lord of Hosts is 
His Name. It was the ascription of the 
Seraphim, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord 
of Hosts. It has become a familiar title 
from its use in the Te Deum, but in its 
translated form it is also in the preface in 
the Communion Service. The Lord of all 
the hosts of heaven and of earth, it is our 
Lord’s title, for He whose vesture was 


dipped in blood, whose name is the Word 
of God, upon whose vesture and thigh is 
written Kino of Kings and Lord of Lords, 
leads the armies which are in heaven. 

Sabbatarians. Those who observe the 
Sabbath-day because they allege that there 
is no sufficient proof to them that there is 
any authority to change from the Sabbath 
to the first day of the week. They have 
but little foothold in this country. 

Sabbath. The Jewish day of rest. It 
was peculiarly so called, for it was doubly 






SABBATH 


672 


SACRAMENT 


typical: I. As of the ceasing from the 
creation of this world. II. As of the day 
when God gave His people rest from their 
bondage in Egypt. Both of these argu¬ 
ments are given each in the separate forms 
of the Covenant as recited at Sinai, and as 
repeated by Moses in the Book of Deuter¬ 
onomy. It is, then, no light thing for the 
Church, guided by the Holy Ghost, to have 
changed from a day of rest so impressively 
commanded to the Lord’s day. (Vide Sun¬ 
day.) The Sabbath, as a sacredly observed 
day, was probably, though not certainly, 
older than the Mosaic age, and came of the 
Patriarchs. In fact, upon the general 
ground of regularity in the offering of wor¬ 
ship, it becomes very probable, and we know 
that the period of weeks was used. But 
the institution of the Sabbath is founded not 
merely on Jewish needs; it is of the high¬ 
est human observance also, as it meets the 
needs of man both in the offering of wor¬ 
ship and in the necessity of rest from 
manual and secular occupations. The name 
itself gives the reason of its recurrence,— 
rest. Its place on the Tables of Stone gave 
it a rank that was beyond other ritual en¬ 
actments of the Mosaic Law. It was made 
a part of the Covenant. It was put as an 
observance ever to be kept in mind. Its 
pollutio*n was one of the grave charges 
against the Nation. It was a day far above 
* all but the great feasts in the strictness in 
which it was to be observed, and the trials 
of the Maccabean Kingdom stamped its 
full ritual, even burdensome, observance 
upon the Nation. 

Our Lord’s own observance of the Day 
and His protests against its abuse, are well 
known. But all allusion to it ceases in the 
Epistles. In the Acts we trace a change by 
the reference to the first day of the week, 
and in the Apocalypse to the Lord’s day. 
The tracing of the change will be found in 
the Article Sunday. But here it is noted 
that Sunday being the equivalent and so 
accepted of the Sabbath, the covenant to 
observe the Lord’s day as our Lord has 
taught us is obligatory upon us. And so 
as the prosperity of the Jew rested in part 
upon the sanctity with which he observed 
the day, so the Christian observance of the 
day is a part of our national prosperity. It 
is evidently so, even upon the low ground 
of the perpetually recurring instruction on 
that day in morals and in general religious 
instruction, not to dwell upon the worship 
due to our God. The Sabbath was invalu¬ 
able as a means of instructing the people 
who were gathered into the synagogues. 
But the Sabbath took in a wider range, 
also founded upon the use of the number 
seven. The seventh day for rest and wor¬ 
ship ; the seventh week after the Passover 
brought the Feast of Pentecost; the seventh 
year was the year of rest for the ground,— 
the Sabbatical year—the non-observance of 
which regulation brought upon the people 
their seventy years of captivity ; then the 


year of the seven times the Sabbatical year,— 
the Jubilee, which was the year of release of 
all hired servants sold for debt, and of release 
of all estates that had been sold for various 
reasons. The year of Jubilee was the year 
of restoration. It was in itself a wise pro¬ 
vision, which recent political disturbances, 
based upon tenure of land, has brought up 
into discussion. But beyond this thought 
of its political importance, there is also the 
spiritual significance as a type of the great 
day of redemption and of release in the 
Kingdom of Christ. The Sabbath, then, 
was a part of the Covenant made with men 
as fundamental. Its change to the Sunday 
will be traced elsewhere, but its sanctity, so 
defended and so insisted on, is given as a 
guide to us for our observance of the Lord’s 
day. The due observance, which was a 
blessing in the one, is a blessing in the 
other also. But it is not proper to give the 
name of the Jewish Sabbath to the Lord’s 
day, and Churchmen should be very care¬ 
ful not to confuse the two in ordinary con¬ 
versation. 

Sacrament. A Latin word, not found in 
the New Testament, meaning a solemn oath, 
originally a judicial phrase, afterwards ap¬ 
plied to the oath taken by soldiers to the 
government. Ecclesiastical writers used it 
as a translation of the Greek word /uvarrjpiov , 
mystery (though it does not seem to express 
the game idea), and so finally it came to be 
applied only to certain rites and ceremonies 
which under some external form set forth 
spiritual truths. In this sense it had a very 
wide application, so that nearly every relig¬ 
ious act or doctrine was called a sacrament; 
even the creed was so styled by a Latin 
writer. (See Smith’s Diet. Christian Antiq.) 
The Church of Rome eventually, by a decree 
of the Synod of Trent, limited the number 
to be called Sacraments to seven ; viz., Bap¬ 
tism, the Lord’s Supper, Confirmation, 
Penance, Orders, Matrimony, and Extreme 
Unction, pronouncing Anathema on those 
who say there are more or less than these 
seven. In the lax sense of the word noted 
'above it may be applied to these, but need 
not be confined to them. The error is in 
declaring all the seven, as that Council does, 
to have been instituted by Christ Himself, 
which is not true of five, and also making 
them all necessary for salvation, which they 
are not. Article XXY. declares of these, 
that they “ are not to be counted for Sacra¬ 
ments of the Gospel, being such as have grown 
partly of the corrupt following of the Apos¬ 
tles, partly are states of life allowed in the 
Scriptures.” By the phrase “corrupt fol¬ 
lowing” we are to understand incorrect, 
mistaken ; as, for instance, the putting Con¬ 
firmation, an Apostolic rite, to be a Sacra¬ 
ment of the Gospel, on the same footing as 
Baptism and the Eucharist, which were ap¬ 
pointed by Christ Himself. 

To place these, too, in their proper position 
as distinguished from all others, and superior 
to them, the Clinch has given a strict defi- 





SACRILEGE 


673 


SAINT 


nition of the word Sacrament, limiting its 
use to these two. In the Catechism it is de¬ 
clared to mean “an outward and visible 
sign of an inward and spiritual grace given 
unto us ; ordained by Christ Himself, as a 
means, whereby we receive the same ( i.e ., 
inward and spiritual grace), and a pledge to 
assure us thereof.” Three things, then, are 
necessary to constitute a Sacrament accord¬ 
ing to the Church’s definition: 1st. The 
Outward Sign. 2. The Ordinance of Christ 
appointing this to be. 3. The means and 
pledge of receiving an Inward and Spiritual 
Grace. And under this definition it is de¬ 
clared there are “two Sacraments only as 
generally (i.e., universally) necessarj 7 to 
salvation, tliat is to say, Baptism and the 
Supper of the Lord.” 

The other five, though some of them may 
partake of a Sacramental character, yet are 
not by our Church called Sacraments, for 
they have not visible signs, appointed by 
Christ Himself, to convey the correspond¬ 
ing spiritual grace. Confirmation is a com- 

lement of Baptism., of Apostolic ordinance, 

ut not appointed by Christ Himself. 
Penance , a word not found in the New 
Testament, if it simply mean repentance, is 
indeed required, but has no divinely ap¬ 
pointed outward sign of remission of sins. 
Orders is not generally necessary, but is 
only for those specially called by the Holy 
Ghost and the Church, nor did our Lord 
appoint any special outward sign to be used 
in conferring it. Matrimony has been in 
the w 7 orld from the creation of man, and is 
not a special Gospel means of Grace. And as 
for Extreme Unction , for which is quoted 
the word of St. James, v. 14, it is not now 
given for the healing of the sick, but to fit 
the passing soul for death. Our Lord 
never appointed the use of oil for such 
purpose, neither indeed did His Apostles. 

It is better for all good Churchmen to be 
guided by the teaching of the Church, and 
use the word Sacrament, as she does, only 
of the two appointed by our blessed Lord 
Himself, viz., of Baptism and of the Sup¬ 
per op the Lord. 

“ The Sacraments were not ordained of 
Christ to be gazed upon, or to be carried 
about, but that we should duly use them. 
And in such only as worthily receive the 
same, they have a wholesome effect or oper¬ 
ation ; but they that receive them un¬ 
worthily, purchase to themselves damna¬ 
tion, as St. Paul saith.” (Article XXV.) 
The Church teaches that the/Sacraments do 
not work like charms or magic, but their 
efficacy depends upon the state of mind 
of the recipient. The Inward Grace indeed 
always accompanies the Sacrament duly 
administered, but operates savingly only 
when received in the heart by Faith and 
Repentance. (Vide Baptism and Lord’s 
Supper.) Rev. E. B. Boggs. 

Sacrilege. The sin of sacrilege has a 
far wider reach than the enumeration of 
those acts which are classed as sacrilegious. 

43 


It is as well to avoid too close an enumera¬ 
tion of what might be turned into a sin, 
but we too may be unconsciously guilty of 
sin when we do not know it. A sacrilege 
is the violating a sacred place, or apply¬ 
ing to profane and secular uses things which 
have been set apart for a holy service. Care 
must be taken, then, to see that we do not 
so misuse for selfish ends what is God’s. 
Much of the old classification of sacrilegious 
acts is now obsolete, since decency and cus¬ 
tom have prevented their recurrence. But 
to appropriate what has been given to His 
Church for sacred use is a sacrilege that is 
sometimes now committed. To use the 
Church building for secular and unhallowed 
purposes is a sacrilege. To interfere with 
and affront the minister in the services is a 
sacrilege. To plunder graves is a sacrilege. 
But if to profane anything consecrated is 
in degree sacrilegious, it is plain that we 
may be guilty of the sin, though avoiding 
overt criminous acts. So if we would train 
ourselves in devout and reverent recognition 
of what is God’s, and endeavor not to mis¬ 
use what is given to Him for His worship 
and for our honoring Him, we will be ex¬ 
ceedingly careful not to fall into this sin. • 

Sacristan. The treasurer of the vest¬ 
ments, vessels, and other valuables of the 
Church. He is usually confused in ordi¬ 
nary usage with the Sexton. In the older 
Churches the sacristan was also a dignitary. 

Sacristy. The Vestry-room of the older 
Churches where the vestments and vessels 
were placed. Sometimes under other names 
it was a large room often large enough to 
hold meetings of the Diocese. 

Sadducees. The Sadducees of our Lord’s 
day were a wealthy, powerful party, not 
very large, but apparently numbering among 
themselves the family of Aaron. Their 
truths were apparently to hold as of Faith 
as little as possible. They rejected all oral 
tradition outside of the Law; denied the 
Resurrection and the existence of all created 
spiritual beings. They were cold, cool, 
worldly, full of political wisdom, and with 
little religious enthusiasm. It is to be noted 
that our Lord was not resisted by them so 
vehemently and openly as by the Pharisees. 
It is not therefore recorded in the Gospels 
that He publicly denounced them, except 
once, when they joined the Pharisees in ask¬ 
ing for a sign*(St. Matt. xvi. 5), though they 
were faulted for their denial of the Resur¬ 
rection. “ Ye do err, not knowing the 
Scriptures.” They lent themselves to the 
purposes of the Pharisees in the movement 
against our Lord, but, except as they felt 
that their power was at stake, they did not 
seem to care. So after the Resurrection it 
was because of the courageous, outspoken 
conduct of the Apostles that the chief priests 
who were of the sect of the Sadducees began 
to persecute them. They disappeared as a 
party after the destruction of Jerusalem. 

Saint, from sanctus, holy. Hence the 
name is given to those eminent in holiness, 





SAINTS’ DAYS 


674 


SALUTATION 


and perhaps the idea of purity in doctrine 
may be implied. In the early days of Chris¬ 
tianity, according to the Epistles of the New 
Testament, the word seems to have been 
used in a more general sense than now, and 
as nearly equal to the term “ Christian,” 
or in extraordinary cases to “ Reverend.” 
“All that be in Rome” are “called to be 
saints” (Rom. i. 7). “ Without holiness no 

man shall see the Lord” (Heb. xii. 14). 
Therefore all must be saints in the widest 
sense of the word, if they expect to enter 
Heaven. St. Paul writes “to the saints 
which are at Ephesus” (Eph. i. 1). In our 
Lord’s day the Essenes and Pharisees were 
esteemed saints by the Jews. In Ps. cvi. 
16, Aaron is styled “ the saint of the Lord.” 
(See Dan. viii. 13, and vii. 18, 21, and 27.) 
“ Ten thousands” (Deut. xxxiii. 2); congre¬ 
gation (Ps. lxxxix. 5, 7); bodies of saints 
arose (St. Matt, xxvii. 52); Saul perse¬ 
cuting saints (Acts ix. 13, and xxvi. 10); 
collection for saints (1 Cor. xvi. 1); saluted 
(Rom. xvi. 15); saluting (2 Cor. xiii. 13). 
The title of saint is given to such of the 
worthies in the Old and New Testament 
who have been holy in life and death, or 
were dedicated to God, as the Israelites 
congregation of saints), and Christians 
“ churches of the saints”) (1 Cor. xiv. 
33) ; “a peculiar treasure” (Ex. xix. 5, and 
Ps. cxxxv. 4); “a peculiar people” (Deut. 
xiv. 2; Tit. ii. 14 ; 1 Pet. ii. 9), intended for 
a specially near relation to God, the Foun¬ 
tain of holiness. St. John, in the Revela¬ 
tion, applies “saint” almost exclusively to 
martyrs, and calls Christ “ the King of 
Saints” (Rev. xv. 3). In later ages the 
word was used to designate martyrs. The 
“ Communion of Saints,” in the Greek, 
has a general meaning. Saints’ Days were 
for a Eucharistic commemoration of mar¬ 
tyrs ; there were so many martyrs that All- 
Saints’ Day was added. Thus, even before 
Christ’s second coming, “ the King of 
saints” is “ glorified in His saints” (2 Thess. 
i. 10). Their “virtuous and godly living” 
is an example, and a “ vivid sense is kept up 
of the ‘ communion and fellowship’ which, in 
God’s ‘elect,’ are ‘knit together’ in the 
‘mystical body’ of Christ.” If these 
blessed examples are followed, the believer 
may come to the “unspeakable joys” of 
Heaven. (See Collect for “All-Saints’ Day.”) 
While the primitive Church honored saints, 
it condemned the worshiping of them. The 
undue elevation of saints occurs especially 
in dark and ignorant ages. When lights are 
lit before the evening comes on they attract 
little notice, but when the darkness closes in 
they are very conspicuous. 

The references in this article are drawn 
from Blunt’s Diet, of Doctrinal and Histori¬ 
cal Theology. See also Conybeare and How- 
son’s Life and Epis. of St. Paul, Brownlee’s 
Life of St. Patrick, and Bingham’s Antiq., 
v. i. bk. 13, c. iii. 

Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Saints’ Days. The days set apart for the 


commemoration of the several saints of the 
Christian Church. The principle upon 
which these Feasts are instituted is that 
they who by their lives and death illustrated 
the power of our blessed Lord over the 
hearts of men, and the purifying and 
strengthening of the Faith and the might 
of God the Holy Ghost in the triumph 
over all foes, should be held in remembrance 
by us, thanking God for their good exam¬ 
ples, and evermore ourselves endeavoring to 
follow in their holy footsteps. It is a very 
useful and beautiful regulation in the 
Church, restricted as it is to the commemo¬ 
ration of those only whose sanctity is in the 
Holy Scripture. While the blessed lives of 
later holy followers of the saints are not to 
be doubted, still, as names were formerly 
added year by year, till the number of those 
commemorated was vastly larger than the 
number of days in the year, it was a wise 
decision which led the English Reformers to 
drop out all names but those of the holy 
Apostles, the commemoration of the Holy 
Innocents, of St. Stephen the Proto-Martyr, 
of the Evangelists, of St. John Baptist, and 
of All Saints ; with the Feast of St. Michael 
and All Angels. The day appointed for 
each was the day of his death or martyr¬ 
dom, for that was called his proper birth¬ 
day, as born into everlasting life. It was a 
point on which great stress was laid by the 
Primitive Christians to ascertain correctly 
the day upon which the Martyrs suffered, 
that they might be remembered yearly at 
the recurrence of the day in the Holy 
Communion. It was out of this usage that 
Saints’ days were set apart. The Church of 
England retains upon her Calendar, but 
orders no service for, a number of saints 
whose names are printed therein in “ black 
letter.” They were many of them Saints and 
holy men who lived and labored in Great 
Britain, but some others arp also admitted 
to the list, as St. Augustine, St. Lawrence, 
St. Cyprian, and St. Clement of Rome. 
Their names were kept there partly as being 
popular and having reference to the history 
of the Church, and partly in honor of the 
men themselves, being all eminent doctors 
or laborers in the Faith, or signalized their 
devotion by a martyr’s death ; but there 
was no service provided, and those only 
were to be accounted holy-days— i.e.. of 
Legal and Canonical observance—which had 
respect to our Lord and to His blessed 
Mother, to the Apostles, to the Evangelists 
and Martyrs of Holy Scripture. 

Salutation. The salutation of the angel 
to St. Mary the Virgin (St. Luke i. 28): 
“ Hail, thou that art highly favored, the 
Lord is with thee ; blessed art thou among 
women.” This was the salutation to her who 
was chosen to be the Mother of our Lord. 

Salutations, in a Christian sense, involve 
the principles of either blessing or of praying 
for a blessing. As the “ Lord be with you” 
is a blessing, so “And with Thy spirit” is as 
much a blessing, and is so to be considered. 






SALVATION 


675 


SAMUEL 


Salvation. The putting a person in a 
state of safety. It is so used in the Cate¬ 
chism,: “ And I heartily thank our Heavenly 
Father that He hath called me to this state 
of Salvation, and I pray unto God to give 
me His grace, that I may continue in the 
same unto my life’s end.” In this place it 
means the redemption in Jesus Christ our 
Lord. In some places in Holy Scripture 
the term is used of national deliverance only 
from foes or calamities, but its usage is gen¬ 
erally only in a spiritual sense. And this 
salvation of man is confessed in the Creed 
to be the object of the mightiest act ever 
done on the earth : “ I believe in one Lord 
Jesus Christ; . . . Who, for us men, and 
for our salvation, came down from heaven, 
And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of 
the Virgin Mary, and was made man.” The 
salvation or deliverance, not only from the 
evil and the taint of present sin, but also 
from the terrible end of the second death 
and to give the blessedness of eternal life, 
is the salvation He offers. It is a double 
salvation, as it were, that is offered. There¬ 
fore our Lord prayed, and “ this is eternal 
life to know Thee, the only true God and 
Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent” (St. 
John xvii. 3). For this knowledge “ makes 
us wise unto salvation” (2 Tim. iii. 15). The 
redemptive acts of our Redeemer are set 
forth elsewhere, but here we will dwell upon 
the extent of the salvation. He is the 
Author and the Captain of our salvation. It 
is entire and complete. From sin, for the 
remembrance of which will be blotted out; 
from its taint and stain, for that we are 
washed clean in the blood of the Lamb ; from 
its consequences of second death, for He 
hath destroyed him who hath the power of 
death, and He hath put it under His feet. He 
giveth us life : “ I am come that they might 
have life, and that they might have it more 
abundantly.” Peace : “ Peace I leave with 
you, My peace I give unto you.” Joy: “Now 
the God of hope till you with all joy and 
peace in believing.” It is given to confes¬ 
sion of the lips. It is the work of a godly 
sorrow. It is the end of Faith. It is the 
free gift for the Christian’s work. It is 
bound up in grace. It is the long-suffering 
of the Lord. It is the end of His appear¬ 
ing. It is the inheritance of the Saints. It 
is, then, one of the terms which includes as a 
result all the acts, gifts, graces, and bless¬ 
ings of the Gospel. And it is of God, 
through God, and in God. Salvation be- 
longeth unto God. Therefore, in the highest 
sense, God is our salvation. The Father 
hath made the Son unto us “Wisdom and 
Righteousness, and Sanctification and Re¬ 
demption.” And therefore the heavenly 
hosts ascribe Salvation, as well as Glory and 
Honor, as among the titles of God. 

Samaritans. The Samaritans were the 
descendants of those tribes which Shalmane- 
zer, or Esarhaddon, placed in the depopu¬ 
lated country of Samaria fifty years after 
he had stripped it of its Israelitish inhabit¬ 


ants. They were heathen, but when they 
were plagued by the wild beasts which had 
overrun the long desolated land, the super¬ 
stitious colonists sent to the King for some 
priests of Jehovah to teach them “ the man¬ 
ner of the God of the land,” that they 
might be protected from the ravages of the 
wild beasts. This was taught them by a 
priest who was sent them, but they still re¬ 
tained their old heathen worship, beside this, 
persisting in their idolatry. Therefore the 
Jews, when restored by Cyrus, would have 
nothing to do with the Samaritans, and ut¬ 
terly refused all intercourse with them. The 
Samaritans retorted with equal bitterness. 
It was owing to their influence that the re¬ 
building of the Temple was hindered. They 
had a Temple worship on Mount Gerizim, 
they kept a Passover, they tried to keep the 
Law. In this state, when every Jewish feel¬ 
ing of national and religious pride was in¬ 
flamed and the stubborn temper inflamed by 
the infliction of so much hardship, the Samar¬ 
itan came in for a full share of hatred and 
scorn. In our Lord’s time this was not les¬ 
sened, and to those around Him His conduct 
must have seemed inexplicable and even dis¬ 
graceful. His love, care, and tender treat¬ 
ment of them, His abode in their villages, 
His teaching among them, His healing of 
the Samaritan leper, seemed so contrary to 
Jewish self-respect. The noble parable of 
the good Samaritan was all the more pointed 
because the chief personage in it was of the 
hated intruder into the Holy Land. He 
forbade the Twelve when first sent out 
(St. Matt. x. 5) to enter into the Samaritan 
villages, but that had a special significance 
in their mission work. Afterwards He 
sketched out for them their widening labors 
thus: They were to preach first in Judaea, 
then in Samaria* then to the uttermost parts 
of the world. The Samaritan may fitly be 
used as the type of the mixture of modern 
religious feeling. . It is now as it was at 
first: “They feared the Lord and served 
their own gods,”—the observance of relig¬ 
ious ceremonies and ordinances with the 
selfish indulgence in all manner of sin. 

Samuel. The most remarkable of the 
prophets after Moses and Elijah. Standing 
between the two, acting with great sagacity 
both as a Priest, as a Prophet of God, and as 
a Judge over the people, he was able to re¬ 
store the Israelitish strength in a great 
measure. The terrible defeat and the loss 
of the Ark at the rash battle at Ebenczer 
had thrown the nation into despair; twenty 
years of waiting, of grief, and of national stag¬ 
nation followed, while Samuel was gaining 
the religious confidence of the nation. At last, 
as Prophet and Priest unto God, he brought 
the people before Jehovah at Mizpah. 
There he wrought a religious reformation and 
a civil reorganization. It took some time, at 
least long enough for the Philistines to gather 
their forces and to try the conclusions of a 
battle at Ebenezer, the scene of their old 
victory. The Lord utterly overthrew them, 





SAMUEL, THE BOOKS OF 


676 SAMUEL, THE BOOKS OF 


and Israel smote them so that for the rest of 
Samuel’s lifetime they were not able to at¬ 
tack Israel. Against his earnest advice the 
people, taking his organization as a hint, de¬ 
manded a king. He was grieved at it, but 
as he was divinely directed he yielded, and 
presented to the people Saul of Benjamin. 
Samuel loved Saul and tried to guide his 
willfulness. Saul’s imperious* conduct and 
his disobedience, both as to the Amalekites 
and by arrogating to himself the right to 
offer sacrifice, and consequent forfeiture of 
the Kingdom, saddened the last days of the 
Prophet. He had a singular fortune. The 
child given to earnest prayer, devoted to the 
Lord, before he could know a mother’s love 
and the sweets of home sent to the Temple, 
consecrated to God's service, growing up in 
favor with the throngs of worshipers at 
Shiloh, as the sins of the sons of Eli had 
horrified them, known to be in the favor of 
God, the chosen messenger to Eli, who had 
nurtured him, of the doom passed upon his 
family, the accepted prophet to the people, 
the religious reformer and civil magistrate, 
then the anointer first of Saul, then of Da¬ 
vid, and, finally, after his death summoned 
by his loved Saul from the rest of Paradise 
only to pronounce against him the sentence 
of outlawry from God’s favor. He was the 
third in rank of might and the second in 
influence of the prophets the Lord sent His 
people. He was the type of our Lord in 
these things, as patient, self-sacrificing, in 
favor with God and man, and as organizer 
of a system. It indeed passed out of Sam¬ 
uel’s unwilling hands to take a breadth 
which was not foreseen and to produce re¬ 
sults, both for good and for evil, which were 
beyond all human power to anticipate. Our 
Lord, on the other hand, committed the or¬ 
ganization of the Church, to His Apostles 
to the infinite blessing of the world. His 
was, as our Lord’s own mission, a mission 
in a time of transition, though we must 
never forget that Samuel was raised up to 
meet the emergency; but our Lord came to 
fulfill His own mission, to complete the 
past and to mould the future of the whole 
world. 

Samuel, the Books of. The four chief 
books of Israelitish history are all linked 
together in so much, that the title given to 
the first two books, though representing an 
early division,—in the Septuagint—is not a 
fair one. The writer of the first book must 
be unknown. But we may very safely as¬ 
sume that he was the Prophet who would 
record the main facts of his time, and that 
the later chapters were added by Gad and 
Nathan, who most probably wrote the sec¬ 
ond book. It is a special mark of the his¬ 
torical books of the Old and New Testament 
that the author never gives his name. Only 
once is this broken,—Nehemiah names him¬ 
self as the author. The material was from 
Samuel’s hand at least (1 Chron., ch. xxix. 
29). The books were probably compiled out 
of this earlier material than the separation of 


Israel into the two kingdoms. The canoni¬ 
cal authority of the books has always been 
admitted, and the references to it in the 
New Testament by our Lord, St. Peter, St. 
Stephen, and St. Paul, seal it for us. Its 
minute historical accuracy is evident upon 
any fair examination, and shows that the 
work was compiled from notes by an eye¬ 
witness. The first book contains the history 
of the close of the Theocracy and of the 
rise of the Monarchy. Samuel, the last 
Judge, the Prophet of God, effects that re¬ 
ligious and political reformation which be¬ 
comes afterwards the basis of the Monarchy. 
The first seven chapters, then, are a distinct 
section, giving an account of Samuel, his 
training, the calamity of Israel, the abey¬ 
ance of religious observances for twenty 
years, then his Judgeship. The eighth chap¬ 
ter opens with the sinfulness of Samuel’s 
sons, and the restlessness of the people; 
then follow (ch. ix.-x.) the election of 
Saul; Saul’s reign till his rejection (xi.-xv.) ; 
recounting his military achievements, his 
unification of the people; his royal charac¬ 
ter in many things marred by his arro¬ 
gance, selfishness, and demoniac possession. 
This brings on the substitution of David 
for Saul by God’s appointment (xvi.-xviii. 
9). Saul growing jealous of David and seek¬ 
ing his life (xviii. 10-xxvii. 12). Lastly, 
Saul’s death (xxviii.-xxxi.). 

The second book is wholly occupied with 
David’s life from the date of Saul’s death. 
This book also parts into two sections. His 
reign over Judah, and then his reign over 
the whole kingdom. David did not at first 
succeed to the whole sovereignty, but the 
claims of Ishbosheth were maintained by 
his uncle, Abner. Joab had begun already 
to wield an interfering power in David’s ca¬ 
reer, and feared that David would be rid of 
him. When, therefore, Abner abandoned 
Ishbosheth’s cause, and offered to David to 
bring all Israel under his sway, Joab assas¬ 
sinated him. But David’s reign over Israel 
was itself to be shaken to the foundation by 
his sin. After the removal of the Ark (ch. 
v. 17-vii.), and vow to build a temple to Je- 
hoyah, and the blessing promised him, came 
his fall in the matter of Bathsheba. This 
was grievously punished in his family trou¬ 
bles (ch. x.-xix.), by Absalom’s rebellion 
and death, and in Sheba’s insurrection. The 
sword was not to depart from his family. It 
hung over it, and fell so often for the sins 
of his descendants. The famine that deso¬ 
lated the land (xxi.), the sin of taking the 
census (xxiv.), and the plague that followed, 
show the greatness and the weakness of the 
King’s character. 

A King after a right royal sort, David was 
yet in so many things an undisciplined man. 
He was a soldier of fearless stuff'; a King 
having political insight and management; a 
man possessed of magnetic attractiveness ; 
a man full of religious earnestness and en¬ 
thusiasm, one whom all loved, yet tempted 
to pride and to sensuality, and by these led 




SANCTIFICATION 


677 


SANCTUARY 


to commit acts whose consequence fell not 
on himself alone, but on his people also. One 
proof, and no mean one, of the veracity and 
the authority of the second book of Samuel 
lies in the fact of the plain, simple statement 
of facts, without extenuation, or exaggera¬ 
tion, or explanation. Whatever Canonical 
authority belongs to the first book must also 
belong to the second, since they were not 
divided in the Hebrew till after they were 
translated into the Greek, and were then di¬ 
vided. 

See for these two books the Speaker’s Com¬ 
mentary, the Cambridge Bible for Schools, 
Smith’s Bible Dictionary, and the authori¬ 
ties cited there. 

Sanctification. It is a state or a condi¬ 
tion of grace and holiness from the power 
of the Holy Ghost in our hearts. We can 
never too clearly recognize that it comes 
from Him co-operating in our hearts and 
with our wills to produce that fruit unto 
holiness. It must, therefore, be a growth, 
a state, a condition, and the two co-operat¬ 
ing forces are the Spirit of God and the 
will yielding to His guidance. Without 
holiness we cannot see God. This holiness, 
which is our own co-operating work, must 
be founded upon the redemption of Christ 
and our baptism in Him, and so our receiv¬ 
ing His righteousness (justification, the be¬ 
ing made or declared righteous): “ but ye 
are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are 
justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and 
by the Spirit of our God.” Sanctification, 
then, begins with baptism as a part of its 
manifold gifts, or more truly, as a power of 
many of its graces it confers. As we put on 
the Lord Jesus and all grow in that new 
creation, so we have as the accompanying 
state holiness, and though holiness is no 
part of our unregenerate state, since it was 
of the original creation, a growth in holiness 
is, as it were, a gradual recovery of our orig¬ 
inal condition, and becomes ours as we work 
together with the Holy Spirit. It is a 
restoration to our nature of the first condi¬ 
tion. It is, then, as Hooker (Serm. on Justi¬ 
fication)" states it, inherent. “Concerning 
the righteousness of sanctification, we deny it 
not to be inherent; we grant that unless we 
work we have it not, only we distinguish it 
as a thing different in nature from the right¬ 
eousness of justification ; we are righteous, 
the one way by the faith of Abraham, the 
other way, except we do the works of Abra¬ 
ham, we are not righteous. . . . St. Paul 
doth plainly sever these two parts of Chris¬ 
tian righteousness, one from the other, for in 
the sixth to the Romans thus he writeth : 
‘ Being freed from sin and made servants to 
God, ye have your fruit in holiness and the 
end everlasting life.’ ‘Ye are made free 
from sin and made servants unto God,’ 
this is the righteousness of justification. 
‘Ye have your fruit in holiness,’ this is 
the righteousness of sanctification. By the 
one we are interested in the right of in¬ 
heriting, by the other we are brought to 


the actual possession of eternal bliss, and so 
the end of both is eternal life.” Then as 
we grow in grace, in spiritual strength, in 
the use of that knowledge and wisdom given 
to us by the Holy Ghost, we grow in 
Sanctification, and so far as it enters into 
our life and our character, it is ours. 

Our Lord in His Intercessional Prayer 
(St.John xvii.) prays both for the Apostles, 
“ sanctify them through Thy truth,” and of 
Himself He saith, referring to His perfect 
humanity and to its discipline, “and for 
their sakes I sanctify Myself that they 
also might be sanctified through the truth.” 
Not only the discipline He underwent (Heb. 
ii. 10, 11), but also as Victim He sanctified 
Himself. And in the unity of His Holy 
Body are we made Holy, Sanctified. So we 
may say that (this having a bearing upon 
the article of the Creed “the Communion 
of Saints”) He hath sanctified Himself for 
the Churcn’s sake that He might sanctify 
Her, that He hath given to Her the Sanc¬ 
tifying Spirit, that as children in the 
Church growing up into the manhood of 
the Christian life, we have given to us 
the Sanctification of the Spirit through 
Jesus Christ. Therefore all the exhorta¬ 
tions with which St. Paul closes his Epistles 
(and more markedly that to the Galatians) 
are to this end, our Sanctification. The old 
controversies upon Sanctification and Justi¬ 
fication have died out; a deeper, truer sense 
of the living power of the graces of the Holy 
Spirit and the need to live and grow in 
them, has made them needless. We are 
called to be saints, let us make our calling 
and election sure. This is our co-operation 
with the Spirit of Holiness, and in Him we 
shall surely be Sanctified. 

Sanctuary. The word correctly belongs 
to the Jewish ritual, meaning the Holy 
Place, which was properly of two parts. 1. 
The Holy of Holies, and then without this 
veil that concealed its contents from view, 
II. The Holy Place in which the Priests 
ministered unto God in the Sacrifices. In 
this Holy Place, the outer Sanctuary, were 
the ever-burning Lamp, the Shew-Bread, 
the Altar of Incense. None but the priests 
trod there, as none but the High-Priest 
ever entered into the Holy of Holies. 

The corresponding place in the Christian 
Church, the place where the Holy Table or 
the Altar stood, was also treated with great 
reverence, as the Screen and the Holy doors 
before it in the Eastern Church show, but 
it was not called the Sanctuary till compara¬ 
tively late. It was, however, always sur¬ 
rounded with a general sense of its holiness. 
In the West, the Sanctuary is the chancel, 
though it sometimes also included the choir. 
It was not, however, so sacredly guarded 
from intrusion as in the East. 

But the Churches had early given to 
them the right of asylum. It had existed 
in the Temple. The right of asylum was 
conceded to heathen temples. It was at¬ 
tached to the Christian temples also as soon 




SANHEDRIM 


678 


SARDICA 


as the Em.peror Constantine, becoming Chris¬ 
tian, recognized and conceded it. The right 
of asylum at first apparently was intended 
only to give such delay as would prevent 
injustice being done to the person obtaining 
it. This right of asylum, at first belonging 
only to the Church building, afterwards was 
extended so as to include the precincts also. 
But after a while it became an obstruction 
to justice. In wild times, as during the 
transition from the Roman civil power 
through the turbulence of the Middle Ages, 
it served a very useful purpose, but on the 
settlement of the peoples into something 
like order and the proper discharge of jus¬ 
tice, this right became an evil. In England 
it was abolished in the twenty-first year of 
James I. 

Sanhedrim. The Jewish Judicial Court 
which tried our Lord, and before which, 
afterwards, the Apostles were brought several 
times. The date of its origin is uncertain, 
and, indeed, if it existed before, it does not 
come prominently forward till the time of 
the Maccabees. It had then and afterwards 
the power of Life and Death. Its chief 
jurisdiction was in minor cases, however. 
Heresy and blasphemy were the higher sub¬ 
jects upon which it passed sentence. The 
Sanhedrim was deprived of the power over 
life by the Romans. Therefore our Lord 
was taken by the High-Priest and a hastily- 
gathered part of the Sanhedrim to Pilate. 
St. Stephen’s martyrdom by the Sanhedrim 
was most probably a sudden, unpremeditated 
act. But after this the Sanhedrim sat upon 
the heresy of the sect of the Nazarenes, and 
used all its influence at home and abroad 
among the Jews to check its rising power. 
Therefore St. Paul asked leave of the Jews 
at Rome to defend himself before them. It 
arrested St. Peter and St. John. St. Stephen 
was taken before it. St. Paul was examined 
by it, and was in danger of his life in the 
angry debate which followed his appeal upon 
the hope of the Resurrection. Its later his¬ 
tory recounts its wanderings, till at last it 
was permanently settled at Tiberias, where 
its labors were upon the Talmud and on the 
text of Scripture. It finally disappeared, it 
is said, before 300 a.d. 

Sardica. A Council was held at Sardica 
in the year 347 a.d., though later authorities 
prefer the date 343-44 a.d. The occasion 
appears to have been the differences and ir¬ 
regularities arising out of the Arian Schism, 
and its continuation by the Semi-Arians or 
Eusebians. As these grew more and more 
scandalous, the Emperors Constans and Con- 
stantius, of the West and East respectively, 
joined in summoning a Council of the whole 
Church at Sardica (now Sophia), in Illyri- 
cum, on the borders of the two Empires. 
Bishops assembled from all quarters to the 
number of 100 from the West and 76 from 
the East. The venerable Hosius of Cordova 
presided, and among other noteworthy men 
present were St. Athanasius, Marcellus of 
Ancyra, Stephen of Antioch, and Asclepias 


of Gaza. The Pope, Julius, was represented 
by two priests and a deacon. The Orien¬ 
tal Bishops at the outset protested against 
the admission of Athanasius, Marcellus, 
and other deposed Bishops; but when they 
found that matters were to be freely dis¬ 
cussed, and that no violence would 'be 
allowed, they withdrew to Philippopolis, in 
Thrace, and there held a separate synod 
under Stephen, Bishop of Antioch, in which 
they drew up a new creed, deposed the 
most conspicuous members of the other 
Council, and forbade communion with many 
others, and especially Pope Julius. They 
were accompanied by five Bishops from the 
West, while two Eastern Bishops remained at 
Sardica. After the departure of the Easterns, 
the Council proceeded with its business; 
they declared it unnecessary to reopen 
questions of faith, the Nicene Creed being 
sufficient; they deposed many Bishops of 
the Easterns ; they declared Athanasius and 
Marcellus innocent of the charges brought 
against them, and restored them to their 
Sees, so far as their decision could do it. 
They addressed a letter to the Emperors 
invoking them to interfere in behalf of the 
oppressed, and they wrote to Pope Julius, 
to the clergy of Alexandria, and to all the 
Bishops of the Church to urge them to unity 
and adherence to the faith of Nice. They 
also passed a number of Canons, some of 
which became of the greatest importance. 
These Canons were drawn up in the form 
of motions put by various members of the 
Council, and voted on by all. 

Canons 1 and 2 forbid the promotion of 
Bishops from one See to another. 

“ Canon 3. Hosius made two proposi¬ 
tions: first, that no Bishop should be per¬ 
mitted to enter another province unless 
called to assist at some judgment; and, 
secondly, that for the honor of St. Peter’s 
memory it be ordered that if a Bishop, con¬ 
demned in his own province, maintain his 
innocence, his judges might write to the 
Bishop of Rome, in order that he might 
determine whether the Bishop’s Qause re¬ 
quired a fresh hearing; that if he and the 
judges whom he should nominate agreed in 
deeming a new trial requisite, it should be 
entered upon at once; but if not, the 
original sentence should stand good.” 

“ Canon 4. Bishop Gaudentius submitted to 
the Council an addition to the last Canon, 
to the effect that care should be taken that 
the Bishop so condemned in provincial 
synod, and appealing to Rome, should not 
be deprived of his See, nor a successor be 
appointed, until the cause should be entirely 
concluded by the Pope.” 

“Canon 7. Hosius proposed that in the 
case of a Bishop condemned by the synod of 
his province and appealing to Rome, if the 
Bishop of Rome should decide that it was 
necessary to have a new trial, it should be 
lawful for him either to delegate the cause 
to the Bishops bordering upon the diocese of 
the accused Bishop, or to send delegates to 




SARUM USE 


679 


SATAN 


the spot to take cognizance of the ques¬ 
tion. ” (Landon’s Manual of Councils.) 

Canon 5 forbids consecrating Bishops for 
insignificant places. Canon 8 forbids Bishops 
going to the Emperor’s Court except when 
called by the Emperor. Canon 13 forbids 
ordinations per saltum. Canons 14 and 15 
forbid Bishops absenting themselves from 
their dioceses. Canon 17 provides for ap¬ 
peals by priests or deacons from the decision 
of their own Bishop to the other Bishops of. 
their province. It is on Canons 3, 4, and 7 
that the claim made by Rome over the 
other branches of the Church is based ; but 
against this assumption it is argued that 
the council was a local one ; that the limited 
authority is conferred as a new thing; that 
the Bishop of Rome had no power to evoke 
a cause from before another tribunal; nor 
any personal voice in the decision; but 
could only receive appeals on application 
of the Councils from which they were made, 
the power of such appeals being limited to 
Bishops ; and also that the power conferred 
was temporary and personal, being given to 
Julius by name, without any reference to 
his successors. Nevertheless, the Canons of 
Sardica were received by the whole Church. 

Sarum Use. The Liturgy according to 
the use of the Diocese of Sarum (Salisbury) 
was one of the most influential and impor¬ 
tant of the .many Uses ( i.e ., Liturgies in 
use) in England. The Sarum Missal was 
itself the outcome of Bishop Osmund’s 
reformation of the Older Uses which had 
obtained and which (from his being a Nor¬ 
man over a Saxon Diocese) he would wish 
to modify. He composed a Custom-Book 
which it is claimed became the Sarum 
Missal (1085 a.d.). The later Sarum Missal, 
which was so freely used for material and 
guidance in the formation of the Prayer- 
Book, probably had by this time received 
many additions. It was the leading Use in 
England at the time of the Reformation, 
though the Dioceses of Lincoln, Hereford, 
and Bangor had their own, and the province 
of York had also an Older Use, dating in 
part from 700 a.d. Durham seems also to 
have had a separate Use. ( Vide Use.) 

Satan. “ The first that sinned against 
God was Satan. And then through Satan’s 
fraudulent instigation man also. They 
‘ kept not their first estate’ because ‘ they 
stood not in the truth,’ from which it may 
be very probably thought that infidelity 
through pride was their ruin, the too great 
admiration of their own excellency having 
made incredible the truth revealed to them : 
the truth of that personal conjunction 
which should be of God with men. As also 
envy maketh them, ever sithence the first 
moment of there own fall, industrious to 
work our ruin.” (Hooker.) Under the 
names and titles of Satan (“ the Adver¬ 
sary”), the devil (“the accuser”), the 
Tempter, the Evil One, Beelzebub, the prince 
of demons, the serpent, there is set before 
us in the Scriptures, and especially in the 


New Testament, one whose awful person¬ 
ality only Christian faith can face without 
flinching. Unbelief has no refuge but to 
deny his existence. Believing in Christ 
the Saviour from sin, we can without shrink¬ 
ing accept the facts of sin, Satan, and death, 
and without attempting to be wise above 
what is written, receive what is written 
concerning Satan and his work in the 
world in its literal plain meaning. 

The history of mankind has hardly begun, 
and the first pair are just created and placed 
upon the earth, righteous, wise, and happy, 
when there comes upon the scene one who 
in the form of a serpent, with fair promises 
and bitter taunts against God, induces first 
the woman and then the man to transgress 
the one prohibition that had been laid upon 
them, and fall into sin. So “sin.entered 
into the world, and death by sin” (Rom. v. 
12). We accept the record of Genesis iii. 
as simply and literally true. But it perhaps 
makes but little difference in the result, as 
it makes little difference in the “ difficulty” 
of the record, whether we understand that 
the full meaning of the events recorded in 
Genesis iii. is hidden under the form of the 
w r ords or under the form of the acts, if we 
only understand that what is recorded is es¬ 
sential truth, and that whether Satan is con¬ 
cealed under the form or under the name of 
the serpent, here is the account—and the 
only explanation in the world—of the in¬ 
troduction into the world of sin and death. 
We find later additions, which tell us about 
him who was the means of the beginning of 
evil in the world, but here at first is no word 
to explain how God could permit evil in 
His universe, no word of its origin, but 
only a simple statement of the facts of the 
creation and then of the fall, and not even 
the name of the evil agent is given nor a 
hint of his high spiritual origin and char¬ 
acter. What is made evident is, the subtle 
personal character of the tempter of men. 

It is a serious error that “devil” is in an 
English authorized version made the trans¬ 
lation of two words of entirely distinct 
meanings, with the natural result of mis¬ 
leading and confusing the ordinary reader. 
One is the word diabolos, the Greek equiva¬ 
lent of the Hebrew Satan, and of which 
“ devil” is a transfer into English rather 
than a translation. The other, which under 
some form occurs about twice as often in 
the New Testament, the word daimon , which 
the same treatment would render “ demon.” 
(Vide Demoniacs.) That is, in the New 
Testament, when the word “ devil” is used, 
only in one-third of the cases is the refer¬ 
ence to Satan himself, in the other cases to 
his subordinate evil spirits. 

As a proper name Satan is found but in 
three places in the whole Old Testament (1 
Chron. xxi. 1, where alone the article is 
wanting). “Satan stood up against Israel, 
and provoked David to number Israel” 
(Zech. iii. 1, 2). “He showed me Joshua 
the high-priest standing before the angel of 





SATAN 


680 


SATAN 


the Lord, and Satan standing at his right 
hand to assist him, and the Lord said unto 
Satan, The Lord rebuke thee, O Satan” (Job 
i. 6-9; ii. 1), when Satan “came also to 
present himself before the Lord,” and re¬ 
ceived permission to afflict Job. In the 
books called apocryphal, once, the equivalent, 
“ the devil,” “ through envy of the devil came 
death” (Wis. ii. 24). But when we enter 
the field of the New Testament we are con¬ 
scious of an entire change in this respect. 
St. Matthew uses the name of Satan three 
times, once identifying him with “ the 
devil” of the temptation (ch. iv. 10), once 
with “ Beelzebub the prince of demons” (ch. 
xii. 26), and once recording our Lord’s 
application of the name to St. Peter. “ The 
devil” he uses six times (ch. xvi. 23), four 
times of the six in the narrative of the 
Temptation, once in the Parable of the 
Sower, and once in the prophecy of the 
judgment-day. His title of “ the evil one” 
St. Matthew uses several times, notably in 
the Lord’s Prayer (ch. vi. 13), and the 
parable of the tares (ch. xiii. 19). St. Mark 
names him Satan three times (St. Mark 

i. 13; ii. 23; iv. 15). St. Luke as “the 
devil” twice, in the Temptation and in the 
parable of the sower, as Satan four times, 
“falling from Heaven,” the captor of the 
woman “bowed with a spirit of infirmity,” 
“ entering into Judas” (who was “ a devil”), 
“desiring to sift Peter as wheat” (St. Luke 
iv. 8; x. 18; xiii. 16; xxii. 3, 31). St. John 
three times as “ the devil,” two of the three 
in reference to Judas, once as “ the evil one” 
(St. John vi. 70; viii. 44; xii. 2 ; xvii. 15), 
three times, repeating our Lord’s words, as 
“the prince of this world” who “ shall be 
cast out,” who “cometh and hath nothing 
in me,” and who “ is judged” (St. John xii. 
31; xiv. 30; xvi. 11). In the Acts twice as 
“ the devil,”—“ them that were oppressed 
of the devil,” and “ thou child of the devil.” 
As “ Satan” twice (Acts x. 38 ; xiii. 10), 
he filled the heart of Ananias with a lie 
(Acts v. 3), and it is “ from his power” that 
the Gospel turns men (Acts xxvi. 18). In 
St. Paul’s Epistles repeatedly as “ the devil” 
(Eph. iv. 27), whose opportunity is hoarded 
anger, his methods of attack wiles (ch. 
vi. 11), pride the cause of his fall (1 Tim. 
iii. 6) and his snare (ch. iii. 7); who en¬ 
slaves the will of his captives (2 Tim. ii. 26) ; 
who has the power of death, but this death 
the Saviour of men (Heb. ii. 14) conquered 
and spoiled him, “the strong man despoiled 
by one stronger than he” (St. Luke xi. 22). 
As Satan whom “ God shall bruise under 
our feet shortly” (Rom. xvi. 20), but to 
whom the Apostle delivers over tne incon¬ 
tinent sinner of Corinth “ for the destruc¬ 
tion of the flesh that the spirit may be saved” 
(1 Cor. v. 5), who tempts this lust and pride 
(ch. vii. 5), who transforms himself into an 
angel of light (2 Cor. xi. 14), who hinders 
the Lord’s servants in their work (1 Thess. 

ii. 18), who “ works in the lawless one, the 
man of sin” (2 Thess. ii. J9), to whom near the 


close of his ministry the Apostle once again 
“delivers” men “that they may learn not 
to blaspheme” (1 Tim. i. 20), but apparently, 
in the case of one of them at least, not with 
any good result (2 Tim. iv. 14). As “ the 
evil one” “from whom the Lord will guard 
you” (2 Thess. iii. 3), and whose “darts the 
shield of faith shall quench” (Eph. vi. 16^). 

He is “ the prince of the power of the air 
who rules the course of this world, the spirit 
that now worketh in the children of disobe¬ 
dience” (Eph. ii. 2). He is one who is set 
over the “ principalities, powers, rulers of the 
darkness of this world, spiritual wickedness 
in high places, against which we wrestle” 
(Eph. vi. 12). He is “ the power of dark¬ 
ness from which we are delivered” (Col. i.). 
He is “ the god of this world who hath 
blinded the minds of those that believe not” 
(2 Cor. iv. 4). St. James bids, “ resist the 
devil and he will flee from you” (St. James 

iv. 7). St. Peter warns against “your ad¬ 
versary the devil, who goes about seeking 
whom he may devour” (1 Pet. v. 8). St. 
John tells us that sin is the business of the 
devil and the sign of his children, and “ for 
this the Son of God w r as manifested, that 
He might destroy the works of the devil.” 
He images them that “have overcome the 
wicked one,” “ of whom” was Cain the envi¬ 
ous murderer, but who shall not touch the 
child of God to hurt him, albeit “ in him 
the world lieth” (1 John ii. 13; iii. 12; 

v. 18, 19). St. Jude shows him contend¬ 
ing against the archangel about the body of 
Moses and receiving his rebuke (Jude 9). 
It is left for the last books to enlarge upon the 
words of our Lord concerning both the fall 
and of the destiny of Satan and his angels. 
“ The angels,” writes St. Jude, “ which kept 
not their first estate, but left their own habi¬ 
tations, He hath reserved in everlasting 
chains under darkness unto the judgment 
of the great day” (Jude 6). And St. Peter, 
“ for God spared not the angels that sinned, 
but cast them down to hell, and delivered 
them into chains of darkness, to be reserved 
unto judgment” (2 Pet. ii. 4). In the 
Letters of the Apocalypse, the conten¬ 
tious Jews are “the synagogue of Satan” 
(Rev. ii. 9, 13, 24), the dwelling of the 
Angel of our church is where the throne and 
dwelling of Satan are, of another, where 
“the depths of Satan” are the doctrines 
taught, and “ the devil” is about to “ cast 
some of them into prison” for their trial. 
In the vision (Rev. xii. 7-9), “ there was 
war in heaven: Michael and his angels 
fought against the dragon ; and the dragon 
fought and his angels, and prevailed not; 
neither was their place found any more in 
Heaven. And the great dragon was cast 
out, that old serpent called the Devil, and 
Satan, which deceiveth the whole world : 
he was cast out unto the earth, and his 
angels were cast out with him.” And later 
on, “ I saw an angel come down from 
Heaven. . . And he laid hold on the dragon, 
that old serpent which is the Devil, and 




SATAN 


681 


SATISFACTION 


Satan, and bound him a thousand years” 
(Rev. xx. 2). And then later still, “the 
devil which deceived them was cast into the 
lake of fire and brimstone, and shall be tor¬ 
mented day and night for ever and ever” 
(Rev. xx. 10). Of all the writers of the 
New Testament St. Paul in his letters is 
fullest in the instruction which he gives con¬ 
cerning the present work of Satan in the 
world. It is for others to prophesy con¬ 
cerning his eternal destiny. 

From this examination of the teaching of 
the Scriptures, it is plain that while we are 
made acquainted with the presence of Satan 
in the world, with his power and his char¬ 
acter from the outset, the Holy Scriptures 
are satisfied for a long time, and until a 
certain definite time, to add but little to 
that knowledge. It is never lost, never 
questioned, but held in abeyance. When 
that time does come, the fullness of knowl¬ 
edge concerning the prince of evil, his 
authority, his rules, his kingdom, is opened 
to us all at once. And finally, to the in¬ 
struction concerning him which is given in 
the New Testament all the world’s wisdom 
has never added a particle. It has denied 
him and his work, as it denies the Lord 
his Conqueror, but it has taught, and has 
pretended to teach, us nothing positive even 
in the place of what it has denied. Of the 
problem of evil it has no solution. The 
close connection between the world’s deal¬ 
ing with these two beliefs—in the Lord and 
about His enemy—is suggestive, for it is 
indeed a connection which exists between 
these two and all that belongs to them re¬ 
spectively from the beginning. 

The fall of man through the agency of 
Satan was closely followed by the promise 
which was to undo that fall,—“ Her seed 
shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise 
his heel.” From that time, if evil was in 
the world, there was the knowledge of God 
in the world also, and a definite faith in His 
promise, a definite expectation of a Deliverer, 
divine and human. The exclamation of the 
first mother was, “ I have gotten a man, the 
Lord.” The work of evil went on in God’s 
world, and prevailed over the good ; but the 
hope and faith was never lost. It was re¬ 
newed to Abraham and preserved in his 
family, and repeated and defined. It is the 
key to the history and prophecy and the 
whole system of Israel. The Lord was in 
the world, and the world and His own 
people were being prepared for the keeping 
of His promise. When His appointed time 
came, the promise was kept. 

With the coming of Christ there is a 
loosing of Satan and his angels for a time, 
as appears by the demoniacal possessions 
which were so frequent just at that time, 
as well as in the intensified badness of the 
world, and with the revelation of Christ 
comes a revelation of knowledge of Satan 
and his works such as had never been made 
before. The mystery of the eternal purpose 
of God was revealed in Christ (Eph. i. 9; 


2 Thess. ii. 7 ), the “ mystery of iniquity” 
had its own revelation in the work of the 
devil and his angels. The two great ene¬ 
mies met in the Temptation, and the victory 
over one man in the Garden was more than 
reversed. The world is Satan’s organized 
kingdom. In it the Lord planted His king¬ 
dom to leaven and absorb it. The angels of 
God are the ministers of Christ their Lord. 
Satan has his angels, the fallen evil spirits. 
“Of thrones and dominions and principali¬ 
ties and powers Christ is head” (Col. i. 
16), and “principalities and powers and 
rulers of darkness, spiritual wickedness in 
high places,” are those against which we 
wrestle. Men are citizens of one kingdom 
or the other, servants of one master or the 
other. The two kingdoms exist side by 
side and so near that we are “ translated out 
of darkness into the kingdom of His dear 
Son” (Col. i. 13). While Satan and his 
emissaries of evil angels and evil men are 
on the watch to snare and destroy those who 
err from the right way, and the casting out 
from the communion of the Church is the 
“ delivering over to Satan.” Righteousness is 
the business of the kingdom of Christ. Sin 
in every form, of the devil and his children. 
The name of the promised one is Jesus, for 
He shall save His people from their sins and 
destroy the works of the devil. In other 
words, the contrast and opposition which ex¬ 
ists between evil and good, right and wrong, 
sin and righteousness, is no contrast between 
abstractions, and is not limited to things 
which we might name by these terms. Evil, 
like good, is the character of an organized 
system which extends through all the world, 
and which has its centre and its king in the 
person of Satan. The contrast and the con¬ 
test is between these two kingdoms and be¬ 
tween these two kings, a contrast and a con¬ 
test that goes on whenever anything exists 
which belongs to either, and will go on till 
one or the other is destroyed. 

Which shall prevail we know. Which 
is prevailing, and has been ever since the 
Lord came. Every Christian life that is 
lived, evet-y act of righteousness and charity 
that is done, scores a victory. The advance 
of the Church is a course of victory. And 
victory on one side means defeat on the 
other, a lessening of the kingdom of Satan, 
a binding of him and his power. The end 
will not be till he is finally cast down. It 
is not coming as rapidly as we would desire. 
But it will come, for He has come who came 
to destroy the works of the devil, and the 
will of God will be done. 

Rev. L. W. Gibson. 

Satisfaction. The term “satisfaction” is 
properly a legal term that comes to us from 
the Roman Law, and as a theological term 
was not used till St. Anselm of Canterbury 
employed it, but it has passed into use, but 
much modified from his teaching. It is 
probable that from him came the use of the 
word in the Canon of our Liturgy “ who 
made there (by His one oblation of Him- 





SATISFACTION 


682 


SCHISM 


self once offered) a full, perfect, and suffi¬ 
cient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for 
the sins of the whole world.” The doctrine 
of satisfaction simply for sin by a sacrifice 
is found in Holy Scripture from the very 
first. It could have been the only idea at¬ 
tached to Sacrifices before the flood, since 
none ate flesh then, and the feast upon the 
Sacrifice was not instituted till Moses or¬ 
dained it. The Sacrifices offered by Abraham 
were whole burnt-offerings— i.e., none were 
reserved at all. So onward, the Sacrifice 
seems to have had simply the purpose of 
offering some victim by which God was ap¬ 
peased ; and here let us note lest the mere 
offering could appease God or could purge 
the consciences of the worshipers that this 
was a memorial before Him of the satisfac¬ 
tion yet to be made in Christ. The idea 
of satisfaction by a sacrifice was that it was 
anticipatory of the proper and only satis¬ 
faction to be made afterwards. In this 
sense only we may say that our heavenly 
Father was appeased. Now, throughout the 
Mosaic Law the whole burnt-offering alone 
was the complete sacrifice retaining the 
principle of satisfaction, but the feast upon 
the sacrifice for the sin-offering and tres¬ 
pass-offering was the introduction of another 
principle. In the first was set forth the 
solitariness of the Atonement of our Lord. 
He trod the wine-press alone. We only 
have bestowed on us the results; we could 
not share in His Atoning act. In this He 
made the one full, perfect, and sufficient 
sacrifice, oblation* and satisfaction for the 
sins of the whole world. It is not necessary 
to point out here the many texts which 
teach us how fully He took upon Him the 
iniquity of us all. How He was wounded for 
our transgressions, and how His soul made 
a sin-offering. The fifty-third chapter of 
Isaiah is both the prophecy and the best ex¬ 
position of His satisfaction as the sin-offer¬ 
ing for the world. It is upon the founda¬ 
tion of the fullness of His satisfaction that 
the sinner now finds acceptance before God. 
It is ascribed to Him in glorious worship of 
the redeemed. It is the constant ground 
upon which we can hope for everlasting life. 
But St. Anselm brought it forward as a debt 
for sin, which was viewed more as a break¬ 
ing of God’s majesty than as of itself a 
loathsome taint which needed to be atoned 
for. There was a harshness in the mode in 
which the Archbishop put it, and a seeming 
intention to push forward the thought of 
the crime of sin more than its present and 
fatal effect upon the sinner. His use, then, of 
the term is narrow. This doctrine of satis¬ 
faction brings out the love displayed in the 
Incarnation of the Son of God. It shows 
that for the hour and the agony of the Atone¬ 
ment our blessed Lord came into the world, 
and that this satisfaction, resting upon that 
and leading up to His Resurrection and to 
the gifts flowing from it, also brings forward 
the facts of our sanctification by the Holy 
Ghost. But we must be very careful to 


separate from this any idea of satisfaction 
we might dream we could make for our¬ 
selves. This is a deduction which by no 
means follows from the other. The satis¬ 
faction of the Lord and our acceptance 
through Him constitute the grounds upon 
which the doctrine of good works must be 
placed, and these can have no wages, but 
whatever we receive for them is the free 
gift of God through Jesus Christ. 

Saxon. Vide Architecture. 

Saying and Singing. The rubrics in sev¬ 
eral places direct there shall be “ said or 
sung” such an Anthem or Psalm. The words 
have a technical meaning, and are in strict¬ 
ness so to be construed. Saying meant then 
a recitation of the passage so ordered upon a 
musical tone, a plain, simple note with little 
or no inflection or cadence. The English 
Prayer-Book was published very early by 
Daye, Merbeeke, Tallis, and others music- 
all} 7 set. Now, saying is an ordinary reading. 
Singing meant a more ornate musical recita¬ 
tion. Now, custom has made the word “said” 
in the rubrics refer to the alternate reading 
and response of the minister and congrega¬ 
tion, and the singing is more of the chant 
than the anthem music. The places in the 
rubrics in the Prayer-Book where this phrase 
“ said or sung” is used are for the Venite , 
the Gloria Patri , or the Gloria in Excelsis 
after the Psalms ; the Te Deum , the Jubi¬ 
late , and Benedictus in the Morning Prayer ; 
the Cantate , Bonum est , Deus Misereatur , 
and the Benedic Anima Mea , in the Even¬ 
ing Prayer; the Preface and the Gloria in 
Excelsis in the Communion Office: the 
Sentences and the three Anthems in the 
Burial Service; the selection of Psalms or 
other portion of Psalms in the Thanks¬ 
giving Office; the Veni Creator Spiritus 
in the Ordinal; the Hundredth Psalm in 
the Office for the Consecration Office; the 
anthem Laudate Nomen in the Office of Insti¬ 
tution. In all of these the rubric permits in 
strictness a recitation upon a musical note 
and fuller musical rendering. But except 
in the Veni Creator Spiritus of the Ordinal, 
there is no direction as to who is to say the 
particular Anthem or Hymn or Psalm. It 
might be, for all the rubric could determine, 
read by the congregation responsively. Cus¬ 
tom, which must rule and sometimes over¬ 
rule in defining rubrics, has of course ar¬ 
ranged it, but it is a mark of how much was 
left to discretion and to the law imposed by 
preceding usages, by the Reformers, and of 
how far for many historical causes we have 
drifted from the old custom. ( Vide Rubric.) 

Sceptic. Vide Doubt and Agnosticism. 

Schism. Division (and then subdi¬ 
vision) of the Body of the Church. Schism, 
as a sin, is not considered with sufficient 
care by the Laity. Its open surface evils 
are acknowledged. The hindrance to the 
cause of Christianity is freely admitted. 
The bitternesses it engenders are deprecated 
upon all sides, yet every schismatical body 
hugs its own schism all the closer. The 




SCHISM 


683 


SCHISM 


Evangelical Alliance is but a compromise 
between the consciousness of the sin of 
schism and the need of unity; and though 
as a mere expedient a failure for unity, yet 
a clear proof that the knowledge of evil and 
the sin of schism is gaining ground. First, 
it is necessary to admit the difficulty of 
breaking up and reorganizing large organiza¬ 
tions simply because they are acknowledged 
to be on a wrong principle; and, secondly, 
that every schism, to have any force in it, 
must be founded upon at least a half truth. 
And, again, the zeal , though of a half-in- 
formed knowledge, is gladly granted. But 
still the great sin remains, not palliated, but 
rather defined more clearly by these limita¬ 
tions. Then, many of the members of the 
different denominations are so by descent. 
They have inherited their Faith, and the 
change involves a greater struggle than can 
be easily measured by those who have not 
passed through it. But it is the great sin 
of the religious world in this country. The 
NewTestament is very clear upon this sub¬ 
ject—this of division. Our Lord warned His 
disciples against false teachers who should 
arise, saying, Here is Christ, or He is 
there. He laid down the principle of unity , 
and of love to one another. In His Sermon 
on the Mount He spoke of false prophets 
and false teachers, but also of those who 
would work lawlessness (iniquity in the 
Authorized Version. Matt. vii. 21-24). 
The Apostles St. Jude, St. Peter, St. John, 
St. Paul have all something to say about 
the sin of schism, either in its deeper form 
involving heresy, or in the form of a mere 
rending of a united body. But all, at some 
point in their protests against it, point out 
that it is a form of willfulness. It would 
be a willful choice for themselves of what 
they should accept and believe. 

St. Paul, in the First Epistle to the 
Corinthians, sets schism, division, in its 
true light,—the rending of the Body of 
Christ. “Is Christ divided?” is his ve¬ 
hement exclamation, yet these schisms had 
not amounted to an open division, only 
parties within the Church. He argues that 
they all speak the same thing, they all be 
perfectly joined together in the same mind 
and in the same judgment. Afterwards his 
language (ch. xi. 18) shows how he foresaw 
its result. God would permit it, that they 
who were steadfast and approved of God 
should be made manifest; and as yet there 
was no open rending, and the point in that 
place is upon the disorders at the Com¬ 
munion. Again (in ch. xii. 12-31), he 
compares the Church to the human body, 
and the unity in it and the work and honor 
assigned to each. It is on the gifts (Charis¬ 
mata) given, and then he enumerates the 
offices and helps from the Apostolic down 
to the gift of language. It is not the place 
here to more than point out that if party- 
ism, which might issue in something like 
our modern schism, could draw out such 
protests, what is not the position of those 


in actual willful schism ? Passing over St. 
Peter’s and St. Jude’s strong words, hence 
these also apply to errors held by men in the 
Church. We find St. John speaking with 
sorrowing words of those who had left the 
Church. How full of suppressed intensity 
of feeling are these solemn words: “Little 
children, it is the last time: and as ye have 
heard that antichrist shall come, even now 
there are many antichrists; whereby we 
know that it is the last time. They went 
out from us, but they were not of us ; for 
if they had been of us, they would no doubt 
continue with us: but they went out, that 
they might be made manifest that they 
were not all of us” (1 John ii. 18, 19). 
Here schism, in the modern sense of the 
word, is set forth, and St. John calls 
those who joined themselves to it anti¬ 
christs. But the sin of schism is better seen 
by turning to the doctrine of unity our 
Lord laid down. First He taught, “He 
that is not with me is against me.” But 
this being with Him must rest upon Unity 
in the Faith and in the Covenant, in His 
Visible Body, for there is none other stated. 
Pointing out by His comparisons of one 
Net, one Fold, one Vineyard, one Vine, the 
unity of Love, the unity of abiding in Him, 
or we shall be but withered branches fit for 
the burning, we turn to the Prayer for His 
Church (St. John xvii.). It is that those 
the Apostles and those who believe through 
their word may be one in Christ, as He is 
one with His Father. Unity He left as a 
part of the Church’s Constitution. But as 
clearly unity in the Apostolic office. St. 
Paul’s and St. John’s arguments would be 
worthless if the Apostolic office were to 
fail. 

St. Paul insists that unity is necessary, 
and asserts his authority and claims that 
fellowship with him is essential. So do 
St. John (1 John i.), St. Peter, and St. 
Jude imply it. (a) Unity in Apostolic 
Faith. “ If any man preach any other gos¬ 
pel unto you than that ye have received, 
let him be accursed. ... I certify you, 
brethren, that the gospel which was preached 
of me is not after man. For I neither re¬ 
ceived it of man, neither was I taught it by 
man, but by revelation of Jesus Christ 
(Gal. i. 9, 11, 12). So in clearer language 
St. John in the first chapter of the first 
Epistle, so Acts ii. 42, and many other 
places; indeed, the fact that the Epistles 
were written implies that unity in the Faith 
is a necessity. ( b ) Unity , under Apostolic 
government (Acts ii. 42, and 1 John i.). 
Eph. iv. 11-16: “ And He gave some, Apos¬ 
tles ; and some, prophets ; and some, evan¬ 
gelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for 
the perfecting of the saints, for the work of 
the ministry, for the edifying of the Body 
of Christ : till we all come in the unity of 
the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son 
of God, unto a perfect man, unto the meas¬ 
ure of the stature of the fullness of Christ : 
that we henceforth be no more children, 




SCOTLAND, CHURCH OF 


684 


SCOTLAND, CHURCH OF 


tossed to and fro, and carried about with 
every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of 
men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they 
lie in wait to deceive; but speaking the 
truth in love, may grow up into Him in 
all tilings, which is the Head, even Christ : 
from whom the whole body fitly joined to¬ 
gether and compacted, by that which every 
joint supplieth, according to the effectual 
working in the measure of every part, 
maketh increase of the body unto the 
edifying of itself in love.” In this, the free¬ 
dom, flexibility, the unity, and the govern¬ 
ment of the Church, the living Body of 
Christ, is very plainly set forth. The 
second and third Epistles of St. John are 
almost entirely upon direction to refuse to 
commune with those who bring in false 
doctrines. 

We draw these conclusions. That schism, 
even in the undeveloped state of partyism, 
is a Sin. That developed schism is based 
according to our Lord’s words and to St. 
Paul’s warning on lawlessness. That schism 
divides from the Unity of the Church, that 
those who are steadfast and approved are 
made manifest. Therefore that it is so utterly 
not Apostolic in any w 7 ay, that it is solemnly 
protested against by the Apostles as an immi¬ 
nent danger. But the real question now is 
for those who are charged with schism to 
decide from what body are we in schism ; 
so many rival bodies claim to be “ The 
Church so many pretensions are put 
forth ; so much confusion is brought in by 
discussion of side issues. Upon the doctrine 
of the Church we must refer to that arti¬ 
cle. And for the proofs of the Apostolic 
Succession to the article upon that subject. 
And upon the Faith to the article the 
Rule of Faith. But the solution must 
be the reply that each can give to this ques¬ 
tion, Can I claim to be in all respects upon 
the foundation laid down in the description 
of the three thousand converted on the Day 
of Pentecost, “ And they continued stead¬ 
fastly in the Apostle's doctrine and fellow¬ 
ship , and in breaking of bread , and in [ the ] 
prayers ” ? If it was necessary then it is 
necessary now. It is of the very life of the 
Christian to be in the Body his Lord cre¬ 
ated, purchased, loved, and sanctifies. He 
cannot be sure that he was in union with his 
Lord unless he is in the Apostolic unity in 
the Apostolic teaching. He is only certain 
that he is in his Lord’s presence when he is 
with those who are gathered by his Lord’s 
authority. ( Vide Name.) That men may 
be in formal schism who are unwittingly 
or unwillingly so is true. That Schismat¬ 
ics may have Apostolic Orders is possible, 
but they have not the other note of Apostolic 
Unity of doctrine. But there is only cer¬ 
tainty when these two are united. 

Scotland, Church of. The planting of 
the Church among the Caledonians is in¬ 
volved in much obscurity. Tertullian claims 
that in Britain the Gospel was preached 
where the Roman armies could not penetrate. 


But whoever first introduced it thither car¬ 
ried it in forms which had no direct con¬ 
nection with the Church of Southern Europe. 
The old Scotch historians speak of King 
Donald I. (203 a.d.), probably the chief of 
some stronger tribe of the Piets, as the first 
Christian King. Amphibalus, Modocus, 
Calanus, Carnocus, are traditional names 
of early preachers of Christianity to them. 
It is said that Diocletian’s persecution (303 
a.d.) drove many British Christians into 
Scotland. The Gospel helped to elevate them, 
polygamy was repressed, but their wild, 
warlike life was not so easily laid aside. 
Ninian, a well-born Briton, said to have been 
trained in France, has the honor of being 
the first really historical personage who 
succeeded in planting the Church effectively 
among the southern Piets. His holy life, 
earnest and zealous (412 a.d.), won for him 
a reverence he well deserved. He founded 
the Church at Whitehorn and is reputed the 
first Bishop of Galloway. Paladius, whose 
mission was originally to the Irish, was di¬ 
verted from that field to labor with great 
influence for many years (450 a.d.) among 
them. He sent the first missionary to the 
northern Piets. The Bishops seem to have 
been, as throughout the contemporary history 
of Britain and Ireland, Tribe-Bishops. 
Malcolm II. (1010 a.d.) first parted the 
jurisdiction of the Bishops into Dioceses. 
This principle of the Tribe-Bishops led to 
the custom of their living in a monastery 
with the Monks and of being, as members 
of the community, subject to the Abbot, a 
fact which has misled many writers. ( Vide 
Culdees.) The name next of note was 
that of St. Columba, the great Saint from 
Ireland, who was gifted with a powerful 
mind and considerable capacity as a states¬ 
man (563 a.d. ). From Iona, which from 
him was afterwards called I-Colum-kill, or 
Hy of Columb of the Cells, he did his work'. 
His was a singular career. Of a princely 
family, a soldier, then a monk, he won a 
greater fame in his strifes for the Gospel 
than he had gained in the struggles of his 
clan. After gathering around him men 
■whom he impressed with his own zeal, and 
having preached in various parts of Scot¬ 
land, he at last, at seventy-seven years of 
age, died on his knees before the altar in his 
little chapel at Iona. 

Out of Iona came the gentle and saintly 
Aidan, who went through South Pictland 
and North England afoot upon his Episco¬ 
pal work, teaching, preaching, founding 
Churches. A successor, Colman (650 a.d.), 
held the famous controversy with Wilfrid, 
Archbishop of York, at Whitby, as to what 
rite—the Old Celtic or the Latin—should 
prevail. Colman was defeated, and retired 
from Northumbria to work more exclusively 
in Scotland. 

St. Cuthbert, the laborer among the Cum¬ 
brians, also made his work felt north of 
the Solway by his zeal and energy. 

The principal Sees at this date were those of 





SCOTLAND, CHUKCH OF 


685 


SCOTLAND, CHURCH OF 


Man and Galloway. Others appear, but with 
uncertain bounds. Kenneth (844-860 a.d.), 
who crushed the Piets, winning the leader¬ 
ship for the Scots, gave greater regularity 
and more certain bounds to the Dioceses. 
The See of St. Andrew’s was removed from 
Abernethy, and was made the chief See in 
Scotland. Gradually as missions were es¬ 
tablished in different places these Sees were 
formed, till all the kingdom was under Epis¬ 
copal oversight. The influence of the Arch¬ 
bishopric of York, which claimed to have 
all Scotland under its sway, introduced the 
Roman rites and broke up the older Celtic 
traditions. Kellach (904 a.d.) went to 
Rome for confirmation in the See of St. 
Andrew’s. Later the protracted struggle 
against the marriage of the clergy was be¬ 
gun. It was not readily ended, for we find 
Canons against their wives ( focarix ) as late 
as 1225 a.d. The Scotch Kings striving to 
break up the dependence of their Bishops 
upon York, tried to use the quarrels between 
York and Canterbury (1098 a.d.) to gain 
this end. Most probably the fact was that 
consecration was conferred generally by the 
Bishops within the realm, but that upon oc¬ 
casion, as now, political reasons led to dif¬ 
ferent courses. The claim on the part of 
York was not given up for a long time, 
and frequent consecrations were given by its 
Archbishops to the Scottish Sees. King 
David (1124 a.d.) endowed some Sees. They 
were distributed somewhat as follows : St. 
Andrew’s, with a large jurisdiction in Fife, 
Lothian, Merse (now Berwick), Stirling, 
Angus, and Mearns ; Glasgow in the West; 
Mortloch (later Aberdeen); Brechin, Dun¬ 
blane, Ross, Dunkeld. The events in the 
Scottish Church were varied by visits from 
Cardinals, who came upon a pretext for re¬ 
form, but really to extort money, and who 
were at last forbidden to enter the realm but 
by the King’s license. In the unhappy strifes 
in the State the Bishops sometimes suffered 
much at the hands of the reckless lords. 
When the kingdom was plunged into its 
lowest state by the attacks of Edward I., the 
lords appealed to the Pope, who sent a Bull to 
the English King claiming the kingdom as 
under him, but this interference Edward 
fiercely rejected. 

The more notable events in the history of 
the Church were the prosecution against the 
Templars (1300 a.d.), the erection of St. 
Andrew’s into an Archbishopric (1472 a.d.) 
by Bulls from Rome. Influenced by petty 
intrigues, the King inhibited Bishop Graham 
from publishing them. The Bishop, a gen¬ 
tle man, after a struggle of twelve years, 
succumbed under his troubles and was suc¬ 
ceeded by his bitterest foe, Shevez. The 
ambition of the Bishop of Glasgow led him 
to obtain a like advancement for his See 
(1478 a.d. ), though the precedency rested in 
St. Andrew’s. At the time of the Reforma¬ 
tion the Archprovince of St. Andrew’s in¬ 
cluded the suffragans of Aberdeen, Brechin, 
Caithness, Dunblane, Dunkeld, Moray, 
/ 


Orkney, and Ross, while Glasgow had 
under it Galloway, Argyle, and the Isles. 
The Scotch Church was infected with the 
same abuses and evils that had tainted the 
rest of the Church that acknowledged the 
Roman obedience. The Lollards began at 
the beginning of the sixteenth century to 
disseminate their opinions in Scotland. Some 
were arrested, but were not punished till 
Hamilton, the young Abbot of Firme (1527 
a.d.), was accused of heresy. His execution 
did more to stir up the people than many 
disputations. This martyrdom led to many 
others. But the effort at Reformation was 
of a much more mixed character than else¬ 
where. The wild, reckless character of 
the nobility, their rapacity, and the peculiar 
tribal relations, gave the Reformation there 
a much different tone. The political aspect 
the struggle soon assumed was one of its 
marked features. When James Y. died 
(1542 a.d.) the Earl of Arran, a reformer, 
was regent, but soon the Roman party got 
influence over him, and the persecuting, re¬ 
pressive efforts were renewed. John Knox, 
who had returned from a residence in Gen¬ 
eva (1555 a.d. ), began to gather a congre¬ 
gation about him in Edinburgh. 

The English Reformation had affected 
those in Scotland so far that the counsel of 
the English leaders was sought by them, 
and Edward’s Prayer-Book was introduced. 
In 1558 a.d. the Earls of Argyle, Glen- 
cairn, and Morton, and the Lord of Lome, 
entered with others into a league together to 
urge a reformation and to introduce the 
Book of Common Prayer. Soon followed 
political excesses, the destruction of the 
monasteries, the deposition of the Queen 
regent. Then came the Parliament of 1560 
a.d. , wherein the Bishops kept silence, and 
strangely permitted themselves to be over¬ 
slaughed. Weakness on the one side, hurry 
and violence on the other; the intrigues and 
conspiracies which gathered around Queen 
Mary Stuart for seven years ; the dying off 
of the Bishops, who were allowed to hold 
the property of their Sees, and the intro¬ 
duction of the Presbyterian discipline, 1572 
a.d. , and the appointment of the Titular 
Bishops,—not Bishops by consecration, but 
only by a political device to hold the seats 
of the spiritual estate in Parliament, to 
keep up constitutional forms. When this 
empty order was attacked (1572-80 a.d.) 
Presbyterianism prevailed, under the lead¬ 
ership of Andrew Melville. For thirty 
years this continued, till the accession of 
James YI. to the English throne (1603 a.d.), 
when he took measures to restore Episco¬ 
pacy to the Scotch Church, which were 
finally carried out in 1610 a.d. There were 
no commotions nor more trouble than was 
natural in effecting such a change. Laud 
endeavored to enforce the use of a Liturgy, 
and drew up the ill-starred book of 1637 a.d. 
The troubles which were gathering around 
Charles I. gave opportunity for the discon¬ 
tented to foment fresh troubles, which grew 






SCOTLAND, CHURCH OF 686 SCOTLAND, CHURCH OF 


into riots at Edinburgh: The leaders in 
Scotch affairs banded together in the famous 
National Covenant, and took the name of 
Covenanters. The overthrow of Episco¬ 
pacy followed upon the death of Charles. 

The next era in the varied fortunes of the 
Church extends over twenty-seven years 
(1661-1688 a.d.). Charles II. upon his 
restoration promised toleration to all; but 
so many prominent Presbyterians were so 
deeply plunged in the treasons against his 
father, as well as implicated in religious 
disturbances, that State prosecutions for 
treason wore the appearance of persecu¬ 
tions. He restored the Scotch Episcopate as 
soon as possible. Archbishops Sharp and 
Fairfoul, and Bishops Hamilton and Leigh¬ 
ton, were consecrated in Westminster Abbey 
by Sheldon, Bishop of London, assisted by 
the Bishops of Worcester, Carlisle, and 
Llandaff (December 15, 1661 a.d.). They 
consecrated seven Bishops to fill the old 
Sees on the 7th of May, and two others on 
the 1st of June, 1662 a.d. The adminis¬ 
tration of the Church’s affairs was as mild 
as it could be consistently with its preserving 
dignity and truthfulness. No Liturgical 
form was introduced. The right of presen¬ 
tation to benefices lay in the Patrons, and 
the induction was with the Bishops. The 
change in the incumbents created some con¬ 
fusion, and the imposition of fines by Act 
of Parliament upon all who did not attend 
church added to the difficulties. Continued 
disaffection and opposition, which could 
have been overcome by time and patience, 
was aggravated by legal suppression, which 
finally found vent in the foul assassination 
of Archbishop Sharp, after several attempts, 
1679 a.d. 

The accession of James II. affected the 
Church in Scotland very seriously. His 
efforts for the restoration of Romanism in 
Scotland were resisted by the Bishops in 
Parliament, and incurred the royal dis¬ 
pleasure. However, the adherence of the 
Bishops to King James and the factious 
conduct of the Presbyterian leaders effected 
a second overthrow of Church polity and 
gave Scotland over to the Presbyterians. 
These changes showed that there was still a 
strong Church feeling among many, espe¬ 
cially in the north of Scotland. No move 
was made by the ejected Bishops to continue 
the succession till 1704-5 a.d., when the 
death of the Archbishop of St. Andrew’s 
brought this necessity forcibly before them. 
Two clergymen were selected, Revs. J. 
Fullarton and J. Sage. This last was a noted 
and able controversialist; in fact, his Epis¬ 
copate was chiefly spent in this labor. In 
truth, the position of the Bishops seemed at 
this time to revert to the ancient custom in 
Scotland, for they were in no position to hold 
Sees. The adherence of the lay members 
of the Church in Scotland to the Stuarts 
prevented any practical amelioration of the 
condition of the clergy. Two other clergy¬ 
men, Revs. J. Falconer and H. Christie, were 


consecrated in 1709 a.d. In 1712 a.d. the 
Bishops adopted the English Book of Com¬ 
mon Prayer, and later (1764 a.d.) revised 
the office of the Holy Communion from ma¬ 
terials supplied by the English non-jurors, 
by adding more especially the Invocation 
after the prayer of Consecration, which 
Bishop Seabury introduced into our own 
American Prayer-Book with some verbal 
changes. The broken and scattered Church 
had by this time so consolidated that the 
clergy could now desire to have a Bishop in 
settled residence, and Bishop Fullarton was 
chosen Diocesan and Primus (1720 a.d.). 
The clergy suffered severely from the gov¬ 
ernment after the insurrection of 1745 a.d. 
The acts passed against them were severe, 
and were so denounced by the English 
Bishops in Parliament. However, obliged 
to endure much hardship they still kept up 
their services, and when another clergyman 
was advanced to the Episcopate it was as 
Diocesan of Aberdeen. Gradually the Sees 
were being again filled in a quiet way. So 
in difficulties and dangers was preserved 
the Church which was destined to give to 
the American Church her first Bishop. 
Bishop Seabury’s election, suit to the Eng¬ 
lish Bishops for consecration, and, upon the 
advice of Dr. Berkeley (the son of Bishop 
Berkeley) his successful application to the 
Scotch Bishops, are recorded also in the 
articles upon the American Church and 
upon the Church in Connecticut. He re¬ 
ceived his orders November, 1784 a.d., from 
Bishops Kilgour (Primus), Petrie, and 
Skinner. It drew the attention of the Eng¬ 
lish Bishops to the depressed estate of the 
Scotch Church, and they procured the repeal 
of the penal statutes of 1746-48 a.d. The 
debt of our Church to the Scotch Bishops 
is very great, and must always be gratefully 
acknowledged. Yet the English Church is 
after all the real source of the Scotch line. 
We are not the less practically indebted to 
them for the Orders given us by our Mother- 
Church ; for the consecration of Bishop Sea¬ 
bury led the English Parliament to relax 
the stringent act, and to permit the conse¬ 
cration of Bishops White and Provoost. 
Gradually the Bishops became Diocesans, 
reviving as far as practicable the old lines 
and holding several of them as a single 
jurisdiction. Moray, Ross, and Caithness 
are held by Bishop Eden, St. Andrew's, 
Dunkeld, and Dumblane are under Bishop 
Wordsworth, Edinburgh is under Bishop 
Cotterell, Glasgow and Galloway are ruled 
by Bishop Wilson, Brechin by Bishop 
Jermyn, Aberdeen and Orkney by Bishop 
Douglass, and Argvle and the Isles by 
Bishop Chinnery-Haldane. The growth 
of the Church in Scotland has been slow but 
sure. It does not exhibit that rapidity of 
increase which we have here. In 1708 a.d. 
there were 133 clergy and 79 parishes vacant. 
In 1838 a.d. there were about 190 clergy. In 
1882-83 a.d. there were 252. In this same 
year 28,144 communicants were reported. 








SCRIPTURES 


687 


SCRIPTURES 


Scriptures. The Holy Books of the Bible 
were so called very early in the Church 
from the New Testament usage. Then, of 
course, the term referred to the Old Testa¬ 
ment (e.y., 2 Tim. iii. 15, 16; so Rom. xv. 
4 ; 2 Pet. i. 20). They are called the Holy 
Scriptures, the Scriptures of the Prophets. 
The title as given to both Testaments as 
early as the Epistles of St. Clement. (Vide 
Bible.) The Scriptures were from the first 
read constantly by the Church, both in 
public and in private. The public reading 
of them is treated at large in the articles 
Lectionary and Lessons. We do not now 
understand how fully they were read in pri¬ 
vate. It is not probable that the complete 
copies we have in daily use were generally 
possessed by any but the rich, and we have 
numerous MSS. of only parts of the Scrip¬ 
tures ; but not only were they read so con¬ 
stantly and largely in the public services 
that the attentive hearer could become fa¬ 
miliar with their contents, but the people 
were so constantly referred to the books 
themselves, that the only conclusion was, 
that the preachers who so referred them 
were confident that they could easily gain 
access to them. Clement, Polycarp, The- 
ophilus, Justin Martj'r, Tertullian, a series 
of writers for the first century after the 
Apostles, imply this (tft-190 a.d.). Clement 
of Alexandria continually refers to the pri¬ 
vate study of the Scriptures. St. Cyprian 
made specially collection of Testimonies 
against the Jews,— i.e ., of texts bearing upon 
the controversies with the Jews. But St. 
Chrysostom is the one who specially urges, 
with great persistence and force, the duty, 
the profit, the delight, in studying the word 
of God. We are very apt to suppose that 
the study of the Scriptures was laid aside 
during the period called the Dark Ages ; but 
this is the reverse of the truth. The many 
copies made by those monks whose affair it 
was to make them, the reading in order in 
the daily offices, which latterly, however, 
became overlaid with other liturgical uses, 
the numerous comments on the several 
books of Holy Scripture,— e.g ., by Haymo of 
Halberstadt (840 a.d.),— and especially the 
many comments on the Apocalypse, attest 
that the study of it was by no means re¬ 
laxed. That many in the monasteries were 
unable to read at all is true, but many of 
these listened so attentively that they were 
quite skilled in the text. That the wild, un¬ 
disciplined Franks and Goths could not read 
them, did not care for them, is a fact, but 
when we consider what the Church had to 
do in educating them, with the difficulties 
of only MSS. at hand, we can well see that 
much ignorance may be excused them. 
Making all allowances for these drawbacks, 
there was a very large amount of Biblical 
instruction disseminated under great hin¬ 
drances. The Emperors and nobles had 
their choicely prepared MSS. Gospels, the 
rich had their copies, the Churches had 
public copies in the church, and there 


was constant instruction given in different 
ways. 

The true defect was in the substitution, 
too often, of listening to the public reading 
in preference to spending much time in pri¬ 
vate study. But however much the amount 
of private study varied at different times 
and in different places, still there were ever 
some in every age who had reverently studied 
the Holy Scriptures. In this day we are 
giving more attention to them than ever; 
some of the most absorbing controversies of 
the day are upon portions of the Holy Book, 
and the recent issue of the Revised transla¬ 
tion has given a great impetus to a closer 
reading of the New Testament. There is no 
book in the world which has been so con¬ 
stantly printed, of which so many thousands 
of editions have been published. Yet there 
is but little intelligent reading of them. 
They have been read through by course 
as a stated daily task year after year by a 
good many, who think themselves students, 
and who yet have never retained a clear 
idea of all they have read. The Scriptures 
have been read, on the other hand, by those 
who wanted to find the authority for certain 
private views, others pick out favorite pas¬ 
sages and reread these only. There are three 
rules to be laid down for a profitable read¬ 
ing of the Scriptures. The two first are 
general and to be constantly used, the third 
is for gaining a more particular training in 
their contents. I. Not merely to read with 
attention, but with that attention which 
leads to comparison of passages. II. To 
meditate frequently as we read, and en¬ 
deavor to find some practical lesson or to 
receive, with better insight into its meaning, 
the doctrine taught us. III. After a general 
training in Holy Scripture by these two rules 
to then take some chief topic, as the Articles 
of the Creed, the divinity of our Lord, the 
Unity of the Church, or the such like, and 
compare Scripture with Scripture, “com¬ 
paring Spiritual things with Spiritual.” But 
again, there is a caution ever to be had : not 
to look for some preconceived idea of what 
should be there. The error of sectism in 
the study of Holy Scripture is twofold : it 
goes to Scripture to bolster up an already 
formulated doctrine, and reject every text 
that does not square with this formula ; and, 
secondly, it does not touch large portions of 
Holy Scripture which set forth truths in¬ 
compatible with the theory the reader wishes 
or seeks to uphold. For example, few with¬ 
out the Church spend much time in tracing 
the office and continuity of the Apostles in 
the New Testament. The texts upon Abso¬ 
lution are largely overlooked. The full 
witness to Confirmation is not often noticed. 
The texts on the Unity of the Church are 
seldom dwelt upon, for they do not fit in 
with preconceived notions. Private judg¬ 
ment reads into Holy Scripture much that 
never was there, and leaves out much that 
Holy Scripture insists upon. It is a practi¬ 
cal mangling of God’s Word. The full 





SEALED BOOKS 


688 


SECOND ADVENT 


round of Bible Doctrine is seldom studied 
and mastered. The rule should be, that as 
the Creeds have defined, so difficult or op¬ 
posing texts are to be accepted ; and that 
Scripture cannot be quoted against itself. 
The Scriptures read with the Prayer-Book 
beside it, and a reference to the way the 
Church has arranged and selected certain 
Scriptures, would help very much. The 
XXXIX. Aticles, though only binding on 
the clergy, furnish excellent hints upon 
difficult topics. The use of some special 
texts in the Services or the Offices, as of the 
Holy Communion and Baptism, will guide 
to a better understanding not only of the 
texts selected, but of others that are con¬ 
nected with them. One rule has been left 
to the last, the rule of ever reading the Holy 
Word of God with prayer. • 

Sealed Books, The, of Common Prayer, 
were the officially-ordered copies of the 
English Book of Common Prayer, revised 
by the Commission of 1661 a.d., which were 
to furnish the standard text for all future 
editions. Every Cathedral and Collegiate 
Church had to procure a copy 'of it, certi¬ 
fied under the great seal of England, which 
Book was to be “ kept and preserved by them 
in safety forever, and to be also produced 
and showed forth in any Court of Record 
as often as they shall be thereunto re¬ 
quired.” The Courts at Westminster and 
the Tower of London were to receive copies. 
By these copies all other printed copies of 
the Prayer-Book were to be compared and 
corrected, and when properly certified to, 
these copies were to be received in Law as 
good records as the “original book” itself. 
The original MS. was not found for a long 
while, and not till after the valuable edition 
by Archibald Stephens, Q.C., was published 
from the Legal Copies. These Sealed Books 
are of the utmost importance in criticising 
the text of our own Prayer-Book, in which 
many variations (despite all care to prevent 
them) from the Standard edition, issued in 
1847 a.d., have appeared. 

Secondaries. The general name for the 
inferior members of Cathedrals, as vicars 
choral, etc. The clerici secundce formae, i.e ., 
of the second or lower range of stalls. . . . 
The Priest, Vicars, and Minor Canons were 
sometimes included in the superior form. 
Some of the lay-singers at Exeter are so 
called. Sometimes the term was applied 
to the assistant priest in course, even though 
not of the second form. At Hereford the 
second Vicar who assists in chanting the 
Litany is the “secondary.” (Hook’s Ch. 
Diet.) 

Second Advent. The doctrine which is 
expressed in the confession of a Prophecy 
yet to be fulfilled: “ From thence He shall 
come to judge the quick and the dead.” 
Our Lord’s prophecy (St. Matt. xxii. 30, 31 ; 
St. Mark xiii. 26, 27, and elsewhere), the 
constant preaching of the Apostles (1 Thess. 
iv. 16 ; 2 Thess. i. 7 ; 1 Pet. i. 7 ; Heb. ix. 
28; Phil. iii. 20, 21), the prophecy of St. 


John (Rev. i. 7 ; xxii. 12), are the basis of 
this Article in the Creed. The Apostles 
confidently expected it in their day. It has 
been looked for from age to age, and many 
holy men have been sure that it was only at 
the door. It is well to expect it, for we be¬ 
lieve it as an assured fact of the future, 
but it is one of those things which can 
never be foreseen. Our Lord has clearly 
put this, that He will come as a thief at an 
unlooked-for hour, when the times and 
seasons in His Father’s power only are 
ripe. He has distinctly said that no man, 
not even Himself, as Son of Man, knoweth 
that time, but the Father only. He has 
only certified solemnly to that coming to 
deliver a judgment, which will be His 
by office and by His Human Nature. In 
this Second Advent (whether preceded by a 
millennial reign the future only shall show) 
He will summon all before Him, the quick 
and the dead, to give an account of their 
deeds and words, and to receive a righteous 
award. The strictness of this inquisition, 
the laying bare of the secrets not of our 
lives, but of our thoughts and motives, the 
double witness both of His book of Re¬ 
membrance and of our own memory, are all 
clearly brought in. The awful splendor of 
that great day, when, with the sign of the 
Son of Man in mid-air to proclaim His 
Presence, He shall come with His holy 
ones, seated in the clouds with the Angels 
of Judgment, summoning all, from earth 
and sea, with the blast of the Archangelic 
trump, He has described in language 
grand by its very simplicity and by the 
weight of facts in prophecies. These should 
be the subject of our meditations. The 
ends of that Judgment are : The conclusion 
of that great scheme of probation whereby 
each child of Adam goes through his trial, 
and as he fulfills his mission or fails in it, 
shall be rewarded or punished accordingly. 
It is the end of all those providences which 
are connected with the free-will of man. 
Each man’s life is a course of trial, and the 
end alone shows the result. Now, though 
as a matter of a particular judgment must 
needs be passed on each one in the hour of 
death, to determine his position, yet it needs 
the solemnity of the final day to declare it. 

And next, it is the great means by which 
the justice of God is made manifest. Here 
we only see the end of the golden chain 
that hangs between heaven and earth, and 
there are many providences which we can¬ 
not fathom. We see virtue crushed to the 
earth, and vice triumphing. We see the 
most total disproportion of the lots of men. 
Why should the lord have more than the 
beggar ? We see one man carried to the 
grave after a life of uninterrupted success, 
another the victim of the frowns of fortune. 
Why is this ? Though God occasionally 
gives us hints of His justice, and shows us 
just enough to convince us that it is well 
with the righteous and ill with the wicked 
even here, yet to mark the Christian dis- 






SECT 


689 


SEMI-PELAGIANS 


pensation (unlike the earlier times) He has 
referred the ultimate retribution, both of 
good and bad, to the future state. And ac¬ 
cordingly, when the great day comes, much 
that is inscrutable to us now will be cleared 
up. God has revealed to us the judgment, 
that by the thought of it we should be urged 
both to piety and patience. “ Blessed is 
that soul, which day and night hath no 
other care than how, in the great day, when 
every creature shall stand around the Judge 
to give an account of their works, she shall 
be able to relate her life. For whosoever 
continually places that day and that hour 
before his eyes, and ever thinks of his de¬ 
fense at that most just tribunal, is likely to 
commit no sin, or at least very fe w. ’ ’ Hence, 
also, St. Chrysostom says, “ Let us ever be 
saying to ourselves and to others, there is a 
resurrection, and a terrible judgment await¬ 
ing.us.” 

Sect. It means a division in the body of 
Christians. It is a body that itself cuts off' 
from the unity of the holy Church Catholic, 
for in that body there must be a unity. It 
is noticeable that a sect has the name of some 
human leader or founder given to it despite 
its repudiation of it, thus marking its hu¬ 
man origin. This natural law was as old as 
the parties in the Corinthian Church. “ I 
of Paul,” “ I of Apollos,” “ I of Cephas,” 
and lastly and truly, “ I of Christ,” so St. 
Paul asks,“ Is Christ divided?” If, then, we 
have any name other than that of Christ, 
both God and man, called upon us, we are 
guilty of partvism or of seetism. Therefore 
it was that our Lord warned us, “ Neither 
be ye called masters : for one is your Master, 
even Christ” (St. Matt, xxiii. 10). 

Secularization. The alienation and the ap¬ 
plication of Church property to secular uses. 
It has happened repeatedly in the history of 
the Church that its property has been seized 
and secularized by the state. There is here 
no reference to the petty seizures and spolia¬ 
tions of lands and property from which 
Parishes or Dioceses have suffered more or 
less in every age, but to the larger acts that 
affected the real estate of the national 
Church, or of the richer corporations, which 
(as, for instance, the Templars, the Jesuits, 
and other large bodies) were spread through¬ 
out the Church. The Templars were prose¬ 
cuted and suppressed and their property seized 
by Philip Augustus in 1312 a.d. In Eng¬ 
land, Henry VIII. seized upon the Monas¬ 
tic property, and though he promised to 
found Bishoprics with it, either put it into 
the treasury for his own purposes or gave 
it to his favorites. In France at the Revo- 
lution all Church property was secularized, 
though much of it has been recovered since. 
In Spain, in Italy, in Austria, in every 
country in Europe there has been such secu¬ 
larization of Church property. Even the 
State of Virginia at the close of the Revolu¬ 
tion seized upon the glebes belonging to 
the Church. 

Secular Clergy. The name given to those 
44 


o'f the clergy in the Roman Church who do 
not belong to some one of the Monastic 
orders. 

Sedilia. Seats or stalls, usually three in 
number, placed within the Chancel on the 
south side. They are either level or are 
graduated, following the steps of the altar, 
the highest seat being nearest the east end. 
They are intended as seats for the clergy 
during the sermon. 

See. (Vide Diocese.) It comes to us 
from the Latin “ Sedes” through the French 
siege , a seat. It was the name given to the 
seat or residence of the Bishop, and so to the 
city in which he had his Throne. St. Au¬ 
gustine speaks of those cities in which the 
Apostles formed Churches as the Apostolic 
Sees, and so they are usually named. It was 
from this fact, in part, that Rome’s opposi¬ 
tion came when Constantinople was raised, 
because of its political importance, to the 
second place, for Constantinople was not an 
Apostolic See. Jerusalem, Antioch, Rome, 
Corinth, and Ephesus were named Apostolic 
Churches, as having Apostles for their 
founders. 

Semi-Pelagians. As Pelagianism was 
practically but the assertion that man could 
save himself, and so was refuted by the 
Theologians and condemned by the Coun¬ 
cils of the Church, so Semi-Pelagianism 
sought to find a mean between the two. It 
would not fairly accept the doctrine that 
man was indeed far gone from original 
righteousness, and is of his own nature in¬ 
clined to evil; nor yet could it hold that a 
man could save himself, and could live 
without sin and keep the commandments 
of God perfectly if he willed it. Those 
who sought an escape from either statement 
formulated their opinion thus: that the first 
strivings of repentance can originate and 
are within the power of the will of man, 
but that if he would grow in grace at all, 
he must have and use the grace of the Holy 
Spirit. This doctrine was very popular in 
the south of France among the Theologians 
there, the chief of whom was Cassianus. It 
has never been fairly dropped, but ever re¬ 
appears from time to time. Augustine’s 
extreme doctrines were the result of this 
resistance to Pelagius. The less cautious 
though correct doctrines of St. John Chrys¬ 
ostom were taken up by the Gallican Doctors, 
while they resisted Augustine’s formulation 
of doctrine. Augustinianism gradually won 
its way. 

It is not within our plan to dwell upon 
the controversies which sprang up from time 
to time upon these questions. The most 
noted was the contest between the Jesuits 
and the Jansenists, who followed theAugus- 
tinian statements. In the end the laxer 
Jesuits triumphed. In England the numer¬ 
ous sectaries who sprang up during the 
Reformation and just after it were more or 
less tainted with Semi-Pelagianism. 

And at this day there is current a large 
amount of Semi-Pelagian doctrine, chiefly 




SEPTUAGESIMA 


690 


SEPTUAGINT 


from carelessness and from inaccurate rea¬ 
soning than from any recognition of it as a 
theory, and very often probably in utter 
ignorance that there was ever any school 
that bore that name. The doctrine of the 
Church Catholic is properly set forth in the 
Articles (Articles IX., X.). 

Septuagesima. The Sunday which is 
about seventy (accurately sixty-three) days 
before Easter. It took its name (Septua¬ 
gesima) probably from counting back from 
Quinquagesima Sunday, which is forty-nine 
days before Easter, and so, roundly, is the 
fiftieth day from Easter-day. The name is 
verj 7 old, being used in the Sacramentaries as 
early as Galasius, 494 a.d. The prepara¬ 
tion for Lent is begun in the Epistles and 
Gospel, which are upon the self-control (1 
Cor. ix. 24-27) needed in the Christian race. 
The Gospel (the parable of the Laborers in 
the Vineyard) has its interconnection with 
the Epistle in implying the nature of the 
toil imposed upon the laborers in the spir¬ 
itual kingdom, whether of the soul or of 
the larger field of the Church. The Collect 
has been traced through the Sarum Missal 
to Gregory I. (596 a.d.). 

Septuagint. The most famous and valu¬ 
able of all the ancient Versions of the Old 
Testament. It is called the Septuagint 
(LXX., or the Seventy) from the legend 
that King Ptolemy procured from the High- 
Priest at Jerusalem a company of seventy- 
two learned Jews, who translated for him 
the Hebrew Scriptures in seventy-two days. 
The legend varies in details in different 
reports. The legend is worthy of credence, 
so far as it shows Alexandria to have been 
the place of the translation, and that it was 
at some time placed in the library there. 
But the translation itself shows such varia¬ 
tions in style and manner that it is impos¬ 
sible to suppose it to have been made by any 
one set of men, or at one date. The facts, 
from internal evidence, point to many 
translators, and perhaps recension, sepa¬ 
rated by considerable spaces of time. AV r e 
may suppose with great likelihood that 
the collection which we call the Septuagint 
was the result of the translations made as 
the needs of the Jews of the dispersion 
demanded. It was the version universally 
accepted in the time of our Lord, and was 
the one which the Hellenic Jews would be 
most familiar with. So its great value lay 
in the wide dispersion of copies of it, in the 
fact that it prepared a language, so to speak, 
in which the Gospels could be written, for 
it introduced so many Hebraisms and Jew¬ 
ish forms of thought that the style of the 
Gospels (written by men Jews by birth and 
speaking the Aramaic vernacular, yet en¬ 
gaged in original composition) would not 
grate so harshly upon the Greek ear. Both, 
of course, used forms of the Hellenic-Greek 
current after the time of Alexander the 
Great, but both used the language as an 
instrument to be tempered anew for their 
sacred work. This Version was in such 


current use that St. Paul uses it freely, 
seldom making any attempt to give a closer 
rendering of the Hebrew original. And so 
do the other Apostles, though, of course, to 
a less extent, since their audiences were not 
so generally Gentile as were his. “ The 
use made of the LXX. in the New Testa¬ 
ment has rendered it very precious to the 
Church. Of three hundred and fifty direct 
quotations from the Old Testament, scarcely 
fourteen per cent, differ from the Septua¬ 
gint. Of thirty-seven quotations ascribed 
to our Saviour, thirty-three agree almost 
verbatim with the LXX. Two follow the 
Hebrew, and differ from the LXX. One 
agrees with neither, and another partly 
with both. In the speech of St. Stephen 
there are nearly thirty quotations from the 
LXX. The Ethiopian Eunuch was con¬ 
verted by reading the LXX. All the quo¬ 
tations in the Acts of the Apostles are taken 
from this version, and wherever the word 
(graphe) Writing or Scripture occurs, it 
means the LXX. The Epistles of St. 
James and St. Peter, being addressed to 
Hellenists by birth, are fully furnished with 
quotations from the LXX. St. Paul, the 
Apostle to the Gentiles, and deeply versed 
in the Hebrew Scriptures, yet quotes from 
the LXX. on all occasions. His first and 
longest address in the synagogue at Pisidia 
is full of allusions to the LXX. His vo¬ 
cabulary is wholly supplied from the same 
source, and this is no less true of the imme¬ 
diate successors of the Apostles. Timothy, 
of Hellenistic parentage, could only have 
been instructed in the Septuagint Version.” 
(Blunt’s Diet, of Hist, and Doct. Theol., 
sub voc.) But there are one or two things 
to note as to the Version. Either it was 
made from a Hebrew text which varies 
much from our own, accepted from the 
Jews and certified to, or it takes many lib¬ 
erties with the text. It is no part of the 
point to be made to attempt to defend any 
liberties so taken, but the variations are 
certainly more numerous and wider from 
the Hebrew text than any modern version 
could possibly venture upon. Yet the 
writers of the New Testament did not dis¬ 
dain to use it, with all its imperfections, 
but incorporated its language into their own 
Inspired Writings. It was rightly not 
their mission to retranslate the Version, 
since they would prejudice the reader 
against their own work, though they did 
correct any very glaring defect in the text 
they chose to quote. Now, is not this case 
somewhat parallel with that of our author¬ 
ized Version (with vastly the advantage on 
the side of the English Version in point of 
accuracy), as compared with the llevision 
lately put forth? Again, as it grew and 
was accepted as the best Version possible for 
the Hellenistic Jews, it was the accepted 
Version for the Eastern Church, and from 
it the Lessons in the Church, the proof- 
texts in Controversies of the utmost im¬ 
portance, as in the Arian Controversy, the 





SEQUESTRATION 


691 


SERMONS 


current comment in Sermon and in Lecture, 
were taken. 

There is needed yet an edition of the text 
worthy of its importance in the History of 
the Scriptures and the Versions in the 
Church’s keeping. 

Sequestration. This is a separating the 
thing in controversy from the possession of 
both the contending parties. It is of fre¬ 
quent use in England. "When a living be¬ 
comes void by the death of an incumbent or 
otherwise, the Bishop sends out his seques¬ 
tration to have the cure supplied, and to 
preserve the profits (after the expenses de¬ 
ducted) for the use of his successor. Some¬ 
times a benefice is left under sequestration 
for many years together, namely, when it is 
of so small value that no clergyman fit to 
serve the cure will be at the charge of 
taking it by institution. In this case se¬ 
questration is committed sometimes to the 
Curate only, sometimes to the Curate and 
Church-Warden jointly. There are several 
other kinds of sequestration, as for neglect 
of duty, and a levy upon the Parson’s goods 
for debt, made through the Bishop. All 
acts involving sequestration pass through 
the Bishop. (From Hook’s Ch. Dictionary.) 

Seraphim. Vide Angels. 

Sermons. The Sermon, or Discourse, 
has always been a most important part of 
the work and duty of the Parish Priest, or 
of the Deacon, “ if he be licensed thereto by 
the Bishop.” Originally it was confined to 
the Bishop as an official act. But this rule 
was very frequently broken, and laymen 
were at times allowed to preach or to exhort. 
In the Apostolic Age the pressing necessi¬ 
ties of an active, energetic Apostolate, and 
the miraculous gifts which were shown by 
many lay members, led to the use of orders 
of men who had this authority to preach. 
And instead of these orders having been 
dropped, it is far more probable that as 
spiritual gifts ceased, the offices were held 
by one and the same person. It must be 
carefully borne in mind that the preaching 
of the Apostles and the modern sermon have 
distinct aims. In the first place, the Apostle 
had a heathen ora Jewish audience to whom 
he proclaimed the Faith as a perfectly new 
thing (hence the Gospel, good news). But 
when there was a congregation gathered, 
then it would be a mixed audience, and for 
these the prophets were appointed (for 
prophesying was not merety a predictive 
power, but also it included the wider power 
to teach), and the prophets in the New 
Testament were also teachers. Later the 
Presbyter held this as well as other func¬ 
tions joined to his office, so that it was 
merged not lost. The Missionary really 
used the Apostolic authority to preach. The 
Parish Priest is the Teacher or Prophet in 
its broader meaning. Our own modern 
Sermon is much more nearly the older use 
in the Primitive Church, and it is (as might 
be expected) a fact that those old Sermons, 
freed from the mere local and temporary 


accessories of the age, can be effectively used 
now as well as then, and the later homi¬ 
lies and expository form pf Sermons is but 
a reverting to .the great models which the 
Fathers have given us. It was and now is 
meant for direct instruction in the Scrip¬ 
tures. It is said that the power of the pulpit 
has declined, but this is far from true. The 
mode of preserving religious truth must be 
affected by the circumstances about it. It 
is not given to every man, on whom is laid 
the duty of preaching, to be an orator. At¬ 
tractive speaking in this day is equally 
amusing as in Athens eighteen centuries 
ago. But it does not always prove most 
effective. Soundness in teaching will alone 
last. It is the preacher’s duty to make his 
Sermon interesting, but it is also the hearer’s 
duty to listen heedfully to him who has the 
care of souls. Our Lord said, “ Take heed 
what ye hear,” and St. Paul predicted that 
“ the time will come when they will not 
endure sound doctrine ; but after their own 
lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers 
having itching ears, and they shall turn 
many from the truth” (2 Tim. iv. 3, 4). 
Here are the Churchman’s rules as to whom 
he will listen to. If they are heedfully ex¬ 
amined they will keep him straitly in his own 
Parish church. There is also the responsi¬ 
bility of hearing aright. A Sermon can be 
upon only a fragment of the great body of 
doctrines. It presupposes some acquaintance 
with the general topic treated, and with its 
interrelation to the whole teaching of the 
Faith. Still, it requires close attention on 
the part of the hearer, with faith (Heb. iv. 
2) and prayer. The Seripon is within the 
lines that the Scripture, the Creeds, the 
Prayer-Book, and the Articles draw around 
it, and a serious departure from them would 
be instinctively felt. So the Congregation 
have an unnoticed but real defense against 
wrong doctrine. 

Sermons may be roughly divided into 
Doctrinal, Hortatory, or Expository. Some¬ 
times the Sermon may partake of all three, 
usually of only one, though every Sermon 
should be practical in some way. There is 
a general but wrong objection to doctrinal 
Sermons. But if they are laid aside the 
preaching would soon become poor and 
shrunken. Doctrines are our Faith,— e.g. y 
the Incarnation, the Atonement, the Resur¬ 
rection, the work of the Holy Ghost, —the 
living power of the Church. We rest upon 
them. We need to hear them explained, en¬ 
forced, and illustrated. The Church intends 
that her children shall receive doctrine. Of 
the three this class of Sermons should be 
most valued. • 

Again, there is a tendency with some 
to undervalue, with others to overvalue, the 
Sermon in comparison with the worship and 
service of the Church. In truth, there is 
no comparison, each is distinct, each is es¬ 
sential. That they are joined together is the 
result of convenience, of custom, of the 
rubric enjoining the Sermon when there is a 




SERVICE 


692 


SEXTON 


Communion, of the opportunity to use the 
lessons of the service to point the instruc¬ 
tion to he given.. That the Congregation 
may be attracted most hy what costs the 
least effort is true, for the service is a holy 
work, a sacrifice; so the Sermon is im¬ 
patiently looked for and the glorious beauty 
of worship is obscured. And as by the ex¬ 
igency of the hour the Sermon must be 
short, it may fail to be as instructive as it 
should be, because there is not time to de¬ 
velop and enforce any very important topic 
upon the minds of the hearers. There can 
be no rubrical reason why the Church could 
not be opened for the Sermon only with the 
shortened service at some convenient hour, 
not the usual hour for service, when full time 
could be given to the service. There is this 
serious duty resting upon every Churchman, 
to take heed what he hears and to whom 
he listens, to consider for himself, and to 
urge on others to receive instruction, not 
seek amusement. 

We will not be allowed to plead ignorance 
of the Law of God when we can know, and 
we should listen carefully to authoritative 
explanations that we may not transgress it 
ignorantly. 

Service. A general term, including the 
offices of Morning and Evening Prayer and 
other most frequently used offices. It is 
used to describe also separate musical ren¬ 
derings of a part of the Public Service. 
A “ Morning Service” would contain the 
Venite , the Te Deum, and Jubilate , or Bene¬ 
dicts, or the Benedicite in place of the Te 
Deum. A “Communion Service” contains 
the Responses to* the Commandments, the 
Prefaces and Sanctus , and the Gloria in Ex- 
celsis. The proper musical rendering of the 
service should also include the Versicles and 
the Amens. It is not an easy matter to per¬ 
suade those in charge that there should be 
more unity of movement and intention in the 
usual selection of the Chants and Glorias 
chosen for the regular Sunday service. The 
Precentor should select the several portions of 
the music with reference to the general unity 
of the service. Not, as is so often the case, 
choose each piece separately because it hap¬ 
pens to be pleasing, without regard to the 
fact whether it is in harmony with what 
precedes or what may follow it. Such a 
service properly compiled from churchly 
music is as much a “ service” as though the 
whole series of Anthems and Canticles had 
had appropriate music from the pen of a 
single composer. Such musical settings of 
the Morning and Evening Prayer and of 
the Communion Service require a training 
from those in charge, which makes them an 
act and a sacrifice of praise which has cost 
something to prepare and to offer to God. 

Session of Christ. His sitting on the 
right hand of His Father is a necessary 
part of that Confession of the Facts of our Re¬ 
demption which constitute the Creed. The 
value of this constant confession is less felt 
than it should be. The Article of His As¬ 


cension is properly followed by a declara¬ 
tion of His session at the right hand of God 
the Father Almighty. He that liveth and 
was dead, and, behold, is alive for evermore, 
has carried our human nature into the 
Presence of Presences. There our Lord 
Jesus Christ abideth in the full majesty 
of all that was His as Eternal Son of God, 
and waiteth as our Judge, clothed with 
plenary power. He is there in that true 
Human Body (then mortal and possible, 
but now immortal and impossible), which 
He took in the Virgin’s womb, together 
with the true Human Soul which belongs 
to His Human Nature, a-nd which was, 
during His life on earth, completely joined to 
His Divine Nature, yet without fusion, and 
which separated from His body by Death, 
was reunited to it upon the third day after 
His Crucifixion, and constituted His true 
and real Resurrection ; and with this He 
as perfect immortal man, as well as God 
for evermore, has “gone into heaven, and 
is on the right hand of God, angels and 
authorities and powers being made subject 
unto Him.” By this session at the Right 
Hand of His Father is set forth His Su¬ 
premacy. But also our Lord being our 
High-Priest, and having entered into the 
holiest with His own blood, abideth there to 
make continual intercession for all who 
shall come to Him. It is His mediatorial 
office which He must retain till the fullness 
of the times shall come. “ Sit Thou at my 
right hand until I make Thine enemies Thy 
footstool.” The facts we confess, then, in 
this Article of the Creed, are His Immortal¬ 
ity, His Presence at the Throne of His 
Father, His Royal Supremacy over all 
things visible and invisible, His Mediatorial 
Office, His exercise of this Office continu¬ 
ally until the time shall come when He shall 
appear in the clouds of Heaven as the Su¬ 
preme Judge of the quick and the dead. 

Sexagesima. The Sunday ‘falling on the 
fifty-sixth day before Easter. As in the 
case of the Septuagesima Sunday, the name 
is given from the round number, not from 
the actual count of days. The Collect, 
Epistle, and Gospel are from the Sarum 
Missal, but slightly altered, since there was 
a reference to St. Paul as a protector, which 
was removed and a correct phrase substi¬ 
tuted. The Epistle has double but distinct 
lines of allusion to the Gospel: first the 
notable sower, St. Paul under the guidance 
of the Holy Ghost ; next the example he 
gave of endurance, of depth of good ground, 
and of the abundant harvest his sowing has 
produced. “ I have planted, A polios watered, 
but God gave the increase” (1 Cor. iii. 6). 

Sexton. Segestan, contracted from Sacris¬ 
tan. His duties are not so dignified or re¬ 
sponsible as were those of the Sacristan, who 
had the care of the valuables of the Church. 
The Sexton has generally charge of the 
menial offices about the church building. 
His duties vary in detail as the customs of 
the several parishes vary, but they generally 




SHECH1NAH 


693 


SIGN 


lie within the limits of caring for the church 
building, ringing the bell, and looking after 
such matters as the rector shall direct or 
require. It is really an office that deserves 
much more consideration than it receives, 
being a charge in the care of sacred things. 
“ I had rather be a door-keeper in the house 
of my God, than to dwell in the tents of 
wickedness,” was the Psalmist’s impassioned 
exclamation. Any service rendered for the 
decency and order and comfort of the wor¬ 
shipers in God’s house is accompanied 
with a blessing. 

Shechinah. It may be freely expressed 
by the Indwelling Presence of God. It was 
a word of later coinage, and was the word 
by which the Jews expressed the pres¬ 
ence of God dwelling in the Holy of Holies. 
It was not the Glory or the Pillar, but it 
was that abiding presence of which the 
Glory and the Pillar were the manifesta¬ 
tions. He dwelt in the bush in Iloreb and 
it was not consumed. He dwelt between 
the Cherubim, and thence gave answers to 
His People. His promise: “ Sing and rejoice, 
O daughter of Zion, for, lo, I come, and I 
will dwell in the midst of thee, saith the 
Lord” (Zech. ii. 10), expresses in part the 
meaning of this Shechinah. It was a word 
used in explanation of the Targums, not a 
word of the Inspired writers. It was a prep¬ 
aration as it were for the later coming, 
teaching of the wondrous indwelling of 
our Lord among men. We may, there¬ 
fore, say that what the devout Jew under¬ 
stood and confessed of the indwelling of 
God’s glory among men was fulfilled in 
our Lord. Wherever the New Testament 
speaks of the Word being made flesh and 
dwelling among men, and of His glory (St. 
John i. 14; iii. 11; Rev. vii. 15 ; xii. 12 ; xiii. 
6 ; xxi. 3), the Jew would readily understand 
the Shechinah of His Presence. But since 
this is so, the references by our Lord to Him¬ 
self are so to be understood: “I am the 
light, the Life of men. Abide in me, and I in 
you.” These refer to His dwellingas a glory 
and a sanctification in the heart,—a fulfill¬ 
ment of His pledge. “ I dwell in the high 
and holy place, with him also that is of a 
contrite and humble spirit.” “ He that 
dwelleth in the secret place of the most 
High shall abide under the shadow of the 
Almighty.” We can well understand this 
as a spiritual reference, but it is something 
far more than that, it is much nearer what 
St. Peter expressed by the words u partakers 
of the divine nature.” And the presence of 
His Glory among us is pledged to us by the 
promise, “ Where two or three are gathered 
together in My Name, there am I in the 
midst of them.” In these ways this later 
Jewish word taught by anticipation the 
truth of His abiding presence, with a full¬ 
ness which we are likely to lose in this day. 

Shew-Bread. The Twelve Loaves which 
were to be placed upon a table overlaid with 
fine gold, and •which was set in the outer 
Sanctuary with the Seven-branched Lamp 


and the Altar of Incense. The twelve 
loaves were to be placed there fresh every 
Sabbath with incense upon them, that they 
may be a memorial, even an offering made 
by fire, unto the Lord. The loaf of the 
previous week was the priest’s portion to 
be eaten then in the Holy Place (Ex. xxv. 
23-30; Lev. xxiv. 5-9). It was never to 
fail; it was the bread before the face of the 
Lord, and so a memorial, to be set before 
the Lord alway. As the Bread before the 
Face of God. So, to use Bahr’s beautiful 
language (Smith’s Bible Diet., sub voc.), 
“ The Bread of the Face is therefore that 
bread through which God is seen, that is, 
with the participation of which the seeing 
of God is bound up, or through the partici¬ 
pation of which man attains the sight of 
God. Whence it follows that we have not 
to think of bread merely as such, as the 
means of nourishing the bodily life, but as 
spiritual food, as a means of appropriating 
and retaining that life which consists in 
seeing the face of God. Bread is therefore 
here a symbol, and stands here, as it so gen¬ 
erally does in all languages, both for life and 
nourishment; but by being entitled the 
Bread of the Face, it becomes a symbol of 
a life higher than the physical: it is, since 
it lies on the table, placed in the symbolic 
heaven, heavenly bread. They who eat of 
it and satisfy themselves with it see the face 
of God (Bahr, Symbolic). It is to be re¬ 
membered that the Shew-Bread was taken 
from the children of Israel by an everlasting 
covenant, and may therefore, be well ex¬ 
pected to bear the most solemn meaning.” 
It is the type of Him who was at once the 
perfect Image of God, the one who abides 
in the Presence of Presences as the Bread 
of Life, and who also has given us Him¬ 
self the Bread for the nourishment of the 
soul (St. John vi. 51). 

Shrine. A place where relics or conse¬ 
crated things are solemnly placed. It is 
used to designate holy places, as the Holy 
Shrines at Jerusalem and in the Holy Land, 
to which pilgrimages used to be made. It 
may also mean a tomb, since the bodies of 
saints were placed in costly tombs in the 
churches. 

Shrive. To pronounce the absolution 
over penitents. It was done publicly once 
a year during the Holy Week, when all 
penitents who had faithfully fulfilled the 
required proofs of a thorough repentance 
were solemnly absolved and restored to 
Communion. But it also came to mean the 
private administration of absolution upon 
confession. 

Shrove-Tuesday. Tuesday before Ash- 
Wednesday. It obtained its name from the 
confession and absolution given upon that 
day in preparation for the Lenten fast. 

Sick. Visitation of the Sick. Vide 
Minor Offices. 

Sign. The Hebrew word 6th, signify¬ 
ing sign, is used in Ex. iii. 12, where it means 
a token of God’s power. Gideon asks for a 





SIMON (SAINT) 


694 


SIN 


sign from God that it is really His angel 
who talks with him (Judges vi. 17). The 
flesh and the unleavened cakes brought hy 
Gideon are consumed by fire at the touch of 
the staff of the angel (v. 21), and thus the 
sign is given by a miracle, and Gideon ac¬ 
cepts the divine commission to enter on his 
great work for God. In the New Testament 
the scribes and Pharisees ask for a “sign” 
from Christ (St. Matt. xii. 38, St. Mark viii. 
12), but He declines to perform wonders for 
those who cavil against Him. This craving of 
the Jews appears again in St. John ii. 18, and 
vi. 30, and 1 Cor. i. 22 : “ The Jews require a 
sign.” In 1 Cor. xiv. 22, we read, “ Tongues 
are for a sign not to them that believe, but 
to them that believe not.” In St. Mark xvi. 
17, our Lord speaks of the miraculous signs 
which “ shall follow them that believe,” and 
the twentieth verse tells of the fulfillment of 
the prophecy. In the plural number the 
word is usually combined with wonders, 
and denotes God’s interventions preternat- 
urally warning men of approaching judg¬ 
ment, and also the miracles wrought by 
means of God’s ministers. 

In the XXV. and XXVII. Articles the 
term sign is used in reference to the Holy 
Sacraments. In the XXV. Article they are 
called “effectual signs of grace.” In the 
XXVII. Baptism is called “ a sign of Re¬ 
generation or New Birth.” In the Church 
Catechism the word Sacrament is defined as 
“an outward and visible sign of an inward 
and spiritual grace.” In this ecclesiastical 
sense of the word we learn that both outward 
acts and inward spiritual life are needed to 
perfect the Christian. The white garment 
formerly worn at Baptism was an indication 
of the purity of life which should follow the 
reception of that Holy Sacrament. Those 
who receive the Holy Communion should be 
so united to Christ that they may partake 
of the heavenly banquet, and be ever “ with 
the Lord” (1 Thess. iv. 17). 

St. Paul likens the Christians to the 
branches of a wild olive-tree grafted into a 
good tree (Rom. xi. 17). So by the Holy 
Sacraments believers are engrafted into 
Christ. But the grafts must not simply 
be bound to the tree ; they must also “ take 
hold of the stock,” and the budding shows 
that they have received sap from the root, 
and “are really united to the tree.” Here 
we have both the “ outward and visible 
sign” and the “ inward and spiritual grace.” 

Authorities: Blunt’s Diet, of Doct. and 
Hist. Theology, Illustrations of the Cate¬ 
chism of the Prot. Epis. Church. 

Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Simon, St. The surnames Zelotes and 
the Canaanite (these two titles, the first 
given by St. Luke and the other by St. Mat¬ 
thew) are all that we have to mark him or to 
give us the slightest insight into his charac¬ 
ter. They both point out that he belonged 
at one time to the faction of Zealots, which 
was so noted a party in the last sad scenes 
of Jewish history. It shows how broad our 


Lord’s human sympathies were, and how 
He could by His wondrous influence har¬ 
monize the most jarring and conflicting ele¬ 
ments, could gather into one body the 
headlong St. Peter, the energetic yet loving 
St. John, the calm and stately St. James, 
and the earnest men like St. Andrew and 
St. Philip, and those with a fanatical past 
like St. Simon, and send them forth with the 
one aim, the one enthusiasm, the one ener¬ 
gizing conviction that would give them the 
victory. 

Simony. The sin of simony consists in a 
willing sale and purchase of spiritual gifts, 
or of those offices and preferments by which 
spiritual gifts are conferred. Our Lord 
had laid down the rule, “freely have ye re¬ 
ceived, freely give.” And St. Peter’s indig¬ 
nant rebuke to Simon Magus, “ Thy money 
perish with thee, because thou hast thought 
that the gift of God may be purchased with 
money.” Simony can, it is evident, take 
many shapes and can find excuses for itself. 
To check it, it was very early enacted that 
the buyer and seller of the offices of Bishop, 
Priest, or Deacon should be .cut off from the 
Church. The Councils, both Diocesan, Pro¬ 
vincial, and Oecumenical, repeatedly passed 
canons against it. Much of the confusion 
which occurred in ecclesiastical affairs dur¬ 
ing the Middle Ages was incurred by the 
effort to suppress it. There must be no fee 
for baptism, or for the spiritual gifts which 
Our Lord left to be freely given to His peo¬ 
ple. Thank-offerings were not to be refused, 
but no fees were to be charged. But all 
spiritual preferments must be given only on 
due examination of the fitness of the person, 
without bribe or thought of future reward. 
The Papal extortions which began about 1126 
a.d. and were continued on for three centu¬ 
ries, afforded the real foundation for the 
present legal enactment against simony. 
They sold offices and Benefices to the high¬ 
est bidder, and claimed and obtained by 
means of provisions, reservations, and com- 
mendams a large income from those who were 
willing to pay. The Benefices were valued 
as annuities are. This state of things led to 
the numerous and complicated laws in Eng¬ 
land upon simony, and the simple direct 
rights of patronage became much confused 
by the claims and counter-claims between 
the Papal Court and the Parliament. 

The sale of livings which now exists, and 
is hedged in by law, is felt as a great evil, 
which from its conditions may not be 
actual simony, but which brings in all the 
scandal of it. And steps have been taken 
during the past years both by the Convoca¬ 
tions of Canterbury and York to urge the 
movement made in Parliament for the re¬ 
moval of the evil. Simony in the Church 
in this country is not known. 

Sin. Among the many and various defi¬ 
nitions of sin, there can be no safer or more 
accurate guide than St. Paul’s exhaustive 
treatise in the Epistle to the Romans. From 
that we learn clearly that sin is the failure 




SIN 


695 


SIN 


to attain to the standard of God’s moral re¬ 
quirement, and is independent of any direct 
revelation of His will, although that standard 
is fixed by His revealed moral law. The 
Greek verb hamartano , to sin, means to 
fall short of the mark, as with a javelin 
badly thrown: “ For all have sinned and 
come short of the glory of God” (Korn., 
iii. 23). “ As many as have sinned without 

law shall also perish without law.” (See also 
verses 14, 15, of the same chapter.) In gen¬ 
eral it is the willful transgression of either 
God’s laws or the moral sense as witnessed 
h)' conscience. The mere consent of the will 
without any overt act is sufficient to con¬ 
stitute sin, as our Lord distinctly asserts. 
Indeed, an action not intrinsically wrong 
may be sinfully performed or purposed, if 
its propriety be even doubted, since “ What¬ 
soever is not of faith is sin.” From the 
universality of sin, affecting even angelic 
natures, it would seem to be a necessary 
result of the freedom of imperfect will. 
The origin of sin in the world was coeval 
with the origin of man. It appeared in the 
first man with the first temptation which 
came in his way, and with him it was the 
deliberate transgression of the Divine com¬ 
mand. In what the primal innocence of 
Adam consisted the Scriptures leave us in 
doubt, whether it was a willing obedience, 
or a lack of moral responsibility, or a mere 
ignorance of right and wrong. The two 
latter conditions are strongly indicated by 
the exceedingly low state of civilization and 
development attributed to him ( vide Man), 
and by the coupling of his disobedience 
with the sudden awakening to a knowledge 
of good and evil. The immediate result of 
sin was the passing of man from a state of 
mere animal idleness and security to one of 
labor, sorrow, and the fear of death, which the 
Scriptures declare to be the direct conse¬ 
quence and punishment of sin. But while 
this declaration is positive we are not to 
receive it as definite. Physical death was 
certainly in the world before man, and 
therefore before sin. It had swept away 
generations of living forms before man’s 
creation, and the constitution of numberless 
creatures contemporary with him made it 
necessary to their life, if not to his own. 
Nor is it necessary to raise the physiological 
and other difficulties incident to the theory 
of a forfeited immortality in the case of 
man alone. From its very nature sin con¬ 
cerns only that higher life which was super- 
added to man’s animal nature when he 
11 became a living soul,” and can only inci¬ 
dentally affect his animal part. It is the 
death of that higher life which sin brought 
into the world, and from that death only, 
not physical death, did the sacrifice of 
Christ redeem the human race. No change 
whatever has passed on man’s mortality 
because of the tragedy of the Cross, and 
therefore if physical death were that curse 
of sin from which man was to be redeemed 
by the Atonement, then the Atonement has 


failed of its purpose and itself become in 
some sense a “ missing of the mark,”— 
hamartia , Sin. This argument alone, the 
reductio ad absurdum , is sufficient to prove 
the irrelevancy of sin to the question of 
physical death. 

The punishment of sin is of two kinds, 
viz., that which it brings of itself in this 
world, as ill health, mental anguish, or so¬ 
cial disgrace, and that which God will in¬ 
flict for it hereafter, the death of man’s God- 
life, by which he shall become fitted only 
for the eternal companionship of the fallen 
angels and deserve a share in the terrible 
fate reserved for them. Sin is necessarily 
hostile to true happiness, because its nature 
is essentially evil, and evil is inconsistent 
with happiness, which is in itself good. 
“ The pleasures of sin,” therefore, cannot 
be true pleasures, and must eventually result 
-in some development of evil. Since sin is 
itself evil and the perversion of what should 
be man’s moral nature, and since its inevi¬ 
table final consequence is moral death, it is 
the great and universal moral disease which 
infects man’s higher life. The Bemedy for 
sin is the Atonement (q.v.) made by the 
Divine Son of God assuming the nature in¬ 
fected by sin, living its life without sin in 
His own person, and bearing its punishment 
in behalf of the human race. While this 
sinless life and death of the GoD-Man does 
not enable any other man to live a life free 
from actual transgression, it has yet secured 
God’s pardon for every sinning man upon 
condition of his believing in Jesus Christ 
and becoming mystically united to Him by 
Baptism (St. Mark xvi. 16). It also secures to 
man the help of the Holy Ghost, the Spirit 
of Christ, to strengthen his will in resisting 
tempjtation to sin. Although the effect of 
sin is to alienate man from God and destroy 
his love for Him, it yet does not alienate 
God’s love from man. Indeed, it was be¬ 
cause of God’s love for sinners that He sent 
His Only-Begotten Son into the world to re¬ 
deem man from sin and its penalty (St. John 
iii. 16). When sin is the performance, or 
the mere consent of the will to the perform¬ 
ance of some evil act, it is known as sin of 
Commission. When it is the simple failure 
to obey or to perform some duty, it is sin of 
Omission. Some of our Lord’s severest 
denunciations are against the latter class of 
sin (St. Matt. xxv. passim). The distinction 
of venial and deadly sin is made by the 
Roman Church, but is not generally recog¬ 
nized among Christians. The unpardon¬ 
able sin, or sin against the Holy Ghost, has 
occasioned much dispute and is often a 
source of great mental anxiety, the belief 
that it has been committed being a frequent 
feature of insane hallucinations. The belief 
in the possibility of such a sin arises from 
our Lord’s declaration that “ All manner 
of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto 
men : but the blasphemy against the Holy 
Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men, . . . 
either in this world, neither in the world to 




SISTERHOODS 


696 


SISTERHOODS 


come” (St. Matt. xii. 31, 32), and also from 
St. John saying, “ There is a sin unto death : 
I do not say that he shall pray for it” (1 
John v. 16). It is generally conceded by 
the ablest interpreters that the sin here men¬ 
tioned consists in the deliberate and final re¬ 
jection of God’s grace in Christ, as by the 
Jews rejecting the testimony of the Holy 
Ghost to Christ’s claims as the Divine 
Messiah, or a sinner dying in willful refusal 
to accept His redemption. The very ob¬ 
scurity of the subject should be a sufficient 
safeguard against the despairing fear of the 
commission of such sin, since so terrible a 
possibility could not be left in doubt without 
vitiating every assurance of God’s love for 
man, while no man could possibly commit 
such a sin who believes in Christ sufficiently 
to fear it. Rev. R. Wilson, D.D. 

Sisterhoods. Sisters of Mercy, Sisters of 
Charity, Sisters of the Church, or simply 
Sisters, as they are variously called, have 
become an accepted fact in the life and work 
of our Church. Their power for good has 
been fully recognized, and the Church now 
only desires to see more of them coming for¬ 
ward and devoting themselves to God. Yet 
for all this many Churchmen and Church- 
women have but a very vague idea of what 
a Sister is, of what the life is that she is 
called to live. It is our purpose in this ar¬ 
ticle to give clear and simple instruction 
upon this. 

A Sister is a womati who is consecrated to 
Almighty God in His Church. It is true 
that this may be said in a degree of all bap¬ 
tized Christians, but the consecration of a 
Sister is something more than that to which 
others are called. 

There are some to whom the voice of the 
Master comes now as it came of old, calling 
“Follow Me,” with a special call involving 
the leaving of all that the world holds dear, 
houses, land, friends, father, mother, for His 
sake. James and John heard and obeyed; 
and some hear it now. God makes Himself 
known to the soul as the “ chiefest among 
ten thousand and altogether lovely.” He 
reveals to the soul what He has done for it, 
what He will be to it. The soul sees that there 
is “none to be desired in comparison with 
Him,” it is filled with gratitude and love at 
the revelation of what He has done for it, 
it bows itself before Him in loving, adoring 
self-surrender. “ Lord, what wilt Thou 
have me to do ?” “ Lord, I will follow Thee 
whithersoever Thou goest.” 

This call of God is what is technically 
called Vocation , and it is consecration in obe¬ 
dience to this that underlies and is the foun¬ 
dation of the true Sister’s life. 

When God has thus called the soul and 
the soul has surrendered herself, He makes 
clear in the way of His providence what 
His will is for that particular soul. Some¬ 
times it is long before He does this, and the 
soul must wait in simple obedience and in a 
dedicated spirit until the way is clear for a 
change to be made in the outer life. 


This change is made when the one who 
believes she has this vocation becomes a 
member of a Religious Community, that is, 
enters a Sisterhood. Probably she is guided 
in her choice of a Community by her 
previous knowledge of some Sisters with 
whom she has been brought in contact, or 
by the advice of her clergyman, with whom 
of course she takes counsel, or by hearing 
or reading of some works in which Sisters 
have been engaged. If she is wisely guided 
she will seek some large, well-organized 
Community, where she will have the benefit 
of experienced training, and a well-devel¬ 
oped and tried Rule of Life. While it is de¬ 
sirable that the number of Sisters in the 
Church should be largely increased, it is not 
well that there should be many little Sister¬ 
hoods. A few large Communities will, do 
more to keep up a high ideal of life, and fit 
and train women for the life to which they 
are thus called, than little independent so¬ 
cieties in separate parishes, struggling on 
feebly with insufficient discipline; and over¬ 
weighted with a multitude of parish cares. 

It has sometimes happened that an earnest 
clergyman feeling the need of women’s 
work among the people, and seeing certain 
devout women apparently fitted for the work, 
has tried to gather them into a little Sister¬ 
hood, under his own care, and for the bene¬ 
fit of his own parish. It would have been 
better if he had guided such women to some 
existing Community, where they would have 
had teaching and training such as it was 
not in his power to give, and from whence 
they might possibly return, or others might 
come in their place, as Mission Sisters, or 
even as a Branch House of the order they 
had joined. 

When a woman desires to join a Com¬ 
munity the question of money naturally 
arises. It may be well to say here that this 
is not a matter of real importance. In some 
Communities it is required that a certain 
sum be brought as dowry by those seeking 
admission, or if not required it is thought 
advisable; but this is not a general rule, and 
very few Communities would reject any one 
on this ground if she were otherwise well 
qualified for admission. If any one is already 
possessed of money, she is not required to 
give it to the Community. She may do so 
if she pleases, or she may distribute it 
among her friends. The Community would 
refuse to receive it if she had any relatives 
who needed assistance and whom it was her 
duty to help. It is only required that she 
shall not retain any money for her own use. 

In most Communities there are two or 
more orders of Sisters. The first or higher 
order are called Choir-Sisters, the others 
variously Lav, Minor, or Second Order 
Sisters. The first Order is composed of those 
of superior education and gifts, and in them 
the management of the Sisterhood rests, the 
Superior and other officers being elected by 
themselves from their own number; they 
also elect the Chaplain. 




SISTERHOODS 


697 


SISTERHOODS 


To the Lay, Minor, or Second Order Sis¬ 
ters a somewhat subordinate position is 
given. They keep the same spiritual rule 
as the others, hut they do the lesser works 
of the Community, the duties of the house¬ 
hold and such like, and have no share in its 
government. 

On entering a Sisterhood the Postulant , 
as she is called, being in the position of one 
seeking admission, remains on trial for some 
six months, keeping the rule of the Order 
and being under the direction of the Novice- 
Mistress, an officer elected or appointed be¬ 
cause of her fitness for training others. At 
the end of this time the Postulant is ad¬ 
mitted as a Novice, and wears the dress of 
the Order and bears also the name of Sister. 
The Novitiate lasts from two to three years, 
when the Sisters, if they think her fit and 
worthy to join the Order, elect her into 
their number. She is then professed , that 
is to say, she publicly before the Sisters and 
Chaplain, and in many cases -the Bishop of 
the Diocese also, professes her willingness 
to give up her whole life to God, to remain 
in this Community and keep its rules as long 
as she lives, and then vows herself to God 
before His altar. During the time she is 
Postulant or Novice the Sister may return 
at any time to her former life in the world, 
but once professed it is a pledge for life. 
Before profession also, the Community may 
dismiss her if they think her wanting in 
the true spirit of consecration, or in other 
needful gifts ; but after profession she cannot 
be sent away unless for some grave moral 
fault, which may God forbid. 

We have referred to the Rule, or Rule of 
Life. This varies in different Sisterhoods, 
but in all it is based upon the three great 
principles of Poverty , Chastity , and Obedience. 
Poverty sepacates the soul from the world; 
Chastity lifts it up to God ; Obedience binds 
it in the Life of the Community and in self- 
discipline and control under the will of God. 
Something must be said of each separately. 

Poverty. —The soul that has heard the 
call of which we have spoken desires to give 
up all for Him who has called her. She will 
not any longer have anything to call her 
own, and what she has while she continues 
to live in this world she will use for Him 
and for His glory. Eor this reason she gives 
up everything when she is finally professed. 
The Sister has nothing, her very clothes be¬ 
long to the Community, she wears what is 
given her without question or murmur. All 
that she needs she must ask for, she may not 
help herself. Of all that is intrusted to her 
for use she must give careful account. Of 
everything she is most sparing as one who 
is really poor. So the food of the Com¬ 
munity, while it is wholesome, is only such 
as the poor eat, and taken for necessity, not 
for pleasure. Many things accounted ne¬ 
cessary in the world Sisters readily learn to 
do without. They may not receive any 
presents for themselves, nor may they re¬ 
ceive payment for work done. All that any 


may wish to give them can only be received 
for the Community to be shared for the 
common good. They are called to be poor, 
and by all possible ways they try in their 
life to realize this. 

Chastity. —The Sister comes to the Com¬ 
munity because she has felt the constraining 
power of the Love of Christ. That love 
takes possession of her soul, and all other 
loves become subordinate to it. The motive, 
the inspiration, the power of the life is all in 
this, “ My Beloved is mine, and I am His." 
Hence the true Sister is willing to leave all 
other friends and ties and to have and love 
only as God wills her to love. God first, 
and all others for His sake; and this all * 
through her life. The Sisters' life is not for 
those who have used up all pleasures in the 
world and found them worthless, or who 
have been disappointed and perhaps embit¬ 
tered by the treatment they have received 
in the world ; such rarely make good Sisters. 
The life of a Sister is the life of one who, 
looking upon the face of Jesus Christ, can 
say, “ I have found Him whom my soul 
loveth,” and saying that, can give up all 
else for Him, and having Him desires noth¬ 
ing else. “ Christ is all." 

Obedience.— The Sister comes to the Sister¬ 
hood not only to give up her worldly posses¬ 
sions, moved by the love of God, but to do 
that which is so much harder, to submit her 
will to the will of God. For this she takes 
the vow of obedience to the Rule of the Com¬ 
munity and to all those who shall be set over 
her. Of course this vow in no way conflicts 
with conscience and her obedience to the re¬ 
vealed will of God. It only affects her life 
in all those matters in which she is free to 
choose. She by this vow surrenders her 
liberty of choice, accepting in its place the 
voice of the Superior speaking in the name 
and on behalf of the Community. It would, 
of course, be impossible to conduct a Sister¬ 
hood without such a rule and vow; if all 
were free to choose their own work and way, 
there might early be discord and difficulty 
where all ought to work easily in order and 
harmony. This, however, is not the chief 
end of the Yow of Obedience. The chief 
end is that the highest powers and faculties 
of the soul may be brought under control 
and be disciplined, that the soul may learn 
to lay itself aside, that the will of God may 
be felt in all the details of every-day life. 

All the rules and regulations of the Sister¬ 
hood are based upon these three great prin¬ 
ciples, expanding them and applying them 
variously, according to the genius of each 
Sisterhood and the works undertaken by it3 
members. 

A life under such discipline of course 
separates those who live it very much from 
others. It brings a gravity and seriousness 
into the life, a quietness of deportment, and 
erhaps a certain sadness. It can hardly be 
ut that those who are drawn near to the 
Master in close and enduring bonds of love 
should be drawn to Him in a penitential 




SISTERHOODS 


698 


SON 


spirit, sharing in His sorrow over a world 
lying in sin. The quiet dark habit of the 
Sisters befittingly sets forth this aspect of 
their life. 

The life comes first, but we must speak 
also of the work. Of course Sisters will 
work, and work hard. They are called to 
be poor, but not to be idle. Church-people 
are asked to contribute to the maintenance 
of Sisterhoods and the works of the Sisters, 
not that the Sisters may do nothing, but 
that they may have a place in which to live 
and means to do their work well. Indeed, 
Sisters work very hard, harder than many 
who work for the wages of this world, while 
they only work for the love of God. 

Their works are of many kinds. They 
teach the children of the rich and the chil¬ 
dren of the poor. They take charge of hos¬ 
pitals, orphanages, penitentiaries, and asy¬ 
lums of various kinds. They nurse and 
visit the sick and poor in their own homes, 
and carry out missionary works for the good 
of the Church. In many cases they do em¬ 
broidery and other needle-work for the 
sanctuary, by the sale of which they often 
almost entirely support themselves. Resides 
these more distinct works, they exert an in¬ 
fluence which can hardly be defined or meas¬ 
ured. Many a hard and worldly heart has 
been brought to God by the gentle influence 
of their devoted lives ; many a sorrowful, 
broken-hearted sinner lias been cheered and 
strengthened by the love that came forth 
from those who in close communion with 
their Lord had learnt the secret of the love 
that caused Him to laydown His life for the 
world. 

What is the power that is to hold women 
up in such a life? The power of God alone 
can do it, and this is only to be obtained by 
prayer. The .Rule of every Community, 
therefore, implies many hours daily given 
to prayer and devotion. Seven times a day 
at least the Sisters come together in their 
chapel to pray. If possible, the Holy Com¬ 
munion is celebrated daily in their midst. 
Besides this, every one has her own hours 
set apart for private prayer and meditation. 
Without this the Community would soon 
sink down into a mere society of persons 
living together for the sake of the work 
they can do, instead of being a company 
gathered together in the Church to live in 
loving devotion to Almighty God, irrespec¬ 
tive of the work which each member might 
be able to do. In Prayer and Meditation 
and the use of all the means of grace the 
Sisters strive to live near to their Lord, and 
to drink in of His Spirit, that their own souls 
being first purified from sin, they may be 
instruments of His glory, and accomplish 
the work to which He sends them in the 
world. 

A life of consecration, a life of poverty, a 
life of earnest self-denial and self-surrender, 
a life of devoted work,—such is the life of 
the Sisters of our Church, but more than 
all, a life of Prayer and of continual com¬ 


munion with Him who said, “ If a man love 
me, he will keep my words, and my Father 
will love him, and we will come unto him, 
and make our abode with him’.” 

Rev. Edward Osborne. 

Solifidians. Those who rest on faith 
alone for salvation, without any reference 
to works or to repentance. This perni¬ 
cious heresy was at one time rampant in 
England, so much so as to make quite a 
party. The doctrine, in its evil conse¬ 
quences, is not current, but the extravagant 
and unguarded language of some popular 
preaching would lead one to suppose that it 
is still held. 

Son. The doctrine of the Divinity of 
our Lord is that He is the Eternal Son of 
God ; that this Sonship was His whom we 
confess to be Jesus Christ; that it was 
foretold, and His birth, work, and redemp¬ 
tive acts were in perfect accordance with 
the prophecy, and that Eternal Word, in 
whom entered the glory of the Father, the 
Man Christ Jesus, is also the Mediator 
now at the right hand of the Father. The 
Scriptures are full, express, and clear upon 
this. The confession of it entered into the 
worship of the Jew, for he sang before God 
the inspired words of the Father to the 
Son, “ Thou art my Son ; to-day have 1 be¬ 
gotten Thee. Ask of me, and 1 shall give 
Thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and 
the uttermost parts of the Earth for Thy 
possession” (Ps. ii. 7, 8). 

Again, “ Give the King Thy judgments, 
O God, and Thy righteousness unto the 
King’s Son (Ps. lxxii. 1), where the Psalm 
gives an outline of the offices that can 
only belong to the Son of God. So in the 
forty-fifth Psalm. These are dwelt on be¬ 
cause they were in the public services, and 
formed part of the National worship and 
the National Confession of Faith. Nor are 
these the only places in the Psalms, for there 
are Ps. lxxxix. 27, and cx., where His Son- 
ship is set forth clearly, and not by inference. 
The prophecy of Isaiah, “ For unto us a 
child is born, unto us a Son is given,” and, 
“ Behold, a Virgin shall conceive and bear 
a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel” 
(Is. ix. 6, and vii. 14), can only describe 
Him whom Nebuchadnezzar saw walking 
in the midst of the fiery furnace,—“ and 
the form of the fourth is like the Son of 
God” (Dan. iii. 25). Here no attempt is 
made to show how much more fully the 
prophecy of the Son of God pervades all of 
Hebrew predictive writings, and there is 
omitted perhaps the most pointed of all the 
promises to David, that recorded in 2 Sam. 
vii., since it would involve a longer dis¬ 
cussion than is possible here. Then the 
prophecy was continuous and accepted, in 
the History of David’s family, in the Wor¬ 
ship in the Temple, in the Prophets, that 
the Son of God should come on earth and 
be born, and take upon Him our flesh. It 
was fit, then, that the Gospels should begin 
with this. St. Matthew begins with the 






SON 


699 


SON OF MAN 


descent of Jesus Christ, the son of David, 
the son of Abraham, who is Immanuel,— 
God with us. St. Mark writes, “ The begin¬ 
ning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the 
Son of God.” St. Luke records the Annun¬ 
ciation to the Virgin, “ He shall be called the 
Son of the Highest: and the Lord God 
shall give unto him the throne of His father 
David: and He shall reign over the house 
of Jacob forever ; and of His kingdom there 
shall be no end.” And St. John, “ In the 
beginning was the Word, and the Word 
was with God, and the Word was God. The 
same was in the beginning with God. . . . 
And we beheld His glory as of the Only-be¬ 
gotten of the Father.” 

Passing over all other references, we will 
quote our Lord’s own claim. He had said, 
“ I and My Father are one.” Nor did He 
retract when the Jews took up stones to 
stone Him as a blasphemer, but added,“ Say 
ye of Him whom the Father hath sancti¬ 
fied and sent into the world, Thou blas- 
phemest, because I said I am the Son of 
God?” Not only did He claim it, but Sa¬ 
tan based one of his temptations upon its 
being true; and after His victory the demons, 
whom He dispossessed of men, cried out, 
“Jesus, Thou Son of God.” And it was 
distinctly upon this charge that He was ar¬ 
rested and tried, and when solemnly ad¬ 
jured by the High-Priest, “ I adjure Thee 
by the living God that Thou tell us if Thou 
be the Christ, the Son of God? Jesus 
saith unto him, Thou hast said.” So, 
in other terms, do the other Evangelists. 
And when He was brought before Pilate, 
and the governor tried to release Him, the 
Jews charged that He was worthy of death, 
because He made Himself the Son of God. 
And Pilate was the more afraid, and sought 
the more eagerly to let Him go ; and at last, 
at the sight of the terrors of that Crucifixion, 
the Centurion of the Guard was compelled 
to confess, “ Truly this man was the Son of 
God.” Our Lord’s claim was repeated by 
all that came about Him. His Apostles 
confessed it, His enemies hated Him for it, 
His judge and His executioners felt its truth ; 
and when He rose from the dead, that held 
as doctrine was now proven historic fact, 
for the Son of Man risen with power from 
the dead could only be the Eternal Son of 
God. It was upon the truth of this Sonship 
that the Apostles went forth to evangelize 
the world, and to baptize in His name, and 
to establish His Church. It was this doc¬ 
trine that gave them their power. St. Pe¬ 
ter, who had the grace given him to be the 
first to confess it, reminded those to whom 
he wrote (2 Pet. i. 7), how on the Mount 
of Transfiguration he heard the “voice 
from the excellent glory,” “ This is my be¬ 
loved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” 
St. John (1 John v. 12), “He that hath the 
Son hath life, and he that hath not the )3on 
of God hath not life.” So St. Paul, in in¬ 
numerable passages, one for its devoted 
love: “ And the life I now live in the flesh, 


I live by the faith of the Son of God, who 
loved me and gave Himself for me.” There¬ 
fore the Creed puts into our mouth and 
teaches our hearts to believe this fact, which 
is eternal, and which by the Manhood of 
the Word comes into our lives and beget- 
teth it, “ And I believe in Jesus Christ His 
Only Son our Lord.” This faith reaches 
from the Throne of God to the depth of our 
sinfulness,—for “there is joy in the pres¬ 
ence of the Angels of God” (i.e., on the 
Throne of God) “ when one sinner repent- 
ethand repentance must be upon the 
ground of faith that Jesus is the Son of 
God, and is able to save them to the utter¬ 
most that come unto God by Him, seeing 
that He ever liveth to make intercession for 
them. 

Son of Man. The related doctrine and 
fact to the confession of the Son of God is 
the further confession that He became for 
us the Son of Man. The prophecy that went 
before of the Son of God in some cases, as in 
those from Isaiah, spoke of that Son of God 
as born a man; the Virgin’s Son is a man, 
but also Immanuel. The man to be born 
of David’s line (2 Sam. xxvi.) was the Mes¬ 
siah. So far David knew, and the Psalm he 
wrote upon this (Ps. lxxxix.) shows that 
he knew Him also to be the Son of God. 
Isaiah’s prophecy of the suffering Messiah 
is too large, too heroic a figure for any mere 
mortal man. He who could fill out its pro¬ 
portions and bear its awful burdens must be 
the Son of Man, who is also the Son of God. 
But the prophecy implies this, and can only 
be understood when it is acknowledged in 
its fullness. The term Son of Man occurs 
frequently in the Old Testament, and most 
often as arpplied to Ezekiel as the type of 
Christ. The royalty of the Son of Man is 
set forth in the seventh Psalm. The Judicial 
office of the Son of Man is set forth in Dan. 
vii. 13, 14. It was the special name which 
our Lord gave Himself. The Evangelists 
do not give it to Him as from others, but it 
is His name for Himself. It was to identify 
Himself with the prophecy and to claim His 
place in the Human race that He did this, 
we may reverently suppose. On two cru¬ 
cial occasions He uses this title, when He 
asks His Apostles, “ Whom do men say that 
I, the Son of Man, am ?” and St. Peter makes 
the confession for Him and the rest, “ Thou 
art the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” 
Again, when the High-Priest adjured Him 
to confess if He claimed to be the Son of 
God, He replied, “ I am, and ye shall see 
the Son of Man sitting on the right Hand of 
power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.” 
It was the declaration of His twofold nature, 
the announcement of Himself as the God- 
Man. It is not necessary here to quote all 
the texts which set Him forth as the Son of 
Man in the Gospels. But in this character 
it was that He lived the wonderful life of 
His sojourn here. 

It was as Son of Man that He humbled 
Himself, it is as Son of Man that He is ex- 




SON OF MAN 


700 


SOUL 


alted; it was as Son of Man, born of a 
woman, that He was made under the law 
(Gal. iv. 4), and as Son of Man He was Lord 
of the Sabbath-day (St. Matt. xii. 8); as Son 
of Man He suffered for sin (St. Matt. xvii. 12 ; 
St. Mark viii. 31), and as Son of Man He has 
authority on earth to forgive sins (St. Matt. 

ix. 6). It was as Son of Man that He had not 
where to lay his head (St. Matt. viii. 20 ; St. 
Luke ix. 58), it is as Son of Man that He wears 
on His head a golden crown (Kev. xiv. 14); it 
was as Son of Man that He was betrayed 
into the hands of sinful men, and suffered 
many things, and was rejected, and con¬ 
demned, and crucified (see St. Matt. xvii. 22; 
xx. 18 ; xxvi. 2, 24; St. Mark viii. 31; ix. 31; 

x. 33 ; St. Luke ix. 22, 44; xviii. 31; xxiv. 
7), it is as Son of Man that He now sits at the 
right hand of God, and as Son of Man He will 
come in the clouds of heaven, with power 
and great glory, in His own glory, and in the 
glory of His Father, and all His holy angels 
with Him, and it is as Son of Man that will 
“ sit on the throne of His glory” and “ be¬ 
fore Him will be gathered all nations” (St. 
Matt. xvi. 27; xxiv. 30; xxv. 31, 32; St. 
Mark xiv. 62; St. Luke xxi. 27); and He will 
send forth His angels to gather His elect from 
the four winds (St. Matt. xxiv. 31), and to 
root up the tar£s from out of His field, which is 
the world (St. Matt. xiii. 38, 41), and to bind 
them in bundles to burn them, and to gather 
His wheat into His barn (St. Matt. xiii. 30). 
It is as Son of Man that He will call all from 
their graves, and summon them to His judg¬ 
ment-seat, and pronounce their sentence for 
everlasting bliss or woe; “ for the Father 
judgeth no man, but hath committed unto 
the Son ; . . . and hath given Him author¬ 
ity to execute judgment also, because He is 
the£ow of Man ” (St.,John v. 22, 27). Only 
“ the pure in heart will see God ” (St. Matt. v. 
8; Heb. xii. 14); but the evil as well as the 
good will see their judge : “ Every eye shall 
see Him” (Kev. i. 7). This is fit and equit¬ 
able ; and it is also fit and equitable that He, 
who as Son of Man was judged by the world, 
should also judge the world; and that He 
who was rejected openly, and suffered death 
for all, should be openly glorified by all, and 
be exalted in the eyes of all, as King of 
kings, and Lord of lords. (Smith’s Diet, of 
the Bible.) This is the truth which is so 
tersely expressed in the Creed. The facts of 
His life and His death set forth His true 
manhood, and in that very and true man¬ 
hood was bound as under a veil, and yet in 
closest union, the eternal Son of God. To 
confess this with a loving heart, and to live 
the life such a faith implies, is the true life 
of the Christian. For it is a strange fact 
that we cannot speak of or dwell upon the 
life of Jesus Christ without feeling that 
He has a power over us that compels a love 
and an obedience or repels the unhappy re¬ 
jecter. His words are true of every man 
that hears His words : “ He that is not with 
me is against me, and He that gathereth not 
with me scattereth.” It is an attraction 


unto life or a repulsion unto death that the 
Son of Man is wielding over the whole 
world. 

Song. The Apostle classifies the rhythmic 
praises as Psalms, and Hymns, and spiritual 
songs. It is the title of a good many of the 
Psalms, especially of those called the Songs 
of Degrees (Ps. cxx.-cxxxiv). The Old Tes¬ 
tament poems may be the Spiritual odes (in¬ 
spired odes?) of the Apostle’s enumeration. 
The poems of the New Testament are always 
Hymns. The rhythmic swing of two or 
three quotations by St. Paul from some 
Christian writing is so marked that they 
may be possibly fragments of hymns; such 
may be the faithful saying (2 Tim. ii. 11-13), 
“ For if we be dead with Him, we shall 
also live with Him. If we suffer we shall 
also reign with Him. If we deny Him, He 
also will deny us. If we believe not, yet 
He abideth faithful : He cannot deny Him¬ 
self.” The parallelism is marked, and the 
rhythm is nearly as clear in the English. 
So in the quotation in Eph. v. 14: “Awake 
thou that sleepest; Arise from the dead ; 
And Christ shall give thee light.” Such 
rhythm is also found in the sum of doctrine 
in 1 Tim. iii. 16. 

Soul. ( Vide Spirit.) The Greek word 
used in the New Testament for soul origi¬ 
nally means breath. It is the vital spirit 
or life : “ This night thy soul shall be re¬ 

quired of thee” (St. Luke xiv. 20). The cor¬ 
responding Hebrew word occurs in Gen. 
xxxv. 18, Kachel’s “ soul was in depart¬ 
ing.” Our Saviour .widens the word to 
include the world beyond the grave in St. 
John xii. 25: “ He that hateth his life in 
this world shall keep it unto life eternal.” 
In this expression the word “ life” or “ soul” 
in the Greek is natural life, while the word 
“ it” gives us a reference to the same word 
as meaning immortal life. In St. Matt. xvi. 
25, 26, Jesus said that he who would save 
his natural life should lose it, but he who 
would lose it for His sake should find it, 
and then asks the weighty question, “ For 
what is a man profited, if he shall gain the 
whole world, and lose his own soul ? or what 
shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” 
He adds a warning concerning the judg¬ 
ment-day. In a parallel passage (St. Luke 
ix. 25) the expression is “ lose himself, or be 
cast away.” The soul, then, is the real self. 

The word soul sometimes means a departed 
spirit: “The souls of them that were slain 
for the word of God” (Kev. vi. 9). “The 
souls of them that were beheaded for the 
witness of Jesus” (xx. 4). The term soul is 
used also to designate the seat of the senses 
and desires, the animal nature. “ Spirit, soul, 
and body,” in 1 Thess. v. 23, includes the 
whole man. Again it refers to the mind, 
as (2 Pet. ii. 14) “ unstable souls.” “ Heart¬ 
ily” (Col. iii. 23) is in Greek “ from the 
soul.” Unanimity (Acts iv. 32) is shown 
by the phrase “ of one soul.” The soul of 
man may include “ his spiritual and immor¬ 
tal nature, with all its higher and lower 






SOUL 


701 


SOUTH CAROLINA 


powers, its rational and animal faculties.” 
“ Rear not them which kill the body, but are 
not able to kill the soul ; but rather fear 
Him which is able to destroy both soul and 
body in hell” (St. Matt. x. 28). “ That believe 
to the saving of the soul” (Heb. x. 39). 
“ They watch for your souls” (xiii. 17). 
“ The engrafted word which is able to save 
your souls” (James i. 21). “The end of 
your faith, even the salvation of your souls” 
(1 Pet. i. 9). “Abstain from fleshly lust3, 
which war against the soul” (ch. ii. 11). 
“ Shepherd and Bishop of your souls” (v. 
25). “ Let them that suffer according to 

the will of God commit the keeping of their 
souls to Him in well-doing, as unto a faithful 
Creator” (ch. iv. 19). 

The word soul is used for a living thing : 
“ The first man Adam was made a living 
soul” (1 Cor. xv. 45). This is an allusion to 
Gen. ii. 7. (See Rev. xvi. 3; Gen. i. 24, and 
ii. 19, and ix. 10, 12, 15.) It is used for 
man : “ Fear came upon every soul” (Acts ii. 
43. See iii. 23). “ Let every soul be subject 
unto the higher powers” (Rom. xiii. 1). 
“ Every soul of man” for every man (Rom. 
ii. 9. See Acts ii. 41, and vii. 14, and xxvii. 
37 ; 1 Pet. iii. 20; Gen. xlvi. 15). 

Reasoning is not performed by the body, 
love is not a bodily act. The soul is affected 
by moral culture, as the body by exercise. 
It is injured by sin, and restored by repent¬ 
ance and faith in Christ. It progresses in 
this life, and is thus prepared for a higher 
future life. While it is pet haps impossible 
to define fully what the soul is, every reflect¬ 
ing mind may be aware that in man’s con¬ 
stitution there is something higher than 
mere matter, and that a spiritual part dwells 
within the body and works through it. As 
it is destined to live through endless ages 
hereafter, how carefully should it be trained 
in devotion and obedience to God here ! This 
care of the soul concerns all men, and is the 
one thing needful. It is of the highest im¬ 
portance,involving peace here and blessedness 
hereafter (St. Luke x. 42; Jer. vi. 16; Heb. 
xii. 14). If one had a valuable jewel which 
he wished to bequeath to a friend he would 
keep it fair and clean, so should he endeavor 
to present his soul at last before God washed 
by the tears of repentance. Our Lord de¬ 
clares that none can kill the soul; it must 
live forever (St. Luke xii. 4). It is to en¬ 
dure as long as God Himself, for ever and 
ever. The souls of the righteous enter into 
joy. Lazarus is in Abraham’s bosom. The 
wicked, as Lives, lie down in sorrow (St. 
*Luke xvi. 22). The penitent thief enters Pa¬ 
radise (ch. xxiii. 43). Those who die in the 
Lord are blessed (Rev. xiv. 13). The soul 
of man can find true happiness only in God. 
As the image of the sun in a lake displays 
its character and beauty, so even on earth a 
holy man reflects the character of God, in 
whose image he is made, and if he is a partaker 
“of Christ’s sufferings” (1 Pet. iv. 13), he 
may become a partaker “ of the divine na¬ 
ture” (2 Pet. i. 4). 


The faculties of the soul are not fully de¬ 
veloped here. The world cannot satisfy it, 
and if a man sells his soul for a world it is a 
fearful loss, because that which is outside of 
him cannot satisfy his spiritual needs. The 
dissatisfied soul of man cries after God. In 
weakness it needs a higher Being to trust, 
and love, and lean upon. This thirst for 
God must have its gratification from that 
God who places on earth the running stream 
to satisfy the bodily thirst. He cannot give 
bodily aid and deny spiritual help. The 
higher men rise in life, often the greater dis¬ 
satisfaction is experienced. The immortal 
soul dwells in a body which in Holy Scrip¬ 
ture is called a garment or a tabernacle, or 
house. 2 Pet. i. 13, “As long as I am in 
this tabernacle.” This shows the soul to be 
distinct from the body. 

Authorities: Buck’s Theolog. Diet.,Words¬ 
worth’s Com. on Gr. Test., Robinson’s Gr. 
and Eng. Lex. of the N. Test., A. Clarke’s 
Com. on 2 Pet. i. 13, 15, T. Gataker, in 
Spencer’s Things New and Old, Whewell’s 
Elements of Morality, Hodge’s Systematic 
Theology, Bloomfield’s Com. on Gr. Test., 

1 Thess. v. 23, Krauth's Fleming’s Vocab. 
of Philosophy. Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

South Carolina, Church in. The first at¬ 
tempt to settle the Province of Carolina was 
in 1660 a.d. The first effectual attempt in 
1670 a.d. In 1672 a.d. the present site of 
Charleston was laid out, and about 1681 or 
1682 a.d. the first Episcopal church in Car¬ 
olina was built in that city. It was built 
of black cypress, upon a brick foundation, 
on the site now occupied by St. Michael’s 
Church. It was called St. Philip’s Church. 

The first clergyman in South Carolina was 
the Rev. Atkin Williamson. He was there 
in 1680 a.d. In 1698 a.d. an Act of Assem¬ 
bly was passed “to settle a maintenance on 
a Minister of the Church of England in 
Charles Town.” It appropriated a salary 
of £150 per annum to him and his succes¬ 
sors forever, and directed that a negro man 
and woman and four cows and calves be 
purchased for his use, and paid for out of the 
public treasury. 

In 1698 a.d., Mrs. Affra Coming donated 
seventeen acres of land, now in the city, 
and the glebe of St. Philip’s Church. 

In 1700 a.d. the population of the Prov¬ 
ince was estimated at 5300, besides Indians 
and Negroes. But one clergyman of the 
Church of England was settled out of 
Charles Town. The Rev. William Corbin 
officiated among the settlements on Goose 
Creek. 

The Society for the Propagation of the 
Gospel in Foreign Parts, incorporated in 

1701 a.d., appointed their first Missionary 
to South Carolina, Rev. Samuel Thomas, in 

1702 a.d. He was instructed to attempt the 
conversion of the Yemassee Indians, but the 
Governor interposed, and his cure was on 
Cooper River. 

In 1704 a.d. an Act of Assembly was 
passed prescribing oaths, and requiring con- 




SOUTH CAROLINA 


702 


SOUTH CAROLINA 


fortuity to the Church of England. It was 
opposed alike by Churchmen and Dissenters. 
The Rector of St. Philip’s, Rev. Edward 
Marston, was involved in difficulty by rea¬ 
son of his strong opposition to the Act, and 
was removed from office by a Lay Commis¬ 
sion appointed by the Act itself. The So¬ 
ciety for the Propagation of the Gospel 
determined to send no more Missionaries 
to Carolina until the section relating to Lay 
Commissioners should be repealed. 

Nine clergymen had been in the Province 
prior to 1706 a.d., four remaining at that 
date. 

The Church of England was established 
by law, by Act of Assembly (Nov. 30, 
1706 a.d.), known as the Church Act. It 
established six Parishes outside of Charles 
Town, in Berkeley County, provided for 
building six churches and six rectories, 
and appointed Commissioners to execute 
these provisions. The Parishes are Christ 
Church, St. Thomas, St. John, St. James, 
St. Andrew, and St. Dennis, in a French 
settlement. It also divided Colleton County 
into two Parishes—St. Paul’s and St. Bar¬ 
tholomew’s—and erected the Parish of St. 
James on Santee. The Act sets forth that 
“ the rector of the Parish, duly appointed, 
is the body corporate,” and provides that 
the Rector or Minister shall be one of the 
Yestry. It also affixed penalties upon both 
the Minister and the parties who should 
“ presume to marry” contrary to the Table 
of Marriages. 

In 1707 a.d. the Rev. Gideon Johnson 
was appointed Commissary of the Bishop 
of London in South Carolina, and was 
elected Rector of St. Philip’s Church. In 
1711 a.d. the Society for the Propagation 
of the Gospel established a school in Charles 
Town, under the charge of Rev. Wm. Guy. 
There is no Parochial Register of St. Philip’s 
Church before 1719 a.d., nor any Journals 
of the Yestry before 1732 a.d. On Easter- 
Monday of that year two Church-Wardens 
and seven Yestry men were elected. 

In 1711 a.d. an Act- of Assembly was 
assed for building St. Philip’s Church of 
rick on its present site, and another in 
1720 a.d. for its completion. It was opened 
for worship on Easter-Day, 1723 a.d., and 
finished in 1724 a.d. In 1724 a.d. a letter 
from the clerg} r to the Bishop of London 
represents the Church in the Province as in 
“a very flourishing and prosperous condi¬ 
tion.” 

In 1726 a.d. , Rev. Alexander Garden, Rec¬ 
tor of St. Philip’s Church, was his Commis¬ 
sary for North and South Carolina and the 
Bahama Islands. Commissary Johnson died 
in 1816 a.d. Individual efforts had been 
made for the conversion of the Negroes, and 
many had been baptized ; but about this time 
the Clergy addressed a Joint Letter to “ the 
Society” in England on the subject; and 
Dr. Gibson, Bishop of London, published a 
Pastoral Letter “ to the Masters and Mis¬ 
tresses of families in the Plantations,” and 


another “to the Missionaries,” urging it 
upon them. About the year 1730 a.d. the 
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel 
in Foreign Parts had twelve Missionaries in 
South Carolina. 

The Commissary convened the Clergy for 
the first time (Oct. 20, 1731 a.d.), when 
they exhibited their Letters of Orders and 
License. The celebrated George Whitefield 
first came to Charles Town in 1738 a.d. In 
1740 a.d. he was cited to answer before the 
Commissary “certain articles” touching ir¬ 
regularities and breach of pledges made at 
Ordination. Mr. Whitefield excepted to the 
authority of the Court, and appealed. After 
the expiration of a year and a day proceed¬ 
ings were resumed, and Mr. Whitefield fail¬ 
ing to appear or to answer after successive 
adjournments for that purpose, he was de¬ 
clared suspended from his office. 

In 1742, Commissary Garden procured a 
school-house, to be built by private subscrip¬ 
tion, for instructing the negroes, and pur¬ 
chasing, “at the expense of the Propaga¬ 
tion Society, two intelligent negro boys, 
with the intention of having them prepared 
in this school for the tuition of others.” 
“ These youths received the baptismal names 
of Harry and Andrew. They continued in 
the school at Charles Town, and there are 
colored persons now (1819) living here who 
were taught b}^ them to read.” (Dalcho, p. 
149.) In 1744 a.d. upwards of 60 children 
were instructed in this school daily, of whom 
“ 18 read in the Testament well, 20 in the 
Psalter, and the rest were in the spelling- 
book.” 

In 1749 a.d. the Commissary resigned his 
office, after twenty-three years’ service, hav¬ 
ing held eighteen visitations. Henceforward 
the Clergy held annual meetings, one object 
of them being to supply with services the 
vacant parishes. 

Up to the year 1750 a.d. there had been 
fifty-nine Clergymen in the Province, the 
average number during the later } r ears being 
ten or twelve. Seven Parishes had been 
added to the original ten, and eight others 
were added between this date and the 
American Revolution. 

In 1751 a.d. the General Assembly pro¬ 
vided for the erection of another Parish in 
Charles Town,—St. Michael’s; the church 
to be built “ on or near the place where . . . 
St. Philip’s formerly stood.” The church 
was opened for Divine worship February 1, 
1761 a.d. The bells and clock were imported 
in 1764 a.d. In 1757 a.d. the Rector of St* 
Philip’s reported the Negro School flourish¬ 
ing and full of children, and from its success 
lamented the want of establishments for the 
Christian instruction of 50,000 Negroes. 

In 1758 a.d. Chief-Justice Pinckney, who 
died that year, founded The Pinc'kneyan 
Lecture , charging his estate with the pay¬ 
ment of “ five guineas yearly and forever to 
a lecturer appointed ... to preach two 
sermons a year on the greatness and good¬ 
ness of God.” The fulfillment of his pur- 





SOUTH CAROLINA 


703 


SOUTH CAROLINA 


pose wus delayed until the “breaking out 
of the war; but his son, General Charles 
Cotesworth Pinckney, established the Lec¬ 
tures in 1810 a.d., and they were regularly 
delivered until interrupted by the breaking 
out of another war, in 1861 a.d.” 

In 1759 a.d., Rev. Robert Smith, after¬ 
wards first Bishop of South Carolina, suc¬ 
ceeded to the Rectorship of St. Philip’s 
Church. He had come over from England 
as its Assistant Minister in 1757 a.d. In 
1762 a.d. “ The Society for the Relief of 
tiie Widows and Children of the Clergy” 
was founded by the Clergy, but made slow 
progress until 1771 A.D., when Laymen 
applied to be admitted. In 1818 a.d. its 
funds amounted to $45,461.11, and continued 
to increase until 1860 a.d. In 1766 a.d. the 
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel 
discontinued th§ir appropriations, having 
aided the Church in South Carolina during 
sixty-four years. 

The last “Annual Meeting” of the Clergy 
on record before the Revolution was in 1770 
a.d. Nine clergymen were present and 
six absent. The largest number in any 
previous year was twenty. 

One hundred and twenty-eight clergymen, 
in all, had been in the Province since its 
settlement, but the sojourn of many was 
very brief,—of the larger number, only two 
or three years. 

In 1774 a.d. the Assistant Minister of St. 
Michael’s gave offense to many of his con¬ 
gregation by a sermon bearing upon politi¬ 
cal questions, and was compelled to leave 
the Parish. Five of the Clergy out of 
twenty adhered to Great Britain and left the 
country. The late Bishop Smith was ban¬ 
ished by the British to Philadelphia. Rev. 
II. Purcell was Chaplain in the Army and 
Deputy Judge-Advocate*General. Of the 
twenty-five Parishes* existing prior to the 
Revolution, twenty are still in union with 
the Convention, the other five are virtually 
extinct. 

In consequence of proposals for a General 
Convention, at a meeting held on the 12th 
of July, 1785 a.d., at which eight Churches 
were represented, five Deputies thereto were 
chosen ; one of them being a Clergyman. 

In 1786 a.d. a committee was appointed to 
form a constitution for the “ Associated 
Churches,” and six “ Fundamental Articles” 
were adopted. In 1790 a.d. the Constitution 
and Canons adopted by the General Conven¬ 
tion, and also “ The Liturgy,” were unani¬ 
mously agreed to. Also, a Standing Com¬ 
mittee was provided. In 1795 a.d. the Rev. 
Robert Smith, D.D., long time Rector of St. 
Philip’s Church, Charleston, was unani¬ 
mously elected Bishop. He was consecrated 
in Christ Church, Philadelphia, on the 13th 
of September of the same year, and died 
October 21, 1801 a.d. To the Convention 
which elected Bishop Smith testimonials 
were presented in behalf of Mr. Milward 
Pogson, the first candidate for Holy Orders 
in the Diocese on record. 


No Diocesan Convention met from 1798 
to 1801 a.d. That year one assembled, and 
the Rev. Edward Jenkins, D.D., was unani¬ 
mously elected Bishop. Dr. Jenkins declined 
the office because of advanced age and in¬ 
ability. In 1806 a.d. “Rules and Regula¬ 
tions for the government of the Churches” 
were, for the first time, adopted. In 1810 
a.d. the first Parochial Reports were made 
to the Convention. The same year wus in¬ 
corporated “The Protestant Episcopal Soci¬ 
ety for the Advancement of Christianity in 
South Carolina,” which for many years was 
the missionary agent of the Church in the 
Diocese. 

In 1812 a.d. the Rev. Theodore Dehon 
was elected the second Bishop, and was con¬ 
secrated on the 15th of October. During 
his brief Episcopate an impulse was given to 
the Church in South Carolina. In 1813 a.d. 
he delivered the first Episcopal Address, and 
reported the first church consecrated in the 
Diocese; also the first new congregations 
organized. The next year he reported the 
first Confirmations ; the aggregate number 
being 516. He departed this life August 6, 
1817 a.d., universally lamented. 

The following year the Rev. Nathaniel 
Bowen, D.D., was unanimously elected 
Bishop, and consecrated on the 8th of Oc¬ 
tober. His judicious, conservative adminis¬ 
tration extended over a period of twenty-one 
years, until 1839 a.d., when he died on the 
25th of August. 

The Rev. Christopher Edwards Gadsden, 
D.D., was elected Bishop on the 14tli of Feb¬ 
ruary, 1840 a.d., and consecrated on the 
21st of June of that year. He zealously and 
earnestly discharged the duties of the office 
until 1852 a.d., when he entered into rest 
on the 23d of June. 

Rev. Thomas Frederick Davis was elected 
Bishop at the ensuing Convention, on the 
6th of May, 1853 a.d. He was consecrated 
October 17. About the year 1860 a.d. 
Bishop Davis was stricken with blindness,but 
continued to discharge the duties of his of¬ 
fice with wonderful energy. The effects of 
civil war produced a great change in the 
condition of the Diocese during his adminis¬ 
tration. Some of the results are given by 
committees appointed to ascertain them, 
thus: 

Ten churches burnt; three have disap¬ 
peared ; twenty-two Parishes suspended; 
eleven parsonages burnt; the Society for 
Relief of the Widows and Orphans of the 
Clergy lost $100,000 ; the Society for Ad¬ 
vancement of Christianity in South Caro¬ 
lina lost $56,000; the Bishop’s Fund lost 
$18,000. 

Amid all these depressing conditions the 
blind Bishop labored on until 1871 a.d., 
when he was constrained to ask for help, and 
in response thereto the Rev. W. B. W. 
Howe was elected Assistant Bishop on the 
14th of May of that year. Bishop Howe was 
consecrated in Baltimore on the 8th of Octo¬ 
ber, and on the decease of Bishop Davis in 




SOUTH DAKOTA 


704 


SOUTHERN OHIO 


December of the same year became the Dio¬ 
cesan. 

Total Parishes in South Carolina up to 1790 a.d.... 25 

(Statistics not to be procured.) 

1810 a.d. Clergy entitled to seats in Convention... 11 


Parishes. 25 

Communicants, white. 439 

Communicants, colored. 199 

- 638 

1821 a.d. Clergy entitled to seats. 23 

Parishes. 28 

Communicants, white. 996 

Communicants, colored. 394 

- 1390 

1830 a.d. Clergy.34 

Parishes. 30 

Organized Congregations. 3 

Communicants, white. 1490 

Communicants, colored. 521 

- 2011 

1840 a.d. Clergy. 46 

Pai ishes and Congregations. 37 

Communicants, white. .... 1963 

Communicants, colored. 973 

- 2936 

1850 a.d. Clergy. 71 

Parishes, 50 ; Congregations, 3. 53 

Communicants, white. 2669 

Communicants, colored. 2247 

-4916 

1860 a.d. Clergy. 69 

Parishes, 67 ; Congregations, 3. 70 

Communicants, white...... 3166 

Communicants, colored... 2960 

■-6126 

Offerings, etc. $50,209.69 

1870 a.d. Clergy. 53 

Parishes and Congregations. 60 

Communicants, white. 2633 

Communicants, colored. 328 

- 2961 

Offerings, etc. $46,119.23 

1880 a.d. Clergy.'.. 47 

Parishes and Congregations. 59 

Communicants, white. 3932 

Communicants, colored. 619 

- 4551 

Offerings, etc. $66,239.84 

1883 A.D. Clergy. 49 

Parishes and Congregations. 59 

Missions. 18 

Communicants, white. 4306 

Communicants, colored. 701 

- 5007 

Offerings, etc.-. $81,882.68 


Note. —Offerings reported the first time in 1857; 
amount, $33,388.07. Prior to 1870 a.d. the offerings re¬ 
ported did not include salaries and other Parish ex¬ 
penses ; these, in 1883 a.d., would be about $50,000. A 
portion of this amount is derived from vested funds. 

Rev. J. D. McCullough. 

South Dakota. (Vide Niobrara and 
North Dakota.) In the General Conven¬ 
tion of 1883 a.d. , Bishop Clarkson, retain¬ 
ing the Diocese of Nebraska, resigned his 
position as Missionary Bishop of Dakota, 
and the Territory was divided into two 
jurisdictions, North and South Dakota. 
South Dakota was put in charge of Rt. Rev. 
W. H. Hare, D.D., who had been Mission¬ 
ary Bishop of Niobrara. His field includes 
the part of the Territory south of the forty- 
sixth parallel, with the Santee Indian Res¬ 
ervation in Nebraska. Bishop Hare esti¬ 
mates the white population at 200,000, and 
thinks their interests linked with those of 
the Indians. The immigration for sixty or 
eighty days last spring was at the rate of 
3000 to 6000 each day. Over 100 new 
post-offices were opened in the past year, 
more than were opened during the same 
period in all the other Territories together. 


The new-comers are largely Americans, and 
favorable to the Church. Towns grow as 
if by magic. Churches are needed, and an 
itinerating clergy. The towns demanding 
occupation are numerous, and the need for 
work is urgent, and the Bishop calls ear¬ 
nestly on the Church to hold up his hands 
in this interesting and wonderfully promis¬ 
ing field. (See his statements in the Spirit 
of Missions , January and February, 1884 
a.d.) Institutions: St. Paul’s School, 
Yankton Agency, D. T., a Normal and 
Divinity School for Indians; St. Mary’s 
School, Santee Agency, Neb., a boarding- 
school for Indian girls; Hope School, 
Springfield, D. T., a boarding-school for 
Indian boys and girls; St.John’s School, 
Cheyenne Agency,^D. T., a boarding-school 
for girls. Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Southern Ohio. The question of dividing 
the Diocese of Ohio was agitated many years 
before that measure went into effect. In 
fact, the subject was brought before the Con¬ 
vention as early as 1850 a.d. The State em¬ 
braces an area of nearly forty thousand 
square miles. Its average length north and 
south is two hundred and twenty miles ; 
its average breadth is nearly the same. Par¬ 
ishes lay upon the extremes, as well as in 
interior and central parts. To visit them 
required an amount of travel and fatigue 
quite beyond the strength of any one man. 
But the measure proposed was not at that 
time deemed expedient. Soon thereafter, 
however, it became evident that the health 
and strength of Bishop Mcllvaine, the then 
incumbent, was fast giving way under his 
accumulated and still increasing burdens. 
The question of an Assistant Bishop, in 
preference to a division of the Diocese, was 
now agitated. In 1859 a.d. this measure 
was adopted, and the Rev. Gregory T. Be¬ 
dell, Rector of the Church of the Ascension, 
of New York, was elected to that office. 

In the year 1873 a.d , Bishop Mcllvaine 
died, after a laborious and distinguished 
Episcopate of forty-one years. Bishop Be¬ 
dell now succeeding to the entire charge of 
the Diocese, it soon became evident that 
some way must be found to relieve him of a 
portion of his labors. The old question of 
division came up for consideration. The 
Bishop himself proposed this measure, and 
it seemed to be generally preferred. Ac¬ 
cordingly, the Convention at its Annual Ses¬ 
sion at Gambier, in June, 1874 a.d., passed 
a resolution for the division of the Diocese 
b} T a line running east and west along the 
southern boundary of the following counties, 
to wit: Mercer, Shelby, Logan, Union, 
Morrow, Knox, Coshocton, Tuscarawas, Har¬ 
rison, and Jefferson. The northern portion, 
by the same resolution, was to be called “ The 
Diocese of Ohio,” the southern portion “ The 
Diocese of Southern Ohio.” In determin¬ 
ing the name which the northern Diocese 
should bear, compliance was required with 
a provision of the Constitution of the Theo¬ 
logical Seminary, which made it indispensa- 






















































SOUTHERN OHIO 


705 


SOUTHERN OHIO 


ble that the Bishop of the Diocese of Ohio 
should be, ex officio, President of its Board 
of Trustees, and at the time of division 
agreed upon left that Institution in the 
northern part, that name was accordingly 
adopted. The action of the Convention was 
confirmed by the General Convention at its 
session in New York in October of the same 
year; 

By this division forty of the eighty-eight 
counties comprising the State were left in the 
new, or Southern, Diocese. These counties 
included a little more than half the popula¬ 
tion of the State, although somewhat less 
than half its area. The number of parishes 
left by this division in the Diocese of Ohio 
was seventy-five; the number of clergy 
seventy-four. The number of parishes in 
the Southern Diocese was forty-four; the 
number of clergy thirty-nine. 

Bishop Bedell having, in accordance with 
his privilege under the Constitution, chosen 
the Diocese of Ohio as his jurisdiction, 
called a Primary Convention of the new 
Diocese for the organization of the same 
and for the election of a Bishop, to be held 
in Trinity Church, Columbus, on the 13th 
day of January, 1875 a.d. This action was 
in conformity with the requirements of 
Canon vi., Title iii., of the General Conven¬ 
tion ; and Articles v. and xi. of the Consti¬ 
tution of the Diocese of Ohio. 

The Convention met pursuant to this call; 
twenty-eight clergymen entitled to seats 
being in attendance, and eighty-three lay- 
delegates representing thirty-five parishes. 
The new Diocese was duly organized and a 
Bishop elected. The lot fell upon the 
Rev. Thomas Augustus Jaggar, D.D., Rec¬ 
tor of the Church of the Holy Trinity, Phil¬ 
adelphia, Pa. His consecration took place 
in the church of which he was Rector on 
the 28th day of April, 1875 a.d. Bishop 
Jaggar entered upon the duties of his Epis¬ 
copate in the following month. He was 
present and presided at the first Annual 
Convention of his Diocese, which was held 
in St. Paul’s Church, Cincinnati, on the 
19th, 20th, and 21st of that month (May). 
The Convention Sermon was preached by 
the Bishop. It gave great satisfaction by 
its clear and forcible presentation of .Gospel 
truth and requirement. This, together 
with his cordial manners, his manly bearing, 
and his hearty engagement in his new work, 
drew to him the confidence and respect of 
his Diocese. That confidence and respect 
greatly increased as time went on, and has 
continued to the present. His administra¬ 
tion, extending now over eight years, has 
been characterized by wisdom, prudence, 
and earnest devotion to the interests of the 
Church. During this time the number of 
the clergy has increased to forty-eight; the 
number of parishes, including missionary 
stations, to sixty-five. The policy of the 
Diocese, under the advice of the Bishop, 
has been to discourage the full organization 
of parishes until such time as they should 

45 


be able to be self-supporting. It is pro¬ 
vided by Canon that missionary stations may 
have a provisional organization, by virtue 
of which they are entitled to a representa¬ 
tion in the Convention, and are thus brought 
into close relations to the Diocese. In pur¬ 
suance of this policy a large number of 
^/asi-parishes are held back from full canon¬ 
ical organization, and hence the number of 
parishes, as such, does not represent the 
actual strength of the Diocese. 

The number of communicants has increased 
since the Diocese was constituted from 4171 
to 5651, the number reported this pres¬ 
ent year (1883 a.d.). The contributions of 
the Diocese for all purposes during- this 
period have been as follows, to wit: in 1875 
a.d., so far as reported, $62,884 (report very 
imperfect); in 1876 a.d., $118,554; in 1883 
a.d., $147,663. 

The number of church b-uildings and 
chapels in the Diocese is 57; the number of 
rectories 13. 

A “ Woman’s Auxiliary Society to the 
Board of Missions” was formed in 1876 a.d., 
which, under an energetic and judicious 
directorship, has done good service in the 
Diocese and in the General Missions of the 
Church. The result of its last year’s work 
is the sum of $7765.95. 

At the last Convention (1883 a.d.), Bishop 
Jaggar delivered a “ Charge” on “ The Duty 
of the Clergy in Relation to Modern Skep¬ 
ticism.” It was an able, affectionate, and 
timely admonition on that subject, and pro¬ 
duced a deep impression. A brief extract 
from the concluding portion will indicate, 
in a general way, the treatment of the sub¬ 
ject: 

“ I have tried to show you that your duty 
in relation to the prevailing skepticism is 
determined by the nature of your office, and 
of the truth committed to you. 

“Your office being a stewardship , your 
duty is to preach positively that which is 
committed to you. 

“The trust committed to you being per¬ 
sonal, a trust in Jesus, your duty is to set 
Him forth in all the fullness of His person 
and work ; to let Him be your strong for¬ 
tress and tower of defense against unbelief; 
to make it your aim to bring men up to the 
faith of personal loyalty to Him; above all, 
to keep yourselves personally in the truth, 
letting the love of Christ constrain you. 

“ The truth being essentially supernatural, 
your duty is to understand clearly the mean¬ 
ing of the supernatural, to stand firmly in the 
historic fact of the resurrection which veri¬ 
fies it, to attempt no compromises with the 
spirit which would eliminate it. 

“The truth being self-manifesting, com¬ 
mending itself to every man’s conscience, 
your duty is to the conscience, depending 
upon and keeping yourself in the line of 
the quickening and awakening power of the 
Holy Spirit.” 

The prospects of the Diocese of Southern 
Ohio for the future may be regarded as in a 





SOUTHERN OHIO 


706 


SPONSORS 


large degree favorable. All her machinery, 
so to speak, is in good working order; no 
serious differences, either in doctrine or in 
the conduct of worship, prevail. Harmony 
in an unusual degree marks her Conven¬ 
tional proceedings. Her Liturgy is now ap¬ 
preciated in places where, at no distant pe¬ 
riod, it was an offense. Her festivals and 
fasts are coming into favor, and to some 
extent into observance, by those without, in¬ 
stead of being regarded as old superstitions. 
The claims of her ministry, as derived 
through Episcopal authority, are better un¬ 
derstood and more indulgently allowed. And 
the time seems near at hand when, under 
Divine favor and blessing, and faithfulness 
on the part of her people, a large degree of 
prosperity will mark her advancement. 

Among the hinderances which have hith¬ 
erto retarded the advance of the Church in 
Ohio (both north and south) has been the 
large and constant drain upon the number 
of her clergy for the supply of regions far¬ 
ther West. This probably was due to the 
geographical position of the State, as being in 
what was formerly considered as the West, 
and adjacent to the rapidly forming new 
Dioceses and Missionary Jurisdictions. 
These naturally called for help to those 
nearest at hand, and Ohio suffered greatly 
from this cause. The same may be said in 
respect to her Laity. Of these, very large 
numbers have removed farther West. In 
this manner many parishes have suffered 
great loss, and some have been wellnigh 
depleted. It is likely that, as means of 
travel and communication between all parts 
of the country have now become easy and 
rapid, these hinderances will in a measure 
disappear. 

In the division of the Diocese of Ohio, 
although the line of separation adopted 
left her Theological and Literary Insti¬ 
tutions in the Northern Diocese, yet care¬ 
ful regard was observed that each divis¬ 
ion should have a joint and equal share in 
the interests and rights of these Institutions. 
Only in one or two particulars is it other¬ 
wise. By the terms of the Constitution 
(Art. viii.) adopted when the Institutions 
were founded, it was made an essential con¬ 
dition that the “ Bishop of Ohio” shodld be 
forever, ex officio, President of the Board 
of Trustees, and by Art. ix. the Theological 
Seminary is put under his immediate charge 
and supervision. It is to be understood that 
the Board of Trustees is the corporate au¬ 
thority of all the Institutions, and, as such, 
has control of all the property held for their 
support, whether used for the Seminary 
proper, or for Kenyon College, or for Pre¬ 
paratory Schools, the corporate name being 
“The Board of Trustees of the Theological 
Seminary of the Diocese of Ohio.” 

Except in the particulars above specified 
the Southern Diocese possesses equal rights 
and powers in the Institutions, being enti¬ 
tled to an equal number of representatives 
in the Board, and consequently to an equal 


share in their government. Dioceses con¬ 
tiguous to Ohio are also given an interest in 
these Institutions. They are entitled to a 
representation in the BoaVd. They may 
each send two Trustees, one clerical and one 
lay, with rights co-ordinate with those of 
the other members of that body. And as 
soon as certain measures, recently initiated, 
can be perfected by the assent of other au¬ 
thorities, the Bishops of the aforementioned 
contiguous Dioceses will also be entitled to 
seats in the Board. 

It is a matter of no small congratulation 
that the plans adopted for the equal co¬ 
working of both Dioceses, and for enlisting 
the interest and aid of the adjacent Dioceses, 
in these Institutions have resulted most 
favorably. The utmost harmony has pre¬ 
vailed, and great good is anticipated from 
these wise and liberal adjustments. Gam- 
bier, the seat of these noble Foundations, is 
in a county (Knox) adjoining the Southern 
Diocese, and but a few miles from the divid¬ 
ing line. It is very near also to the geo¬ 
graphical centre of the State. It is beautiful 
for situation and natural scenery, and 
beautiful also from improvements in build¬ 
ings, parks, and grounds. It is unsurpassed 
for healthfulness. The faculties of these 
several Institutions are men of eminent 
scholarship and large experience in teach¬ 
ing, and nothing seems wanting to make 
this famed Seat of Learning equal in effi¬ 
ciency and usefulness to any in the land. 

Rev. Erastus Burr, D.D. 

Spirit. Vide Holy Ghost, Soul. 

Sponsors. Persons who make vows for 
others are called “ Sponsors.” They are 
also in the Church called “God-fathers” 
and “God-mothers.” The persons who 
stand with adult candidates for baptism are 
spoken of in the rubric as God-fathers and 
God-mothers, but in the body of the service 
they are called “ Witnesses.” 

The “ Witnesses” make no vows for the 
adult person, but they assent to the injunc¬ 
tion to put him in mind of his vow, promise, 
and profession, and to see that he is rightly 
instructed in God’s Word. The Witnesses 
in adult baptism maj^ be spoken of as Spon¬ 
sors, but that use of the word is not entirely 
correct, inasmuch as they make no vows for 
the person baptized. 

The word Sponsors is correctly applied, 
whereas, in the case of infants and persons 
not having reached years of discretion, 
some others stand forward and make vows 
for those who are admitted to the member¬ 
ship of the Church by Baptism. 

The office of Sponsor is of ancient author¬ 
ity. It is mentioned by the early Fathers 
as existing in their time, and has always 
continued in the Anglican Church. The 
qualifications for the position, while never 
having been authoritatively defined, may be 
gathered from the Baptismal Office itself, 
where such duties are specified for the 
Sponsor that no one but a devout person can 
properly engage to perform them. How can 






SPRINGFIELD 


707 


SPRINGFIELD 


one engage to renounce all evil for the child 
if he is the slave of sin himself? How can 
he say that the child shall he taught to be¬ 
lieve the Articles of the Christian Faith if 
he does not believe them himself? How 
can he promise that the child will obey 
God’s commands if he is living in disobe¬ 
dience himself? 

Consistency demands that the sponsor 
should be a practical believer. It is not re¬ 
quired that he.be eminent for saintliness, 
but he should be a sincere Christian. The 
neglect of duty on the part of sponsors 
shows that too often the office is entered 
upon without any real understanding of 
what it involves, and with nc true desire to 
do what is best for the child’s welfare. 

It is an absolute perversion of the spon- 
soriaToffice to think of it as a mere formal 
appendage to a naming ceremony. If a 
sponsor think of himself as merely witnessing 
the giving a name to the child, and regards 
his work as ending there, he has not under¬ 
stood the matter at all. He is to be the 
child’s religious friend, watching over him 
as opportunity will permit, seeing that he is 
taught and trained in a Christian way, and 
is finally brought to the Bishop to be con¬ 
firmed. The relationship of the sponsor to 
the child ought always to be such that the 
latter may confidently look upon him as a 
safe teacher and a reliable guide, and expect 
from him a full measure of Christian sym¬ 
pathy and help. Rev. G. W. Shinn. 

Springfield, the Diocese of. The Dio¬ 
cese of Springfield is composed of all that 
part of the State of Illinois lying south of 
the counties of Woodford, Ford, Living¬ 
ston, and Iroquois, and east of the Illinois 
River. It has an area of 30,000 square 
miles, and had in 1880 a population of 
1,300,000 persons. 

The consent of the Bishop and Conven¬ 
tion of Illinois to the organization of this 
new Diocese was given in September, 1877 
A.D. The consent of the General Conven¬ 
tion having been obtained at its session in 
October of the same year, the Diocese was 
formally organized at the Primary Conven¬ 
tion, held in Springfield (December 18, 1877 

A.D.). 

The division of the Diocese of Illinois 
was suggested by Bishop Whitehouse, in the 
33d Annual Convention in 1870 A.D., when 
the matter was referred to a committee of 
six clergymen and six laymen, with the 
Bishop, "it was proposed to divide the Dio¬ 
cese into three, but the proposed action 
failed to receive the consent of the General 
Convention of 1871. The subject of divis¬ 
ion was considered in each of the Conven¬ 
tions of 1872, 1873, and 1874 a.d. The 
decease of Bishop Whitehouse, in 1874 a.d., 
prevented, for the time, any further action 
on the subject. Bishop McLaren, the suc¬ 
cessor of Bishop Whitehouse, in his ad¬ 
dress to the Diocesan Convention of 1876 
a.d. , intimated his willingness to consent 
to such a division of the Diocese as would 


secure the consent of the General Conven¬ 
tion. The first definite step towards securing 
such compliance with canonical requirements 
as would render the division of the Diocese 
practicable was taken on the 23d of April, 
by the Churchmen of Quincy, who conveyed 
all the property of the two parishes in 
Quincy to the Bishop of Illinois in trust, to 
be reconveyed to the Bishop of Quincy, 
when such person should exist, and pledged 
the sum of $3500 annually for the support 
of the Bishop and an assistant clergyman. 
.The lines at first proposed for the new Dio¬ 
cese of Quincy not meeting the approval of 
a majority of those concerned, they were 
modified so as to include the existing limits 
of the Diocese. At the meeting of the 
Diocesan Convention of 1877 a.d., arrange¬ 
ments were perfected for the division of the 
Diocese into three on the lines since adopted. 

While this division was being carried out 
for the purpose of obtaining increased Epis- 
. copal supervision, the idea was steadily kept 
in view that division was not necessarily 
separation. The’plan of a federation of the 
Dioceses within the State, as authorized by 
the General Convention, was contemplated 
from the first. 

At the Primary Convention for the or¬ 
ganization of the Diocese of Springfield, 
held in the city of Springfield on the 18th 
of December, 1877 a.d., 17 clergymen were 
entitled to seats, and 19 parishes to represen¬ 
tation. Of these, 16 clergymen and the 
representatives of 15 parishes were actually 
present. On the first ballot for Bishop, the 
Rev. Geo. F. Seymour, S.T.D., Dean of the 
General Theological Seminary, was unani¬ 
mously elected by the concurrent votes of 
the clergy and laity. When the consent of 
a majority of the Standing Committees had 
been obtained, Dr. Seymour, acting under 
the advice of his Bishop and the members 
of the Standing Committee of the Seminary, 
declined the election. At the first Annual 
Convention, held on the 28th day of May, 
1878 a.d. , 15 clergymen were entitled to seats, 
of whom 14 were present, together with the 
representatives of 12 parishes. The Rev. Dr. 
Seymour was unanimously requested to with¬ 
draw his declination. He consented to do 
so, and was consecrated as first Bishop of 
Springfield, in Trinity Church, New York, 
on St. Barnabas’ day, 1878 a.d. Ten Bish¬ 
ops united in the laying on of hands, among 
whom was one of the English Colonial 
Bishops, thus again uniting the two lines of 
succession. 

The harmony of the Diocese, thus happily 
begun, has continued to the present time. 
No party issue has ever been raised or party 
vote cast in the Convention. The Diocese 
has grown, as shown by its statistics, with 
unexampled rapidity. The number of clergy 
has risen from 16 in 1878 a.d. to 42 in 1883 
a.d. ; the number of parishes and missions 
from 21 to 47 ; the communicants have in¬ 
creased from 1425 to 2129 ; the amount of 
contributions from $22,685 to $38,884. An 




STALLS 


708 


STEPHEN (SAINT) 


orphanage, supported by the general offer¬ 
ings of the Diocese, and a school of high 
grade for girls, are in successful operation in 
Springfield, and five grammar schools for 
boys, under the patronage and supervision 
of the Bishop, have been organized in as 
many places. The beginning of a Diocesan 
Library, about 500 volumes, has been made. 

The Diocese has been the first to introduce 
into the Church in America the office of 
Archdeacon, as it exists in the Church of 
England. The duty of this officer is spe¬ 
cially to look after the real estate and other 
property of the Church in the Diocese, the 
security of titles, and the proper care of 
church buildings, plate, and vestments. 
There are at present three Archdeaconries, 
those of Springfield, Alton, and Cairo. The 
ancient office of Rural Dean is also recog¬ 
nized and adopted by the Diocese. There 
are six Kural Deaneries. 

In the legislation of the Diocese, the in¬ 
herent rights of the Episcopate are recog¬ 
nized by the provision that no change in the 
Constitution or Canons shall be made with¬ 
out the consent of the Bishop. An impor¬ 
tant change was made in 1882 in the time 
of holding parish meetings for the election 
of vestries. In every other Diocese, so far 
as known, these meetings are held on Easter- 
Monday, thus bringing an election which is 
often a fruitful source of contention imme¬ 
diately after the solemnities of Holy Week. 
In this Diocese parish meetings are held on 
the Monday before Advent. In the year 
1882 a.d. the name Convention was changed 
to Synod, and the word “ male” was stricken 
from the description of qualified voters at 
parish elections. 

The following are the statistics of the Di¬ 
ocese reported to the Synod of 1883 a.d. : 

Clergy, 42; parishes and missions, 47; 
baptized, 311; confirmed, 270; communi¬ 
cants, 2129; Sunday-school scholars, 2212. 
Contributions: parochial, $33,174.24; gen¬ 
eral, $547.24; diocesan, $5162.87; total, 
$38,884.32. Rev. J. D. Easter, D.D. 

Stalls. (Vide Sedilia.) To say that a 
person has a stall is only another way of 
saying that he has an office in that Church. 

Standing. The rubric directs standing 
at certain times in the service. We stand 
at the opening of the service as an act of 
reverence. So in acts of Praise, as in the 
Anthems and the Hymns, and as show¬ 
ing reverence when the Gospel is read, and 
when notice of the Communion is given. 
Standing in prayer was a Jewish custom as 
well as kneeling. Solomon knelt, so also 
Daniel. The Pharisee stood. Standing is 
now the posture of the Easterns in the Sun¬ 
day services, except for the fifty days of 
Pentecost. At Baptism the congregation 
should stand till after the baptism is ad¬ 
ministered. The adult at Baptism should 
also stand when receiving that sacrament. 
Those to be joined in matrimony should 
stand till the benediction, when they should 
kneel. Indeed, the rule may be held uni¬ 


versal that the congregation should not 
kneel till so directed in the rubric. As for 
those to be married, kneeling even at the 
benediction is not ordered, but only it is a 
proper posture. But the Priest stands in 
token of authority at the Absolution, in 
reading the Commandments, in reading the 
Prayer for the whole estate of Christ’s 
Church Militant, at the Consecration of the 
Elements, and at the Benediction when all 
the congregation are still kneeling. The 
decency and reverence of these rules is evi¬ 
dent to all who consider that the worship 
of God is more than a mere form, and has 
a meaning and is directed to an Infinite 
Person. 

Stations, were the assembling of the con¬ 
gregations at certain services which were 
protracted, so that the days on which these 
services occurred were called stated days, 
and the assembly a station, and it was held 
as a fast. The station or fast was explained 
“ as an encampment, which protects us from 
the attacks of the devil” (St. Ambrose, Ser¬ 
mon 25). The congregations on the Sunday 
later acquired that name. The processions 
called stations were of later origin, but the 
“stations” of Passion-Week are of quite a 
later date, and had a close connection with 
image worship. 

Stephen, St. The first martyr of the 
Church, the first witness to the Faith of 
Christ who sealed it with his blood, the 
leader of the noble army of martyrs. A 
man full of Faith and of the Holy Ghost, 
filled with wisdom, grace, and power. He 
was chosen with six others to be the first 
deacons of the Church. By his faith and 
power he did such great wonders and mir¬ 
acles among the people, and then disputed 
with such wondrous force, that he overbore 
all opposition. He was arrested upon a charge 
which, in the evil sense the Jews placed on 
his words, was probably correctly quoted, but 
in the fact and the intention with which it 
was preferred wholly false;—that he had 
spoken blasphemous words against Moses 
and against God, which they made out from 
his assertion that Jesus of Nazareth would 
destroy the Temple and remove the Law. 
Before the Sanhedrim he rose equal to the 
trial. His face was as it had been the face 
of an Angel. So far from retracting, he 
only placed in a clearer light the facts. God 
is not bound to any one place as holy. Horeb 
was holy. Sinai was holy, as well as the 
Temple. Then he suddenly broke out into 
a vehement invective, seeing his words made 
no impression upon his audience, and in his 
ecstasy the heavens opened and he raptur¬ 
ously exclaimed, “ I see the heavens opened, 
and the Son of Man standing on the Right 
hand of God.” It was this that maddened 
them beyond endurance, and they who were 
stately judges transformed themselves into 
angry executioners. They hurried him out 
of the city, and casting their garments at 
the feet of a “ young man whose name was 
Saul,” they stoned him. Calling upon God 




STIPENDIARIES 


709 


SUFFRAGAN 


and saying, “ Lord Jesus, receive my 
spirit,” he kneeled down and cried with 
a loud voice, “ Lord, lay not this sin to 
their charge,” and when he had said this 
he fell asleep. The worth in which he was 
held and the might of his character were 
shown by the devout men who, in the midst 
of a dangerous persecution, could bury him 
with that state which is implied by the words, 
“ they together bore him to his burial and 
made great lamentation over him.” His must 
have been a most glorious character. Energy, 
knowledge, power, steadfastness, unflinch¬ 
ing courage, a loveliness of mind that trans¬ 
figured his face to angelic beauty, all con¬ 
centred upon this, one of the mightiest of the 
early converts to Christianity. Of the depth 
of the impression he made upon those of 
bis own day we have the best proof in that by 
the direction of the Holy Spirit St. Luke, 
who may well have been an eye-witness of 
it, records the history proportionally more 
fully than any other single part of his record. 
St. Stephen’s speech, in the ease and readi¬ 
ness, in the freedom and force of his argu¬ 
ments, stands forth as a model. Its criticism 
Dean Stanley shows is natural and just. It 
differs from the record of the Hebrew, where 
we may well suppose tradition would sup¬ 
plement the concise statements of Holy 
Writ. These have provoked much discus¬ 
sion, into which we cannot enter, but the re¬ 
sult has always been to show how accurate 
the different writers of the New Testament 
really were, and that there is no necessary 
disagreement if the statements are fairly 
valued. St. Stephen’s day falls upon the 26th 
of December. In art he is represented with 
a mural crown. 

Stipendiaries. Members of choirs and 
other officers who were paid salaries were 
usually called Stipendiaries, in distinction 
from others who were supported from the 
Fund or Endowment. 

Stole. Vide Vestments. 

Subcantor. ( Vide Succentor.) As sub¬ 
chanter he was the representative for the 
Precentor, and to him was assigned the duty 
of arranging the musical services of the feasts 
of the second class. 

Subdeacon. An office which had an 
early existence in the Church, but which the 
English Church dropped at the Reformation, 
together with the other minor orders, 
Acolytes, Exurcists, Readers, and Door-keep¬ 
ers. " It is not in use in the Anglican 
Church at all now, while it is still in use in 
the Eastern and Latin Churches. The 
name was given from the duties which ap¬ 
pertained to the office,—to serve the deacon 
in filling his ministry. 

Sublapsarian. They who hold that God 
foreknew but did npt predestine Adam’s 
fall. But that the decree of Predestination 
did take effect immediately upon all of 
Adam’s descendants. This mode of attempt¬ 
ing to avoid the logical consequences of the 
supralapsarian theory—for both can be but 
theories—cannot relieve the difficulties by 


merely removing their action a step lower. 
The consequences of the decree of Predesti¬ 
nation, whether before the fall or after it, do 
not change the terrible, logical inference that 
God is the author of sin, nor do they the 
less render the Scriptures of none effect, 
which distinctly teach us that God willeth 
that all men should repent and be saved, 
by the mere change of the point at which 
the supposed decree of Predestination was 
operative. The consequences must neces¬ 
sarily be the same to us. It is only, there¬ 
fore, a mere nominal escape from the doc¬ 
trines which flow from an extreme state¬ 
ment of Predestination, which excludes the 
apparently but not really opposed fact of 
freedom of will. (Vide Predestination.) 

Substance. It is the “ Being,” existence. 
We are of the substance of our parents, 
different in person, but of the same sub¬ 
stance, limited by the same conditions, hav¬ 
ing the same general capacities. The unity of 
our human nature, which we all feel but can¬ 
not readily express, is the common substance, 
as it were, of our nature. We as individuals 
with varying abilities are yet tied down to 
the common limits which time and mortal 
nature and the opportunities of the hour 
furnish. By using these as instruments 
with those abilities which belong to us, con¬ 
trolled by and controlling events, we ad¬ 
vance or retard development of our powers, 
but we cannot go beyond. Our substance 
is created. But of the Supreme Being we 
cannot limit our conceptions to these things. 
God is a Spirit and self-existent. Of the con¬ 
ditions of His self-existence we cannot con¬ 
ceive. But we know Him to be a substance, 
unbegotten, eternal. The substance of God is 
One, Sole, Self-existent; subject to noth¬ 
ing that can affect any other being in the uni¬ 
verse. We confess to be in the three Persons 
of the Trinity, —The Father, Eternal, 
Unbegotten, the Son of One substance with 
the Father, the Holy Ghost proceed¬ 
ing from the Substance of the Father and 
through the Son sent to us. It is a mystery 
incomprehensible to finite minds, not con¬ 
tradictory of our other knowledge of divine 
things, but above our reach and known only 
by revelation, but not solvable by reason 
alone. As our substance is common to 
many individuals, it is not beyond this anal¬ 
ogy to confess the Unity and the eircumin- 
cession in the substance of God,— of the 
Three Persons, the Father, the Son, and 
the Holy Ghost. 

Succentor. The leader of the second 
choir, as St. Augustine explains the use of 
the Psalms antiphonally, or he was the leader 
of the chorus, as St. Basil seems to imply in 
explaining the singing of the Psalms in his 
day. 

Suffragan. The Bishops in a province 
under an Archbishop or Metropolitan are 
called Suffragans. So the Archbishop of 
Canterbury has twenty-two Suffragan-Bish¬ 
ops in his Province of Canterbury. The 
Archbishop of York has eight in his Prov- 






SUFFRAGES 


710 


SUNDAY 


ince of York. But besides the use of the 
title there is another, which forms a part 
in the compound title, Suffragan-Bishop. 
Anciently the Chorepiscopi, or country Bish¬ 
ops (vide Chorepiscopi), were doing a mis¬ 
sionary work subordinate to the Bishop of 
the See. His was a city, they were in the 
country in some sort as his commissaries, 
with equal spiritual prerogatives, which 
they exercised under him. The order was 
removed after a long struggle (when its 
missionary work had made the Church a 
national one) in the several countries in 
Europe, and so it disappeared from Eng¬ 
land. But in the spoliation of the monas¬ 
teries it was intended to endow twenty-six 
Sees, to be practically chorepiscopates under 
the title of Suffragan-Bishoprics. Of these, 
one was actually filled by Hodgkin at Park¬ 
er’s consecration. The Act of Henry VIII. 
ordering the Suffragan-Bishoprics fell into 
desuetude, but it was held could be revived 
at any time. It has been so revived in 
England that three, Dover, Bedford, and 
Colchester, are filled, and it is proposed that 
the Isle of Wight shall be also filled. 

Suffrages. The votes of assent and of 
approbation ; and hence the assenting peti¬ 
tions of the people in the Litany are called 
the suffrages, and the versicles and responses 
• after the Creed in the Morning and Evening 
Prayer, in the Visitation of the Sick and of 
Prisoners, and Offices of the Prayers at Sea. 
These suffrages are very ancient in substance, 
and there is sufficient similarity to the 
prayers called the Ectene in the Eastern 
Church to lead the masters in Liturgies to 
suppose a common origin for them. The 
suffrages for some of the Lenten offices in 
the Mozarabic Liturgy are of great beauty. 

Sunday. God, from the first, set apart 
one day in seven for His service. This was 
the seventh day, because He is said to have 
“rested” on that day from His work. The 
sanctification of it by the Jews was their 
acknowledgment that they were worshipers 
of Him as their only Creator; and also 
their proclamation of Him as peculiarly 
their Redeemer from the bondage of Egypt; 
and their deliverance on that day at the Red 
Sea was Moses’ argument with them to keep 
the Sabbath. But this rescue of Israel by 
Moses was only a type and pledge of a 
spiritual deliverance by Christ. Therefore 
the shadow must give place to the substance, 
and God is now to be worshiped as the One 
who has fulfilled the promise; and the 
Christian, after six days of work, also sanc¬ 
tifies a day, to acknowledge the same ob¬ 
ligation to his Creator, and to his Redeemer, 
who, on the first day of the week, by rising 
from the dead, delivered him from death. 

The change from the seventh day to the 
first was made by the earliest Christians 
with sufficient reason; for if the Jews 
sanctified the seventh day in gratitude for 
temporal deliverance, which was only a 
pledge of a spiritual, surely the Christian 
has more cogent reason to sanctify that day 


on which the pledge was fulfilled by Christ’s 
rising, and He was delivered from spiritual 
captivity, His enemies overwhelmed, and He 
led, not to an earthly Canaan, but to an in¬ 
heritance incorruptible in heaven. And we 
have abundant testimony of Scripture that 
the first day of the week, or Sunday, has 
always been the day which Christians have 
consecrated to God’s service: “Upon the 
first day of the week” “the disciples came 
together to break bread” (Acts xx. 7), etc., 
etc. And God approved it, for it was upon 
this day that the Holy Ghost came down 
visibly upon the Apostles, to qualify them 
for their ministry in the evangelization of 
the world. This change continued, and Ig¬ 
natius emphasizes the fact, when he urges 
the Magnesians “not to sabbatize with the 
Jews, but to lead a life agreeable to the 
Lord’s day, on which our life was raised 
from the dead by Him” (i.e., Christ) “ and 
by His death.” 

It is called the Lord’s day in Scripture ; 
“ I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day” 
(Rev. i. 10). 

It is called Sunday by many early writers, 
as Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and 
others. It was originally the day dedicated 
by the heathen to the sun, and early Chris¬ 
tian apologists in speaking of the Church 
to heathen governors, used the name with 
which they were familiar. In the edicts of 
the first Christian emperors it is almost 
always called Sunday. The name is appro¬ 
priately retained, because Christians dedi¬ 
cate it to the Saviour, whom Malachi 
called the Sun of Righteousness (ch. iv. 2). 

It is only recently that this day has been 
called the Sabbath. In a sense it may be so 
spoken of, since it is a day of rest; but 
Scripture and all primitive ecclesiastical 
writers apply the term Sabbath only to Satur¬ 
day, the Jewish sacred day. 

Chrysostom says that it was sometimes 
called The Day of Bread, because of the 
general custom in the primitive Church of 
meeting for “ the breaking of bread” on 
every Sunday throughout the year. 

Pliny, a heathen magistrate soon after St. 
John’s death, learned from some Christians 
that their custom was to meet together 
early in the morning before light, on a cer¬ 
tain fixed day (which Ignatius explains was 
Sunday), to sing hymns to Christ as their 
God, and bind themselves with a sacrament 
to do no evil, and afterwards to partake of 
a common feast. 

To secure proper observance of Sunday, 
it was ordered by Constantine that all pro¬ 
ceedings at law be suspended on that day, ex¬ 
cept in cases of absolute necessity, or when 
there was opportunity for some eminent 
charity ; and all Christian laws forbade the 
frequenting of games or sports on that day. 
In time the Jews grew careless in observ¬ 
ance of their Sabbath, spending it in idle¬ 
ness and indulgence, and heathen practices 
were continually tending to divert Chris¬ 
tians, and therefore the fourth Council of 





SUNDAY 


711 


SUNDAY-SCHOOL WORK 


Carthage decreed, “ That if any one forsook 
the solemn assembly of the Church on the 
Lord’s day to go to a public show, he should 
be excommunicated.” Persons were liable 
also to excommunication who absented 
themselves for three Lord’s days from the 
public assembly without good reason, if they 
went to the games at any time on that day, 
left the church while the Bishop was preach¬ 
ing, refused to join in the prayers or receive 
the Holy Communion, or held or frequented 
a separate assembly. 

Recreations and relaxations for health, or 
to promote the more proper observance of 
the holy day, were permitted. Therefore, 
strict as the early Church was in observing 
fasts, yet no fast was ever allowed upon 
Sunday, not even in Lent; but these, in 
honor of the risen Lord, were made days of 
refreshment, recreation, and religious re¬ 
joicing. Tertullian says that they regarded 
it a crime to fast on that day. St. Ambrose 
condemns the Manichees for fasting on Sun¬ 
day, because they thus in effect denied the 
Lord’s resurrection. The fourth Council of 
Carthage reckons him no Catholic who fasts 
upon that day ; and the first council of 
Braga particularly anathematized a number 
of sects because they persevered in this 
custom. 

So eager were the early Christians to at¬ 
tend Divine worship, that nothing but sick¬ 
ness or great necessity, such as imprisonment 
or banishment, could detain them from it; 
and they did not regard persecution as an 
excuse for forsaking the assembling of them¬ 
selves together (Heb. x. 25), and when they 
could not meet by day, did so at night. 
Their zeal for the observance of Sunday 
showed itself in long vigils preceding the day, 
begun of necessity in times of persecution, 
but continued afterwards as useful exercises 
of piety. They usually had sermons twice 
on that day. But where there was no ser¬ 
mon in the evening, they still had evening 
prayer, which they considered themselves 
obliged to attend as a necessary part of 
public worship and observance of the day. 
In obedience to St. Paul’s injunction, “ on 
the first day of the week” they made liberal 
offerings for the poor and for religious 
purposes. 

The enforcement of the observance of 
Sunday throughout mediaeval times was a 
very important factor in the process of dis¬ 
ciplining and Christianizing the wild tribes 
whom the Church had to evangelize. And 
while we find constant laxness of observance, 
beside this, we find as persistent, urgent 
teaching and canonical enactment upon its 
being kept as a holy day. It was, it is, 
emphatically a holy day : “This is the day 
the Lord hath made: we will rejoice and 
be glad in it.” The neglect of it is a pol¬ 
lution, and, without any exaggeration, it 
may be asserted, that wherever this day is 
publicly desecrated, then trouble, social and 
political, has brooded over the country. 
The Lord’s day is a blessing we should 


zealously guard as a protection to our land. 
Not in a narrow, pharisaical spirit, but in 
the broader and holier ground of a thank¬ 
ful, rejoicing spirit. To better preserve it, 
the Church has enacted this Canon, con¬ 
ceived and issued in this spirit (Tit. i., Can. 
xx.): “All persons within this Church shall 
celebrate and keep the Lord’s Day, com¬ 
monly called Sunday, in hearing the Word 
of God read and taught, in private and 
public prayer, in other exercises of devo¬ 
tion, and in acts of charity, using all godly 
and sober conversation.” 

Like other monuments, the continued ob¬ 
servance of this day, as a matter of course, 
by nations widely distant, not only perpet¬ 
uates the memory, but demonstrates the 
historical fact of Christ’s Resurrection. 
And nations have been thankful to cling to 
the observance of that which, for nearly 
two thousand years, has borne silent testi¬ 
mony to that greatest of events upon which 
all of man’s hopes for eternity depend. 

Authorities: Bingham’s Antiquities, 
Chapin’s Primitive Ch., Wheatley on the 
Book of Common Prayer, Nelson’s Festi¬ 
vals and Fasts. See also Smith’s Diet, of 
Christian Antiquities, Hessey’s Bampton 
Lecture, Sunday. 

Rev. T. G. Littell. 

Sunday-School Work in the Church. 

The relationship of the Sunday-School to 
the Church is determined by two principles 
which have always been held, and which 
must always be maintained. 

The first is that every child, should be bap¬ 
tized , and thus brought into covenant rela¬ 
tions with God. The second is that every 
baptized child is to be taught by parents , 
sponsors , and pastor the truths of the Chris¬ 
tian Faith; should be trained to live a 
Christian life; and should be encouraged to 
seek help in the use of the means of grace. 

These two principles make the Christian 
nurture of the young so vitally important 
that nothing can ever be regarded as a sub¬ 
stitute for the personal work of pastor, 
parent, and sponsor. 

Other agencies may become helps, but 
never can they be substitutes. 

The Sunday-School is a helping agency. 
It supplements the work which is to be 
done by those who are directly responsible 
for the child’s welfare, and it supplies some 
training where there is neglect on the part 
of any of the three classes of responsible 
parties before mentioned. 

In no case, however, can the Sunday- 
School relieve pastor, or parent, or sponsor 
of the duty of imparting that instruction 
and training which are needed by the bap¬ 
tized child to enable him to understand the 
terms of the covenant under which he is to 
God, and to perform the practical duties 
growing out of it. 

There will always be the need of home 
training in the ways of godliness, always 
the need of that watchfulness and sympathy 
which a sponsor should manifest, and always 





SUNDAY-SCHOOL WORK 


712 


SUNDAY-SCHOOL WORK 


the need of that fidelity in teaching and 
guiding which a pastor should exercise. 

The Sunday-School, therefore, cannot be 
thought of as an independent organization , 
or as having a mission separate from the 
Church , or as working in lines and by methods 
which are not under the supervision of the 
clergyman who is the spiritual guide of all 
in his parish, of the young as well as of the 
old. 

The baptized child is already a member of 
the Church of Christ. His baptism was not 
a mere ceremony in which he received a 
name, hut a sacrament in which he became 
“ a member of Christ, a child of God, and 
an inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven.” 

There is contemplated the period when the 
baptized child, after faithful teaching and 
training, will realize the relationship in 
which lie stands to the Lord, will turn to 
Him with sorrow for sin and faith in Christ, 
and will take upon himself his baptismal 
vows, seeking in the Apostolic Rite of Con¬ 
firmation the gift of the Holy Spirit to be 
a faithful disciple of the Lord Jesus. His 
confirmation admits him to the Holy Com¬ 
munion, in which Sacrament he is taught 
not only to remember the love of his divine 
Master, but also to feed spiritually upon 
Him. From Baptism to Confirmation, from 
Confirmation to Communion, and from Com¬ 
munion to a life of personal fidelity and use¬ 
fulness,—these are the well-marked lines of 
growth in the history of a Christian child 
properly trained according to the Church’s 
ways. 

Very prominent, then, among the means to 
be used for this training is the catechising by 
the pastor. It is hardly to be thought that 
the spirit of the Church’s provision for the 
catechising of the children is complied with 
in the hard, dry, technical recitation of the 
Church Catechism sometimes in vogue. 

While this summary of the things “ which 
a Christian ought to know and to believe” 
should be committed to memory, its mere 
recitation is not sufficient. It should be re¬ 
garded as the ground-work, the outline of 
the range of truth which is to be taught and 
illustrated ; the convenient series of hooks 
and pegs on which to hang the many topics 
included in a religious education. 

Catechising the children openly in the 
church is required of the clergy and is faith¬ 
fully performed by many of them, although 
in varying methods, some calling the chil¬ 
dren together fora Children’s Service, others 
going regularly into their Sunday-Schools, 
and others meeting the spirit of the require¬ 
ment in ways which their own judgment 
finds most effectual. 

The children come especially under the 
pastor’s training as they approach that age 
when they reach the period of discretion, 
that is, when they are old enough for Con¬ 
firmation. 

To meet their needs, and to enable them 
to come to that Apostolic Rite properly pre¬ 
pared, it is the usage to form a Confirmation 


Class in the parish, where for a length of 
time they receive the clergyman’s especial 
instructions. These instructions cover quite 
a range of topics, including a review of the 
elementary principles of religion, the prac¬ 
tical duties of the Christian life, the history 
and meaning of Confirmation, and the nature 
and benefits of the Holy Communion. 

The Confirmation class, or rather the Con¬ 
firmation instruction, holds a most important 
part in this Church in the whole matter of 
the religious training of the young. Al¬ 
though no definite form has been given to 
it, it is felt by almost all to be one of the 
most important of the pastor’s duties. 

This brief summary of some of the things 
the Church expects the clergy to do in the 
way of teaching the young leads us on now 
to consider the work of the Sunday-School. 

Regarding the Sunday-School as a help in 
teaching and training the young, and re¬ 
garding the Church Catechism as containing 
the summary of the things to be taught, we 
think first of the organization of the Sunday- 
School. The school should not be mob-like. 
If it is not organized it defeats its own pur¬ 
poses, but its organization should be simple. 
Not many rules are needed, and not many 
officers. No matter how large the number 
of scholars, the machinery of the school 
should never be elaborate or cumbersome. 

Some one must be at its head ; some one 
else is to record attendance, and attend to 
various like details ; some one is needed to 
change library-books, and a sufficient num¬ 
ber of teachers are required to permit the 
scholars to be grouped into departments, or 
else to be divided into classes. 

A Superintendent, Secretary, Librarian, 
and Teachers are the usual working force, 
but to these may be added a Treasurer and 
a Chorister or Organist. 

Very much of the efficiency of a school de¬ 
pends upon the kind of a superintendent it has. 
If he is an active, faithful, and pious man, 
with a fair share of tact and earnestness, 
and disposed to co-operate with the rector, 
he will find his position one of great useful¬ 
ness, and he can do much towards making 
the school what it ought to be. 

On the other hand, an indolent, neglect¬ 
ful, and blundering man, or one who cannot 
work with the clergyman, is manifestly in¬ 
competent to have charge of the Sunday- 
School. 

Whether the clergyman himself should 
act as superintendent is often debated. It 
is certainly helpful if a good layman can 
be found to attend to the many details which 
the position involves, 60 that the rector may 
have more time and opportunity for religious 
instruction. 

Some of the clergy find it a very good 
plan to put the opening services and various 
matters of detail in charge of the superin¬ 
tendent, but they, the clergy, make it a 
point to be present some ten or fifteen min¬ 
utes before the session closes to catechise the 
children upon the lessons for the day. 






SUNDAY-SCHOOL WORK 


713 


SUNDAY-SCHOOL WORK 


It is hardly necessary to speak here of the 
duties of the other officers, except to remark 
that one of the most useful persons in a 
school is the chorister, who can teach the 
children to sing. 

There ought always to be some one with 
sufficient musical ability, and also with that 
necessary enthusiasm to teach new hymns, 
chants, and carols, from time to time, and 
to lead the singing at the regular sessions. 

A good chorister is a treasure in the Sun¬ 
day-School. Something should be said here 
on the general subject of the music and 
hymns suitable for children. We have, on 
thfe one hand, a great mass of light trifling 
melodies attached to very silly and some¬ 
times very erroneous words. On the other, 
we have heavy harmonies with very little 
melody, and words that may suit the piety 
of adult years, but which are not at all 
suitable for children. 

The number of really good hymns and 
tunes for children is very small. They have 
to be searched for. It is certainly desirable 
to avoid the trashy, sensational music so 
persistently advertised, and equally desir¬ 
able to avoid the heavy sort which children 
cannot and should not use. Where the 
hymns in the Hymnal are suitable, and 
where the music is within the power of the 
children, it is manifestly proper that they 
should be made familiar with them, as like¬ 
wise with the Canticles in the Prayer-Book. 
Nowhere, however, are more care and judg¬ 
ment needed than in the selection of hymns 
and tunes for the Sunday-School. 

Passing on to the qualifications needed to 
make one a good teacher , we are met by the 
fact that many of the persons who are avail¬ 
able as teachers have had very little train¬ 
ing, and do not always have the right con¬ 
ception of the work before them. 

It is a pity that more of the older persons, 
the fathers and mothers, do not take classes. 
Too often this work is handed over to 
young men and young women, who, what¬ 
ever may be their zeal, do not always have 
sound judgment in dealing with the children. 
But given the average teacher, the person 
who wants to be useful, and who is willing 
to go to some trouble to accomplish a good 
result, much may be done by the rector or 
superintendent in the way of Teachers' 
Meetings fior the study of the Lessons. 

In many places the Teachers’ Meeting is 
regularly held each week, and the lesson 
appointed for the following Sunday is gone 
over with great care, so that each one goes 
to his class with some fair understanding of 
what is to be taught. There are few expe¬ 
dients so helpful to the same teachers as 
these meetings, where the lesson is talked 
over, discussed, and illustrated, but others 
prefer the more quiet opportunities which 
their own homes, with the aid of Commen¬ 
taries, Teachers’ Helps, and the like, provide. 

It matters not how the preparation is at¬ 
tained so that the teacher comes to the class 
full of the topic of the lesson. And no 


teacher should ever come empty. It is a 
dreadful waste of time to pretend to teach 
when one has nothing to impart. The 
children soon perceive a teacher’s ignor¬ 
ance, and are not slow to comment upon it. 
Not only should a teacher come well pre¬ 
pared upon the lesson for the day, but he 
should come punctually and regularly. His 
irregularities in this regard tell badly upon 
the class, and lead to most deplorable re¬ 
sults, sometimes to the breaking up of the 
class altogether. If he has to be away he 
should provide a substitute, or if unable to 
do this, should notify the superintendent. 

Then, too, the teacher should feel that 
his presence with his class is for a definite 
purpose. He is not to appear to them as if 
he did not know what he had come for, nor 
is he to waste his time and theirs by chatting 
upon miscellaneous topics. They have come 
to be taught something in religion, and he 
is there to teach them. 

Above all else the teacher should be a re¬ 
ligious man. No others should teach in 
Sunday-School. It is better to have a few 
good teachers than a score of those whose 
lives negative all their words. A man need 
not be perfect before he take a class, but he 
must be sincere. He must be interested in 
personal religion to that extent that he will 
do his utmost to teach his pupils to revere 
God’s truth, and to aim at serving Him in 
a Christian life. After all, the religious 
faculty in children is reached not so much 
through the intellect as through the affec¬ 
tions. Indeed, it seems to be awakened and 
stimulated in ways that we cannot describe 
other than to say that a sympathetic soul 
comes into the presence of others, and their 
spiritual faculties become active. It is very 
wonderful, this awakening of the spiritual 
faculties of others. Eloquence, learning, and 
earnestness fail to accomplish that which 
sincerity and straightforward simplicity will 
secure. The one qualification which every 
teacher should have and may have is this 
personal piety, which in itself is the best of 
all agencies for awakening a responsive in¬ 
terest on the part of those who are taught. 

The three divisions of the Sunday-School 
which are usually found most convenient 
are the Infant Department, the Main School, 
and the Bible-Classes. The first is intended 
for the children who are to receive oral in¬ 
struction, the second for those who are able 
to read, and the third for the older scholars 
of a more advanced standing. 

It is well to have the three departments 
brought together for the opening and the 
closing exercises, and especially in the lat¬ 
ter, that they may all have the benefit of 
the review of the lesson and the catechising. 

The Subjects of Study in the Sunday-School 
next engage our attention. They may be 
divided into five classes : 

1. The Sacred Scriptures. 2. The Cate¬ 
chism. 3. The Prayer-Book. 4. The His¬ 
tory of the Church. 5. The Practical Duties 
of the Christian Life. 




SUNDAY-SCHOOL WOEK 


714 


SUPEKEEOGATION 


Although thus separated here for the pur¬ 
poses of our consideration, we are not to 
think of them as being always distinct. 
Thus any study of the Scriptures means 
gaining some knowledge of the practical 
duties of Christian life, and any study of 
the Prayer-Book involves some study of 
Church History. What is meant is that, in 
the usual order, the infant becomes familiar 
first with the Bible Stories, then with parts 
of the Catechism, then with the Gospels, af¬ 
terwards he gains some knowledge of the 
Prayer-Book as he grows old enough to use it, 
of the History of the Church, and finally 
of the many things a Christian ought to do. 
There is afterwards the going back over 
ground previously trodden, to examine it 
more fully, and then widening out on either 
side. 

Among the earliest parts of a child’s re¬ 
ligious education, and one of the most help¬ 
ful, is telling him Bible Stories. The story¬ 
telling ability of the teacher should be so 
cultivated that he will be able to impress 
the stories of the Bible indelibly upon the 
youthful memory. These old stories are the 
most interesting, and the freshest in the 
world, and they carry with them their un¬ 
mistakable lessons. They show the strug¬ 
gle between good and evil, and reveal what 
style of character God approves. There is 
no more effective mode of teaching than that 
of being able to tell the Bible Stories in 
simple but striking language adapted to the 
comprehension of children. 

Passing on from story-telling, the teacher 
then begins to employ the child's memory in 
parts of the Catechism, especially in the 
Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten 
Commandments. 

Following closely upon this will come 
some explanation of the Church's year, so 
that as the child begins to note the coming 
and going of days and weeks, he may be 
able to associate them with the facts and 
doctrines which the Church commemorates. 

A child has received a good start when he 
knows the principal Bible Stories, can recite 
the leading parts of the Catechism, and un¬ 
derstands what the principal divisions of the 
Church’s year commemorate. But now he 
has learned to read the Scriptures for him¬ 
self, and his knowledge widens out. How 
much there is now for him to learn ! The 
narratives of Holy Writ, the Words of the 
Lord Jesus, the doctrines in the Epistles, 
the planting of the Church, the daily duties 
of the daily life,—there never need be any 
lack of topics for the teacher’s teaching. 

Without enlarging upon these, it seems 
proper to add that the children of the Church 
are to be taught as children of the Church. 
Our Church has a definite system of truth, 
clear and simple. It covers a few points of 
doctrine, and that system of truth should be 
adhered to. Our Church has an orderly form 
of worship, her children should be taught 
to love it and to unite in it. 

Our Church makes demands upon the per¬ 


sonal service and loyalty of her children. 
They should be taught to give willing adhe¬ 
sion. In a word, the children ought to be so 
trained in Sunday-School that as they grow 
up they will become loyal members of this 
Church. It is not enough to make them 
mildly acquiesce in her ways. They should 
become thoroughly in love with them. This 
is not to make them bigots and uncharit¬ 
able, but to give them tone and fibre whereby 
they will go out into the world and be of 
some positive use in the world. 

First sincere Christians, then loyal Church¬ 
men, —who can doubt that children trained 
to be thus will develop noble characfers 
and find their work for Christ and His 
Church ? 

And that is the object of the Sunday-School. 
It offers to aid parents, sponsors, and pas¬ 
tors in developing the religious life of the 
young, in filling their minds with the truths 
of our Most Holy Faith, and in training 
them to serve God faithfully in their day 
and generation. Whatever its defects of 
administration, this is its aim. 

Kev. G. W. Shinn. 

Supererogation. Works which it is 
claimed may be done over and above what is 
commanded us to do. The XIV. Article is 
very express in disproving this: “ Voluntary 
works, besides over and above God’s com¬ 
mandments, which they call works of superer¬ 
ogation cannot be taught without arroganev 
and impiety: for by them men do declare 
that they do not only render unto God as 
much as they are bound to do, but that they 
d'o more for His sake than of bounden duty 
is required ; where, as Christ saith plainly, 

‘ When ye have done all that are com¬ 
manded you say, We are all unprofitable 
servants.’ ” That some advice in Holy Scrip¬ 
tures is given which may be lawfully chosen 
or declined, as celibacy, yet it is equally 
plain that it demands all our willingness to 
obey the motions of the Holy Spirit only 
to do what is commanded us. The choice 
of doing or not doing certain things is of 
expediency. If one sells all that he has and 
gives to the poor he is doing well, but it 
may be inexpedient in another, or he may 
not choose to do this, using the uncertain 
riches to obtain a treasure hereafter. The 
young man who kept all the commandments 
(in his own estimation) yet owned he lacked 
something that he was told could be supplied 
by his selling all and following the Lord, 
this touched the defect not only in his con¬ 
duct, but in his character too. He lacked 
self-denial in its best form. But we are 
taught in Holy Scripture that we can do no 
good thing of ourselves, that if we say we 
have no sin we deceive ourselves, that in 
many things we offend all. Then there can be 
no power of ourselves to do more than what 
is commanded. If we but consider that the 
very best we could do would be but the 
mere measure of our duty, and we can add 
nothing more, we cannot overpass that, 
we could not dream for an instant that there 




SUPERNATURAL 


Y15 


SUPERNATURAL 


were works of an obedience more than is re¬ 
quired of us. The choice in the counsel is 
not an addition to a sufficient goodness, it is 
a voluntary selection of a certain form of 
obedience left to us to choose. Then as we are 
taught in Scripture, we can merit nothing, 
but all is of grace and of His gift. It follows, 
then, that there can be no treasury of good 
works which we can help to fill with those 
things over and above what we do as suffi¬ 
cient for ourselves, which treasured good 
words may be passed, as it were, to the bless¬ 
ing of those who are disobedient and erring ; 
an error which is too glaring for any one 
seriously thinking of his own duty to fall 
into. Our life in Christ is not a task 
or a business. So much to be done for so 
much wages. Such obedience only required, 
and the rest of our* work as we choose. This 
was one form of Pharisaic hypocrisy. It 
is a life, and to be a healthy spiritual life re¬ 
quires all our own energy, work, and labor 
from an humble sense of our own unworthi¬ 
ness and a deep, earnest love to Him who 
loved us and gave Himself for ps. He 
learned obedience in the days of His sinless 
flesh, with pain, and tears, and strong cry¬ 
ing. And we who are sinful can never 
with wailing, and tears, and prayers ever 
gain in this mortal life His sanctity. It is 
of His worthiness, and His mercy, by His 
eternal power that the treasury of His 
atoning acts is sufficient for us. 

Supernatural. The word supernatural is 
popularly opposed to natural, being that 
which is beyond the experience and knowl¬ 
edge of man. Its more exact use is to ex¬ 
press the higher region of system, the lower 
region being that of things and events in 
ordinary experience and knowledge. Super¬ 
natural things are not opposed to order and 
law, but form “the higher portion of an 
universal order, and are the subjects of an 
unknown, but not unknowable law.” The 
idea of mystery varies in different genera¬ 
tions according to their degree of informa¬ 
tion, but it always will exist. But in what 
is mysterious the devout and thoughtful 
mind still finds that “ Order is Heaven’s first 
law.” Even the miracle may fall under law. 
Man can interrupt the action of gravity by 
stopping the fall of a descending body, so 
God can interrupt the course of nature with¬ 
out a violation of law. The law of resistance 
is as much a law as the law of gravitation. 
“ The veil of the supernatural is lifted by a 
miracle for a moment, and it is then evident 
that nature is not to be limited by our ex¬ 
perience, but extends intoaregion ordinarily 
unseen, and forms one great system of order, 
of which the supernatural is but the higher 
atmosphere.” 

In primitive ages men were freely inclined 
to believe in the supernatural, as is evident 
in the religions of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. 
They believed “ in fates and furies, nymphs 
and graces.” The Sophists tried to resolve 
mythic tales into “ facts and powers of 
nature.” The Sadducees acted similarly in 


Christ’s day. The supernatural is, how¬ 
ever, a necessary part in the system of God. 
“He is before all things, and by (or in) Him 
all things consist” (Col. i. 17). This shows 
that Christianity was not an after-thought 
of God, but afore-thought, and that Christ 
existed before the natural world, “before all 
things,” and created “all things” (v. 16). 
He is “ the Lamb slain from the foundation 
of the world” (Rev. xiii. 8). The world 
was made to include Christianity. By or in 
Christ all things con-sist, stand together, 
as many parts coalesce in a whole. “ All 
things were made by Him, and without Him 
was not anything made that was made” 
(St. John i. 3). A personal loving relation to 
God in Christ is the key which unlocks 
mysteries. “ Every one that'loveth is born 
of God, and knoweth God” (1 John iv. 7). 
“ The whole life of faith is an experience and 
spiritual discovery of God.” It was to 
Christ’s own disciples that He said, “ it is 
given unto you to know the mysteries of the 
kingdom of heaven” (St. Matt. xiii. 11). Says 
Archbishop Benson, “The countless tribes 
which broke up the old civilizations were 
governed by an absolute naturalism in feel¬ 
ing and in action, and she (the Church) 
overcame it.” The introduction of the su¬ 
pernatural was an unanswerable argument. 
The natural conclusion from the marvels 
wrought by Jesus was, “ no man can do 
these miracles that thou doest, except God 
be with him” (St. John iii. 2). “ Since the, 

world began was it not heard that any man 
opened the eyes of one that was born blind. 
If this man were not of God, he could do 
nothing” (St. John ix. 32, 33). 

In the Old Testament the fact of the su¬ 
pernatural is constantly present. It meets 
us in the account of the creation: “By the 
Word of the Lord were the heavens made; 
and all the host of them by the breath of 
His mouth” (Ps. xxxiii. 6), “the utterance 
of His mouth, that is, the originating 
Word.” “ The heavens declare the glory of 
God” (Ps. xix. 1). “Thou hast established 
the earth, and it abideth” (Ps. cxix. 90). 
The lightnings obey God (Job xxxviii. 35). 
“He appointed the moon for seasons; the 
sun knoweth His going down” (Ps. civ. 19). 
What a mighty and yet peculiar care of the 
world is displayed in Job xxviii. 25, 26, 
where God is represented as making “ the 
weight for the winds,” and weighing “the 
waters by measure,” and making “adecree 
for the rain” ! In Jeremiah xxxiii. 20, we 
read of God’s “ covenant of the day,” and 
His “covenant of the night,” that they 
should preserve their order. The rainbow 
was made “the symbol of nature’s con¬ 
stancy.” 

“ The true notion of the natural cannot 
be held without the complementary idea of 
the supernatural, since nature can have no 
beginning in itself (the thought involving 
a contradiction), and therefore demands a 
power older than itself, beyond and above 
itself.” Even the magicians of Pharaoh 





SUPPLICATION 


716 


SUPREMACY 


acknowledged “ the finger of God” in His 
miraculous work (Ex. viii. 19). The tables 
of the law were “ written with the finger of 
God” (Ex. xxxi. 18, and Deut. ix. 10). Our 
Saviour speaks of casting out devils “ with 
the finger of God” (St. Luke xi. 20). Of 
the volcano the Psalmist says of God, “ He 
toucheth the hills and they smoke” (Ps. civ. 
32), “ the lightness of the effort implying 
the mightiness of the power.” In the Old 
Testament the supernatural is seen at the 
creation, in the passage of the Red Sea and 
other miracles, the wonders of Sinai, and 
the smitten rock in the Wilderness. In the 
book of Job the natural appears in the 
thunder and storm, and in animal life. In 
Ps. xxix. the voice of God is represented as 
dividing “the flames of fire,” and shaking 
'“ the wilderness.” The natural and super¬ 
natural are mingled in the account of the 
Flood, the crossing of the Red Sea, the 
Egyptian plagues, and the providing of food 
in the Wilderness. “ Again, the great nat¬ 
ural is so described in Job and the Psalms, 
that the awe of the supernatural is upon us, 
and we receive the impression of a divine 
presence as distinctly as though it had been 
all miracle.” Both at the creation and at 
the present time we are to think of the 
natural and supernatural as constantly 
mingled, and as being alike the work of 
God. The earth bringing forth at the crea¬ 
tion was obeying God, and creation and 
growth are named together, so each harvest 
is a repetition of the work of the Author of 
the world, who opens His hand daily to fill 
his waiting creatures with good (Ps. civ. 
27, 28). 

Authorities : Blunt’s Diet, of Doct. and 
Hist. Theology, McCosh on the Supernat¬ 
ural in Relation to the Natural, Bushnell’s 
Nature and the Supernatural, SchafF’s 
Introd. to Gen. i. in Lange’s Genesis, Sir 
Joshua Reynolds in Pycroft’s Course of 
English Reading. 

Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Supplication. The act of offering an 
humble request and a pleading that it may 
be granted, whether it be for ourselves or 
for others, as did Daniel in his intercession. 
It is usually in the form of a litany. The 
preces , or prayers, these supplicatory forms, 
were the people’s part, therefore they were 
responsive. The supplications in the Litany 
are properly the first four of th epreces. The 
rest of the Litany is addressed to our Lord. 
The term is by no means to be confined 
merely to mean responsive prayers, for St. 
Paul directs supplications to be offered for 
all men. So in the Collect at the end of 
the Communion Office, “Assist us merci¬ 
fully, 0 Lord, in these our supplications 
and prayers.” 

Supremacy. Lordship, whether natural, 
as God’s supremacy, or given as man’s lord- 
ship over the lower creation or constitu¬ 
tional, as that of Rulers both in Church and 
State, either according to Law or usurped, 
in Church or State. 


God’s supremacy is part of natural relig¬ 
ion, and is universally received by all who 
believe in Him. Our Lord’s supremacy 
is part of our Christian Faith. His Su¬ 
premacy is by direct grant from God the 
Father. He hath given all things, all 
power in heaven and in earth, into the 
hands of the Son. So also is man’s suprem¬ 
acy over the lower creation (Ps. viii.). The 
Bishops, as the successors in office, have the 
supreme government in the Church by a 
grant from Christ: “As my Father hath 
sent me, even so send I you.” And by Con¬ 
stitutional enactment for government the 
different ranks of precedence or appellant 
power are arranged. There is also a usurped 
supremacy in the Church, as that of the 
Pope. This supremacy was not from the 
beginning. The Bishop of Rome had a 
Patriarchal sway over the Province of Rome, 
the suburbicarian Dioceses near Rome, and 
an advisory right in the Western Church. 
Against anything but this advisory right 
the Spanish Bishops protested, in St. Cyp¬ 
rian’s time. They did not admit his patri¬ 
archal right. This was all that was held 
till after the year 606 a d. The Sardican 
Decree (347 a d.) was passed only by the 
Western Bishops after the Council had 
partly broken up. It gave an appellate 
jurisdiction to the then Bishop of Rome, 
Julius (347 a.d.), and Yalentinian III. 
made it absolute (445 a.d.). But it was 
very slowly accepted in the West through 
an hundred and fifty years. It interfered 
very seriously with the government of the 
Metropolitans over their Provinces, and 
affected the trials«of cases. It was admitted 
at times, and again resisted, as short-sighted 
self-interest and the political state of things 
varied. The Popes gradually stretched this 
power towards supremacy, first by an exten¬ 
sion of the general right to hear appeals, 
next by deci*etal letters interfering and 
ordering changes, next by assuming the 
right to confer jurisdiction. But these al¬ 
terations of Church Constitution, vast as 
they were, received an immense impetus 
from the Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals. These 
forged documents formulated the floating, 
shapeless ideas of the time, and fixed them 
in favor of Roman Supremacy by the usual 
appeal to the “ Thou art Peter,” and by a 
series of daring inventions. The Papacy 
gladly seized upon them, and by the skillful 
use of only three or four little sentences, 
embodying a new principle, were enabled 
to overturn the whole fabric of the Church 
Constitution. 

From the acceptance of the Pseudo-Isidore 
on to the Reformation, the encroachments of 
the Papacy were unceasing. The resistance 
was disconnected, dependent upon the po¬ 
litical expediency of the moment. Yet 
strangely, the semblance of power universal 
in the West, which seemed to be within the 
Papal grasp, ever eluded it at the critical 
moment. The arrogance of Gregory VII. 
crushed the Emperor Henry 1Y., because 






SUPREMACY 


717 


SURSUM CORDA 


of the irregularly controlled abilities'of that 
great Emperor ; and just as Gregory deemed 
himself successful he died, with the knowl¬ 
edge that he had failed to complete his pur¬ 
pose. So, too, Innocent III. held England 
as a papal fief for a moment, hut exasperated 
the English and irritated the French, and 
was powerless to prevent the Magna Charta, 
the instrument which helped to make Eng¬ 
land free. His reign marked the highest 
point which Roman absolutism ever reached. 
Boniface VIII. overreached himself by his 
violence, and this led to the Avignonese resi¬ 
dence of the Popes under French influence. 
Then came the line of the great Councils of 
Constance, Pisa, and Basle, which further 
weakened the Roman prestige, which at last 
was to incline the different provinces to act 
in either direction. The next step was to 
make the Metropolitans the holders of dele¬ 
gated power from Rome. This was a usur¬ 
pation based upon an assumption of false 
principles, (a) That the See of St. Peter 
was supreme in the Church, a doctrine 
which the Roman Bishops persistently 
taught everywhere. ( b ) That the Appellate 
jurisdiction which Valentinian III. had 
conferred could overset and supplant the 
ancient liberties of the Metropolitans. Both 
principles were contrary to fact and to 
history, but self-interest in petty contests 
among the Metropolitans, and a steady ad¬ 
herence to a fixed policy on the part of the 
Roman Bishops, gave the desired opportu¬ 
nities to establish them both. The viola¬ 
tions of the ancient canon law were always 
made with a protest that either they were 
in direct line with the spirit of the Canon 
law, or because St. Peter’s See had plenary 
authority, or because the exigencies of the 
time demanded that a lesser evil should be 
done to avoid a greater ; but throughout, the 
value of a convenient precedent was always 
appreciated. This course continued down 
to the year 860 a.d. Numberless cases 
could be adduced, did space allow, to show 
that this encroachment was resisted in the 
West. The East as yet knew nothing of 
the assertions of the Pope as meaning any¬ 
thing more than a magnifying of his office. 
The resistance in the West, as in the case 
of the Priest Apianus of Carthage, who ap¬ 
pealed to the Pope against his Bishop, and 
in the case of Hilary of Poictiers, was by 
appeal to the Canons, but there was no con¬ 
certed resistance. The gift of the Pallium, 
which was at first a mark of favor, became 
a yoke of obedience to the Roman See, and 
was so accepted by the Franco-German 
Bishops under the lead of Boniface, the 
English apostle of Germany. But Pope 
Zachary complains that some of the Bishops 
did not care to receive it. But this Pall or 
cloak as investing with Metropolitan dignity, 
came to mean the grant of Metropolitan 
Jurisdiction,—a further step in encroach¬ 
ments. 

To trace the Constitutions of Clarendon 
and the earlier articles of Louis IX., and the 


Concordats drawn up with the several gov¬ 
ernments of Europe, and the political diplo¬ 
macy used by the Popes, and their waste of 
diplomatic sagacity in endeavoring to con¬ 
trol Italy to the aggrandizement of their 
several families, would be too long. But the 
facts are irrefutable that a Patriarchate ex¬ 
tending at first only to the suburbicarian 
provinces, and an advisory position as Bishop 
of the once capital of the world, a skill¬ 
ful use of political events upon a steadily ad¬ 
hered'to line of policy, and a claim to preside, 
either directly or by proxy, at the Councils 
of the Church, were ably used to make a 
Primacy of honor, the supremacy of a power 
so destructive of all constitutional rights in 
the Church, so thoroughly a despotism, so 
glaring in its usurpations, that it could hot 
be endured. The wounds it inflicted upon 
the Church have not been healed, but it has 
been fettered and hampered in every way 
possible. This Supremacy yet claimed, 
urged, and lately fortified with a decree of 
Infallibility, is a thing of the past. It can 
never return again, but this does not repair 
the breaches, nor does it remove the present 
ill consequences to the Body of Christ. 

Authorities: Barrow on the Supremacy, 
and all Eccl. Histories worth the name. 

Surplice. The usual form of the Alb, 
which was anciently much less loose, with 
closer sleeves, than in the present Surplice. 
It is a corruption of the word superpelli- 
ceum. Its present form goes back to the 
twelfth century. ( Vide Vestments.) 

Surrogate. The deputy for a Chancellor, 
Commissary, Archdeacon, or official, who 
had to hold a benefice near the place where 
the Court was held, be in good repute, and 
skilled in both civil and ecclesiastical Law. 
He could hold such Courts as his principal, 
could issue the like licenses and mandates. 
Usually he issued licenses to marry, for he 
was the deputy of the Bishop who could dis¬ 
pense with the banns and give a license. 
He also admitted wills.to probate. 

Sursum Corda. The versicle “ Lift up 
your hearts,” with the response “ We lift 
them up unto the Lord.” It is the part of 
the Preface which formerly began with a ben¬ 
ediction, but now in our own Prayer-Book 
forms the introduction. Its antiquity is 
very great. It was the usual versicle at 
this point of the Liturgy in the time of St. 
Cyprian (252 a.d.), and was then quoted as 
the common form. That it should not have 
been quoted oftener and earlier is not sur¬ 
prising when we consider the secrecy with 
which all celebrations of the Communion 
were made. The next writer who quotes it is 
St. Cyril (380 a.d.) of Jerusalem, who speaks 
of it in his lectures to the Catechumens. 
After that the references are quite frequent. 
But the Sursum Corda includes also the re¬ 
maining versicles and responses. “Let us 
give thanks unto our Lord God. It is 
meet and right so to do. It is very meet, 
right, and our bounden duty that we should 
at all time and in all places,” etc. The Pref- 





SUSANNA 


718 


SYMBOL 


ace extends from the Lift up your hearts to 
the first words of the Sanctus. After the 
prayer of Humble Access, the Canon or 
rule of the Holy Communion begins and 
goes on to the Hymn. 

Susanna, Book of (Apocrypha). The 
name Susanna means a lily. The Book 
containing the story of this Jewish woman 
is a part of the Apocryphal Additions to 
Daniel. It was called “The History of 
Susanna (or the Judgment of Daniel).’’ 
There is no evidence that it ever formed a 
part of the Hebrew text. It is thought that 
it may have been the work of an Alexan¬ 
drine writer. The story, whether true or 
not, is intended to teach the excellence of 
virtue, and the punishment of a lying tongue 
and an unclean heart. “ To Christian com¬ 
mentators Susanna appeared as a type of 
the true Church tempted to infidelity by 
Jewish and Pagan adversaries, and lifting 
up her voice to God in the midst of perse¬ 
cution.” In the Septuagint this history of 
Susanna is placed at the beginning of the 
Book of Daniel, while in the Yulgate it forms 
the thirteenth chapter. That the account 
of Susanna was written originally in Greek 
instead of Hebrew or Chaldee is shown by 
the fact that when Daniel is represented as 
declaring what would be the punishment of 
the wicked men who were making a false 
accusation to shield themselves, he makes 
use of a paranomasia, or play upon words, 
which could only hold good in the Greek 
language. The Hebraisms show that the 
addition to Daniel was written by a Hebrew 
in Greek. As the elders were judges, Calmet 
concludes that the Jews had judges during 
the captivity, though it may be doubted 
whether they had power to put to death. 
Jewish writers thought that the punishment 
was inflicted by Nebuchadnezzar. St. Ber¬ 
nard and St. Chrysostom compare the per¬ 
secuted matron to an innocent lamb, and 
the wicked judges to ravenous wolves, but 
their prey was taken from them ; and so the 
narrative ends with an account of the pr;de 
of husband and parents and kindred in the 
noble Susanna and of Daniel’s great reputa¬ 
tion in the sight of the people. 

Authorities : B. F. Weseott in William 
Smith’s Die. of the Bible. He refers to 
Hippel, “In Susann.” Arnald’s Comm, in 
Patrick, Lowth, and Whitby, Horne’s In¬ 
troduction, Prideaux’s Connections. 

Eev. S. F. Hotchkust. 

Suspension. The penalty of suspending 
a layman from communion or a person in 
orders from any or all his official functions 
is not a final, and may be a temporary, de¬ 
privation. 

A clergyman may for cause be suspended 
from the office of preaching alone, or he 
may be suspended from holding a Parish, 
or from all his functions, as the gravity of 
the offense may require. According to the 
Canons of the General Convention, there 
are three grades of punishment for five dif¬ 
ferent classes of offenses—viz., admonition, 


suspension, or degradation—either of which 
is to be inflicted according to the Canons of 
the Diocese in which the trial takes place, 
until otherwise provided for by the General 
Convention. Suspension is also inflicted 
upon a clergyman absenting himself for 
five years from his Diocese without proper 
reason or excuse, satisfactory to his Bishop, 
which shall only terminate when he gives 
in writing sufficient reason, .or when he re¬ 
turns to reside in the Diocese, or renounces 
the ministry. Suspension or degradation is 
also the penalty for a contumacious non- 
appearance in the Court if the clergyman 
is on trial for an} r offense. But there can 
be no suspension pronounced against a 
Bishop, Priest, or Deacon which does not 
specify what terms or at what time the 
penalty shall cease. 

For the layman, suspension from the 
Holy Communion is the only penalty known 
in our Canon Law, and this cannot be pro¬ 
nounced and enforced but by consent of the 
Bishop, to whom every case of discipline 
requiring such suspension must be referred. 
Restoration may be, generally is, granted 
upon sufficient proof of amendment of life. 
According to the ancient Canon Law, ad¬ 
monition should precede Suspension, unless 
the case was such as required immediate ac¬ 
tion. And if suspension in ordinary cases 
was not preceded by an admonition, there 
would be cause for an appeal. 

Symbol. It was early used to mean the 
Creed. The reason for this cannot be sat¬ 
isfactorily traced. But the Symbols of our 
Faith are the Creeds,—the Nicene and the 
Apostolic. The word, however, latterly, is 
not confined to the Creeds, but is applied to 
all confessions of Faith by different Churches, 
Denominations, or Religious Societies. In 
this it takes a wider range than should be 
permitted to so technical a term. But the 
word is used to mean the representation of 
something by another by which it can be 
suggested, as a letter for a sound, a type 
for a reality, or a hieroglyph for a word or 
concrete *idea, and thence passing into the 
Christian ritual and decorative art. Sym¬ 
bolism has taken a very important part in 
the development of certain Christian ideas. 
The Cross, the A and £2, and the p are com¬ 
mon symbols of our Lord. The 'w' imagery 
of the Revelation has passed into dec¬ 
orative symbolism in the forms of the Four 
living creatures taken as symbols of the 
Four Evangelists, and the Cherubs of the 
Hebrew temple have been imagined and re¬ 
produced with other angelic forms. These 
and the like have passed into allowed deco¬ 
rative symbolism, but it has ever been a dif¬ 
ficulty to draw the line between what is 
perfectly allowable, what is doubtful, and 
what must be absolutely rejected, as, for in¬ 
stance, the attempt to represent the Supreme 
Being. To us the Crucifix, or the represen¬ 
tation of the Virgin Mother and the Holy 
Infant, have both ideas behind them that 
make their use most doubtful, if they do not 




SYMPHONY 


719 


“SYSTEMATIC DIVINITY” 


condemn them. A deeper and better sym¬ 
bolism is carried out in the proper plan and 
construction of a church. There from the 
great door to the Eastern window all can 
be S3 r mbolically arranged, in gradations, as 
we find them carried out in the Temple of the 
Courts, of the Gentiles, Women, Men, Priests, 
and the Sanctuary, and the Holy of Holies. 
The Narthex, the Nave, the Choir, the 
Sanctuary, had their appropriate positions. 
The Cruciform plan, the Arch of triumph 
over the choir, the lights of the Eastern 
window, all were marked with a beauty of 
symbolism, which was the more deep and 
enduring because it places the worshiper 
into the centre of its types, and existed for 
him and his service made use of it. Of all 
the plans of constructive symbolism the 
Eastern Church is the most complete ; from 
crypt to dome it was originally intended to 
have a significance, to tell a fact, to sym¬ 
bolize the doctrine of the Faith. It was so 
considered, and the explanations and alle¬ 
gorical descriptions which appear so puerile 
to those who do not admit the value of sym¬ 
bolism, are full of meaning to the student. 
Take, for example, the work of St. Simon of 
Thessalonica, which was written in 1430 a.d. 
How trifling it seems to the one, how de¬ 
vout to the other! One more part of sym¬ 
bolism is to be noticed. That which the 
Divine wisdom of our Lord has attached to 
certain acts. • The pouring of the water in 
the act of Baptism, the breaking of the 
Bread and the taking of the Cup in the 
Holy Communion, are by His example. 
The raising of the hands to bless, and the 
kneeling in prayer and bowing as a worship, 
are religious acts which are common to all 
religions and to all Faiths. The white robes 
of the ministers of God are noted as the 
symbol of righteousness. In fact, no doc¬ 
trine of religion can take form in outward 
act without the use of some symbolism or 
other. 

Symphony. The harmony of voices and 
instruments, or again, the concert of many 
instruments together. There is no room in 
the service for a symphony. 

Synod. Speaking broadly, Synod is the 
Eastern word for Council (the Western 
word), for the assembly of the Bishops and 
Clergy and Delegates, who have a right to 
meet and to enact Canons, to hear cases, 
and to decide upon the work of the Church, 
whether it be of a Diocese or Province, or a 
National Church, or whether it be an (Ecu¬ 
menical Council. It has not taken root in 
the Western Church, Council being the 
usual term employed. Under their respec¬ 
tive titles will be found the outlines of the 
more important Councils held at different 
times in various parts of the Church. It 
may be noted here that Synod was the more 
usual name for the Anglo-Saxon Councils 
till the Norman influence, beginning with 
Edward the Confessor, supplanted it by the 
term Council,—not so but that Synod was 
used later, and two Councils before that, 


but in each time less commonly than the 
other term. 

Synodals. Payments made by the Clergy 
to the Bishop at the time of their attendance 
at the Synod. But it was distinctly urged 
that this payment was made then from con¬ 
venience. The payment was due to the 
Bishop, but was not a fee for permission to 
attend a Synod which was of his own sum¬ 
moning. 

The decisions of Provincial and Diocesan 
Synods also received this name occasionally, 
and ordered to be read to the Parishes 
throughout the Province or Diocese wherein 
they were to be enforced. 

“ Systematic Divinity” is a sublime des¬ 
ignation. Some, perhaps, may think it is one 
step from the sublime. It is certainly one 
or the other. If the revelation of God can 
be reduced to a system, he must have a ca¬ 
pacious understanding who can take it all 
in ; and a wonderfully analytical and syn¬ 
thetical mind who can distinguish all its 
parts, and put them together, in due rela¬ 
tions of order and reciprocal support, into a 
system. 

The designation is not very old. Some of 
the early Christian Fathers were voluminous 
writers upon divinity. They were mighty 
philosophers as well. But they were content 
to deal with portions of the doctrine of the 
Faith. Being often controversialists, they 
were eminently successful in supporting the 
point of truth that was assailed, and in show¬ 
ing its vital importance towards preserving 
the integrity of the whole. They do not 
appear, however,—any one or any class of 
them,—to have attempted to put all the 
truth, or as the phrase now is, all the essen¬ 
tial truth, into one complete system. Even 
the “Apologists for Christianity” appear to 
have aimed rather at showing its superiority 
to heathenism, and its accordance with sound 
philosophy, than at exhaustive statements 
and elucidations of all the truth it taught. 
Later writers, including even the volumi¬ 
nous schoolmen, remained also content with 
treating of portions of the faith. Very com¬ 
prehensive many of them were, but none 
ventured the attempt to put the whole into a 
system. 

The sixteenth century invented systematic 
divinity. It produced several systems in¬ 
deed. It was remarkable as the era of sys¬ 
tems Every eminent reformer had his own 
system. It accorded with his peculiar ger¬ 
minal ideas, and was developed according 
to his conception of some general principle. 

For example, Calvin took the sovereignty 
of God for both principle and germinal idea. 
Putting aside whatever conflicted, as he 
thought, with it, and not recognizing a 
“duality,” much less a “ manifoldness,” in 
truth, he simply followed out deductively, 
with hard logic, his one chosen principle. 
The whole systematic divinity of Calvinism 
flowed from this postulate. The universality 
of his first “ logical” term being accepted, it 
followed of course that the Almighty Sov- 






“SYSTEMATIC DIVINITY” 


720 


“SYSTEMATIC DIVINITY” 


ereign, as He knew, so also ordered all things 
from beginning to end. He not only “ fore¬ 
knew”—more accurately, was ever, eternally 
knowing—whatever occurred, how every 
man would live and act, but He actually 
decreed the destiny of every man from his 
birth'. It mattered not to Calvin that every 
man knew himself to be free. This he treated 
as a general delusion. He accepted the 
Divine Humanity of Jesus, preached the 
atonement, but he brought that also within 
the close circuit of the single, irresistible, 
self-evolution, all-embracing will of the 
Almighty. It mattered not to him that, if 
the will of God was all, the Sacrifice was 
unnecessary and therefore unreal. It was 
God’s will that Christ should die for our 
sins. That was enough. God’s consistency 
was not a point for man’s reason to inquire 
into. Submission was the single duty of the 
reason, as it was the sole practicability for 
the human person as a whole. 

It will be observed that Calvinism and 
Romanism meet at their respective extremes. 
Neither has room for personal, free man. 
The immense, accumulated piles of Roman 
theology or divinity, all fall together into 
a system, whose practical principle is sub¬ 
mission to one central authority, or rather 
usurpation. The authority of the Church— 
which is a fact and, within its scope, legiti¬ 
mate—was, under Romanism, made, first to 
crush the individual into one homogeneous 
mass, and then to put the efficient work of 
his salvation into the partly directing and 
partly ministering hands of the priesthood. 
This system of divinity completes itself in 
the infallible headship of the Pope. The 
whole system of Romanism stands upon a 
half-truth ; which, like all half-truths when 
developed, has become a hideous distortion 
of the Catholic faith. 

The sj^stematic divinity of Calvin was a 
thoroughly logical devolution. Its fault lay 
in its major premise or postulate. It is true 
that God is sovereign, but it does not neces¬ 
sarily follow that He will, much less that 
He must, act purely and simply after the 
evolution of Almighty power. God is some¬ 
thing besides the Almighty. He may have 
made a creature after His own image, and 
have endued that creature with liberty of 
choice, and may then have dealt with that 
creature according as he should exercise his 
granted freedom. This He clearly did. 
Hence Calvinism fails in its postulate, and 
consequently fails throughout. 

Arminius was the opponent of Calvin. He 
took for his postulate the liberty of man. 
He or his followers, in the exasperation of 
controversy, and because of the blinding in¬ 
fluence of his own half-truth, perhaps did 
seem to deny or rather diminish the Divine 
Sovereignty; certainly they were charged 
with it. 

The Arminians have always accepted the 
doctrine of the Atonement. They have 
been chiefly remarkable for a system of 
divinity which placed the whole efficient 


work of salvation within the soul of the 
individual man. They agree with Calvin¬ 
ism in this respect. They differ in that 
they regard personal “ conversion,” “change 
of heart,” or “experience of religion,” not 
a 3 a single operation of irresistible grace, 
but as an operation of grace in which the 
man’s own will co-operates, and which may 
be lost and won not only once, but many 
times. The systematic divinity of Armini- 
anism, having for its postulate human free¬ 
will, has developed in the direct line of op¬ 
position to Calvinism. Both, within their 
scope, are completed systems of divinity. 
Either is comparatively easy of under¬ 
standing, and not difficult in evolution and 
practical application. Both postulates being 
true, and either without the other being 
only a half-truth, it follows that their sys¬ 
tems, being both one-sided, are both erro¬ 
neous. 

Lutheranism has its systematic divinity, 
which differs from both Calvinism and Ar- 
minianism. It is more comprehensive than 
either. Lutheranism has, however, always 
been remarkable for its adherence to the 
State. Luther contended against the Pope 
with the aid of princes. The Emperor fa¬ 
vored the Pope, but did not simply follow 
his behests. He dealt with Luther as with 
a political agitator. Hence proceeded a 
mingled religious reformation and political 
revolution. The two ideas -reciprocally 
affected each other. They remain yet 
united. Protestant Germany has state 
churches, Presbyterian in form, Erastian in 
spirit. 

The systematic, doctrinal divinity of 
Lutheranism is deduced from two funda¬ 
mental principles,—personal spiritual lib¬ 
erty under direct responsibility to God, 
with the right of “ private judgment,” and 
the sufficiency in and by itself of Holy 
Scripture. Of course these principles en¬ 
tered into the whole Protestant Reforma¬ 
tion, but in Lutheranism they were received 
pure and simple. They constituted its 
original germ and energy, and have since 
evolved themselves by natural development. 
Luther rejected not only papal usurpations, 
but all church authority. Nothing re¬ 
mained, therefore, but such lines of theo¬ 
logical invention as proceeded from private 
judgment of the Written Word. Luther, 
his associates, and his near successors, were 
not exempt from the influence of traditional 
doctrine, and did not, therefore, wander 
entirely off from the primitive faith. Hav¬ 
ing dropped, however, the principle that 
“ the Church hath authority in matters of 
faith,” there was nothing to limit the 
widest application of “private judgment.” 
His followers have not failed to use “ pri¬ 
vate judgment” both in Scriptural interpre¬ 
tation itself, as well as in criticism, at every 
point and in every way, of Scripture itself. 
Hence the two principles so came into con¬ 
flict that one had to yield. Private judg¬ 
ment was not the one to yield. The result 




“SYSTEMATIC DIVINITY” 721 


“SYSTEMATIC DIVINITY” 


was what is known as “destructive criti¬ 
cism,” and the consequence is that the 
Word of God itself—bereft of its rightful 
interpreter, the primitive Church, and taken 
away from its appointed keeper, the living 
Church—is accepted, notably in Germany 
and by Lutherans generally, according to 
current knowledge, prevalent philosophy, 
and the critical private judgment of the 
day. 

The chief doctrinal peculiarity of Luther¬ 
anism is solilidianism, or justification by 
faith only. 

“ Indulgences” were on sale openly. It 
was asserted that the “saints” had done so 
many more good works than were needed 
for their own salvation that the “ Church” 
had a vast accumulation in its spiritual 
treasury, out of which it could make sales 
of purgatorial exemptions to those whose 
good works were deficient or even wholly 
wanting. 

Luther, in his fierce opposition to such 
uses jjf “good works,” naturally drifted to 
the opposite extreme. While Faith, or per¬ 
sonal trust in Christ, is to those capable of 
it the sure intelligent ground for the hope 
of salvation, yet, as St. James shows, “ faith 
without works is dead.” Luther, in the 
fervor of his Protestantism, separated faith 
fr<*m works, leaped the barrier of the Epis¬ 
tle of St. James by calling it an “ epistle of 
straw,” and invented the phrase “ justifica¬ 
tion by faith only.” The Antinomians soon 
pushed this doctrine to its extreme conse¬ 
quences, and taught boldly that the moral 
law was no longer binding upon the justified 
in Christ. Luther does not appear to have 
liked this consequence of his own doctrine, 
but nevertheless held on to it, as have many 
of his followers since, both in and out of 
Lutheranism. 

In fact, the distinguishing points of Lu¬ 
theranism, out of which grew its whole sys¬ 
tematic divinity, were every one true, but 
every one also only half the truth.* Hence 
the system, on the whole, is one-sided ; and 
its drift, far away from the concrete Church 
and doctrine of Christ, has been rapid, per¬ 
haps fatal. 

Modern Lutheranism has drifted far off 
the position held by Luther and Melancthon. 
While it still possesses learned and able 
scholars, who defend the Scriptures, it has 
many more who apply “destructive criti¬ 
cism” to them. The result is a systematic 
divinity and prevalent theology, going by 
the name of Lutheranism, which holds little 
in common with Luther except “ the right 
of private judgment.” 

The Anglican Reformation retained not 
only the primitive order and unbroken con¬ 
tinuity of the Church, but asserted, even 
rather more strongly than did the Conti¬ 
nental Reformers, the dignity of man, his 
indefeasible liberty, and direct personal re¬ 
sponsibility to God, in virtue of his original 
creation after the Divine image, and because 
of his right and duty to accept for himself 

46 


individually the benefits and consequent ob¬ 
ligations of the redemption. These two 
points have therefore distinguished the sys¬ 
tematic divinity of Anglicanism,—the au¬ 
thority of the Church and the personal 
liberty of man. • They have been acknowl¬ 
edged principles from the first, and remain 
still living energies in both life and doctrine. 
Voluminous writings of able, learned, and 
devout theologians have already grown into 
a vast catalogue of Anglo-Catholic theology. 
It has been particularly rich in Church his¬ 
tory. It has shown through history not 
only the unbroken continuity of the organic 
Church in England with the primitive 
Catholic Church, but her strict adherence 
also to the primitive “ faith once for all de¬ 
livered to the saints.” Some of her divines 
have leaned most to the side of Church au¬ 
thority, and have elucidated most fully and 
earnestly such points as the Apostolicity of 
Episcopacy, the efficacy of Sacraments, and 
the blessed reality of the organic commun¬ 
ion of the Saints, living and dead, in the 
one Body of Christ, in which He every¬ 
where and always dwells, bestowing the 
grace of the Spirit, who Himself as “ Lord 
and giver of Life” inspires the chosen House¬ 
hold of God, and guards His temple. 

On the other hand, another able, zealous 
and devotional body of English divines 
have written largely upon Christian doctrine 
and practice, as they relate to personal man 
under the personal God,—Father, Son, and 
Spirit. With earnest orthodox zeal, they 
have distinguished the persons in the sub¬ 
stantial Trinity of the One God ; have applied 
all the old established doctrines of the un¬ 
changing One Faith to the mind, heart, and 
conscience of the individual man ; have set 
forth clearly and strongly penitence, faith, 
and holy obedience, and have promoted 
earnestly the reproduction in living disciples 
of Christ’s example, by teaching the duty 
of resting on Him alone for pardon and 
grace, vouchsafed for His sake by the lov¬ 
ing Father, and made efficient by the 
light and power of the Holy Ghost. 

These two classes of divines, one looking 
in the direction of organic Church life, and 
the other in the direction of individual sal¬ 
vation and personal immortal growth, have 
not always, as is natural, fully appreciated 
each other. Sharp and protracted theolog¬ 
ical controversies have been waged between 
them, within the bosom of the English 
Church. Their systems of divinity have 
been thought by many to be irreconcilable. 
But the English Church has remained with¬ 
out schism, and both schools are now at last 
perceiving that each holds one wing in the 
united citadel of the faith, and that both are 
joined together and made one in the com¬ 
mon centre and Head,— Christ. 

Divinity or theology, so far as it can be 
systematic, has in England a dual system. 
The organic principle is as essential to the 
unity of the Truth, as that of the indefeas¬ 
ible personal dignity and responsibility of 





“SYSTEMATIC DIVINITY” 


722 


TABERNACLE 


man is to “ the liberty wherewith Christ 
hath made us free.” The form of the point 
of junction between these two principles 
is incapable of definition, because it lies hid¬ 
den in the GoD-manifest, who is both the 
personal Saviour of every man that believ- 
eth, and the “ Head over all things to His 
Church, which is His Body.” 

Such contributions as have been made to 
systematic divinity in America have fol¬ 
lowed very much after English examples. 
A more open and clearer field, however, is 
found in America, for a deeper exposition 
and wider application of the principles of 
manly dignity and independence. In social 
and political life, this principle has al¬ 
ready developed a specifically American 
type. It has in these directions developed 
strength, force, and a prevalent confidence 
of power. Nor has it wholly failed in a 
gentle refinement, one in which self-asser¬ 
tion is more and more felt to be needless. 

American Christianity is thrown into this 
current of far occidental feeling, thought, 
and force of evolving progress. The Church 
in America intrusts to her divines the work 
of setting her forth, clearly and definitely, 
amid this American development. With¬ 
out the prestige enjoyed by the English 
Church, she cannot, even if she would, begin 
by claiming authority and demanding rev¬ 
erence. She is not helped by such social 
conditions as the English Church enjoys. 
The American people are not habitually 
reverent. Before they pay respect even, 
they wish to understand on what grounds it 
is claimed. 

Here, then, is a new field for the Church ; 
out of which must grow a somewhat pecu¬ 
liar—not new essentially, but new in order 
and form—systematic divinity. There is a 


chapter in the great book of all Catholic 
theology which England has commenced 
but never can finish Its principle is the 
glorious manhood of the image of God, with 
its resplendent development through mem¬ 
bership in Christ. The Church in Amer¬ 
ica has to grow into the American Church. 
She can only do so as she absorbs into her¬ 
self and sanctifies the irrepressible, because 
natural and providential, American instinct. 
The systematic divinity of the future will be 
that which honors and conserves man’s free 
personality, and shows his Person, all the 
larger and more free, in the organic com¬ 
munion of the Living Church. 

The GoD-man is the perfect type of hu¬ 
manity. He is His Church, as a body. He 
is “the light that lighteth every man that 
cometh into the world.” The Americans, 
that will learn and know the truth, need 
not step outside the line of their progress. 
There is a nobler manliness and a larger 
liberty in the Church than can possibly be 
in the world. 

Upon the whole, it is apparent that sys¬ 
tematic divinity never can be a single treat¬ 
ise, nor indeed a single line of treatises, em¬ 
bracing the whole formal instruction in 
Christianity. It is contained in many 
books, with many chapters ; some dusty and 
forgotten, some venerable but not now effi¬ 
cient, some old yet ever young, some in 
course of writing, some yet to be written. 
The subject of all, however, is the “ one 
faith” “ once for all delivered to the saints,” 
embodied in the historic Church and mani¬ 
fested by the ever Living Body of Christ. 
Systems of divinity come and go ; but the 
truth, as it is in Jesus, ever remaineth 
ever liveth, and goeth on forever. 

Rev. B. Franklin, D.D. 


♦ ♦ ♦ 


T. 


Tabernacle. The symbol of God’s pres¬ 
ence. The Tabernacle was the type of His 
Presence with His People. It was complex 
in its symbolism. The gradation from the 
outer broad admittance to all, on to the soli¬ 
tary entrance once a year of the High-Priest 
into the Holy of Holies, was a lesson upon 
the inner life. The Sacrifices, varying yet 
all upon a consulted plan, inculcating the 
true doctrine of sin as God sees it, were 
types of a mode of access to Him. The 
constant offerings taught the necessity of 
prayer. The ministrations of the priests in 
their appointed order and rank; the giving 
by them of the Blessing of Peace; the ser¬ 
vices of the Psalms and Hymns,—all trained 
the people in a conception of holiness and 


of the abiding presence of God, which 
should have raised them into a higher and 
nobler character. It did do so, but Holy Scrip¬ 
ture ever records the sins as well as the vir¬ 
tues of the chosen People so impartially, that 
we do not feel that they were, as they "really 
became, far above the nations around them. 
This teaching by rite and by symbol reached 
farther than the training of the people. It 
was the pattern of the things God showed 
Moses in the mount, with the charge to 
carry them out strictly. They were the 
shadows of the reality in Christ Jesus, 
and they even had a preventing grace, an 
anticipatory character, and so were to teach 
the great truth of the Atonement for sin. 
They were a declaration of God’s will and 






TE DEUM 


723 


TEMPTATION 


purpose upon the law of worship, which we 
are to offer willingly, as it is in Psalms of 
the new birth of the Church in Christ : 
“ In the day of Thy power shall the people 
offer Thee free-will offering with an holy 
worship: the dew of Thy birth is of the 
womb of the morning.” It is but following 
out the comment of the Epistle to the He¬ 
brews, as illustrated by the Vision of the 
Revelation, to hold that the Mosaic ritual, 
a shadow of the good things to come, is a 
guide to us in reverently seeking the Divine 
will as to worship in the freedom and the 
liberty of the glorious Gospel of Christ. 

Te Deum. The noblest of the uninspired 
hymns, if indeed it can be truly said that it 
is not inspired. Its origin is very dim. 
The story that it was a responsive improvisa¬ 
tion in the enthusiasm of the moment by St. 
Ambrose and St. Augustine when the latter 
was baptized is only a beautiful legend. Its 
material was most probably gathered from 
many devotional sources. St. Cyprian’s tract, 
“ De Mortalitate,” closes with a strain very 
like “ the glorious company of the Apostles 
praise Thee:” “ There is the glorious com¬ 
pany of the Apostles. There is the number 
of exulting prophets. There is the innu¬ 
merable multitude of the martyrs.” The 
passages in the hymns at the end of St. 
Clement of Alexandria’s works are evidently 
the source of much of the Te Deum. Other 
material may yet be forthcoming; and it 
may well have been sung, not in its present 
state, but in some fragmentary form, at St. 
Augustine’s baptism. It was most evidently 
a growth that has become perfected by the 
joyful use in the public worship of innu¬ 
merable holy hearts. The earliest notice of 
it is in the rule of Caesarius (527 a.d.). From 
that time it passed into more and more fre¬ 
quent use. It is often chanted after a 
victory or a great deliverance. The famous 
Te Deum which Handel wrote was upon the 
victory at Dettingen. The constant use in 
daily worship passed into the English Prayer- 
Book of Edward VI. (1549 a.d.). Its per- 
missory use outside of the daily service is 
in the Forms of Prayer to be used at Sea, 
when it may be used, after the anthem ap¬ 
pointed to be used after a Victory. In Ed¬ 
ward’s first Prayer-Book it was not to be 
used in Lent, but the Benedicite was to be 
substituted for it, but this direction was 
omitted afterwards. 

Temple. The first Temple vowed, and 
prepared for, by King David, and built 
from his plans and with the treasure he 
had accumulated by his son Solomon, up¬ 
on Mount Zion. It was seven years in 
building, and so faithfully were the plans of 
the architects carried out and the varied 
parts so well prepared, that when the Temple 
was erected there was neither hammer, nor 
axe, nor any tool of iron heard in the 
house while it was building. The cost of 
the work was immense. The total sum (sup¬ 
posing money to have been worth sixteen 
times as much then as now) exceeded three 


hundred millions of dollars. Its equip¬ 
ments for worship were complete, and per¬ 
haps the most splendid, as they certainly 
were the most extensive, ever made. The 
Temple on its completion was consecrated 
with magnificent pomp and a profusion of 
sacrifices which are unparalleled. But it 
must be noticed that these ceremonies fol¬ 
lowed, did not precede the offer of the 
Temple to Jehovah. 

When the ark was put into its place, 
then the glory of the Lord descended, and by 
its insupportable presence drove the priests 
into the outer court, where they made their 
offerings. After this Solomon uttered the 
grand prayer of dedication. In its relation 
to the Tabernacle, the Temple was the type 
of the Christian dispensation in its relation 
to the Mosaic. It completed, set in order, 
and celebrated with a greater splendor the 
typical ritual of the Law which could not 
be so carried out, and was in fact intermit¬ 
tently used for many years. It is used also 
in relation to the Christian life as a type 
of the Indwelling of the Holy Ghost. 
“What!” exclaims St. Paul, “know ye not 
that ye are the Temple of God?” “that 
your body is the Temple of the Holy Ghost 
which is in you, which ye have of God, and 
ye are not your own ?” (1 Cor. iii. 16 ; vi. 
19.) Again, the service of God in the Tem¬ 
ple was the home of the Christian Liturgy. 
There is a parallelism in the two, which 
shows that the one was the pattern for the 
other. Its choral character impressed itself 
on the Christian worship. Its responsive 
structure has been taken up and enlarged. 
Its intercessory services are re-impleaded 
with the one, full, perfect, and sufficient 
sacrifice through which all our pleadings 
are offered. The great festivals, so signifi¬ 
cantly carried out in the Temple worship, 
were transferred under a more spiritual 
meaning into the Christian worship. Looked 
at in every way, the Temple in its glory is 
the type and the earlier pattern of so much 
which belongs to the .Church of God. It is 
probable that the Temple worship did not 
always retain such statelj r splendor. Only 
in Solomon’s day, in the reformation of 
Hezekiah, and at the restoration of Josiah, 
was there a full realization of it. In the 
Second Temple and in Herod’s Temple there 
were wanting several things which especi¬ 
ally belonged to the Solomonic Temple. 
'J he ark -had perished. The glory did not 
rest upon either one. The perfect appoint¬ 
ments of vessels and of minor details were 
wanting. As in so many other of God’s 
dealings, His gifts are not recognized. The 
presence of Christ in the Second Temple, 
which was indeed its greater glory, was not 
acknowledged, but His people drove out and 
gave up to be crucified Him who was at 
once the Presence and the Priest. • 

Temptation. This word has been and 
is used so confusedly, that it is difficult to 
force on men’s minds the real meaning 
of the word in the several places where it 






TEMPTATION 


724 


TENNESSEE 


may occur. The intention under the word 
at the place in which it is used, affects its 
force very seriously. Properly and in a good 
sense, it is but the trial under which a 
superior always places an inferior as a test 
of his trustiness. This is always admitted 
as being perfectly fair in our daily life. 
So God tried, tempted, tested Abraham. 
So every opportunity that is put in our 
hands is a trial, a test, a temptation. But it 
has an evil sense, when we turn what was a 
test to evil ends ; so God’s fair tests may by 
our evil take a worse turn, and we yield, 
either by our own carnal will, or by sugges¬ 
tion of the devil, to the evil side of the 
trial. So Adam was justly tempted by God, 
•but was ignorantly tempted by Eve, who 
was .herself evilly tempted by the devil. 
A third sense still lower, and the usual one, 
is when the devil tempts us to sin ; in this 
case we use most commonly the word in its 
worst meaning. The devil tempted Eve 
with wicked intention, Eve tempted Adam 
ignorantl} 7 ’; out of these comes a fourth 
form, when men tempt each other to sin, 
whether wittingly or unwittingly. And 
lastly, when men tempt themselves, for it is 
a wonderful power in our human nature that 
a man can, as it were, go outside of himself 
and tempt himself to sin, as if he were a 
second person. 

This life, which should be a holy proba¬ 
tion, is by our sinfulness and by the com¬ 
binations of causes beyond us, a time of 
temptation, which descends from the trial 
which fits for heaven through every step to 
the sin that destroys the soul. And a 
single probation from God, by the inter¬ 
ference of men and the secret temptations 
of the fiend, and by our own weakness, either 
from habit or from carelessness, may become 
a temptation. The petition in the Loud’s 
Prayer, “ Lead us not into temptation,” 
while one of the most difficult to explain, 
yet is one of the most needful of its peti¬ 
tions. It is the cry of the trembling soul 
to a merciful Creator to lighten its trial, 
to relieve and to strengthen it in the mor¬ 
tal struggle, to open the Way of escape. 
Temptation is the sin-tainted form for 
God’s holy probation. In every way our 
Lord’s temptations are an example for our¬ 
selves to use, and in themselves are the 
Victory that He must win that we may be 
more than conquerors in Him. His tempta¬ 
tions were not only the ones which assailed 
Him after His fast, nor were they those that 
His enemies put upon Him ; but the tempta¬ 
tions He speaks of when He saith, “ Ye are 
they that have continued with me in my 
temptations,” are those trials which as the 
Son of Man, tempted in all points like as 
we are, He had to endure,—the jarring 
against His perfect nature by the weak and 
faithless, the ignorant and unbelieving. 
His temptations conclude all that was neces¬ 
sary to make Him master of our weaknesses, 
failings, and temptations. For this cause 
He is not ashamed to cal 1 us brethren. The 


extent and subtlety of temptation, the 
power to resist it, the power granted to 
Satan to tempt, the relation so wonderful 
of our Lord’s sympathy with the tempted, 
and His ever-present help, are all subjects 
that need a far longer discussion than space 
allows, and to indicate without developing 
each of these would be to do harm rather 
than good. Every Commentary should sup¬ 
ply some light upon these questions, and 
the innumerable sermons upon it published, 
and which are easily accessible, would give 
more instruction than could be given in a 
few sentences here. 

Tennessee, History of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church in. Unlike those of some 
of the older States, its records do not extend 
far into the past, only dating from 1829 a.d. 
Five or six years before this period, Bishop 
Otey emigrated to Tennessee, and preached 
to congregations at Franklin, and Columbia, 
and Nashville, at which latter place the 
Episcopal Church in Tennessee, July 1, 
1829 a.d., was first regularly organized. 
Upon this occasion a meeting was held, and 
a Constitution and Canons for the govern¬ 
ment and regulation of the Protestant Epis¬ 
copal Church in Tennessee were adopted. 
At this meeting there were present only 
three clergymen, Rev. Daniel Stephens, 
Rev. James H. Otey, and the Rev. John 
Davis, and nine laymen. Bishops Ravens- 
croft and Mead visited Tennessee, the former 
presiding at the first Convention of the 
Church in Tennessee. On the 29th of June, 
1833 a.d. , the Rev. James H. Otey was elected 
Bishop of Tennessee, and immediately after 
his consecration, January 14, 1834 a.d., he 
entered upon the duties of the Episcopate, 
and for nearly thirty years, not only as the 
Bishop of Tennessee, but also as Missionary 
Bishop of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, 
and Florida, most faithfully dispensed the 
word of life. The coadjutors of Bishop 
Otey were not many, but their interest in 
the Church never diminished. After the 
election of Bishop Otey the prospects of the 
Church were encouraging. The Book of 
Common Prayer was sought after, books ex¬ 
planatory of our doctrines and worship were 
read, Sunday-schools, Missionary Societies, 
and institutions of learning were estab¬ 
lished. 

The progress of the Church was seriously 
impeded by the civil war. Some of the 
churches were without clergymen, her peo¬ 
ple scattered, and the perils of the times 
seemed to extinguish the zeal of the freeness 
of the Church. At the close of the war a 
special Convention was held at Nashville, at 
which Rev. C. T. Quintard was elected 
Bishop, and from that time the Church has 
gradually progressed. Churches were or¬ 
ganized in many places: in Memphis 3, 
Bolivar 1, Jackson 1, Cleveland 1, Chatta¬ 
nooga 1, Cumberland Furnace 1, Sewanee 1, 
Trenton 1, Tullahoma 1, Edgefield 1, Knox¬ 
ville 2, Greenville 1, Mason 1, Brownsville 
1, Pulaski 1, Covington 1, Winchester 1, 





TENURE OF CHURCH PROPERTY 725 TENURE OF CHURCH PROPERTY 


Shelbyville 1, Nashville 2, besides many 
missionary stations. Sewanee is the Univer¬ 
sity of the South. At Columbia is a flourish¬ 
ing female school, and also one in Bolivar. 
Owing to the imperfection of statistical re¬ 
ports, the number of communicants cannot be 
given with certainty. There is a project on 
foot to divide the Diocese ; whether it will 
be done the future will decide. 

Rev. Geo. White, D.D. 

Tenure of Church Property. The prop¬ 
erty with which this article has to do con¬ 
sists mainly in Houses of Worship, Rectories, 
buildings devoted to eleemosynary, hospi¬ 
tal, or educational purposes, and their ap¬ 
purtenant grounds. From the nature of 
the case it is apparent that the tenure by 
which this property is held must of necessity 
be fiduciary in its character. It is, there¬ 
fore, of the first importance that the legal 
title, in whomsoever vested, be firmly im¬ 
pressed with the trust which it is intended 
to subserve, and that this trust be so clearly 
defined and securely guarded as to be pro¬ 
tected, beyond peradventure, against diver¬ 
sion or misuse. Not only is this precaution 
important in order to secure the benefits in¬ 
tended to flow from the property of the 
Church already in possession, but addition¬ 
ally so in respect of encouraging gifts, be¬ 
quests, and devises, which for want of it 
might be withheld. 

The General Convention of 1880 a.d. hav¬ 
ing had its attention drawn to the subject of 
Church incorporations and the methods of 
tenure of Church property by the Deputies 
in that body from the Diocese of Minnesota, 
took action in the matter by the appoint¬ 
ment of a Commission to inquire into and 
report upon the subject. The report of that 
Commission made to the General Conven¬ 
tion of 1883 a.d. so fully and ably presents 
the whole matter, that we shall content our¬ 
self with adopting and reproducing here its 
principal parts. 

In a communication published under date 
of February 6, 1881 a.d., the Chairman of 
the Commission, the Right Rev. the Bishop 
of Central New York, set forth the objects 
sought to be attained by the appointment of 
the Commission, and the importance to the 
Church of close attention to the practical 
bearing of the subject. 

Attention was called to the frequent loss 
of gifts, bequests, and property through de¬ 
fects or irregularity in legal forms, and to 
the “ waste in Dioceses, Parishes, and pub¬ 
lic charities for the want of duly consti¬ 
tuted and qualified trust corporations em¬ 
powered to receive and manage the endow¬ 
ments.” 

Reference was made to facts then already 
brought to the attention of the Commission, 
showing the disaster resulting from imper¬ 
fect legislation, fiduciary negligence, and 
the ignorance of testators. 

A request was made for facts, opinions, 
and suggestions; and the following recom¬ 
mendations were made to all Dioceses in the 


United States where such action had not 
already been taken : 

1. To consider the expediency of obtain¬ 
ing, if possible, from the legislative authority 
in each State or Territory, an Act making 
the Diocese itself, or its Convention or Coun¬ 
cil, a legal corporation, qualified to receive 
and hold in trust any Church property de¬ 
signed for religious, benevolent, or educa¬ 
tional purposes, under suitable conditions. 

2. To appoint, from time to time, a com¬ 
mittee to examine the state, title, and se¬ 
curities of all funds or investments or real 
property having a Diocesan character. 

3. To require every parish to report to 
the Diocesan Convention or Council whether 
there is good ground to believe that its right 
to receive and hold property is good under 
the provisions of the common or statute 
law. 

As a result of this action, the subject was 
drawn under consideration in several of the 
Diocesan Conventions ; and with respect to 
what has already been done, both before and 
since the appointment of the Commission, 
it may fairly be said that there has been a 
good beginning, and some progress in the 
direction indicated in the suggestions made. 

In August last a circular letter was pre¬ 
pared, containing ten questions intended to 
elicit information upon the whole subject; 
and copies were sent to the Bishops, and 
also to the Secretaries of the Diocesan Con¬ 
ventions. 

To this letter from only nineteen Dio¬ 
ceses have answers been received containing 
information of some value, but not full 
enough to furnish the material for such a 
report as the Commission desired to make, 
nor to oiler a basis for the compilation of 
statistics, either comprehensive or exact. 

Enough has been ascertained, however, to 
warrant the estimate that the aggregate 
value of property held by the Church, for 
various uses, cannot be less than thirty mil¬ 
lions of dollars, not including the large prop¬ 
erties controlled by Trinity Parish in New 
York. The control of this large interest is 
distributed among more than three thousand 
corporations in different States, with differ¬ 
ent powers, subject to different trusts ; and 
it is to be feared, at the very least, more than 
half of it not impressed with the trusts to 
which it is intended to be applied in such 
manner as to insure the protection of the 
law. 

It will, in the judgment of the Commis¬ 
sion, be impossible for any candid mind to 
apply itself to even a superficial examina¬ 
tion of this subject without being duly im¬ 
pressed with the lack of system, uncertainty, 
and ineffectiveness with which these great 
property interests are secured to the future 
use and benefit of the Church. And, in most 
of the Dioceses, there are now possibilities 
of loss, which by greater legal precision, and 
the adoption of accurate forms of convey¬ 
ance, well-considered corporate supervision, 
and attention to the clear and legal defini- 




TENURE OF CHURCH PROPERTY 726 TENURE OF CHURCH PROPERTY 


tion of trusts, might be reduced to a mini¬ 
mum, if not absolutely avoided. 

It might be presumed that, with respect 
to the Church buildings and Rectories, the 
interest of the individual Parishes would be 
strong enough to afford adequate protection. 
We venture, however, to hazard the asser¬ 
tion that, in Dioceses where this subject has 
not been especially and carefully considered 
and acted upon, it will be found to be the 
rule that there is no barrier which could, in 
case of necessity, be interposed to prevent 
the diversion of the property from its legiti¬ 
mate use, or its being hopelessly encum¬ 
bered by any Vestry which might, by acci¬ 
dent or otherwise, find itself in the con¬ 
trol of it. The Canon upon the subject of 
the alienation and incumbrance of Church 
property affords no legal protection what¬ 
ever, as has been demonstrated in several 
notable cases arising in the courts of law. 

Such, generally stated, being the condi¬ 
tion of affairs, it is apparent that the subject 
demands the most careful consideration and 
serious attention of the Church. The rem¬ 
edy for these evils, however, cannot be fur¬ 
nished or applied through the General 
Convention, but must be sought in and 
through the several Dioceses. 

It is very important that it be clearly 
understood that the subject cannot be cov¬ 
ered by Canonical legislation, either general 
or Diocesan, but must be controlled by 
the statute law of the respective States. 
The provisions of Canon 24, Title I., have, 
of themselves, only moral, not legal, force, 
to prevent alienation or incumbrance con¬ 
trary to its provisions. The effect of the 
existing Canon has probably been mislead¬ 
ing in creating a false impression of se¬ 
curity. What is needed is, not a provision 
depending upon voluntary action, but one 
which will restrain a Vestry which does not 
consider itself bound by the Canon, and 
makes the Church property useless to a pur¬ 
chaser, because available for no other use 
than that to which it has been consecrated. 

If there is to be a Canon on the subject, 
it would seem to be desirable to so frame it 
as to secure the execution of its provisions 
ex vi termini. And it is practicable to re¬ 
quire by General Canon, that for the future, 
the title to real estate for Church build¬ 
ings, Chapels, and Rectories shall be taken 
only under conveyances expressly defining a 
trust, the general terms of which might pos¬ 
sibly be set forth. The Commission have not 
considered it within the proper scope of the 
present report to suggest any Canonical 
legislation. If, upon consideration, the 
Committees on Canons should deem such 
legislation advisable, it would not be diffi¬ 
cult to frame such amendments as would 
accomplish what is intended by the present 
Canon, at least wherever the common-law 
doctrine of uses and trusts is in force. 

Beyond this point legislation by the 
General Convention could not go ; since the 
title to real property must be acquired and 


held under such diverse systems of law as, 
were there no other reason, to forbid any 
attempt to furnish unvarying forms and 
methods. 

It was, nevertheless, a timely measure of 
prudence for the General Convention to 
direct attention to a subject so vital in its 
relation to the future welfare and prosperity 
of the Church. Already its action has led, 
in more than one instance, to Diocesan ac¬ 
tion ; and it is believed that, if the present 
interest be not suffered to abate, few, if any, 
Dioceses will fail to make proper provision 
for the future security of their property. 

Entertaining these views, the Commission 
has not considered the scope of its author¬ 
ity—conferred by the somewhat indefinite 
resolution under which it was appointed—to 
go beyond the collection of information, 
and the suggestion of such general princi¬ 
ples of action as might be safely recom¬ 
mended. 

While it is to be regretted that the infor¬ 
mation obtained has been so meagre, it is 
yet sufficient to show the necessity for 
prompt and energetic action to secure per¬ 
manence in the tenure of Church property, 
and the creation of suitable Church corpo¬ 
rations with such powers as to make them 
available for all present or future neces¬ 
sities of a Diocese. 

Without entering into or attempting to 
prescribe details, except for the purpose of 
illustration, the Commission desire most 
earnestly to direct attention to these vital 
points: 

1. It is of the utmost importance that, 
upon the title of every separate property 
dedicated to the uses of the Church, there be 
impressed a trust which will be so clear and 
well defined as to secure it for all time 
against diversion, and to protect it against 
the contingency of being alienated from its 
legitimate use, either directly or-through 
the medium of incumbrances, even by the 
action, or with the assent, of those who 
happen, for the time being, to be entitled to 
its use. 

With proper attention to legal forms the 
end may be secured, whether the legal title 
to the property be vested in the Parochial 
or in a Diocesan corporation. 

It is not within the province of the Com¬ 
mission to decide between the two systems ; 
but it may be permitted to suggest some of 
the advantages which accrue from an ade¬ 
quate Diocesan provision for the separation 
of the legal from the equitable title. • 

The former may be vested in such corpo¬ 
rations as are hereafter recommended, as a 
dry trust, which in certain contingencies— 
as, for example, the failure of the Parish 
organization — would become an active 
trust, subject to proper limitations to be 
prescribed in each case. The use may, in 
such case, be vested absolutely in the Parish, 
and subject to its control for every legiti¬ 
mate end as fully as under an absolute con¬ 
veyance to it. If there be objection in any 




TENURE OF CHURCH PROPERTY 727 TENURE OF CHURCH PROPERTY 


quarter to the application of this system to 
existing Parishes, it may be made compul¬ 
sory onty for the future, and voluntary as 
to otiiers. If the admirable features of this 
system are understood, it may, when that 
is desired by a Diocesan Convention, be 
safely left to work its own way to popular 
favor, when the necessary machinery is pro¬ 
vided to make it practicable. 

"What is termed, for convenience, the 
Diocesan system, has the additional advan¬ 
tage of providing a proper custodian of the 
property when, from any cause, there ceases 
to be a local Parish or organization to use 
and to protect it. The provision of a cor¬ 
poration of the Diocese, to hold the legal 
title to real estate held for Parochial as 
well as Diocesan purposes, also furnishes the 
necessary machinery hereafter recommended 
for the convenient administration of trusts 
of every species of property, whether the 
amount be large or small, and secures its 
application to the purpose designated by the 
donor. 

It is a fact well understood, that the want 
of security and certainty for the future 
restrains many pious and benevolent persons 
from making gifts, devises, or bequests, 
which would otherwise be secured to some 
one of the many objects for which the 
Church is constantly appealing for pecu¬ 
niary aid. 

The frequent changes in the Vestries, the 
composition of very many of them, and the 
confessed impossibility of present improve¬ 
ment in this respect, together with the fact 
that they are intrusted with the care of the 
property interests which were never intended 
to be at the disposal of any one generation, 
—all demonstrate the impropriety of having 
these important interests at the mercy of so 
unstable and accidental a guardian. 

It is to be remembered, on the other hand, 
that care must be taken, where titles are 
vested in the Diocesan corporation, that 
nothing shall be done to weaken the sense 
of responsibility of the Parishes and local 
authorities for maintaining the services of 
the Church, and doing their work to the 
extent of their ability. The suggestion of 
the Diocesan system does not atfect the rela¬ 
tion of the Parish to its property, since upon 
it must rest the entire responsibility and 
actual control as heretofore. 

Another measure, already adopted in some 
States, for the protection of Church build¬ 
ings and real estate of kindred character, is 
a statutory provision forbidding the aliena¬ 
tion of such property without the prior ap¬ 
proval of a competent court of equity. The 
publicity attending applications to the court 
under such laws insures an opportunity for 
all interested parties to be heard; and, 
if these laws should be extended to em¬ 
brace mortgages as well as absolute convey¬ 
ances, they would probably afford adequate 
protection. Where, under the practice of a 
Diocese, the title is vested in the Parochial 
corporation or local trustees, the passage of 


such a law would be a valuable safeguard; 
and even where the legal title is vested in a 
Diocesan body, though the necessity is less 
pressing, it is still an additional security if 
alienation and incumbrance of the Church 
building, at least, be only permitted under 
the direction of the court. Such laws exist 
in the States of Virginia and Ohio, and pos¬ 
sibly in others not reported to the Commis¬ 
sion. 

2. This naturally suggests the other branch 
of inquiry included in the resolution under 
which the Commission was appointed. 

The necessity of a comprehensive Di¬ 
ocesan corporation, capable in law of hold¬ 
ing any species of property upon any trust 
which may be ingrafted upon it, is apparent, 
and now becoming so generally recognized 
as to require statement only, and not dis¬ 
cussion. 

Such a corporation may be comprehensive 
enough to administer any and every trust 
within the Diocese, whether its object be 
Diocesan or Parochial, and whether it be 
strictly ecclesiastical, or one of those elee¬ 
mosynary, educational, or benevolent foun¬ 
dations which are already frequent, and, as 
the real spirit of the Divine Master more 
thoroughly permeates the Church, will the 
more abound if the creation of proper Di¬ 
ocesan agencies insures fidelity in their exe¬ 
cution and reasonable certainty in their 
future safe-keeping. 

Such corporations, responsible to the Di T 
ocesan Convention or Council, are annually 
subjected to the scrutiny which business con¬ 
siderations render necessary ; and embarrass¬ 
ments to the trust by death or resignation 
of trustees, and the lapse or loss of trust 
property, are thus guarded against with 
absolute certainty. 

Such corporations appear, from the re¬ 
ports made to the Convention, to have been 
already provided in several Dioceses; and 
the number of them is increasing. Some of 
those already created are very comprehen¬ 
sive, and will afford satisfactory precedents 
for similar legislation for Dioceses which 
have not yet acted upon the subject. 

3. In order to secure both or either of 
these points, it will be essential for each Di¬ 
ocesan Convention to provide, as early as is 
practicable, for the thorough examination 
of the condition of its titles, and the tenure 
of its property ; and to obtain from the legis¬ 
lature such enactments as shall be found ne¬ 
cessary to secure adequate protection for the 
future. At the same time, the creation of 
such Diocesan corporate bodies as may be 
required should be secured. 

Where, as is done in some cases, the Dio¬ 
cese is itself incorporated, there should be 
provision in the charter for the administra¬ 
tion of trusts and property interests by a 
board of trustees with some degree of per¬ 
manence, rather than by so transitory a body 
as the Diocesan Convention. The trustees 
may be elected by the Convention for fixed 
terms, or may be named in the Act of Incor- 





TENURE OF CHURCH PROPERTY 728 


TESTAMENT 


poration, with provision for filling vacancies 
by vote of the Convention or otherwise. 

The Commission recommend that this 
subject be presented to the attention of the 
several Dioceses more effectually than will 
be accomplished by the publication of this 
Report in the Journal. If it be deemed ad¬ 
visable, provision may also be made for the 
continuance of this Joint Commission, to be 
charged with the duty of assisting, when 
such assistance shall be requested, in the 
formulation of Diocesan and legislative 
action, suggesting well-considered forms of 
conveyance and the collection of informa¬ 
tion, to be reported to the next General 
Convention. 

The passage of the following resolutions 
is respectfully recommended: 

1. Resolved (the House of Bishops con¬ 
curring), That it is recommended to each 
Diocese to obtain, without delay, such leg¬ 
islation as may be found necessary with re¬ 
spect to the existing daws of the State, for 
the protection of its property, real and per¬ 
sonal, and whether held for Diocesan or 
Parochial uses. 

2. Resolved (the House of Bishops concur¬ 
ring), That all real estate held in any Dio¬ 
cese, for Diocesan or Parochial purposes, 
should have the use for which it is held im¬ 
pressed upon its title. 

3. Resolved (the House of Bishops con¬ 
curring), That a form of conveyance should 
be provided, under which churches shall 
acquire title to real estate, with proper lim¬ 
itations in trust. 

4. Resolved (the House of Bishops con¬ 
curring), That the Committees on Canons 
be, and they are hereby, requested to con¬ 
sider and report if, in their judgment, Canon 
24, Title I., should be amended so as to re¬ 
quire that title to real estate for Churches, 
Chapels, or Rectories shall be so taken as 
that the trusts under which they are held 
shall be limited in the conveyance. 

5. Resolved (the House of Bishops con¬ 
curring), That a permanent board of trus¬ 
tees, with proper provision for filling vacan¬ 
cies, should be legally incorporated in each 
Diocese, to take charge of and control all 
such property of the Diocese or of its Par¬ 
ishes as may be intrusted to it. When the 
Diocese is itself incorporated, the Act of 
Incorporation should provide for the exer¬ 
cise of its corporate powers in the care of 
property, and the administration of trusts, 
by a board of trustees having some perma¬ 
nence of organization, rather than directly 
by the Diocesan Convention. 

6. Resolved (the House of Bishops con¬ 
curring), That the joint commission upon 
Church Incorporations and the Tenure of 
Church Property be, and the same is hereby, 
continued for the purpose of assisting, when 
requested, in the formulation of Diocesan 
and legislative action, suggesting forms of 
conveyance, and the collection of further 
information to be reported to the next Gen¬ 
eral Convention. 


Ter Sanctus. The Hymn which Isaiah 
heard in his vision in the Temple (Isa. 
vi. 1-4), and which has been ever used in 
the Celebration of the Holy Communion. 
There is the Preface belonging to the or¬ 
dinary celebration, or the Proper one ap¬ 
pointed for the festal Sunday ; then follows 
the Ascription, which should always be said 
only by the celebrant: “ Therefore with An¬ 
gels and Archangels, and with all the com¬ 
pany of heaven, we laud and magnify Thy 
glorious Name; evermore praising Thee, and 
saying,‘Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of 
Hosts, Heaven and Earth are full of the 
Majesty of Thy Glory. Glory be to Thee, O 
Lord most High. Amen.’ ” 

This is a shorter form (both in the imme¬ 
diate Preface and in the Ter Sanctus ) than 
in other Liturgies. The Sanctus in the form 
usual elsewhere ended with the words, 
“ Hosanna in the highest, Blessed is he 
that cometh in the name of the Lord. Ho¬ 
sanna in the Highest.” There seems to be 
no assignable reason for the change from a 
venerable form. In the preceding words, 
“ Therefore,” etc., the form was different in 
every Western Liturgy, and was probably 
made variable from a very early date, while 
the Eastern Liturgies clung to a single 
unvarying Preface. ( Vide Preface.) 

Testament. The word for Testament is 
also the one for Covenant, but the translators 
of the English Bible have not always ob¬ 
served this, and have used the word indif¬ 
ferently, but to our loss, as in Heb. ix. 19, 
20, where it must mean Covenant, as it is 
correctly translated in Gal. iii. 15, and this 
mistranslation has passed into the Words of 
Institution in the Communion office when 
the Priest recites the words, “ This is my 
blood of the New Testament,” in place of 
the New Covenant, which was our Lord’s 
full meaning. ( Vide Covenant.) But the 
word is now usually used of the New Testa¬ 
ment, and when the whole Bible is referred 
to by it, it is customary to use the phrase, 
“ the Old and New Testaments.” 

Testament , Old. —The Old Testament, as 
a volume, begins with an inspired account 
of the creation of the world in Genesis, and 
closes in Malachi with a prophecy of the 
coming of Christ. It comprises Divine 
accounts of history, and sacred laws, and 
prophecies, and Psalms and Proverbs. An 
ancient division of the entire book made 
three parts—the Law, the Prophets, and the 
Hagiographa, or Holy Writings. “The 
Law” included the Pentateuch,—that is, 
the first five books of Scripture. “ The 
Prophets” contained Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 
Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamen¬ 
tations, Ezekiel, Daniel, the twelve Minor 
Prophets, Job, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther. 
The Hagiographa embraced the Psalms, 
the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of 
Solomon. Afterwards the Jews made a 
different division. The Jewish historian, 
Josephus, who was contemporary with the 
Apostles, divides the Old Testament into 





TESTAMENT 


729 


TESTAMENT 


the Law, the Prophets, and “ Hymns and 
Instructions for Men’s Lives.” There is a 
similar division in Philo. Our Lord’s 
words are, “ that all things must be fulfilled 
which were written in the law of Moses, 
and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms con¬ 
cerning Me” (St. Luke xxiv. 44). In this 
phrase the Hagiographa are styled Psalms. 
The Pentateuch or Law was divided into 
sections, to be read as lessons in the syna¬ 
gogues on the Sabbath-Day, as we now read 
Scripture lessons in church. In the disper¬ 
sion of the Jews, the synagogues, with their 
Scripture readings and teachings, prepared 
the way for Christianity. One of the most 
striking scenes in the New Testament re¬ 
lates the blending of the old and new dis¬ 
pensations ill a Jewish synagogue. Our 
Blessed Lord in Nazareth, “as His custom 
was,”—a lesson of worship for mortals,— 
“ went into the synagogue on the Sabbath- 
Day,” and read and commented on the out¬ 
pouring of God’s Spirit of blessing described 
in Isaiah, and declared the prophecy ful¬ 
filled in Himself (St. Luke iv. 16-22). The 
ancient Book of God in the hands of the 
Son of God is a sublime picture (see also 
Acts xv. 21, and xiii. 15). The Jews 
kept the Holy Scriptures in a sacred chest, 
and thrice a week they were read in the 
synagogues. Every seven years, at the Feast 
of Tabernacles, when all Israel were assem¬ 
bled before the Lord, the law of the Lord 
was read (Josh. viii. 35). The sacredness of 
the five books of the Law is seen in the fact 
that they were, by the command of Moses, 
deposited by the Ark of the Covenant, 
within the Holy of Holies, on which the 
Divine Presence rested (Deut. xxxi. 9, 26). 
Sometimes the phrase “ the Law and the 
Prophets” includes the whole Old Testa¬ 
ment. Both in the Old and New Testa¬ 
ments a prophet means not simply one who 
predicts, but also “any one sent by God.” 
See St. Luke xxiv. 27, where Christ speaks 
of “Moses and all the prophets,” and im¬ 
mediately the words “ all the Scriptures” 
follow. In St. Matt. xxii. 40, “ All the law 
and the prophets” appears to include all the 
Old Testament, as in St. Matt. vii. 12, and xi. 
13^ So highly did the Jews reverence their 
sacred Scriptures that they were ready to 
die, if necessary, for “the Oracles of God.” 

One interesting fact which meets us in be¬ 
ginning the Old Testament is the great age 
which was then granted to men. Methuse¬ 
lah lived from Adam to Noah, Shem con¬ 
versed with Noah and Abraham. Isaac 
conversed with Abraham and Joseph, from 
whom traditions might have been easily con¬ 
veyed to Moses by Amram, “ who lived long 
enough with Joseph.” “ When first reve¬ 
lation was given to man, men’s lives were 
so long, that there was little danger lest the 
light of truth should be lost; Adam, Seth, 
Enoch, Methuselah, Noah, were in fact all 
but contemporaries. Seth, the son of Adam, 
lived to within fifteen years of the birth of 
Noah. Tradition, therefore, may have suf¬ 


ficed for them; and yet we have reason to 
believe that, even then, the faith was much 
corrupted.” (Browne on the Articles.) 
Hence various Revelations have been needed, 
and God has given them from the days of 
Moses to the time of St. John. The Old 
Testament is a Covenant between God and 
man (Ex. xxiv. 3-12; Deut. v. 2 ; Gen. xv.; 
Ex. xxiv.; Jer. xxxii. 22). The Mosaic 
Covenant or Testament was an agreement 
which engaged the Hebrews to worship God 
alone, while in return God promised that 
they should be His chosen people. The 
Christian religion is a New Testament or 
Covenant (St. Matt. xxvi. 28). Hence St. 
Paul speaks of “the two Covenants” (Gal. 
iv. 24) The Covenant of Sinai and the 
Covenant of Calvary are alike parts of God’s 
plan for man’s redemption. The New Cove¬ 
nant is that of forgiveness through faith in 
Christ. The Old Testament looks forward to 
Christ. He asserts that they testify of Him 
(St. John v. 39). The New Testament is the 
key to the Old. The Seed of the woman is 
promised in Eden, and born in Bethlehem. 
Our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount 
shows “ how deep is the moral teaching im¬ 
plied in its letter.” The prophecies foretold 
Christ. In Isa. liii. the crucifixion is 
plainly foreshadowed. As the Jewish Church 
was under a Theocracy, so is the Church 
under Christ. “ The Law was our school¬ 
master to bring us unto Christ” (Gal. iii. 24). 

The promise to Abraham concerning his 
seed, and to David about his son, and the 
types of passover and scape-goat, and the 
sacrifices on the Day of Atonement, and 
the consecration of the High-Priest, all point 
to Christ. St. Paul speaks of the Jews 
as eating “ spiritual meat” and drinking 
“ spiritual drink : for they drank of that 
spiritual Rock that followed them : and that 
Rock was Christ” (1 Cor. x. 3, 4). The 
same Spirit is needed and promised to those 
who seek to know the Scriptures now (St. 
Luke xi. 13). The Church has been commis¬ 
sioned to hand the Scriptures down to us, as 
the Samaritan woman brought her towns¬ 
people to Christ. The liturgical use of Scrip¬ 
ture in Lessons and Psalms has kept it before 
the people, and so the Church has been 
the keeper of Holy Writ. To speak of the 
various books of the Old Testament: Gene¬ 
sis signifies generation, or production, and 
tells of the generation of all things. Exodus 
is the departure of the Israelites from Egypt. 
Leviticus contains the Laws of Sacrifices and 
the Institution of the Priesthood. Num¬ 
bers has an account of the numbering of 
the Israelites, with a part of their history. 
Deuteronomy means the second law, or the 
law repeated. It also gives a history 
of Moses. Joshua gives name to a book 
which contains his acts. Judges gives the 
administration of thirteen Judges from 
Joshua’s death to the time of Eli. The book 
of Ruth is generally considered as an ap¬ 
pendix to the book of Judges and an intro¬ 
duction to that of Samuel. 




TESTAMENT 


730 


TESTAMENT 


lluth was an ancestress of David, and so 
of Christ. This Moabitish damsel’s his¬ 
tory is thought to bean intimation of the re¬ 
ception of the Gentiles into the Christian 
Church. It also shows God’s providential 
care over those who fear Him. The greater 
part of 1 Samuel is supposed to have been 
written by Samuel. The names and char¬ 
acters of Samuel, Eli, Saul, and David are 
mingled with Jewish history in 1 and 2 Sam¬ 
uel. In the books of Kings, Solomon and his 
successors appear, and the division of the 
ki ngdom occurs, and finally the tribes go 
into captivity. The Chronicles contain 
Genealogical Tables and Histories. The book 
of Ezra harmonizes with, and illustrates the 
prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah ; it 
shows God’s Fatherly care over His people. 
Nehemiah narrates the rebuilding of the 
walls of Jerusalem by his oversight, and the 
two reformations accomplished by him. The 
noble Queen Esther deservedly gives name 
to the book which records her pious deed of 
self-sacrifice for her nation. The Poetical 
Books are Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesias¬ 
tes, and the Song of Solomon. In Job we 
see the patriarchal doctrines, and a proph¬ 
ecy of resurrection, and a delineation of 
final retribution. The Psalms the Hebrews 
styled the Book of Hymns, or praises; they 
were to be sung with the voice, accompanied 
with instruments of music. As to the name, 
see St. Luke xx. 42. The use of the Psalter 
in the Church Services keeps up an echo of 
the Temple worship through the centuries. 
They are often termed the Psalms of David, 
because he was the chief author. Many of 
them refer to Christ, “ Great David’s 
Greater Son.” “ The book of Proverbs 
has always been ascribed to Solomon,” 
though it has been doubted whether he wrote 
every maxim. It instructs men in the mys¬ 
teries of wisdom and understanding, the 
perfection of which is the knowledge and 
fear of God. The Apostles frequently quote 
it. Ecclesiastes signifies a Preacher. The 
book is ascribed to Solomon. As for the 
title, see chap. i. 1, 12. The object of the 
book is to display the vanity of earth, and 
to draw men to communion with God, as 
the “only permanent good,” and to teach 
that happiness must be sought “ beyond the 
grave.” The “vanity of vanities” (ch. i. 
2) rings through the book until “ the con¬ 
clusion of the whole matter : Fear God, and 
keep His commandments : for this is the 
whole duty of man” (ch. xii. 13). The Song 
of Solomon is generally deemed “ a mystical 
poem, or allegory.” It is full of Oriental 
figures. Scott considers it as intended “ to 
describe the state of his (the Christian’s) heart 
at different times, and to excite admiring, 
adoring, grateful love to God our Saviour.” 
The Prophetical Books are chiefly prophecy, 
though history and doctrine are also to be 
found in them. They are sixteen in num¬ 
ber, the Lamentations being considered an 
appendix to Jeremiah. The Greater Proph¬ 
ets are Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and 


Daniel, so designated from the size of their 
books. The Minor Prophets are Hosea, 
Joel, Amos, Jonah, Obadiah,Micah, Nahum, 
Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, 
and Malachi. This “ Goodly Fellowship of 
the Prophets,” as the Te Deum styles them, 
all point to the coming Christ: “To Him 
give all the prophets witness” (Acts x. 43). 
In reading the Two Testaments, or Cove¬ 
nants, we should reflect that a proper Cove¬ 
nant implies the agreement of two parties, 
and if God gives miracles and prophecies, 
and sends His Blessed Son to die for man, 
man must on his part in faith accept the 
benefits. “He that hath the Son hath life; ( 
and he that hath not the Son of God hath 
not life” (1 John v. 12). “Now the God 
of hope fill you with all joy and peace in 
believing, that ye may abound in hope, 
through the power of the Holy Ghost” 
(liom. xv. 13). 

Authorities: Browne on the Articles, 
Chr. Wordsworth on the Canon, and Com. 
on the Gr. Test., Encyc. Amer., Jos. Francis 
Thrupp in Wm. Smith’s Diet, of the Bible, 
Horne’s Introduction. As to Ruth and the 
Gentile world, see Lange in Van Oosterzee’s 
Christian Dogmatics. 

Testament, New .—The New Testament, as 
a complete book, consists of four Gospels, the 
Acts of the Apostles, twenty-one Epistles, 
and the prophetic book of the Bevelation of 
St. John the divine. The life and teaching 
of Our Saviour Jesus Christ form the 
topic of the New Testament. It begins with 
the events which preceded the birth of Jesus, 
and ends with a picture of the “ same J esus” 
in glory, and a declaration that He who 
came once in humility will come again in 
power to judgment. The crucifixion and 
atonement—the act of Christ’s death, and 
its blessed effects—are the central points in 
this volume. As the Old Testament in the 
Prophets and Psalms testified of the coming 
Christ, the New Testament declares that 
He has come. A connecting link through¬ 
out this varied book is found in St. John, 
the beloved disciple. He commences his 
Gospel by saying, “In the beginning was 
the Word” (compare Gen. i. 1). He ends 
the Revelation with a prayer for Christ’s 
second advent, and the blessing through 
Christ. His great age permitted him to 
see the working of the Church after Christ’s 
Ascension, and to complete the Gospels. 
His personal association with our Lord gives 
deep interest to all his teachings. In the 
endearment of love he never loses the 
thought of his Lord’s divinity. Well did 
the stficients make the soaring eagle an em¬ 
blem of St. John The zeal of St. Peter 
and the logic of St. Paul supplemented the 
work of St. John. The Epistles show much 
human feeling, as especially the wide-hearted 
salutations of St. Paul in Rom. xvi. The 
description of the earthly life of Christ is 
closed in the beginning of the book of Acts. 
The lives and acts of Christ’s disciples, and 
the doctrines they taught, through the guid- 






TESTAMENT 


731 


TESTAMENT 


ing of the Holy Spirit, form the rest of 
the New Testament. In their teachings 
these men of God, like their Master, con¬ 
stantly appealed to the Old Testament, so 
that the quotations from that book are nu¬ 
merous. The teaching is intensely personal 
and practical. Christ is represented as a 
Person, and man’s relation to Him here and 
hereafter is to be the incentive to Christian 
living. 

St. Paul was “ in Christ” (2 Cor. xii. 2). 
Believers were “baptized into Jesus 
Christ” (Rom.vi. 3). St. Paul is “ crucified 
with Christ.” “Christ liveth in” him 
(Gal. ii. 20). Hence “to live is Christ, 
and to die is gain.” (Phil. i. 21). Then the 
New Testament is not a mere story. It is 
the tremendous announcement of the saving 
work of the Son of God, not to be debated 
over, but to be reverently received, as the 
starving man grasps at food. The Collect 
for the second Sunday in Advent teaches 
how it is to be digested. The early Church 
saw in the Four Gospels a representation of 
the Cherubim seen by Ezekiel (ch. i. 5-26, 
and x. 1-22). Like them they bear God 
“ on a winged throne into all lands,” mov¬ 
ing by the Spirit’s guidance. Like them 
they are “joined together,” are full of eyes, 
and sparkle with heavenly light. Like 
them, they sweep from heaven to earth, and 
from earth to heaven, and fly with light¬ 
ning’s speed, and with the noise of many 
waters. Their sound is gone out into all 
lands, and their words unto the end of the 
world (Ps. xix. 4). St. John sees these Four 
Living Creatures in heaven, and they cry, 
“Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, 
which was and is, and is to come” (Rev. iv. 
4-11). Each Evangelist has his particular 
mode of displaying Christ. St. Augustine 
shows that St. Matthew more fully declares 
Christ’s Kingly character. His genealogy 
is from David the King, by a line of Kings, 
and the wise men do homage to the “ King 
of the Jews.” St. Luke dilates on the 
Priestly character of our Lord, and de¬ 
scribes the sacrificial offerings made for the 
infant Christ (St. Luke ii. 22-24). He 
oftener reveals Christ in his mediatorial 
office in prayer, ever living “ to make inter¬ 
cession for us” (Heb. vii. 25). St. Luke was 
the Evangelist of the Gentiles. He taught 
the inefficiency of the Mosaic law, and the 
“ saving'efficacy of Christ’s Sacrifice, and 
the blessedness of the Atonement made by 
Him on the Cross, and justification by Faith 
in His Blood.” This justification he makes 
a “ practical principle,” and “the root of 
Christian virtue.” As our Lord says in 
the parable of the Good Samaritan, “ Go 
and do thou likewise.” “All who would 
be saved by His death must imitate His 
life.” The lion is referred as an emblem to 
St. Matthew (see Rev. iv. 7), because he is 
the king of beasts, and our Lord is called 
“ The Lion of the tribe of Juda” (Rev. v. 5). 
St. Mark relating what Christ did in His 
Human Nature is symbolized as the Man 


in adapting (Rev. iv. 7). The Ox, the Sac¬ 
rificial Victim, is ascribed to St. Luke. St. 
John \vith his eye fixed on the Light of 
Christ is the Eagle. St. John teaches that 
“the contemplation of the Truth and the 
sweetness of Love” must go together. 

The book of Acts is the first history of 
the Christian Church. It has been called 
the Gospel of the Holy Ghost, as it repre¬ 
sents the wonderful work of the Spirit 
from the day of Pentecost onward. The 
character of the primitive Church is shown in 
chap. ii. 46 : “ They, continuing daily with 
one accord in the temple, and breaking 
bread from house to house, did eat their 
meat with gladness and singleness of heart.” 
Here was the constant prayer and the com¬ 
munion of saints. No wonder that the next 
verse adds that the “ Lord added to the 
Church daily such as should be saved.” As 
the little Church thus grew it made its home 
in various places, and Pastoral Letters were 
needed from its Bishops; hence came the 
Epistles, which are for the most part ad¬ 
dressed to Churches or to Christians in gen¬ 
eral. A few are directed to individuals. By 
these inspired Epistles Church order and true 
doctrine were inculcated, so that the new 
converts were “ built upon the foundation of 
the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ 
Himself being the chief corner-stone” (Eph. 
ii. 20). A pleasant connection between an 
Epistle and a Gospel occurs in Col. iv. 14 : 
“ Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas, 
greet you.” A touching motive for writing 
is given by St. Peter (2 Ep. i. 15): “ I will 
endeavor that ye may be able after my de¬ 
cease to have these things always in remem¬ 
brance.” He also connects the Epistle 
with the Gospel accounts in speaking of the 
Transfiguration (vs. 16-18). The Epistles 
are a continuation and amplification of the 
Gospels (Gal. i. 11). While the Acts de¬ 
scribe the planting of the Church, the 
Epistles give an account of its training. St. 
Paul, as a missionary, founded Churches, 
and when he could, revisited them, and in 
cases where he could not do this, he wrote 
to them, answering their letters and mes¬ 
sages, and comforting and strengthening 
them. Hemsterhusius says that St. Paul’s 
Epistles “seem to have been written under 
an almost celestial excitement of mind.” 
Jerome remarks that his “ words are thun¬ 
der-bolts.” Tholuck gives “ power, fullness, 
and warmth” as the distinguishing marks 
of St. Paul. 

St. Chrysostom calls St. Paul's Epistles 
“ an adamantine wall to the Church through¬ 
out the world.” The Epistle of St. James 
was to give fortitude to the Jewish Chris¬ 
tians, and enforce the practice of the Gospel. 
Of St. Peter’s first Epistle, Alford says that 
it follows out our Lord’s “command to its 
writer, ‘ And thou, when thou art converted, 
strengthen thy brethren’” (St. Lukexxii.32). 
The second Epistle is distinguished by the 
sublime description of the destruction of 
the earth by fire, and should move in every 






TESTIMONIALS 


732 


TEXAS 


reader’s heart a prayer for mercy through 
Christ in the “Day of the Lord” (ch. iii. 
8-18). The Epistles of St. John abounding 
in love recall the legend that “the Apostle 
of love” in the feebleness of age used to ut¬ 
ter the brief sermon, “ Little children, love 
one another.” St. Jude’s Epistle is an ear¬ 
nest exhortation to “ contend for the faith 
which was once delivered unto the saints” 
(v. 3). The prophetic book of the Revela¬ 
tion, with its magnificent description of 
Heaven, fitly closes the Sacred Volume: 
“ Blessed is he that readeth, and they that 
hear the words of this prophecy, and keep 
those things which are written therein” 
(Rev. i. 3). With so many topics and such 
various writers the unity of the New Testa¬ 
ment denotes the work of the Spirit of God. 
Furthermore, the Old and New Testaments 
are in wondrous agreement. The Fathers 
called them “the perfect and well-tuned 
organ of God,” “from differing sounds” 
giving “ one saving voice to those who are 
willing to learn.” Justin Martyr says, 
“ What else is the Law but the Gospel fore¬ 
shadowed ? What other the Gospel than the 
Law fulfilled?” St. Augustine compares 
things in the Old Testament to such as are 
under a shadow, the New Testament brings 
them into the open sun. The Old and New 
Testaments have been likened to the lower 
and upper millstones, which together grind 
the wheat. 

Authorities: Bishop Chr. Wordsworth’s 
Introd. to the Four Gospels, McWhorter’s 
Hand-Book of the New Test., Whitby’s 
Pref. to Gospels and Acts, Trench’s Star of 
the Wise Men. Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Testimonials. The certificates of good 
character and of proper qualifications which 
the Canons demand must be presented in 
behalf of a postulant or candidate for holy 
orders, that he may be duly received as such 
by the Bishop. The testimonials are de¬ 
manded at every step taken in the premises, 
that the Church may be sufficiently pro¬ 
tected against the admission of unworthy ap¬ 
plicants. Despite all the care taken, it does 
occur that unworthy men are admitted to 
holy orders. A great responsibility lies 
upon those who are asked to sign these tes¬ 
timonials and certificates, for a heavy duty 
towards God and the Church is placed upon 
'them, and there is no room for courteous or 
kindly intentions, or for any wish to spare the 
feelings of the applicant, no matter how well 
intentioned he may be. Archbishop Dolben, 
of York, charged his clergy with these 
solemn words: “ Not to impose upon him 
by signing the testimonials which they did 
not know to be true, as they would answer 
it to Him at the dreadful day of judgment.” 
It should be well weighed with the laity, for 
with them lies much of the responsibility, 
by avenues of information practically closed 
to a clergyman. If, then, by laxness, heed¬ 
lessness, or other insufficient cause, testi¬ 
monials are signed for a man known not to 
be fit for the ministry and harm to the flock 


of Christ come thereby, then those who 
aided his admission must bear their share. 
Reasonable doubt should weigh, not a prej¬ 
udice nor a past life which has been heartily 
repented of, and sufficient personal knowl¬ 
edge should in all cases be the basis for any 
consent to sign such testimonials. 

Texas, the Protestant Episcopal Church 
in. A sketch of the Church in Texas, within 
the limits prescribed for this article, must be 
very brief, and so far unsatisfactory. Only a 
general and meagre outline can be given. Its 
first planting goes back about forty-six years. 
In 1838 a.d. the Rev. Caleb S. Ives came to 
Texas as the first Missionary, under the aus¬ 
pices of the Foreign Committee of the Board 
of Missions of the Church in the United 
States. He settled in Matagorda, an old 
Spanish town, near the mouth of the Colo¬ 
rado River, and the outlet of a fertile agri¬ 
cultural region. It was then one of the 
most flourishing points in the infant Repub¬ 
lic. By his godly life, earnest zeal, and 
faithful teaching he soon won his way to the 
hearts and confidence of the people, and laid 
deep and lasting the foundations of the 
Church, organizing a Parish which has re¬ 
tained its churchly and loyal character amid 
all subsequent changes, and the general de¬ 
cline in latter years of that region. He col¬ 
lected funds both in the North and South for 
a church building. It was framed and 
shipped from New York in 1839 a.d., a neat 
and commodious edifice, and sufficiently ad¬ 
vanced towards completion to be used for 
service the same year. In 1844 a.d. it was 
consecrated by Bishop Polk, of Louisiana. 
Mr. Ives was at this time, and for years 
previous and subsequent, the most Southern 
and Southwestern Episcopal Minister in 
North America. After abundant labors, he 
died in the latter part of 1849 a.d., beloved 
as few have ever been in the Church. 

His successor was the Rev. S. D. Denni¬ 
son, so prominently connected with the Gen¬ 
eral Missionary work in after-years. Seek¬ 
ing temporary relief from Parish labors in 
a voyage to the South, he arrived in Texas 
in December, 1849 a.d., having been ap¬ 
pointed a Missionary to Matagorda. He 
entered on the work and was elected Rector 
of the Parish, but resigned the following 
October. The Rev. D. D. Flower, of Ala¬ 
bama, was called in the spring of. 1851 a.d., 
and accepted, but remained only a short 
time. The Rev. H. N. Pierce (the present 
Bishop of Arkansas) followed Mr. Flower, 
and remained until nis removal to New Or¬ 
leans. He was succeeded by the Rev. S. R. 
Wright, of Alabama. On the eve of his 
departure for this field, in October, 1854 a.d., 
Matagorda was well nigh destroyed by one 
of the most terrific tornadoes that ever swept 
the coast of the United States. The church 
building shared in the general wreck. The 
vestry, deeply despondent, offered to release 
Mr. Wright from the engagement, but this 
devoted man of God would not decline. He 
officiated for a few weeks, and then went 





TEXAS 


733 


TEXAS 


North and East to raise funds for another 
church building. His efforts were crowned 
with success, and a most comely structure 
was reared, the pride of the town and county, 
the first and most conspicuous object seen 
by the traveler on his approach, many miles 
away on the prairie. In a destructive storm 
of 1875 a.d. it was partially destroyed, but 
fitted up, to be used, it is hoped, for many 
years to come. Mr. Wright soon after, 28th 
of January, 1857 a.d., was called to his rest, 
taken ill in his vestry room while preparing 
for a funeral, and surviving but a few hours. 
A succession of faithful men followed him 
in the Parish, among the most prominent 
of whom was the Kev. John Owen, who 
died during the epidemic in Galveston, 1867 
a.d , one, like the saintly Wright, “ whose 
praise was in all the Churches." 

The name of the Rev. R. M. Chapman 
stands next to that of Mr. Ives as a Mis¬ 
sionary to Texas. He was appointed by the 
“Foreign Committee" from the “Eastern 
Diocese," and sailed from New York, Octo¬ 
ber 31, 1838 a.d., for Houston. He came 
with the purpose of supporting himself in 
part by teaching. In March, 1839 a.d., 
subscriptions were made of about $5000 for 
a church building. On the 1st of April a 
Parish was organized, and wardens and ves¬ 
trymen were elected. Whether discouraged 
by surrounding circumstances, or impaired 
in health by the climate, is not known, but 
Mr. Chapman left the following summer. 
In April, 1840 a.d., Church officers were 
again elected, and on the 21st of that month 
the Rev. Henry B. Goodwyn, of Maryland, 
then in Houston on a visit, was elected Rec¬ 
tor, but remained only a few months. Dur¬ 
ing the previous year the first Episcopal 
Visitation was made to this then distant 
field. In the latter part of 1838 a.d. the 
Right Rev. Leonidas Polk, Bishop of Lou¬ 
isiana, was requested by the Foreign Com¬ 
mittee of the Board of Missions “ to visit 
Texas with reference to the Missions of the 
Episcopal Church to be established in that 
country." The Bishop came the following 
spring, and in his report to the Board, 
dated Houston, May 17, 1839 a.d., says, 
“ There is a Presbyterian congregation or¬ 
ganized here, and also one of our own 
Church. Four or five thousand dollars have 
been subscribed for erecting an Episcopal 
church." This visitation to Houston and 
other places was doubtless most encouraging 
to the few and scattered members in this re¬ 
mote field. For that noble man and Bishop 
never failed to leave behind him the endur¬ 
ing impress of his godly character, his genial 
spirit, and commanding presence as he jour¬ 
neyed in his Apostolic office among the 
Churches. 

Houston and the adjacent region were not 
left long without a Minister. The Rev. 
Benjamin Eaton arrived January 14, 1841 
a.d., his appointment having been pre¬ 
viously communicated by the Secretary of 
the Board of Missions to the Wardens at 


Houston. Mr. Eaton began his work here. 
He also visited Galveston, soon after organ¬ 
ized a Parish there, and was called to the 
Rectorship, which he accepted. His first 
intention was to divide his time between 
Galveston and Houston, but after doing so 
for three months he concluded to confine 
his labors to the former, although he found 
there “ only four persons who professed any 
attachment to the Church, while at Houston 
there were seventeen Communicants, the 
majority males." In a letter written some 
years afterwards, May, 1858 a.d., Mr. Eaton 
says, “ I commenced the building of the 
church here six months after my arrival, 
having by that time collected a large con¬ 
gregation. The church was opened in 
June, 1842 a.d. It was blown from its 
foundations and greatly injured the follow¬ 
ing September, which obliged me to make 
a second begging expedition. The liberality 
of friends abroad enabled me to repair and 
again open it in about six months. The 
corner-stone of the present building was 
laid under very discouraging circumstances 
on Thanksgiving-Day, 1855 a.d., and the 
church opened November 1, 1857 a.d. The 
extreme exterior length is 154 feet, and the 
width 66. It has seats for 750 persons, and 
is generally well filled. Whenever neces¬ 
sary, it can be made to accommodate 1500." 
Of Mr. Eaton’s long rectorship of thirty 
years, his varied gifts, his faithful labors, 
and his tragic death,—falling at the desk 
where he had so long preached the un¬ 
searchable riches of Christ, carried by 
weeping friends along the aisle and to the 
rectory, where he breathed his last after a 
few hours of unconsciousness,—the Church 
has been generally informed. His reward 
is with him, and, “being dead, he yet 
speaketh." 

Next came the Rev. Charles Gillette, long 
an active and prominent clergyman of 
Texas. He set sail from New York for 
Galveston January 12, 1843 a.d. For sev¬ 
eral months before, under the direction of 
the Board of Missions, he had been engaged 
in making collections for the rebuilding of 
the church in Galveston, which was blown 
down the September previous, and raised 
about $1000. He was instructed by the 
Board to select his own field of labor, and 
went first to Washington, as probably the 
most eligible point, it being then the seat of 
government. He found the opening, how¬ 
ever, better at Houston, and, returning 
there, continued his ministrations as Rec¬ 
tor for a time in that place. In June, 1844 
a.d., he visited the North, seeking aid in 
the erection of a church building, and se¬ 
cured $1800. The building was completed 
and opened for service Easter-Day, April 4, 
1847 a.d. In September, 1845 a.d., with Mr. 
Eaton, he made a tour through Middle and 
Western Texas, among other places visiting 
Brenham, Independence, Austin, and San 
Antonio. In September, 1847 a.d., by re¬ 
quest of certain citizens there, Mr. Gillette 





TEXAS 


734 


TEXAS 


again visited Austin, held a series of ser¬ 
vices, and organized a Parish, under the 
name of Christ Church. The second Epis¬ 
copal visitation to Texas was made by 
Bishop Polk in February, 1844 a.d. He 
confirmed some persons in Houston. Ac¬ 
companied by Mr. Gillette, the Bishop pro¬ 
ceeded through the country to Matagorda, 
and thence, with Mr. Ives also, returned 
along the coast to Galvestoi^. 

Prior to this, in May, 1843 a.d., Messrs. 
Eaton, Gillette, and Ives met at Matagorda 
for the purpose of organizing the Diocese 
of Texas, but owing to adverse causes the 
project was defeated. 

The two visitations of Bishop Polk al¬ 
ready mentioned were necessarily hurried, 
and made with a long interval between. 
The need for more frequent, indeed, constant 
Episcopal supervision was more and more 
sorely felt. To meet this need the follow¬ 
ing memorial was prepared, to be presented 
at the ensuing General Convention : 

“ Galveston, March 13, 1844 a.d. 

“ The undersigned, Presbyters of the Dio¬ 
ceses of Alabama, Missouri, and Virginia, 
Missionaries in the Republic.of Texas, feel¬ 
ing the urgent necessity of constant Epis¬ 
copal supervision for the welfare of the 
Church in this Republic, and being satisfied 
of the kind intention of the Church in the 
United States, manifested hitherto by her 
fostering care, are encouraged to ask such 
assistance as may early supply our necessi¬ 
ties. And we would respectfully solicit such 
action by the General Convention of the 
Episcopal Church in the United States at 
their approaching meeting as shall provide 
us with such Episcopal supervision as is en¬ 
joyed by Missionary Districts in the United 
States. 

“ Caleb S. Ives, 

Rector Christ Church , Matagorda. 

“ Benjamin Eaton, 

Rector Trinity Church , Galveston. 

“ Charles Gillette, 

Rector Christ Church , Houston .” 

To provide for the expected consecration 
of a Bishop for Texas, then a foreign power, 
a “ Promise of Conformity to the Doctrine, 
Discipline, and Worship of the Church in 
the United States” was drawn up by the 
House of Bishops, when a Bishop for Texas 
should be elected. This soon followed. On 
the 22d of October, 1844 a.d., the House of 
Bishops nominated to the House of Deputies 
the Rev. Geo. W. Freeman, Rector of Em¬ 
manuel Church, New Castle, Delaware, as 
Missionary Bishop of this Church, to exercise 
Episcopal functions in the State of Arkansas 
and in the Indian Territory, south of the 
36J parallel of latitude, and to exercise 
Episcopal supervision over the Missions of 
this Church in the Republic of Texas.” 
The Deputies concurred, and Dr. Freeman 
was duly elected, and consecrated without 
delay. In his first triennial Report to the 
General Convention, October, 1847 a.d., he 


says, “ Leaving the place of his former resi¬ 
dence 17th of February, 1845 a.d., he pro¬ 
ceeded on his first visitations, which from 
the lateness of the season when it was com¬ 
menced was somewhat hurried, and con¬ 
fined chiefly to the Missionary Stations al¬ 
ready existing, and was completed in the 
latter part of the month of June.” “In 
the three years which have elapsed since his 
consecration, besides visiting the Churches 
and Missionary Stations within his jurisdic¬ 
tion thrice, he has visited Columbia and 
Brazina, in Brazina County, Texas, twice, 
and Richmond and Velasco in the same 
State once. The number of Communicants 
within his jurisdiction he reports to be, as 
nearly as he has been able to ascertain, 200 
in Texas and 70 in Arkansas; whole num¬ 
ber, 270.” This was in October, 1847 a.d. 
He also says, “ In Texas the congregations 
in the three established Parishes have been 
steadily growing, at Houston the number 
of Communicants is about 80; the church 
recently completed and consecrated is al¬ 
ready found too small to accommodate the 
increasing congregation, and notwithstand¬ 
ing the large Confirmation (35 persons) 
lately held there, the worthy- Rector reports 
that he has already a large class of addi¬ 
tional candidates for that holy rite. At 
Galveston the congregation is large, and 
still increasing; the number of Communi¬ 
cants is 62, and the erection of a new 
church is seriously spoken of, although the 
present building is the largest belonging to 
our Communion in the State. At Mata¬ 
gorda, too, the Church is prospering, though, 
of late, there have come in some who ‘ rise 
up and speak against her.’ The faithful 
Missionary is doing good service, both by 
his pastoral labors and his schools, which 
are becoming important nurseries for the 
Church ; and although his field is appar¬ 
ently circumscribed by the limits of a small 
town, the whole population of which does 
not exceed three or four hundred, the circle 
of his influence for good is far more exten¬ 
sive, and may be considered as embracing 
the country around for many miles. The 
number of Communicants is 38. In various 
other parts of the State there is a manifestly 
growing interest in religious things in gen¬ 
eral, and a decided bias towards the Church, 
and nothing appears to be wanting, with the 
blessing of God, but a band of faithful and 
efficient Missionaries to insure a glorious in¬ 
gathering of the faithful into the fold of 
Christ. To earnest, devoted, and self-de¬ 
nying men, capable of < enduring hard¬ 
ness’ in the cause of Chrtst, there is 
scarcely a more promising field in the whole 
range of our Missionary operations than 
that presented by Texas.” 

The next important step, contemplated 
for some years past, was the organization of 
the Diocese of Texas. Bishop Freeman 
called a meeting of the Clergy and Laity at 
Matagorda, August 1, 1849 a.d. They as¬ 
sembled as members of the Church of the 





TEXAS 


735 


TEXAS 


United States living in Texas. The Bishop 
presided at this primary Convention, and the 
same day the organization was completed. 

It was ordered that the next meeting of 
the Convention should be held in Houston, 
on the second Wednesday in December of 
the same year, unless the Bishop, who was 
authorized to change the time, should see 
fit to so do. It was changed, and the meet¬ 
ing was held in Christ Church, Houston, 
May 9, 1850 a.d. Five Clergymen were in 
attendance, with the Bishop, and delegates 
from three Parishes. Four new Parishes 
were admitted into union with the Conven¬ 
tion, viz.: Trinity Church, San Antonio; 
St. Peter’s, Brenham ; St. Paul’s, Washing¬ 
ton ; and St. Paul’s, Polk County. The 
Bishop reported the ordination of two Dea¬ 
cons to the Priesthood,—the Rev. H. N. 
Pierce and the Rev. Henry Sansom. There 
were also reported 10 organized Parishes, 
and, since the previous Convention, 211 
Baptisms, and 80 Confirmations. In 6 Par¬ 
ishes, 262 Communicants, and in 3 Parishes, 
Sunday-School Teachers, 33; and Scholars, 
211. Action was taken for the establish¬ 
ment of a Mission, or Church School, and 
a Committee appointed to take the neces¬ 
sary steps for raising means, the selection 
of a location, providing Teachers, and to 
report to the next Convention. By resolu¬ 
tion, the Bishop was earnestly requested to 
make his home at some central and conve¬ 
nient point within the Diocese. 

At the succeeding Convention in Galves¬ 
ton, March 1, 1851 a.d., the Bishop, in his 
address, urged as absolutely essential to the 
welfare and progress of the Church that 
they should have a Bishop exclusively their 
own. The matter was referred to a Com¬ 
mittee, which strongly indorsed the Bishop’s 
views, and recommended it to the serious 
consideration of the next Convention. Fur¬ 
ther action was taken as to the Diocesan 
School, and the Rev. C. Gillette was re¬ 
quested to undertake, under the direction 
and advice of the Bishop, the raising of 
funds, providing for Teachers, and putting 
the said school in operation. 

At the Convention of 1852 a.d., May 13, 
in St. Luke’s Church, Chapel Hill, 7 Cler¬ 
gymen were present and delegates from 6 
Parishes. Three new Parishes were ad¬ 
mitted into union with the Convention, 
viz. : the Church of the Epiphany, Austin; 
Redeemer, Anderson ; and All Faith Church, 
Liberty. 

The Bishop again urged the necessity for 
a resident Episcopal head, the wisdom of 
at once making provision for his support, 
and preparing for his election at no distant 
day, intimating “ that, in view of advanc¬ 
ing age, his mind had been much inclined 
to the thought of resigning his present 
Episcopal charge altogether.” A report 
was made in accordance with the recom¬ 
mendation, and the Convention decided to 
proceed to the election of a Bishop. On 
the first ballot, Bishop Freeman was unani¬ 


mously chosen. He stated in reply that 
“ he had neither anticipated nor cherished 
such a result, and was not prepared at 
present to respond, and asked time for con¬ 
sideration.” 

The Diocesan School was reported to 
have been located at Anderson, Grimes 
County, and put in operation the 1st of 
January preceding. Mr. Gillette also re¬ 
ported the commencement of a Female 
School, distinct from the other, for which 
he had been obliged to become personally 
responsible. 

The Diocesan School soon after took the 
name of St. Paul’s College, and was so in¬ 
corporated. There were reported in 10 
Parishes 176 Baptisms, 261 Communicants, 
and 52 Confirmations during the year; 
contributions for Church purposes in 4 Par¬ 
ishes, $1744.28. 

At the next Convention, May 5, 1853 
a d., in Austin, assessments were laid on 
the Parishes, amounting to $500, towards 
the support of a resident Bishop; and the* 
Deputies to the General Convention were 
requested to solicit the Board of Missions 
to grant Bishop Freeman a fixed income per 
annum, should he accept the Episcopate of 
Texas. From 13 Parishes 510 Communi¬ 
cants were reported. 

In 1854 a.d., Bishop Freeman informed 
the Convention “that the circumstances of 
his family relations, and other matters, ren¬ 
dered it impossible for him to remove into 
the Diocese without greater sacrifices than 
he felt able or willing to make ;” that with¬ 
out such removal the permanent Diocesan 
charge would be of no material advantage, 
and would scarcely be desired ; and he there¬ 
fore felt constrained to decline it. No action 
was then taken as to another election. In 
the Convention of 1855 a.d., at Seguin, after 
favorable and adverse reports, and much 
discussion, it was decided not to go into the 
election of a Bishop, and not until the suc¬ 
ceeding Convention, 1856 a.d., at Galveston, 
was a choice made. The Rev. Arthur Cleve¬ 
land Coxe, of Baltimore, was elected, but 
declined, and so the Diocese continued with¬ 
out a resident head. The following year, at 
Austin, May 21, 1857 a.d., a letter was read 
from Dr. Coxe, of March 25, offering, if the 
Diocese would raise $1000 annually for three 
years, he would pledge, with the co-opera¬ 
tion of sundry clergymen in New York, 
Philadelphia, and Baltimore, the additional 
sum of $1500 per annum, three years, for the 
person who might be elected their Bishop, 
with his expenses of travel, that so he might 
be exempt from all incumbrance of parochial 
work or other sort, for the entire devotion 
of his timeand talents to the Episcopal work. 
A committee was appointed to secure, if pos¬ 
sible, the required amount on the part of 
the Diocese. The Rev. Alex. H. Vinton, 
D.D., was elected Bishop. The next day 
Bishop Freeman, assured, as he said, now of 
a favorable result, and regarding the ques¬ 
tion as to the permanent Bishopric settled, 






TEXAS 


736 


TEXAS 


resigned his provisional charge. Dr. Vin¬ 
ton, however, declined the call for weighty 
and conclusive reasons, in a letter marked 
by propriety and good sense. 

At the following Convention, April 15, 
1858 a.d., in Houston, Rev. Benjamin Eaton 
presiding, the Kev. Sullivan H. Weston was 
elected, and again the Diocese was doomed 
to disappointment, Mr. Weston declining. 
A few days after the adjournment of this 
Convention, Bishop Freeman died in Little 
Rock, Ark., April 29, 1858 a.d. The next 
Convention adopted a report, paying the 
following tribute to the departed Prelate: 
“ Ever firm, faithful, and conscientious in 
the discharge of duty, and at the same time 
kind and conciliatory, he did much to lay a 
firm and broad foundation for the Church in 
Texas. He labored faithfully as a Bishop 
in the Church of God ; and rests from his 
labors, and his works do follow him.” The 
statistics for the previous year showed no 
marked advance except in the increase of 
Sunday-School teachers and scholars, and 
contributions for Church objects, amounting 
to $26,437.47. St. Paul’s College had passed 
already through a troublous financial his¬ 
tory. The Kev. C. Gillette had taken charge 
of Christ Church, Austin. The Kev. Mr. 
Platt, a worthy and devoted man, succeeded 
Mr. Gillette, but the decline continued ; and 
in the early part of 1860 a.d. the school was 
no longer in existence, the Parish at Ander¬ 
son retained little more than a nominal ex¬ 
istence, and only one or two buildings re¬ 
mained to tell the story of the failure. 

The tenth Annual Convention was held in 
Galveston, May 5, 6, 1859 a.d. The Rev. 
Alexander Gregg, Rector of St. David’s 
Church, Cheraw, S. C., was elected Bishop. 
His acceptance was in due time made known, 
and his consecration took place in the Monu¬ 
mental Church, Richmond, Va., October 13. 
The Bishop began a brief Visitation at Gal¬ 
veston, December 11, going thence to Bren- 
ham, Austin, San Antonio, Gonzalez, Co¬ 
lumbus, Richmond, and Houston. He re¬ 
turned from South Carolina with his family 
the middle of February, 1860 a.d., and took 
up his residence at Austin. The first Con¬ 
vention after his coming was held in Mata¬ 
gorda, April 13. The statistics from nine 
Parishes were: of Baptisms, 165; Confirma¬ 
tions, 114; Communicants, 456; Candidates 
for Orders, 3 ; Clergy, 14; Contributions for 
Church purposes, $10,689.50. 

The following year the war began, but 
notwithstanding the unfavorable influences 
and spiritual drawbacks of such a protracted 
civil strife, the Church continued to ad¬ 
vance, as was shown by the statistics re¬ 
ported at the Convention in Houston, June 
15-17, 1865 a.d. , viz.: “Baptisms, 278; 
Confirmations, 271; Communicants, 962; 
Contributions, $12,387; Clergy, 19.” In 
1874 a.d. , nine years after, at the Conven¬ 
tion in Jefferson, Maj^ 28, there were re¬ 
ported: “Clergy, including the Bishop, 34; 
Candidates for Orders, 7 ; Lay-Readers, 21; 


Parishes organized, 3; Missions, 6; Bap¬ 
tisms, 466 ; Confirmations, 290 ; Communi¬ 
cants, 2567 ; Sunday-School Teachers, 203 ; 
Scholars, 1362; total Contributions, $53,- 
096.34 ; Value of Churches, Rectory, School- 
houses, etc., $127,050.’’ At this meeting 
final action was taken on the important sub¬ 
ject of the reduction of the Diocese, which 
had been considered in previous Conven¬ 
tions, and by the General Convention, at its 
last session, the matter of making Canoni¬ 
cal provision being then considered. On this 
occasion a special Committee reported, in 
accordance with the recommendation of the 
Bishop, proposing the cutting off large 
portions of the State (or Diocese), to be 
formed into the Missionary Districts of 
Northern and Western Texas, according to 
the lines suggested by the Bishop, and that 
the General Convention be petitioned to 
provide for and ratify the same. This was 
done, notwithstanding the grave difficulty 
that no legal provision had been made for 
such a mode of relief. The Rev. Alexander 

C. Garrett, D.D., was elected Missionary 
Bishop of Northern Texas, and was conse¬ 
crated at Omaha, Neb., 20th of the follow¬ 
ing December. The Rev. R. W. B. Elliott, 

D. D., was elected Missionary Bishop of 
Western Texas, and consecrated at At¬ 
lanta, Ga., 15th of November. The terri¬ 
tory of Northern Texas embraced an area 
of 100,000, and Western Texas 110,000, 
square miles., leaving the Diocese with 
59,694, the population being more unequally 
distributed. The total population of the 
State was estimated at 1,200,000. The Dio¬ 
cese, as reduced, contained nearly 600,000; 
Northern Texas, 400,000; and Western 
Texas, a little over 200,000. The State em¬ 
braced 167 counties, 57 of which were in 
the Diocese, and 55 each in the Missionary 
Jurisdictions. 

The Diocese as it was then reported 39 
Parishes, 34 Missions, and 32 Clergymen. 
Of these it retained 26 Parishes, 15 Missions, 
and 20 Clergymen, Northern Texas having 
4 Parishes, 9 Missions, and 5 Clergymen, 
and Western Texas 9 Parishes, 9 Missions, 
and 7 Clergymen. The progress of the 
Church throughout this vast territory since 
has been encouraging, and the wisdom of 
the action taken in October, 1874 a.d., 
abundantly justified by the results. In 
October, 1883 a.d., at the last General 
Convention, the statistics reported for the 
Diocese were: Clergy, 20; Parishes and 
Missions, 57; families, 1200; individuals, 
5600; Baptisms the previous year, 335; 
Confirmations, 146; Communicants, 2400; 
Sunday-School Teachers, 183; Scholars, 
1748 ; Contributions, $47,600. For Northern 
Texas : Clergy, 9 ; Parishes, 9 ; Missions, 15; 
Baptisms, 107; Confirmations, 50; Com¬ 
municants, 1134; Sunday-School Teach¬ 
ers, 88; Scholars, 715; Contributions, 
$9736.36. Western Texas: Clergy, 15: 
Parishes, 12; Missions, 18; Baptisms, 143; 
Confirmations, 79; Communicants, 1153; 




TEXT 


737 


THANKSGIVING 


Sunday-School Teachers, 124; Scholars, 888; 
Contributions, $14,155.16. 

By the close of another decade it is not 
to be doubted but that the growth of the 
Church will be found to have kept pace 
with that of population, and Bishops, 
Clergy, and Laity will have reason to say, 
hitherto hath God helped us, and as much 
reason to pray to the great Head of the 
Church for an increasing blessing to the end. 

Kt. Bey. Alexander Gregg, D.D., 
Bishop of Texas. 

Text. The letter of the Holy Scripture. 
Usually the word applied to the verse or 
verses upon which a set discourse is deliv¬ 
ered. But it is also the letter of the Scrip¬ 
tures, whether in the Greek or Hebrew, or in 
some particular version under examination. 
The Old Testament text w T as settled by the 
Jewish doctors (the Masorites, vide Maso- 
rah) fifteen hundred years ago. It is now 
in the state in which they placed it. Earlier 
MSS. in point of time do not exist, but 
some MSS. represent copies of the Old Tes¬ 
tament which were transcribed before this 
recension, and also the Masorites themselves 
distinguished between a reading which they 
did not displace, but which was wrong, and 
the reading they recommended (the K’ri 
and the K’tlieb, “ what should be read” 
and “ what is in the text.” The text was 
providentially preserved to us intact, for 
though human weaknesses intervene to pre¬ 
vent us from a positive certainty that we 
have every letter as it came from the pens 
of the inspired writers, yet we are sure 
that we have a very accurate copy of the 
work. The vast labors of Scholars, Jewish 
and Christian, have not touched the in¬ 
tegrity of the Masoretic Text, though emen¬ 
dations may be suggested. So, too, of the 
New Testament. The text of the Greek of 
the New Testament was arranged by a 
famous printer in Paris, Robert Stephens, 
in 1546 a.d. (and later 1549 a.d., and the 
Regia, 1550 a.d.), from confessedly imperfect 
MSS. but with remarkable freedom from es¬ 
sential defects. The labors of a long line of 
eminent scholars since then have produced a 
purer text, yet of the thirty thousand varia¬ 
tions in MSS. collated and arranged not 
three affect doctrine or the essentials of 
the text, and but few omit any of the im¬ 
portant words. The passages affected are 
1 John v. 7, which is generally supposed 
to be a late insertion ; and St. John viii. 
2-11, which is most probably genuine, and 
has very strong authority. The third is a 
various reading of Who for God in 1 Tim. 
iii. 16, a variation which does not affect the 
doctrinal statement. A good idea of general 
variations in the text made by modern crit¬ 
icism may be obtained by a comparison of 
the marginal notes in the recent Revised 
Translation upon what is left out or what 
is considered doubtful, with the parallel pas¬ 
sages in the Authorized Version. By far 
the larger number of variations are to the 
ordinary reader nearly valueless, being 

47 


variations in tense or mood or a change of 
particles. But very few out of so large a 
number change the words of a text. In 
still fewer instances a sentence evidently 
inadvertently repeated from another sug¬ 
gestive or parallel passage has been left 
out. The Textus Receptus, as the text of 
Stephens of Paris is called, will probably 
remain practically the text of our New Tes¬ 
taments, though critical editions are impera¬ 
tively necessary for the Biblical Scholar and 
the Theologian. Such have been recently 
published, foremost of which is Westcott’s 
Text of the New Testament. 

This very imperfect notice of the Text of 
the originals should be supplemented by the 
information to be found in Smith’s Diction¬ 
ary of the Bible. For a notice of the Au¬ 
thorized Version of the Bible and Revised 
Version of the New Testament, see Ver¬ 
sions. 

Thanksgiving. If it is a plain duty and 
an act of common politeness to thank any 
one for a favor, much more is it an obliga¬ 
tion laid on every human being to heartily 
thank God for the countless undeserved 
blessings received at His hand. “Every 
creature of God is good, and nothing to be 
refused, if it be received with thanksgiv¬ 
ing” (1 Tim. iv. 4). Cruden defines Thanks¬ 
giving thus : “ An acknowledging and con¬ 
fessing with gladness the benefits and 
mercies which God bestows either upon our¬ 
selves or others.” Thanksgiving naturally 
forms a part of the Church services. The 
Jew had a “sacrifice of thanksgiving” 
(Lev. vii. 12, 15). There were psalms of 
thanksgiving (Neh. xii. 8, 46). “ Offer 

unto God thanksgiving” (Ps. 1. 14). “ Let 
us come before His presence with thanks¬ 
giving” (Ps. xcv. 2). “ Enter into His gates 
with thanksgiving” (Ps. c. 4). St. Paul ex¬ 
horts that “ giving of thanks be made for 
all men” (1 Tim. ii. 1). Prayer is to be 
“ with thanksgiving” (Phil. iv. 6). Public 
thanksgivings are given for public mercies, 
as the song of triumph after the miraculous 
passage of the Red Sea (Ex. xv.), and in the 
Prayer-Book the hymns and prayers after 
deliverance from tempest, or after a victory. 
Special acknowledgments occur in Scrip¬ 
ture for special mercies, for “ wisdom” (Dan. 
ii. 23), for the faith of Christian believers 
(Rom. i. 8), “for the grace of God” given by 
Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. i. 4). The four and 
twenty elders thank God for the enlarge¬ 
ment of Christ’s kingdom (Rev. xi. 16,17). 
Anna, the prophetess, “gave thanks unto the 
Lord” for the infant Christ (St. Luke ii. 
36, 38). This spirit of general and particular 
thankfulness to God finds proper expression 
in the Prayer-Book. The “ General Thanks¬ 
giving” for bodily and spiritual mercies and 
redemption through Christ is placed in the 
Morning and the Evening Prayer. Various 
Thanksgivings for personal and national 
mercies of providence and grace are found 
in the Occasional Prayers. In the “Family 
Prayer” for the “Evening” is a beautiful 





THANKSGIVING 


738 


THEOLOGY 


and comprehensive form for acknowledging 
the daily benefits received from God. In 
thanking the Lord for “ our reason” in this 
prayer it may be well to remember the ques¬ 
tion of the insane man to a London mer¬ 
chant, as to whether he ever thanked God 
for his reason. The merchant said that he 
never after offered thanks to God without 
thinking of gratitude for reason and right 
mind. A much neglected occasional prayer 
is the Thanksgiving “ for a Recovery from 
Sickness.” The prayer “ Fora Sick Person” 
is often called for, but when God blesses the 
invalid, too often, like the nine ungrateful 
lepers, he does not return thanks. Dr. Sam¬ 
uel Johnson writes, “ I am so far recovered 
that on the 21st 1 went to church to return 
thanks, after a confinement of more than 
four long months.” The word “ Eucharist” 
means thanksgiving, and after recovery from 
sickness it is most desirable to draw near to 
God in this Holy Feast. Indeed, the Holy 
Communion is the great act of Christian 
thanksgiving, and stands pre-eminent in this 
respect. 

The Prayer-Book contains “A Form of 
Prayer and Thanksgiving to Almighty God 
for the fruits of the earth, and all the other 
blessings of His merciful Providence.” In 
the United States this festival often very 
properly combines the idea of a Harvest- 
home and a family reunion. The “ Mid- 
lenting” or “ Mothering”' of English sons 
visiting the family abode corresponds to the 
social part of this festival. It is a pleasant 
custom to deck the church with the fruits 
of the earth, and then give them to the 
poor, and a large offering for some worthy 
object should on such a glad day be placed 
thankfully on God’s altar. The Law de¬ 
clared that bread was not to be eaten before 
an offering was made to God (Lev. xxiii. 
14). In Deut. xxvi. 1-11, is an account of 
the offering of first fruits, and when the 
American thinks of his nation’s advance¬ 
ment, and how the “few” have become “a 
nation, great, mighty, and populous” (v. 5), 
like the descendants of the Syrian Jacob, 
he should freely return to God a part of 
what he has so freely received. Grace at 
table is a private thanksgiving in accord¬ 
ance with this public one. “ When thou 
has eaten, and art full, then thou shalt bless 
the Lord thy God, for the good land which 
He hath given thee” (Deut. viii. 10). If 
the Jew blessed God when he smelled a 
flower, much more should we bless Him at 
the daily meal, spread by His bounty. 

When the spirit of thanksgiving shows 
itself in an offering to God, it is desirable to 
sing, as the offering is presented at the altar, 
the words of David, “ All things come of 
Thee, and of Thine own have we given 
Thee” (1 Chron. xxix. 14). If thanksgiving 
is a proper employment for God’s people on 
earth, it is also the work of angels in heaven, 
as they fall “ before the throne on their 
faces and” worship God, “ Saying, Amen : 
Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and 


thanksgiving, and honor, and power, and 
might, "be unto our God for ever and ever. 
Amen” (Rev. vii. 12). 

Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Theandric Operation. A word com¬ 
pounded of Theos and Andros , of God and 
man. We use frequently a similar com¬ 
pound, Jesus Christ, the GoD-man, to 
intimate the complete, interrelated union 
without fusion of our Lord’s two natures in 
His one Person. The theandric operation 
also denotes the complete harmonious, sub¬ 
ordinated work of His human will under 
His divine will. The word was of late in¬ 
troduction (640 a.d.), and is comparatively 
unused. 

Theology is the philosophy of the Faith. 
In so far as it is of the Faith it is fixed and 
unchangeable, because the Faith was once 
for all delivered to the saints. So far as its 
philosophical element reaches, Theology is 
subject to the laws of human reason, and is 
affected by the progress or retrogression of 
knowledge. Hence Theology changes from 
time to time. Its changes are causes of 
conflict. Those who defend the old theo- 
logic forms of expression and modes of argu¬ 
ment think they are contending for the faith 
itself, while those who assail these old forms 
and modes may declare themselves the more 
strongly attached to the Faith, and posses¬ 
sors of the more confidence in it, for the very 
reason that it can be shown to stand firmly 
even while the Theology generally received 
as expressing it is found no longer consistent 
with advanced knowledge or with improved 
logical methods. Every one will recollect 
the standard illustration of this point. The 
Word of God was as true, and the Faith it 
enshrines as sure, after Galileo proved that 
the earth moved round the sun, as they 
were before. In our own period, too, the 
true faith respecting creation is only more 
fully set forth and elucidated by the fact 
that Theology requires some reconstruction 
in order to fit it into the unfolding facts of 
geological science. No one now thinks of 
the six days, of the progressive creation of 
the world, as fixed temporal quantities of 
twenty-four hours each. 

Skeptics, of course, exult when they make 
a breach in old walls of theologic opinions 
and prove untenable some forms of its ex¬ 
pression. Many timid saints, also, tremble 
for the stability of the “ building of God.” 
But the Faith is never shaken. The Church 
sacraments and doctrine as given or sealed 
by Christ and the Holy Ghost are im¬ 
mutable, because they rest on the Corner- 
Stone, the Rock, the Word of God, God 
with us, the Truth, in whom dwelleth all 
the fullness of God. 

Thus it is seen that the Faith is that sum 
of fact which rests in and on Christ, which 
cannot, therefore, be prevailed against, 
which will remain the one Faith forever. 

Theology is not to be underrated, because 
it never can stand on the clear ground of 
certainty. It is more or less probable, and 




THEOPHANY 


739 


THESSALONIANS 


therefore, when well used and duly esteemed, 
becomes a great help towards understanding 
and applying the Truth. Human reason is 
just as much a GoD-given faculty as the 
faculty of faith itself. Within its own limits, 
men should esteem, value, and follow it. 
Reason may fairly test the foundation of the 
Faith. Then the man must take what rests 
on that foundation into his faculty of faith. 
From this, as a second starting-point, reason 
may proceed according to both its methods. 
It may deduce, from facts of the Faith, just 
consequences and conclusions ; and, if its 
deductions are sound, its results will carry 
the obligation to believe, follow, and obey. 
It may lay points of the Faith alongside 
other points, and mingle them even with 
philosophic or scientific truth ; and, upon 
induction from the whole, draw out a theo¬ 
logical conclusion, or even a chain of doctrine 
and law. If this induction be fair, full, and 
faithful, the whole theological conclusion 
becomes binding upon the minds and con¬ 
sciences of those who receive or ought to re¬ 
ceive it. 

Hence Theology is a thing of weight, a 
power given from on high, a means of wide 
instruction, a legitimate basis of exhortation. 
Sermons are generally theological discourses. 
They are designed to apply points of the 
“ one Faith” to the specific needs of hearers. 
Though not infallible, they may be true. In 
so far as they are true they are spoken of 
God, because spoken according to His will 
by those sent by Him, His own chosen 
prophets or teachers. Hearers are not bound 
by every theological instruction or exhorta¬ 
tion they may hear; they are, however, 
bound to take heed how they hear. They 
may not innocently reject or neglect what 
they hear, merely because the human ele¬ 
ment in the discourse takes away its whole 
infallibility ; because whatever of truth there 
is remains God’s truth still, and hence 
binding on conscience and obligatory to the 
will. 

The Theology of the past embalms much 
of the history of man. Christian theology 
has run side by side with the currents of 
human progress. Mankind are very much 
indebted to it for mental, moral, social, and 
political advancement. The Western human 
tidal flood of progress has been impelled al¬ 
ways by strong theological forces. Indeed, 
its recuperative and evolving forms of civil¬ 
ization have been, and yet are, imbued with 
power that proceeds from Christian theology. 
While not overvaluing, one must also take 
heed lest he undervalue, that great energy 
of Divine-human Theology, through and by 
which God works in, into, over, and around 
mankind. 

Rev. Benjamin Franklin, D.D. 

Theophany. It refers to the anticipative 
manifestations of God the Word as the Je¬ 
hovah Angel, in the Old Testament. In the 
following list only those which are admitted 
as undoubted Theophanies are given. Ex¬ 
cluding first the free intercourse of God 


with yet sinless man, and the expostulations 
of God with Cain, and the communications 
to Noah, there is the appearance of the Angel 
of the Lord to Hagar when first driven 
from Abraham’s tent (Gen. xvi. 7-13); the 
visit of the three Angels which appeared to 
Abraham on the plains of Mamre and one of 
whom was the Lord (Gen. xviii.); the 
Angel of the Lord appearing to Abraham 
at the offering of Isaac (Gen. xxii. 11 sq.). 
Passing by the earlier appearances to Jacob 
in visions, there was the mysterious wrest¬ 
ling with the Angel at the ford Jabbok 
(Gen. xxxii. 24-30). Jacob devoutly ac¬ 
knowledged His presence and guiding care 
when he blessed Joseph’s sons : “ The Angel 
which redeemed me from all evil bless the 
lads” (Gen. xlviii. 16). The Angel of Jeho¬ 
vah in the Burning Bush (Ex. iii.-iv. 17). 
The Angel of God in the Pillar of Fire (Ex. 
xiv. 19). The Angel in whom is the Name 
of God and who led the People through the 
wilderness (Ex. xxiii. 20-23). This is the 
Angel that appeared to Balaam (Num. xxii.), 
to Joshua at the siege of Jericho (Josh, 
v. 13), to the People at Bochim (Judges 
ii. 1), to Gideon (Judges vi. 11), to Manoah 
(Judges xiii. 3), over Jerusalem with drawn 
sword (2 Sam. xxiv. 16). He chose to with¬ 
draw Himself and to reach His People by 
other channels. But in visions He was 
seen by His Prophets, as when Isaiah saw 
His glory, and heard His Worship sung by 
the Seraphim, and when Zechariah in a 
vision saw Him beside the High-Priest, 
Joshua, to protect him from Satan (Zech. iii. 
1, 2). It was this Angel of the Covenant 
who should appear suddenly (Mai. iii. 1). 
These are the chief and undenied Theophanies 
'"Sf the Word, who was from the beginning 
with God and was God, and this Word of 
God is Jesus our Lord. 

Theophori. A name the Christians often 
gave themselves. Bearers of God in their 
hearts. It is said that St. Ignatius gave 
himself this name when questioned by 
Trajan. 

Theosophy. Wisdom concerning God. 
It was principally applied to the grotesque 
speculations of Jacob Boehm, the philo¬ 
sophic shoemaker of Gorlitz (1575-1624 
a d.), but it has also been given to the specu¬ 
lations of metaphysical Brahmins. The 
system of Jacob Boehm is a most quaint 
farrago of deep spiritual and mystic specu¬ 
lations, written in a style that resembles 
strongly the Rosicrucian and Alchemic jar¬ 
gon. it was translated by William Law, 
the famous non-juror, who wrote against 
Bishop Hoadly. Law was himself a man 
of remarkable power and of deep devout¬ 
ness, but apparently unbalanced in those 
speculations in which he was not forced by 
controversy to be precise and accurate. In 
these speculations he gave reins to his mys¬ 
tical tendency. 

Thessalonians, First Epistle. By a 

series of just inferences from ISt. Paul’s 
movements in his second missionary jour- 







THESSALONIANS 


740 


THOMAS (SAINT) 


ney, we may fairly infer that this Epistle 
was written some months after he had 
established the Church in Thessalonica, 52- 
53 a.d. St. Timothy had been sent to re¬ 
visit them, as the Apostle could not do so 
himself, and his report was so encouraging 
to the Apostle that he wrote his letter to 
them in a spirit of commendation which is 
also found in the Epistle to the other Ma¬ 
cedonian city, Philippi. In this First 
Epistle, which was also the first of the grand 
letters which St. Paul wrote, he dwells, as 
is natural, upon the central truth of the 
Faith, and chiefly upon the Second Advent. 
As yet there had been but'little antagonism 
to the Apostle which would bring out a 
written enunciation of the teaching he after¬ 
wards recorded. Faith and works and jus¬ 
tification are not named indeed, but they 
are thoroughly implied. He dwells natu¬ 
rally upon the comfort of the hope of the 
Future Life and the preparation to meet 
our Lord, and implies that there had been 
a persecution, in which the Christian Thes- 
salonians had stood firm. He warns them 
against the besetting sins of the day, and 
bids them be patient. It is not that St. Paul’s 
own teachings were elemental, but rather 
that as yet the ditficulties in the Church did 
not demand of him a full record of what he 
taught orally. The general plan of the Epis¬ 
tle is wholly characteristic of the Apostle. 

I. Ch. i. He recalls his mission and 
preaching and then conversion. 

Ch. ii. He reminds them how he lived 
among them disinterested and blameless. 

Ch. iii. He speaks of his anxiety for 
them and of Timothy’s report, and offers 
a very earnest prayer for their increase in 
the Faith. 

II. Ch. iv. He exhorts them to purity, 
brotherly love, and honest life, comforting 
those whose friends had died with the cer¬ 
tainty of the Resurrection, and (ch. v.) as¬ 
suring them that though he looked for it in 
his day, yet it was in the determination of 
God. The Epistle ends with practical sug¬ 
gestions and warnings. 

In its construction we see a larger refer¬ 
ence to the articles of the Creed, dwelling 
so pointedly upon our Lord’s passion, death, 
resurrection, and coming to judgment, and 
founding his exhortation upon it. 

The Second Epistle must have followed 
the first quite soon, as St. Paul appears to 
have found that he was misrepresented in 
some way, and he writes repeating what he 
had said of the Lord’s coming, but dwelling 
upon the hindrances which must be removed 
before that could take place. His language 
here has been used controversially in an 
endeavor to fix the person of the man of sin, 
and so has given a prominence to this Epis¬ 
tle. It is very markedl}' in the same line 
of teaching as the previous one. As full of 
fervent zeal, of delicate suggestion, and 
warning, as earnest in declaring the Faith, 
and in urging that suffering is "a condition 
of entering into the Kingdom of Heaven, 


and a reiteration of the coming of the Son 
of Man to judge the world, it is well to give 
this outline of the Epistle: 

I. The Apostle’s joy in their faith and 
exhortation to suffer gladly for the Lord’s 
sake, that they may receive double at His 
hand when He shall come to judgment 
(ch. ii.). But that Coming is hindered by 
many things, some of which were political, 
and, too, that characters might be developed, 
and that those who are His be proven. 

II. Ch. iii. A practical suggestion or two 
upon the holy life and upon discipline of 
unworthy members, so delicately and so 
mercifully worded that the Apostle’s tender¬ 
ness and sympathy are well displayed. This 
Epistle is better known because of the 
polemical use made of it, but throughout, 
the devoted zeal of the Apostle, his earnest¬ 
ness and love, are so characteristic that these 
form the true worth of the Epistle apart 
from that enunciation of the Gospel which 
he makes in it. It as full of love expressed 
in St. Paul’s manner as are St. John’s 
Epistles; love to his Lord and love to the 
Christians at Thessalonia because of his 
Lord’s love to him. 

Thomas, St., in the list given of the 
twelve Apostles by three of the Evangelists, 
is the seventh in place. St. John, who has 
recorded no list of the Apostles’ names, 
seems to have had a personal knowledge of 
St. Thomas, as he alone (note the name 
Thomas is Syriac, and means a twin) men¬ 
tions him as Didymus, or a twin. He also 
seems to have understood his character bet¬ 
ter, as he both heard and recorded the four 
remarkable sentences uttered by St. Thomas. 
When called to be an Apostle, he is supposed 
to have been like St. John and St. Philip, a 
young man, a Galilean, and a fisherman. 
His character, to judge from the account of 
him in St. John’s Gospel, was ardent and 
affectionate, bold and courageous, but pos¬ 
sessed of a degree of caution that made it 
difficult for him to receive any truth that 
was not fully explained to him, and ren¬ 
dered him unwilling to believe in his Lord’s 
reappearance after the Resurrection on the 
testimony of others. It made him boldly 
declare, “ Except I shall see in His hands the 
print of the nails, and put my finger in the 
print of the nails, and thrust my hand into 
His side, I will not believe .” This proof had 
already been given to the other Apostles, 
and why should he not demand it also ? How 
those eight days of doubt were passed by 
him we can only conjecture ; but when the 
first day was come again, and the disciples 
were assembled together, Thomas was with 
them, and then the doors being shut, Jesus 
stood in the midst and said, “ Peace be unto 
you.” Then addressing Thomas by name, 
He said, “ Reach hither thy finger and be¬ 
hold my hands, and reach hither thy hand 
and thrust it into my side, and be not faith¬ 
less, but believing.” In ecstasy and devo¬ 
tion, St. Thomas made use of the wonderful 
exclamation, “My Lord and my God.” 






THOMAS (SAINT) 


741 


TIMOTHY 


The festival of St. Thomas is of ancient 
date, having been observed in the time of St. 
Gregory ; it falls on the 21st day of Decem¬ 
ber. The Collect has the leading idea, drawn 
from a Homily of St. Gregory when he 
says, “ that by this doubting of St. Thomas 
we are more confirmed in our belief than 
by the faith of the other Apostles.” It is 
recorded by Eusebius that after the day of 
Pentecost and the gift of tongues the Apos¬ 
tles were scattered abroad, and that St. 
Thomas was sent to the Parthians, Medes, 
Persians, and Chaldeans, founding churches 
among them till he penetrated into India. 
The Christians of St. Thomas, a remarkable 
religious community, still bear witness to 
his labors in that distant land; they are 
settled along the Malabar coast of the Indian 
peninsula.' To the north also there seem 
to be relics of the Christian faith preached 
by St. Thomas mixed with the strange re¬ 
ligion of Thibet. St. Thomas was mar¬ 
tyred at a place called Taprobane. Having 
been at first assailed with stones, he was at 
last killed by the thrust of a spear, thus 
offering a comparison to the words of our 
Lord to him: “ Reach hither thy hand 
and thrust it into my side.” It was not 
granted to St. Thomas to have his courage¬ 
ous aspiration fulfilled to die with Christ, 
but to die for His cause. It is related that 
the Portuguese found an ancient inscription 
in Meliapore, purporting that St. Thomas 
had been pierced with a lance at the foot of 
a cross which he had erected in that city, and 
that in 1523 a.d. his body was found there 
and transported to Goa. It would appear 
that St. Thomas traveled farther than any 
of the Apostles, and preached to various na¬ 
tions of different languages, showing that 
as his incredulity was great, so was his faith 
great in proportion. 

In Sacred and Legendary art St. Thomas 
finds a conspicuous place. “ The Incredulity 
of Thomas” has been variously treated by 
different painters, but by none more suc¬ 
cessfully than by Rubens, whose picture is 
in the gallery of Antwerp. In purely Le¬ 
gendary painting he is the subject of many 
beautiful fancies. When painted alone or 
with the other Apostles, his attribute is al¬ 
ways a builder’s rule or square, and for this 
reason he is called the patron of architects 
and builders'. This attribute must be sought 
for in a popular legend of which he is the 
subject. He was sent by our Lord, so says 
the legend, to an Indian king who was 
seeking architects to build him a palace. 
Being pleased with the appearance of St. 
Thomas, the king gave him large sums of 
gold and silver, bidding him build a palace 
finer than the emperor’s at Rome. The 
king then went into a distant land for two 
years. St. Thomas meanwhile, instead of 
building the palace distributed all the treas¬ 
ure among the poor and sick. The king on 
his return was full of anger, and cast St. 
Thomas into prison, intending to torture 
him to death ; but he was shown in a vision 


a beautiful palace in heaven, which the 
Angel told him St. Thomas had built for 
him. The king ran to the prison to deliver 
the Apostle, who said, “ Know, O king, that 
I have laid up thy treasures in heaven.” 

Throne. The Bishop’s chair in his Ca¬ 
thedral. It is often so called, but properly 
the title Throne describes the rank of 
the Patriarch, but the Bishop’s chair is a 
Cathedra. It is placed generally beyond 
the stalls, and is raised. Its position in the 
ancient Church was beyond the Holy Table, 
which was placed nearly in the centre of the 
Chancel, and this arrangement is carried 
out in some Cathedrals. This was once the 
position of the Marble Chair of the Arch¬ 
bishop of Canterbury, which may well be 
called a Throne. The Patriarchal Sees are 
called Thrones. 

Tiara. The mitre, surrounded with a 
triple crown, which the Pope wears upon 
certain State occasions. The Tiara was a 
comparatively late ornament added to the 
Pontifical dress. It was a round cap at 
first. John XIII. placed upon it the first 
crown. Boniface VIII. added the second, 
and Benedict XIII. a third. (Vide Hook’s 
Church Dictionary.) 

Tiles. (Vide Architecture.) The 
glazed brick of various colors used in 
Church Architecture, which is now ex¬ 
tensively used, especially for floors in 
churches. 

Timothy. The best beloved of all of St. 
Paul’s companions. To him probably more 
than to any one else St. Paul confided the 
thoughts of his great soul. Timothy was 
born of holy parentage. His mother and 
grandmother were faithful, earnest Jewish 
women, living either at Derbe or at Lystra. 
His temperament, as we may gather from 
what St. Paul alludes to in the two Epistles 
to him, shows him an earnest, zealous youth, 
devoutly trained by a loving mother and 
grandmother, accepting with them the 
Gospel, and proceeding in all godliness, so 
that it were easy that Prophets in the 
Church should point him out as a fit person 
to rule in the Church. At St. Paul’s second 
visit he was set apart to do the work of an 
Evangelist. He then was circumcised, 
since, being half an Israelite, that the cove¬ 
nant of his forefathers remained uncom¬ 
pleted would be a scandal to Jewish con¬ 
verts. He was henceforth the Apostle’s 
constant companion, leaving him only upon 
imperative need. He was at Berea and 
Athens; he goes on a mission to Thessa- 
lonica. For the next five years he is not 
noticed, but probably actively serving St. 
Paul. Then he is sent to Macedonia and 
Achaia, when the Apostle plans his third 
Missionary Journey. His relations to Cor¬ 
inth are those of the most kindly nature. 
A large circle of friends scattered through¬ 
out the Church receive greetings from him 
in St. Paul’s Epistles, or hear from St. Paul 
of his labors. How often he left the Apos¬ 
tle’s side or when he returned to it from 




TIMOTHY, EPISTLES TO 


742 


TIMOTHY, EPISTLES TO 


some special mission we cannot now de¬ 
termine. From the letter to the Homans 
in which he sends a salutation till the 
Apostle is a prisoner there we lose sight of 
him. But now he becomes the Apostle’s 
constant messenger. He is arrested, and 
witnesses a good Confession. St. Paul, 
after he is released, leaves him at Ephesus 
to regulate and correct disorders. He is set 
over men older than himself, and has to see 
to the many and various duties which fall 
to a Bishop now. Ordination, Discipline, 
Finance, Preaching, and Personal Conduct 
as a public man are all set before him as 
proper to his office. He is to fight a stead¬ 
fast warfare. But the Apostle is arrested a 
second time, and is in prison at Borne 
again. How long an interval lies between 
the first Epistle and the second we cannot 
know accurately. Timothy is still at Ephe¬ 
sus, and now St. Paul needs him, and 
writes to him one of the most touching of 
all the Epistles he had yet written. In it 
the master calls the servitor to come to 
him, and it is probable that Timothy is 
now at the last scene of St. Paul’s eventful 
life. What his future career was we do not 
certainly know, but there is very much 
probability in the conjecture that he is the 
Angel of the Church warned and appealed 
to by our Lord in St. John’s Apocalypse 
(Bev. ii. 1-7). That this was certainly so 
of course cannot be proven, but it is very 
likely the warning of the Angel’s faults and 
the commendations of his zeal suit very well 
the temperament of St. Paul’s beloved com¬ 
panion, and there is nothing at all more 
likely than that when St. Paul laid down 
his life Timothy would return to Ephesus, 
where his work was already planned out, 
and where his* office and authority were 
not only known, but were established : prob¬ 
ability would point that way. But whether 
this was so or not, Timothy’s charge, which 
he received from St. Paul, only establishes 
the more clearly the continuance of the 
Apostolic office and the extent and limita¬ 
tions of its authority. In Ephesus is a well- 
established Christian community, and has 
Elders set over it already. If Elders could 
ordain Elders, then why should Timothy be 
imposed upon them with a higher office of 
ordination as well as discipline? But if (as 
St. Paul calls him when writing to the 
Thessalonians, 1 Thess. i. 1, compared with 
ii. 6) he is an Apostle in office, then the 
whole of his duty falls in at once with the 
lines that the Epistles lay down. Any 
other supposition compels us to do violence 
to some part or other of the Sacred record. 
In this, which is led up to by the general 
facts of the New Testament, the Apostolic 
nature of his authority, and the linking of 
his name with the Angel of the Church of 
the Apocalyptic Message, are clear, natural, 
and within the lines of the office as our 
Lord established it and as St. Paul in¬ 
structed Timothy to wield it. 

Timothy, Epistles to. The two Epistles to 


Timothy which we receive have been fiercely 
assaulted as spurious. But the refutation 
is complete and decisive. Style, purpose, 
date, and contents all are unmistakably St. 
Paul’s, and Timothy’s relation to him and 
the missions upon which he was sent all 
prove that they are genuine. The first 
Epistle was written after the first imprison¬ 
ment, at some place from Macedonia prob¬ 
ably, but under what surroundings we do 
not know. Timothy is left at Ephesus ( a) 
to teach sound doctrine and to discipline 
those who teach false doctrine as the 
Apostle had, Hymenseus and Alexander. 
(6) He is to set in order the Liturgy (giving 
of thanks is “the Eucharist’s”). ( c ) To or¬ 
dain fit persons for the Diaconate and Pres- 
byterate. ( d) The Apostle recurs to false 
teaching again, (e) He outlines the practi¬ 
cal government to be exercised both over 
the Ministry and the Laity, and intermin¬ 
gles personal directions and exhortations to 
him, and gives him the topic upon which he 
is to warn those committed to his charge. 
The Epistle closes with a most earnest per¬ 
sonal appeal and a magnificent doxology, and 
then most characteristically with an addition 
of warnings,—as if Timothy in his own lov¬ 
ing sympathetic nature might be tempted to 
relax that strictness which so difficult a 
position as that at Ephesus demanded. The 
second Epistle, which was written at the 
second imprisonment, almost with the gleam 
of the sword above him, is full of St. Paul’s 
marked style. It is intensely personal; his 
own prayers, the tenderness of St. Timothy, 
the kindness of friends who were not 
ashamed of his chain, the dispersion of his 
companions upon missions, his loneliness, his 
fear that Timothy may be confused by tab¬ 
ling heretics, the salutations of his friend, 
his sermons to St. Timothy to come with 
speed, all are so direct, so personal, that we 
may almost see the chained Apostle in his 
cell striving to dictate to an amanuensis 
(probably St. Luke) his message of love 
and warning and summons to his best be¬ 
loved son in the Faith. Its contents may 
be summarized somewhat thus: (a) A per¬ 
sonal appeal and mingled reminiscences, 
with a compact restatement of the gospel 
whereof he is appointed a preacher and an 
Apostle and a teacher to the Gentiles. ( b) The 
holding fast to and transmission of the 
form of sound words, and the steadfastness 
in confessing and insisting upon them. On 
this he quotes from a Christian hymn, and 
closes with a warning to teach and preach 
meekly, (c) A prophecy of the last times, 
and an urging Timothy again by his own 
example to be courageous and to preach 
the Word constantly, despite the sectaries 
that would oppose themselves. ( d) The 
summons to come to Borne as soon as he can, 
with mingled warnings against certain op- 
posers, and a statement of his lonely state 
and salutations to friends at Ephesus. 

These Epistles and that to Titus are called 
pastoral Epistles, since they give directions 




TIPPETS 


743 


TITHES 


upon the Pastoral office, and are written to 
men in Apostolic office that they may know 
how they ought to behave themselves in the 
house of God, which is the Church of the 
living God, the pillar and ground of the 
Truth. By these Epistles, and by the just 
inferences to be drawn from them, the Bish¬ 
ops, Pastors, and Teachers of the Flock of 
Christ have been guided in all matters 
pertaining to Ordination, to Discipline of 
the Clergy, and instruction and govern¬ 
ment of the Laity. 

Tippets were hoods of some black mate¬ 
rial, which must not he silk, which were 
worn on the shoulders of such ministers as 
were not graduates of any University, to dis¬ 
tinguish them from those who wore the 
robe and colored hood pertaining to their 
order. 

Tithes. The tenth part, paid by Divine 
command by the Jew for the maintenance 
of the Levites and the worship at the Taber¬ 
nacle, and kept up as long as the Jews 
retained any national organization. The 
principle of the tithe was universally ac¬ 
knowledged by the Gentile, the Patriarch, 
and the Jew. The Carthaginians paid 
tithes not only to their deities, but to the 
deities of other countries. The nations in 
Asia Minor had such a custom. It was 
vowed to their deities by the Homans on the 
eve of battle. The Greeks acknowledged 
it. It must not, however, be supposed that 
this was regularly observed. The law of 
the tithe was broken constantly. But the 
principle was confessed and often acted 
upon. Abraham paid tithes to Melchisedec. 
Jacob vowed the tithe at Bethel. God or¬ 
dered it in the Mosaic Law as a regular and 
fixed charge upon the income of the Jew. 
It was a tithe upon all the income,—produce 
and flocks alike. This did not include the 
free-will- and thank-offerings and first-fruits. 
Then, at the end of every third year, the in¬ 
crease was to be tithed also, and a public 
festival was to be held at some central place 
for each locality. And the Jew was to in¬ 
vite the widow, the fatherless, and the 
stranger, and he was to offer a solemn 
prayer, declaring that he had offered to the 
Lord all that he was commanded to do by 
the Law. The Jew, then, who fulfilled his 
duty, paid the tithe of the increase, and made 
his offerings with a glad heart, offered nearly 
twenty-five per cent, of his income as a holy 
thing to Jehovah, and this was a bounden 
duty. His prosperity depended upon it; 
and" so long as he paid it he was blessed in 
his store, in his basket, in his flock, and in 
his field. It seems that it was intended to 
stamp upon the religious mind the necessity 
of offering tithes as a condition of grace, and 
then it was to be left to the conscience and 
free-will of the offerer. But tithes were not 
commanded under the Christian dispensa¬ 
tion, while their principle is evidently pre¬ 
supposed in the Sermon on the Mount. As 
in so many other points the will of God 
having been sufficiently declared and the pre¬ 


cedent having been set, the Christian Church 
was left at liberty to act as circumstances 
should direct. The Church was to be as 
flexible and have as large a power of adapt¬ 
ability as was possible. Yet the precedent 
of the Mosaic Law was not to be lost sight 
of in the larger liberty of the Gospel. In 
the first century of Apostolic work we know 
from the New Testament what the freedom 
of the Gospel led men to do,—sell houses 
and lands to give all to their poor. They 
gave of their ability each one severally as 
he would. So in the second century we 
find but little allusion to this, yet the 
Fathers taught that as the principle of the 
commandments was carried further back 
than the letter of the law, so our Lord 
intended to remove the restraint of the 
tenth that we might give more joyfully 
and freely. Again, in the third century we 
find this gladsome giving urged; and we 
know that immediately after a severe per¬ 
secution St. Cyprian was able out of the 
Church treasury to send quite a large sum 
for the ransom of some Christian captives 
carried off by plundering Numidian ma¬ 
rauders. The tithe so far from being the 
maximum was not even set as the minimum. 
There was no real limit, for every one was 
expected to do all he could freely. The sug¬ 
gestion of tithes was later ; the law of tithes 
was first alluded to in the Apostolic Consti¬ 
tutions, which, since it was a kind of Direc- 
torium, was probably a work that grew in 
successive editions, as would be natural. 
The idea was further suggested by St. Am¬ 
brose’s saying that the Christian Priest suc¬ 
ceeded to the position of the Levitical. 
Thence this idea of the tithe was introduced 
and became the principle of giving ; but as 
this which had been the minimum before 
now became the maximum, it was enacted 
by the various provincial synods from about 
Charlemagne’s time that tithes were the 
first demand of the Church, and this demand 
was enforced by civil enactments. From 
this time on, tithes took their place in the 
regular income and was a charge upon the 
estates. It is not necessary for us to trace 
this further, since tithes are only a volun¬ 
tary act, but indeed as really binding upon 
a man, if offered by vow or promise, as if 
made compulsory. 

But it is a very serious duty for everyone 
in the receipt of any income, whether by 
daily toil or from any other source what¬ 
ever, to consider his dependence upon the 
merciful compassion of the Lord of the 
Universe, and to ask himself if a tithe is not 
the least that he can offer in return for 
what he has received from God. The re¬ 
marks of the earlier Fathers in connection 
with this subject, that our Lord bade His 
disciples see to it that their righteousness 
should exceed the righteousness of the 
Scribes and Pharisees, taught the duty of 
alms-giving, and so far from condemning, 
commended the paying of the tithe of mint, 
anise, and cummin, and are worth more than 





TITLES 


744 


TITLES 


a passing thought. They suggested that the 
Christian should do more than the Jew. 
Nor is it too much to say that tithes honestly 
paid with a glad heart bring prosperity and 
contentment. It is a trust from God that 
enables us to have anything to give, and it 
is a grace of the Holy Ghost in the heart 
that enables the devout giver to give joy¬ 
fully and to prove that he is fit to be trusted 
with more. Tithes were held to be the 
minimum. Free-will-offerings, Gifts, Thank- 
offerings, were also poured into the treasury 
of the Church. St. Cyprian upon his tak¬ 
ing orders, after providing for his sister, 
gave all his goods to the Church in Carthage, 
among other real estate some gardens which 
he owned. So others upon coming into the 
Church gave freely. Were the tithes and 
the ancient system of a common treasury 
for each Diocese faithfully carried out, the 
work of the Church in Missions and other 
responsibilities would be well supplied with 
all things needful. 

Titles. The ancient Canon law provided 
that no one could receive holy orders unless he 
were appointed to serve some Parish church 
or some Priest in a Parish. An exception 
was made in favor of those who were to 
serve in a Cathedral and those who were 
officers in a # College. Under this principle 
the Canons require that no one can receive 
Priest’s orders who cannot produce to the 
Bishop a satisfactory certificate that he is 
engaged to serve some Church, Parish, or 
Congregation, or is an agent for some Mis¬ 
sionary Society recognized by the General 
Convention, or is a Tutor, Professor, or In¬ 
structor of youth in some incorporated edu¬ 
cational Institution, or is to serve as Chap¬ 
lain in the Army or Navy (Tit. i., Can. viii., 
£ iii.). It is eminently proper, or many 
could receive orders in the Ministry with no 
field in which to minister their office. 

Titles, the, of the Holy Trinity. The 
first Person of the Ever-Blessed Trinity is 
in Holy Scripture styled a “ Creator” 
(Ecc. xii. 1; Isa. xl. 28 ; Bom. i. 25; 1 Pet. 
iv. 19). The endearing term “Father” is 
applied to Him (Deut. xxxii. 6; 1 Cor. viii. 
6); “Father of all” (Eph. iv. 6); “One 
Father” (Mai. ii. 10) ; “ Our Father” in 
the Lord’s Prayer (St. Matt. vi. 9). Our 
Saviour addresses Him as “ Father” 
(St. John xvii. 1), and “ the only true God” 
(v. 3) ; “ Holy Father” (v. 11); “ Bight- 
eous Father” (v. 25); “Lord of heaven 
and earth” (St. Matt. xi. 25). In the fourth 
verse of the sixty-eighth Psalm God is 
called “ Jaii,” and in the next verse, “ A 
Father of the fatherless and a Judge of the 
widows.” “ Maker,” “ Husband,” “ Holy 
One of Israel,” and “God of the whole 
earth” (Isa. liv. 5). The Spirit of adoption 
teaches men to “cry, Abba, Father” (Bom. 
viii. 15). The idea of the Fatherhood of 
God expresses a still closer relation in the 
term, “The Father of our Lord Jesus 
Christ” (Rom. xv. 6; 2 Cor. xi. 31; and 
Eph. i. 3). The majesty of God is shown 


in Ps. xxiv. 7, by the expression “ King of 
glory,” and St. Paul calls God “ The 
Blessed and only Potentate; the King of 
kings, and Lord of lords” (1 Tim. vi. 15). 
In Abraham’s prayer for Sodom he pleads 
with God as “ the Judge of all the earth” 
(Gen. xviii. 25). He is represented as a 
“ Lawgiver” (Isa. xxxiii. 22 ; James iv. 12). 
The glorious orb of day furnishes an emblem 
of the beneficence of God : “ The Lord God 
is a sun” (Ps. lxxxiv. 11). The same verse 
indicates His protective power by the word 
“ shield.” “ God is our Itefuge and strength” 
Ps. xlvi. 1). The stability of God draws 
rom David the figure of a “ Bock” and 
“ Fortress” (Ps. xxxi. 3). The word rock 
is a favorite one in the Psalms in this con¬ 
nection: “Lead me to the Bock that is 
higher than' I” (Ps. lxi. 2). The song of 
Moses refers to this comparison: “ For 
their rock is not as our Bock, even our ene¬ 
mies themselves being judges” (Deut. xxxii. 
31). 

David also speaks of God as his “ Light,” 
and “salvation,” and “the strength of his 
life” (Ps. xxvii. 1). The unlimited power 
of God the Father displays itself in His ad¬ 
dress to Abram: “ I am the Almighty 
God” (Gen. xvii. 1). The Hebrew Name 
Jehovah, from the verb to be, relates to 
the fact that God exists of Himself, and 
that He has existed from all eternity, and 
that He will forever exist (Ex. vi. 3). “ 1^ 

Am hath sent me unto you” (Ex. iii. 14). 
The troubled Jacob understands that his 
Maker is “ the God of Beth-el” (Gen. xxxi. 
13). Similar is the oft-repeated expression, 
“The God of Israel” (Ex. xxiv. 10, etc.). 
The character of God shines out in His own 
description of Himself as “the Holy One” 
(Hosea xi. 9). The echo of this comes back 
in our Lord’s words, “ Holy Father” 
(St. John xvi. 11). What a comfort in St. 
Paul’s expression, ,“ the God of patience 
and consolation” ! (Bom. xv. 5.) The dura¬ 
tion of God is manifested in the phrase 
“the eternal God” (Deut. xxxiii. 27), and 
“the everlasting God” (Gen. xxi. 33. See 
Isa. lx. 28). Nebuchadnezzar describes 
God as “ the most high God” (Dan. iii. 26), 
Cyrus as “ the Lord God of heaven” (Ezra 
i. 2). God speaks to Amos as “the Lord, 
the God of hosts” (Amos v. 16). Moses 
designates Him as “the living God” (Deut. 
v. 26), and Nehemiah (ix. 31) as “ a gra¬ 
cious and merciful God.” In Ps. lxxxix. 
8, we find the words “ strong Lord.” These 
titles of God the Father present Him as 
Creator, Father, King, Judge, and liefuge, 
and as ever-existing, all-holy, all-powerful, 
and all-merciful. Thus He is the constant 
Preserver and the ceaseless Benefactor of 
the creatures whom His own hand has 
made. 

The Second Person of the Trinity, our 
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, appears 
in prophecy in the beginning of the Old 
Testament Scriptures as the “ Seed” of the 
woman who should bruise Satan (Gen. iii. 






TITLES 


745 


TITLES 


15). He is “the Head-Stone of the corner” 
(Ps. cxviii. 22) ; “ A precious Corner-stone, 
a sure Foundation” (Isa. xxviii. 16; cf. 1 
Pet. ii. 6, and Eph. ii. 20). Jesus Christ 
was “a righteous Branch,” and “a King,” 
and should “be called The Lord Our 
Righteousness” (Jer. xxiii. 5, 6). The 
High-Priest typified Christ (Heb. ii. 17): 
“ A merciful and faithful High-Priest.” 
He was “ the Lamb of God, which taketh 
away the sin of the world” (St. John i. 29), 
and “the Messias” (v. 41), “The Son of 
God,” and “the King of Israel” (v. 49; 
compare St. John v. 19, 23, 25; 1 Cor. xv. 
28, and St. Mark xiii. 32). But while our 
Lord claims the homage of “the Son of 
God,” He also humbles Himself to be “the 
Son of man” (v. 27): “Jesus Christ our 
Lord” (Rom. i. 3).; “ Thou art my Son” (Ps. 

ii. 7): “The Son of the living God” (St. 
Matt. xvi. 16) ; “The Christ of God” (St. 
Luke ix. 20). Christ means Anointed One, 
or Messiah : “ Alpha and Omega, the begin¬ 
ning and the ending” (Rev. i. 8); “The 
Door” (St. John x. 7); “The Good Shep¬ 
herd” (v. 11); “ The Sun of righteousness” 
(Mai. iv. 2) ; “A Star out of Jacob” (Num. 
xxiv. 7); “The bright and morning Star” 
(Rev. xxii. 16) ; “ The true Light which 
lighteth every man that cometh into the 
world” (St. John i. 9); “The resurrection 
and the life” (St. John xi. 25); “A Foun¬ 
tain” (Zech. xiii. 1); “ The Ro^e of Sharon 
and the Lily of the valleys” (Solomon’s 
Song ii. 1); “ The Bread of Life” (St. John 
vi. 35) ; “ The True Vine” (St. John xv. 1); 
“ First-born” (Ps. lxxxix. 27) ; “ The image 
of the invisible God” (Col. i. 15); “The 
Head of the body, the Church” (v. 18); 
“A Prince and a Saviour” (Acts v. 31); 
“Prince of life” (Acts iii. 15); “ The Holy 
One and the Just” (Acts iii. 14) ; “ Heir of 
all things” (Heb. i. 2); “ Brightness of His 
glory, and tne express image of His Person” 
(v. 3); “ The Beginning, the First-born 

from the dead” (Col. i. 18); “The Way, 
the Truth, and the Life” (St. John xiv. 6) ; 
u My Lord and my God” (St. John xx. 
28); “The Word” (St. John i. 1); “The 
Word of God” (Rev. xix. 13) ; “ Equal with 
God” (Phil. ii. 6. See, also, St. John v. 17, 
18, for our Lord’s own assertion of Son- 
ship, and the natural inference of the 
Jews); “ The only-begotten Son” (St. John 
i. 18); “The Christ” (v. 20); “Jesus of 
Nazareth” (ver. 45); “Jesus” (St. Matt. i. 
21, 25); “ The Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 
viii. 6); “The Lord” (Heb. ii. 3"); “Em¬ 
manuel, . . . God with us” (St. Matt. i. 23, 
and Isa. vii. 14); “ Author of eternal salva¬ 
tion unto all them that obey Him” (Heb. v. 
9); “ The Author and Finisher of our faith” 
(Heb. xii. 2); “Wonderful, Counselor, The 
mighty God, The everlasting Father, The 
Prince of Peace” (Isa. ix. 6); “Our Lord 
Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep” 
(Heb. xiii. 20); “The chief Shepherd” (1 
Pet. v. 4); “ The Shepherd and Bishop 
of your souls” (1 Pet. ii. 25); “ Christ in 


you, the hope of glory” (Col. i. 27); “ Our 
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 

iii. 18); “ King of kings, and Lord of lords” 
(Rev. xix. 16); “ A Prophet” (Acts iii. 22); 
“The Lord of glory” (1 Cor. ii. 8). These 
titles represent the Son of God as a Saviour 
and Redeemer and Lord, and the manner in 
which, in Holy Writ, the same terms are 
used for both the Holy Father and the 
Holy Son teach us, to quote our Lord’s own 
words, “ That all men should honor the Son, 
even as they honor the Father. He that 
honoreth not the Son, honoreth not the 
Father which hath sent Him” (St. John v. 
23); “Search the Scriptures; for in them 
ye think ye have eternal life, and they are 
they which testify of Me” (v. 39). 

The following names are given to the 
Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Holy 
Trinity: “The Spirit of God” (Gen. i. 2, 
and Job iii. 3, 4). In the reference in Job 
the phrase is added, “ the breath of the Al¬ 
mighty;” “the Comforter” (St. John xiv. 
26); “the Eternal Spirit” (Heb. ix. 14); 
“Free Spirit” (Ps. Ii. 12); “Spirit of the 
Lord God” (Isa. lxi. 1, and see St. Luke 

iv. 18); “the Spirit of the Lord;” “the 
Spirit” (St. Luke iv. 1); “ the Spirit of His 
Son” (Gal. iv. 6); “the Spirit of Jesus 
Christ” (Phil. i. 19); “Spirit of Christ” 
(Rom. viii. 9, and 1 Pet. i. 11); “ Spirit of 
Judgment” and “Spirit of burning” (Isa. 
iv. 4) ; “ Good Spirit” (Neh. ix. 20 ; see Ps. 
cxliii. 10); “ the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 
vi. 11); “Spirit of the living God” (2 Cor. 
iii. 3); “the Holy Ghost” (Acts ix. 31); 
“God” (Acts v. 4; cf. v. 3); “ Holy Spirit” 
(Ps. Ii. 11, and St. Luke xi. 13); “Holy 
Spirit of God” (Eph. iv. 30); “ Holy Spirit 
of promise” (Eph. i. 13); “the Lord” (2 
Cor. iii. 17 ; compare Nicene Creed); “ the 
Power of the Highest” (St. Luke i. 35); 
“ Spirit of adoption (Rom. viii. 15); “the 
Spirit of Truth” (St. John xv. 26); “ the 
Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the 
dead” (Rom.viii. 11) ;“theSpiritofHisSon” 
(Gal. iv. 6); “ the Spirit of life” (Rom. viii. 
2); “ the Spirit of your Father” (St. Matt. x. 
20); “the Spirit of Grace” (Heb. x. 29); 
“the Spirit of Prophecy” (Rev. xix. 10); 
“ the Spirit of Wisdom and Understanding, 
the Spirit of Counsel and Might, the Spirit 
of Knowledge and of the Fear of the Lord” 
(Isa. xi. 2); “ the Spirit of Holiness” (Rom. 
i. 4); “ the Spirit of Wisdom and Revela¬ 
tion” (Eph. i. 17); “the Spirit of Glory” 
(1 Pet. iv. 14); “the Seven Spirits of 
God” (Rev. iii. 1); “Voice of the Lord” 
(Ps. cvi. 25). The epithet “Holy” indi¬ 
cates the sanctifying power of the Spirit of 
God: “Sanctified by the Holy Ghost” 
(Rom. xv. 16). His guiding and leading 
work is shown in our Lord’s words, “He 
will guide you into all truth” (St. John xv. 
13); “ the finger of God” (St. Luke xi. 20). 
In addition to the titles given to the Holy 
Spirit in Scripture, several emblems are 
made use of to explain its work. 

Water i§ abundant and free. It cleanses, 





TITLES 


746 


TITUS, EPISTLE TO 


purifies, and refreshes, hence the prophet 
says, taught by the Spirit how to speak of 
Himself, “ 1 will pour water upon him that 
is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground; 
I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed” (Isa. 
xliv. 3). Water was naturally used in Holy 
Baptism, and the Savtour declares that 
“ except a man be born of water and of the 
Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of 
God” (St. John iii. 5). Spiritual life is “ liv¬ 
ing water” (St. John iv. 10). It is not stag¬ 
nant, but constantly flowing. Fire enlight¬ 
ens and purifies. The disciples of Christ 
were to be baptized “ with the Holy Ghost, 
and with Are” (St. Matt. iii. 11). On the 
Day of Pentecost “ there appeared unto them 
cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon 
each of them. And they were all filled with 
the Holy Ghost” (Acts ii. 3, 4). The Wind 
is powerful and reviving. The word Spirit 
means breath or wind, and our Lord says of 
its unseen work, “ So is every one that is born 
of the Spirit” (St. John iii. 8). Oil heals, 
and is used for consecrating. The Wise 
Virgins in the parable were furnished with 
oil, or spiritual life (St. Matt. xxv. 4). The 
rain and the dew are gentle and vivifying. 
Hosea says of God, “ He shall come unto 
us as the rain” (ch. v. 3), and, “ I will be as 
the dew unto Israel” (ch. xiv. 5). The dove 
is an emblem of meekness and innocence. 
After the baptism of Jesus we read of “ the 
Spirit of God descending like a dove, and 
lighting upon Him” (St. Matt. iii. 16). A 
voice teaches, “If any man hear My voice, 
and open the door, I will come in to him, 
and will sup with him, and he with Me” 
(Rev. iii. 20). A seal impresses and secures : 
“Ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of 
promise” (Eph. i. 13). 

The idea of the Holy Trinity embedded 
in the Scriptures is well compared to that 
of a cross in the ground plan of a Cathe¬ 
dral. The whole structure shows the de¬ 
sign. And if, too, to him (St. John) this 
great belief was more than belief, this 
“ light” was also “ life” ; if he could feel it 
blessed to acknowledge a Father who is our 
Father, a Son in whom we also “ are called 
the sons of God,” a Holy Spirit who “ dwell- 
eth with us and shall be in us ;” may we also 
find in the Trinity the ground of practical 
devotion, pure and deep, till, quickened by 
the power of this faith, the Three that bear 
record in Heaven shall bear their witness in 
our hearts; and the Trinity shall have be¬ 
come, not the cold conclusion of the intellect, 
but the priceless treasure of the affections, 
the blessed foundation, and the perpetual 
strength of the new and spiritual life! 
The mystery of faith is an invaluable treas¬ 
ure, but the vessel that contains it must 
be clean and undefiled ; it must be held in 
a pure conscience ; as the manna, that glor¬ 
ious symbol of the word of faith preached 
to us by the Gospel, was confined to the 
tabernacle, and preserved in a vessel of 
gold. 

Authorities: Foster’s Cyc. of Illustra¬ 


tions, Cruden’s Definitions in his Concord¬ 
ance, Knapp’s Theology, Bishop Horne’s 
Ser. on the Trinity, E. H. Bickersteth’s 
Rock of Ages, H. T. Bailey’s Liturgy Com¬ 
pared with the Bible, Prof. Butler’s Ser. on 
The Trinity Disclosed in the Structure of 
St. John’s Writings, and Jones on The 
Trinity. Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Titus. One of the nearest and dearest of 
the companions St. Paul took with him. 
Silas, Timotheus, Titus, Luke, seem to have 
been his loving associates. “ I had no rest 
in my spirit,” wrote St. Paul to the Corin¬ 
thians, “because I found not Titus, my 
brother.” He is only noticed in the Epis- * 
ties, but these notices and the missions he is 
sent upon all imply a man of forcible and 
upright character, thoroughly to be trusted, 
and zealous in anything he undertook. St. 
Paul tells the Galatians that Titus was a 
Gentile. He sends him to Corinth twice 
upon a mission which was connected with 
the discipline of the Church. He left him 
in Crete to establish the Church there, and 
the charge he gave him implied that Titus 
was a man of firmness and nerve. St. An¬ 
drew, Archbishop of Crete, describes him as 
the first founder of the Church in Crete, 
“the pillar of the Truth, the main stay of 
the Faith, the unwearied trumpeter of the 
Evangelical Promises, the lofty utterer as a 
tongue for St. Paul.” The Apostle recalled 
him from Crete, apparently after his first 
imprisonment, and was probably with him 
till the second, when he was sent on a mission 
to Dalmatia. Here all our really authentic 
information ends. 

Titus, Epistle to. The Apostle writes 
after his first imprisonment this second of 
the three Pastoral Epistles to Titus, his own 
son after the common Faith. The Apostle 
knowing the difficulties of his position and the 
character of the Cretans, gives him short, 
clear, and authoritative counsels for action. 
The directions are all explicit, and show that 
Titus was a man of more than ordinary 
vigor and capable of dealing sharply and 
promptly, as he probably had proven in his 
mission to the Corinthians. He is bidden 
to set the Church in order ; to ordain Elders; 
to rebuke the careless, that they may be 
sound in the Faith ; to see that the men and 
women conduct themselves soberly and dis¬ 
creetly in all things; to direct the slaves 
to honest, faithful service; to put them in 
mind of the rightful authority of the powers 
that be ; to reject heretics. It is evident that 
age and toil had not lessened the Apostle’s 
sense of authority and responsibility, and 
that he bade his fellow-workers exercise their 
commission to the full. There is one argu¬ 
ment in favor of the continuance and in¬ 
crease of the Apostolic office drawn from 
this Epistle of the Apostle. It is impos¬ 
sible to suppose that St. Paul had planted 
a Church without giving to it Elders. If 
the Elders (Presbyters) were competent to 
perpetuate their office, why leave Titus, then, 
with special instructions about them? If he 




TOBIT, BOOK OF 


747 


TOLERATION 


was an Apostle also, as St. Paul’s words 
elsewhere imply (2 Cor. viii. 23), then all is 
clear and plain. And, too, Titus is in exactly 
the same position that Timothy held in 
Ephesus. Now Timothy is numbered by St. 
Paul in his first Epistle to the Thessalonians 
with himself as an Apostle (1 Thess. i. 1) : 
“Paul, and Silvanus, and Timotheus, . . . 
when we might have been burdensome 
as the Apostles of Christ” (ch. ii. 6). If 
Silas and Timothy, then Titus too. In fact, 
St. Paul’s company must have consisted of 
men with Apostolic Commission above the 
rank of the Presbyters fitted to take the 
missions upon which St. Paul sent them. 
He was too skilled an organizer and too deli¬ 
cately appreciative of others’ feelings and 
rights to have made so signal a blunder as 
would be implied by any other course. 

Tobit, Book of. This story of a faithful 
captive Jew contains many points which are 
interesting and instructive. It was highly 
esteemed among the Jews. Tobit’s prayer 
of rejoicing (chap, xiii.) is a hearty render¬ 
ing of praise to God. The doctrine of good 
and evil spirits is plainly taught by the in¬ 
troduction of the evil Asmodeus, and of 
“Raphael, one of the seven holy angels, 
which present the prayers of the saints, and 
which go in and out before the glory of the 
Holy One.” The miracles are not in keep¬ 
ing with those narrated in historical Scrip¬ 
ture. The book may have had a historical 
basis, but extraordinary details have found 
place in it. The point is in the good moral 
lessons, while the incidents are pictures to 
enliven the story and impress the teaching. 
It is thought by Ewald that the work may 
have been written in the East, “ towards the 
close of the Persian period.” The way in 
which Media is spoken of (ch. xiv. 4) would 
imply the strength of the Persian monarchy 
at that time. There is much reference to 
alms-giving, and the burial of the dead, and 
to the Jerusalem worship. Luther said of 
this book that it was “a truly beautiful, 
wholesome, and profitable fiction, the work 
of a gifted poet. ... A book useful for 
Christian reading.” Tobit is quoted in the 
Second Book of Homilies (of Alms-deeds). 
Three verses are found among the sentences 
at the offertory, beginning, “Give alms of 
thy goods,” etc. (iv. 7-9). For the refer¬ 
ence to the sins of our forefathers in the 
Litany, see Tobit iii. 3. The book is valua¬ 
ble as a beautiful picture of Jewish domestic 
life Its works seem to spring from living 
faith. The alms-giving is loving service (i. 
16, 17; ii. 1-7; iv. 7—11, 16). The injunc¬ 
tion in the last reference is noteworthy, “let 
not thine eye be envious when thou givest 
alms.” The tenderness of domestic life dis¬ 
plays itself in this book in the weeping of 
Anna when her son had started on his jour¬ 
ney (v. 17) and the father’s pious consola¬ 
tion, which pointed to angelic aid, and dried 
her tears (vs. 20-22). The affection of Ra- 
guel and his family (vii. 4-8) is a pleasant 
touch of Eastern life. Tobit counts the 


days, impatiently awaiting the return of his 
son, while the mother neglects her food, and 
goes out into the way to watch for her child’s 
coming (x. 1-7). The various family rela¬ 
tions are painted in simple patriarchal style, 
as in the happy return of Tobias (ch. xi.). 
Prayer is highly esteemed (iv. 19). The 
angel Raphael is represented as a healer by 
the appointment of God (iii. 17), and the 
one who brought remembrance of faithful 
prayers “before the Holy One” (xii. 12). 
The particular incidents and descriptions of 
this book may show a historical basis. Horne 
conjectures that it was begun by Tobit, con¬ 
tinued by his son Tobias, and finished by 
some other member of the family. We have 
lessons of charity and patience in Tobit’s 
ready aid to his distressed brethren, and his 
pious submission, like that of Job, to cap¬ 
tivity, poverty, and blindness. St. Jerome 
translated this book into Latin in a rapid 
manner, by the aid of a learned Jew. The 
closing up of the book is very striking. 
Tobit ends his praises of God, and declares 
his faith in the prophecy of God by Jonah 
concerning Nineveh. He looks forward to 
the destruction of idolatry, and the turning 
of the nations to sacred Jerusalem, and so in 
faith he dies, an hundred and fifty-eight 
years old, and receives honorable burial; his 
wife follows him shortly to the same tomb. 
The son Tobias grows old with honor, and 
dies “an hundred and seven and twenty 
years old.” 

Authorities: B. F. Westcott in Win. 
Smith’s Diet, of the Bible, Prideaux’s Con¬ 
nections, Arnald’s Comm, in Patrick and 
Lowth and Whitby, Horne’s Introduction. 

Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Toleration. To bear with those who 
hold what is not approved of as true is an 
act in which we imitate the forbearance of 
our Lord. To tolerate what is wrong or 
leads to wrong, when we have the responsi¬ 
bility of seeing that it may be amended, or 
of protesting against it, is contrary to 
honesty. To tolerate our neighbor’s sins 
without trying to urge him to amendment is 
a wrong to society. But to force him to do as 
we think right is to interfere with him and 
to usurp an illegal authority. The duty and 
the limits of true toleration are not properly 
understood. In this country, where equal 
freedom is given to all “to worship God 
according to the dictates of their own con¬ 
science,” there is no need to use the word 
with regard to those who form religious 
bodies separate from our own, and their rights 
we are bound to respect. But within the limits 
of the Church there can be no such thing as 
toleiation. The widest liberty is allowed 
in accord with the truth. The YI. Article 
lays down this principle: “Holy Scripture 
containeth all things necessary to salvation : 
so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor 
may be proved thereby, is not required of 
any man, that it should be believed as an 
Article of the Faith, or be thought requisite 
or necessary to salvation.” There can be no 




TONSURE 


748 


TRADITION 


larger liberty possible ; no conditions are 
laid down other than those in Holy Scrip¬ 
tures. But it would be evidently subversive 
of the very existence of the Church to yield 
more, and to tolerate any infringement 
upon these. It would be fatal to permit any 
doctrine of men to be substituted and en¬ 
forced. It is but a just defense of the truth 
which we must ever enforce. It was on 
this principle that St. Paul resisted the in¬ 
tolerant conduct of those who would fetter 
the true Faith with their notions (Gal. ii. 4, 
5). It was the disciplinary power of the 
Church which purged it from heretics and 
false teachers. Toleration in this sense 
must be necessarily impossible if the princi¬ 
ples set forth in the last message of our 
Lord to the Church (Rev. ii., iii.) are true. 
There is a forbearance and an expostulation 
and an admonition which must be used 
(Tit. iii. 10). There must be an allowance 
for defects in education and in capacity to 
understand, but this is another thing. Be¬ 
yond the point of kindness to the individual, 
there should be care for the safety of others 
in the Church, who might be misled. It lies 
with the Bishops as the responsible Angels 
of the Church to judge what is the true 
limit of a toleration, and where kindness 
and forbearance cease to be rightly and 
charitably exercised. 

Tonsure. It was a practice in the Church 
from early times to cut the hair of those en¬ 
tering into holy orders; but tonsure or shav¬ 
ing of a portion of the hair of the crown 
(as in the Western Church), or totally (as 
in the Eastern), was of comparatively late 
date. The earliest authentic order upon it 
is said to be a Canon of the fourth Council 
of Toledo (633 a.d.). From that time, how¬ 
ever, directions about it are more and more 
common. In the English Church, Tonsure 
was dropped at the Reformation. 

Tradition. The word tradition (a thing 
or fact or belief handed down, whether by 
written memoranda or orally) has lost so 
much of its better meaning that it is difficult 
to make that just and right use of the word 
which is demanded by facts. Our Lord 
condemned the traditions of the Jews, which 
made the commandments of God of none 
effect. This is probably, in part, the reason 
why the word has gained with us an evil 
sense. The other reason is that so many 
false traditions had grown up in the Church 
during the Middle Ages that when the Eng¬ 
lish Church purged these away, the word 
was used to brand them as unworthy of 
credit; and despite the protest of the 
XXXIV. Article the popular use of the 
word has overborne iis legitimate use. The 
Jews, we know, had an Oral Law which, 
while it merited our Lord’s condemnation 
in many things, yet contained the true ex¬ 
planation of the prophecies concerning Him, 
and kept ever clearly before them the doc¬ 
trine of the resurrection. St. Paul speaks 
of the traditions which he had given the 
Thessalonians, and condemns others’ teach¬ 


ings. Now while it may be said that these 
were not traditions as we now use the word, 
yet the teaching by “ word of mouth” was 
the foundation of tradition. But there were 
necessarily traditional usages, unwritten cus¬ 
toms which could and did vary in different 
places ; and for the years of persecution and 
trial in the Primitive Church much had to 
be intrusted to tradition. There then grew 
up cases and interpretations of practices 
right in themselves which formed that body 
of unwritten common law which is called 
tradition. To this day we must use tradi¬ 
tion. No series of rubrics in the Prayer- 
Book are so closely joined or contain such 
minute directions but something is left to 
inherited custom. Such were the directions 
of St. Paul when protesting against innova¬ 
tion. He practically appealed to the prin¬ 
ciple of tradition when he wrote, “ we have 
no such custom, neither the Churches of 
God” (1 Cor. xi. 16). Using the word, then, 
in its true sense as the handing down cor¬ 
rectly of a custom, a usage, or of some un¬ 
written law of the Church, we find the 
English Church and our own setting forth 
the just use of tradition in its rites and cere¬ 
monies thus: “ It is not necessary that Tra¬ 
ditions and Ceremonies be in all places one, 
or utterly like, for at all times they have 
been divers, and may be changed according 
to the diversity of countries’ times and men’s 
manners, so that nothing be ordained against 
God’s word. "Whosoever through his pri¬ 
vate judgment willingly and purposely doth 
openly break the traditions and ceremonies 
of the Church which be not repugnant to 
the Word of God, and be ordained and ap¬ 
proved by common authority, ought to bo 
rebuked openly (that others may fear to do 
the like), as he that offendeth against the 
common Order of the Church and hurteth 
the Authority of the Magistrate, and wound- 
eth the consciences of the weak Brethren. 
Every particular or national Church hath 
authority to ordain, change, and abolish 
Ceremonies or Rites of the Church ordained 
only by man’s authority, so that all things 
be done to edifying.” (Art. XXXIV.) 

The Consenting witness of the early ages 
of Christianity is not t° be despised. In¬ 
deed, much more depends upon it than 
many have thought. Tradition, in its best 
sense, and treating of subjects of the highest 
importance, has preserved for us the proofs 
of the Apostolic Succession, the genuineness 
and the Canonical Authority of Holy Scrip¬ 
ture, the Apostles’ Creed, the observance of 
the Lord’s Day, the continuity of the 
Church, the rites of Baptism, the early 
proof of the use of Infant Baptism. Sub¬ 
jects of less essential importance, but of 
great value, are the Liturgical observances, 
the divisions of the Christian year, the 
arrangement of the great Feasts, the healthy 
growth of Ritual. The Rubrics of our own 
Prayer-Book, which were arranged at its 
compilation, in 1549 a.d., presuppose a tra¬ 
dition and custom which have been but im- 







TRANSFIGURATION 


749 


TRENT 


perfectly transmitted in continuous use from 
several causes. (Vide Rubrics.) It is one 
of the efforts made by many to endeavor to 
recover and to restore these traditions, so 
far as practicable. But the Article most 
wisely states that each Church “ has author¬ 
ity to ordain, change, or abolish Ceremo¬ 
nies or Rites of the Church ordained only 
by man’s authority, so that all things be 
done to edifying.’-’ It would be a sad loss 
and a breakage of the finer lines of that 
cord of continuous discipline and usage and 
Ritual which holds us to the past and may 
be in essentials traced to Isapostolic usage 
and tradition. Still, for overruling cause, 
for the sake of winning souls, for the preach¬ 
ing of the Gospel, all of these lesser bonds 
might and should be broken. Let that day 
never come. 

Transfiguration. Feast of Transfigura¬ 
tion (August 6). This feast was one of 
somewhat late institution. It was intro¬ 
duced into the Greek ritual about 700 a.d., 
for St. John Damascenus, and Cosmas 
wrote hymns for the Office. In the West it 
is claimed that it was observed as early as 
the time of Leo I., 450 a.d. But Potho of 
Prum, 1152 a.d., condemned it as a nov¬ 
elty. It was ordered to be universally ob¬ 
served in the West by Calixtus II., 1457 
a.d., upon occasion of the defeat of the 
Turks before Belgrade. The date of its ob¬ 
servance is, throughout the Orthodox Greek 
Churches and the West, August 6. It 
was dropped from the list of the greater 
feasts in the English Church. The last 
General Convention, October, 7883 a.d., 
has restored it, and appointed a Collect, 
Epistle, and Gospel for it. 

It commemorates an act of our Lord 
which has a deep significance in relation to 
our spiritual life. He, before His last 
journey to Jerusalem, took the three chief 
Apostles with Him into a high mountain, 
and then as He prayed He was transfigured 
before them. His raiment became as white 
as snow, His face shone as the Sun, and 
Moses and Elias appeared and talked with 
Him of the decease He should accomplish 
at Jerusalem. There are several important 
points to be noted. It was in His human 
nature that this took place, and after His 
discipline, which preceded the last of the 
series of the acts of the Redemption. The 
glory that shone through that humiliation 
was now a part of His sinless nature, and it 
was the consequence of His fasting prayers 
and doing so perfectly the will of His 
Father. This glory, the Shekinah which 
was His in His eternal nature, was already 
manifested in His miracles, in His wondrous 
powers over nature. It was this by which 
He awed His opponents. “ Never man 
spake as this man.” 

Yet the transfiguration was a step more. 
His humanity was now interfused and per¬ 
fected in the glory. Henceforth we note a 
change in our Lord. Acting, teaching, lead¬ 
ing with authority always, now He goes 


forward steadfastly towards Jerusalem. He 
sends messengers before His face to prepare 
His way. He, as it were, rules and over¬ 
rules the acts of others that He should now 
accomplish His decease, and after that be 
received up again. The grace and the 
strength of the Transfiguration were needed 
(let us say it reverently) for the Cross, as 
the Baptism and the Dove must precede the 
temptation. For us, then, St. Paul’s lan¬ 
guage, “ be not conformed to this world : 
but be ye transformed by the removing of 
your mind, that ye may prove what is that 
good, and acceptable, and perfect will of 
God,” is divinely given us to receive its in¬ 
terpretation from the Transfiguration of our 
dear Lord. 

Translation of a Bishop from one See to 
another of higher importance and value. It 
was early practiced in the Church, and gave 
a good deal of trouble. There were frequent 
efforts made by ambitious holders of small 
Sees to obtain promotion, which in many in¬ 
stances were successful, contrary to the reg¬ 
ulations. But the later Councils, while for¬ 
bidding it as a practice, still allowed it under 
only certain extreme cases ; and the irregu¬ 
larity of the act was once made the pretext 
for removing Gregory Nazianzen from the 
Patriarchate of Constantinople. In the 
English Church, translations are quite fre¬ 
quent. In our own Church there have been 
several instances of translation from Mis¬ 
sionary Jurisdictions to Dioceses. 

Treasurer. A dignitary to whom was 
committed the collection and the disburse¬ 
ment of the moneys of the Church or of the 
Monastery. Now he has the same office in 
the Parish or in the Diocese. It is the most 
important of all the offices held in the man¬ 
agement of the Temporalties of the Church. 
It requires much financial tact and skill, and 
is that office which when properly discharged 
lessens the friction of the different parts of 
the Parochial or Diocesan organization. 
Our peculiar economical arrangements throw 
very much into the hands of the treasurer, 
who has with irregularly paid and, too 
often, scanty moneys to meet the many and 
varied requisitions made upon him by the 
needs of the Rector and of the Parish. If 
he should prove incompetent in skillful 
management the defect is instantly felt; 
should he be competent he is hardly known. 
His office represents the health of the Parish 
in temporals. And as health of body is as¬ 
sumed and carelessly used, and only valued 
when lost, so the functions and delicate 
duties of the treasurer are often only felt and 
rightly valued when they fail to be properly 
discharged. 

Trent. The great Council of the Roman 
Church which was held at Trent, in the 
Tyrol. The progress of the Reformation in 
Germany, the appeals of the Reformers to a 
Free General Council, and the demands of 
the Emperor Charles V. for such a Coun¬ 
cil, and the promises made by previous 
Popes, forced Clement VII. to take steps to 





TRENT 


750 


TRINITY 


have a Council summoned in 1534 a.d. But 
he de^ed, threw so many hinderances in 
the way, that it fell to his successor, Paul 
III., to convoke it, in 1546 a.d. Its history, 
of its prorogations and delays, of the in¬ 
trigues and trickeries used, of the dissen¬ 
sions which threatened to dissolve it, of the 
political questions which influenced it, and 
of the political causes which reversed the 
conduct of the Embassadors present at it, 
the principles upon which its policy was 
based, are too intricate and involve the re¬ 
cital of too many concurrent secular events 
to permit any lengthened notice of it. 

It was summoned in 1545 a.d. (Decem¬ 
ber 13). It was removed to Bologna, where 
it was prorogued in 1547 a.d., after holding 
ten sessions in all. It was again convened 
at Trent in 1551 a.d., and held six more 
sessions, when, in 1552 a.d., it wasagain pro¬ 
rogued for two years, but this was extended 
to ten years. When its seventeenth session 
was held, January, 1562 a.d., nine more 
sessions were rapidly held, and then, after re¬ 
citing and confirming the acts of its earlier 
convocations, it dissolved. Clement VII. 
prepared the steps, Paul III. summoned it, 
Julius III. reconvened it, Paul IV. refused 
to remove its progation, and finally Pius IV. 
ordered its last sessions. Its acts are divided 
into two series: (a) on Faith, ( b ) on Refor¬ 
mation, and on both it failed to meet the de¬ 
mands made upon it. Many things were 
ignored and others produced much dissen¬ 
sion. The strongest arguments against the 
Papacy were urged, and it required all the 
address and diplomacy of the Italian legates, 
and all the political influence they could 
command, to avoid decisions upon some 
dangerous topics. The results of the Coun¬ 
cil were not adequate to the needs of the 
time, and the Popes congratulated them¬ 
selves when they succeeded in proroguing 
it, and Pius IV. was relieved when it was 
dissolved. It refused relief on some doc¬ 
trinal questions. It made the least possible 
concession on reform. It crystallized popu¬ 
lar Roman doctrine and made some decrees 
that are absolutely at variance with all facts. 
It neutralized all important concessions by 
the phrase “ reserving the rights of the 
holy See.” Its claims to be a General Coun¬ 
cil are worthless; neither the Eastern nor 
the English Bishops were represented in it. 
Its decrees were protested against from time 
to time by the French or Spanish Embassa¬ 
dors. It was not free, but was constantly 
under the control of the Pope, who pro¬ 
rogued it whenever it threatened to become 
unmanageable. Its decrees are received in 
France, but not in name. It failed to meet 
the true issues upon the questions for which 
it was summoned. Its whole effect was to 
solidify into one form the unformed floating 
opinions and doctrines of the Roman obedi¬ 
ence, to bind more firmly the abuses of the 
Roman Curia, to enable the Pope to formu¬ 
late an appendix to the Nioene Creed which 
made the decrees of that Council as binding 


upon every Bishop and Priest as the Ar¬ 
ticles of the Paith in the Creed. 

A good, impartial history of the Council 
is yet needed, but the necessary documents 
are not all, even yet, collected, and the mass 
of papers now in reach have not been col¬ 
lected and put into proper order. Fra Paolo 
Sarpi in 1629 a.d. published a history of the 
Council, which exhibited its defects with 
great wit and sarcasm. A reply was attempted 
by Cardinal Pallavicini, 1660 a.d., but, ex¬ 
cept that it supplied some documents of 
value, it is not to be compared to Sarpi’s 
attack. The genuine acts of the Council 
have only lately been published at Prague, 
by Father Thenier. 

Authorities : Brent’s translation of Sarpi’s 
History, Mendham’s Council of Trent, Pal- 
lavicini’s History in Migne’s Library, Paris, 
and numberless minor histories and defenses 
which are readily accessible. 

Trine Baptism. The immersion of, or 
the pouring of water upon, the person bap¬ 
tized thrice,—once in the name of each Per¬ 
son of the Holy Trinity. It is an ancient 
custom, and of so early a date that it may be 
derived from Apostolic usage, as is shown in 
the recently discovered “Teaching of the 
Twelve Apostles,’’which is dated 120-160 a.d. 
The earliest mention of the details of the ad¬ 
ministration of the Sacrament gives this as 
the practice, and the Apostolic canons, which 
probably represent the rules which obtained 
before 325 a.d., direct that the Bishop or 
Priest who does not so administer baptism 
shall be deposed. It is something more than 
a devout practice, for at the least it makes it 
certain that the immersion or the aflfusion 
had been performed, which were it done but 
once and hastily might be doubted. 

Trinity. It is the full all-containing rev¬ 
elation, the declaration of which our Lord 
came to complete. It was shadowed out in 
the Old Testament from the very first. The 
Names by which God chose to reveal Him¬ 
self in His unity also included the Trinity. 
( Vide Elohim and Jehovah.) The Name 
Jehovah was the name by which our Lord 
was addressed and received worship, and is 
now adored in heaven and in earth. (“ There¬ 
fore let all the house of Israel know as¬ 
suredly, that God hath made that same 
Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord 
and Christ.” Acts ii. 36.) He revealed the 
Unity of Nature in the One Godhead and the 
Trinity of Persons : “ I and My Father are 
One.” “ But when the Comforter is come 
whom I well send unto you from the Father, 
even the Spirit of Truth which proceedeth 
from the Father, He shall testify of Me.” 
The Baptismal words also must imply what¬ 
ever we believe of the Name of the Father, 
that also is the power of the Name of the 
Son, and of the Name of the Holy Ghost. 
Not Three Names but one Name,—he., 
Power, Majesty, and Glory. Co-equal 
honor, worship, and obedience are due to the 
Three Persons in the Oneness of the Sub¬ 
stance of God. 




TRINITY 


751 


TRINITY-SUNDAY 


This doctrine of the Trinity makes us 
Christians, for we must believe that Christ is 
the very and only-begotten Son of God, ac¬ 
cording to the summary of the Revelation 
in the Nicene Creed, or Christ has not the 
claim He makes and we yield for our worship 
and obedience. It is the foundation of our 
Confession. It is woven into our worship. 
It is in the front of all doctrinal statements. 
Passing by the Nicene Creed referred to, 
the first four obsecrations of the Litany ex¬ 
press it: “ O God the Father of heaven; have 
mercy upon us miserable sinners. O God 
the Son, Redeemer of the world ; have mercy 
upon us miserable sinners. 0 God the Holy 
Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the 
Son ; have mercy upon us miserable sinners. 
O holy , blessed , and glorioiis Trinity , Three 
Persons and One God ; have mercy upon us 
miserable sinners . ” 

Beside the other Liturgic offerings of 
prayer founded upon this Truth, as in the 
Invocation in the Communion office, and in 
the several offices of the Church and in the 
Collects, such as the slightest examination 
of the Prayer-Book will reveal, the first of 
the XNXIX. Articles puts forth this formal 
statement of the Doctrine: “There is but 
one living and true God, everlasting, with¬ 
out body, parts, or passions; of infinite 
power, wisdom, and goodness; the Maker 
and Preserver of all things, both visible and 
invisible. And in unity of this Godhead 
there be Three Persons, of one substance, 
power, and eternity ; the Father, the Son, 
and the Holy Ghost.” Full expositions 
of this Article are so readily accessible that 
a full discussion here is unadvisable. But 
it may be well to note that the Fathers, be¬ 
fore 325 a.d., having to combat varied local 
and temporary heresies, used often in de¬ 
fense phrases which, in view of subtler attacks 
(which they could not anticipate), appear 
now incautious ; but throughout there is a 
wonderful consensus of teaching, remarka¬ 
ble, when the difficulties of interchange of 
thought and of agreement upon lines of de¬ 
fense between the leaders in any sudden emer¬ 
gency are considered. It only proves how 
full and complete the original deposit of the 
doctrine was, and how universally it was re¬ 
ceived. We owe the term Trinity to the 
genius of Tertullian (who, however, did not 
use it in his controversy with Praxeas), when 
he gives this statement: “ The union of the 
Father in the Son, and of the Son in the 
Paraclete, implies Three conjoined, which 
Three are one Thing, not one Person.” 
The most famous defender of the Doctrine 
of the Trinity was St. Gregory Nazianzen, 
whose Five Theological Orations have placed 
him foremost, and to which we must go for 
subtle and thorough statements of this fun¬ 
damental Article of the Faith. 

“ If the Christian faith concerning the 
Trinity consist in admitting three Persons 
really distinct in a numerical unity of es¬ 
sence, it follows that these Persons must bo 
co-eternal, co-equal, and consubstantial with 


each other ; that the One must proceed from 
the other, the Son from the Father by eter¬ 
nal generation ; the Holy Spirit by way of 
procession from the Father and the Son as 
from one principle. And being convinced 
that the Three Persons are mysteriously 
united in one nature from all eternity, the 
believer is able to give a consistent account 
of the other truths of Christianity. He can 
consistently, with this belief, assert that one 
Person of the ever-blessed Trinity took upon 
Him our nature and remained undivided 
from God, retaining His nature as God, and 
His distinct personality while He took the 
Manhood into God. By saying this he 
neither divides the substance of God, by 
saying that part of Him became incarnate in¬ 
stead of saying that one Person of the God¬ 
head took upon Him our nature; nor con¬ 
founds the Person by calling them only 
three different manifestations of the same 
Person. By believing a Trinity of Persons 
he is relieved from the necessity of the blas¬ 
phemy of the disceptibility of God, and, by 
believing in a Unity of nature, from the folly 
of dividing the essence of the Infinite. And 
when he asserts that one Person of the all- 
glorious Trinity took upon Him our nature, 
he does not thereby assert His unchangeable, 
divine nature to be subject to our passions or 
diminish aught from His eternal perfections, 
but that through His divine nature made 
flesh to be divine, seeing He did not destroy 
His body, but took it up to heaven, where it 
now ministers to the Christian’s good in 
divers ways. To believe Him to have taken 
into God our nature is easier than to believe 
that He is the soul of the world ; and to be¬ 
lieve that there are distinct Persons in the 
Godhead than that He separated all crea¬ 
tures from His own essence; to believe that 
He has now a human body in heaven to 
which He will liken the bodies of the saints 
at last, according to His mighty working, is 
an easier task than that our bodies and all 
matter in the universe are an unreality.” 
(Bishop Forbes’s Nicene Creed, pp. 77, 78.) 

Consult the Commentaries upon proof- 
texts, and Brown on the XXXIX. Articles, 
Graves on the Trinity, Blunt’s Diet, of Hist, 
and Doct. Theol., Hook's Church Diet. 

Trinity-Sunday. The Sunday following 
Whit-Sunday, and by which the Church 
completes the declaration of all the Doctrines 
of the holy Faith upon fixed days. It is 
one of the most valued of our Festival Sun¬ 
days. It gathers up into one service an out¬ 
line of all the revelations upon the Nature 
of God and our relation to Him as set forth 
in the Holy Scriptures, and closes the series 
of Articles of the Christian Faith. Its ob¬ 
servance by name is peculiar to the English 
Church. Trinity-Sunday has the Epistle 
and Gospel which were assigned to the Sun¬ 
day of the Octave of Pentecost in the Comes 
of St. Jerome, and its Collect is the one as¬ 
signed in the Sacramentary of St. Gregory 
(596 a.d.). The retention of the name is a 
proof of the independence of the British 







TRISAGION 


752 


TRUTH 


Church, since its offices, though lost now, in¬ 
fluenced markedly the Earlier Saxon, which 
in turn moulded the Norman English Offices, 
so that the English Liturgic rule has ever 
retained its own distinctive marks. Our 
Feast of the Holy Trinity is, then, a most 
valuable one in many ways. Doctrinally, 
as training the members of the Church in 
all truth. Liturgically, as completing the 
cycle of worship and commemoration as¬ 
signed to the Sundays of the year. Histor¬ 
ically, (a) as teaching us (in the world’s 
history) our relation to God in its lesson 
(Gen. i.), and (6) in its observance in the 
Church the true apostolic primitive inde¬ 
pendence of our Mother-Church of England. 

Trisagion. A form of the Ter Sanctus 
which has obtained in the East and is used 
there: “Holy God, Holy and Mighty, 
Holy and Immortal, have mercy upon us.” 
It is assigned to the time of St. Proclus of 
Constantinople (434 a.d.), but Freeman 
traces its elements to the Eighteen Prayers 
of the Synagogue, which were in use before 
our Lord’s day, and in which He joined in 
the Synagogue worship. It passed into 
Greek Liturgic use, and is of doctrinal im¬ 
portance. When Peter the Fuller (485 a.d.), 
Patriarch of Antioch, added “ who wast 
crucified for us,” the words, as either trans¬ 
ferring its application from the Holy Trinity 
to our Lord alone, or as savoring of heresy, 
created great disturbances. Its use in the 
Latin Church of the West is limited only 
to Good-Friday, and it was dropped by the 
English Church. 

Tropology. That use of a text which 
gives it a moral significance apart from, or 
rather folded within, the external and tem¬ 
porary meaning of the text. 

Truth. We all, by the constitution of 
our nature, demand the truth. No question 
is harder to answer than Pilate’s, “ What is 
truth?” when we turn to the human side; 
none more readily answered when we accept 
our Lord’s declaration, “ I am the Truth.” 
Truth is largely relative, and only in the 
case of facts, and of these as facts, can ab¬ 
solute truth be obtained. There is nothing 
harder to get at than the “ Truth, the whole 
truth, and nothing but the truth.” The 
reason for this is plain when we pass behind 
the mere surface. The taint of sin destroys 
the perfect harmony of our intercourse with 
each other, and we, from selfishness and sin, 
act towards each other in half-truths. It 
has so fatally destroyed the intercourse with 
God, the source of all truth, that He alone 
can restore it, and only as we are willing 
can we receive His truth, from which all 
subordinate truths receive their true rela¬ 
tion. Truth, then, as a thing to be ac¬ 
quired, possessed, is the desire of every 
heart, but it is so dislocated and distorted 
that we cannot get it as fully as we would, 
nor do we accept it as fully as we profess it. 
Again, the Truth of God, as a possession, is 
not of our creation. We do not make it, 
but we must make it our own by accepting 


it. In the dealings of man with man, 
whether with a superior, equal, or inferior, 
truthfulness is our professed principle of 
action, but it is only half acted upon, and 
we live with each other more or less on 
terms of semi-concealment and of implied 
generally unconscious falsehood. This is the 
case in business relations, and it decidedly 
affects our social relations. If, then, we are 
so trained by daily habits, how shall we be 
able to accept God’s truth fairly and with a 
pure heart ? 

Again, in receiving truth, we take it 
upon evidence. But in most cases the evi¬ 
dence is received and examined by the few, 
and is reported upon, and the mass accept 
and act upon this report. Leading master¬ 
ful intellects, then, whether competent or 
not to weigh evidence, fashion much of the 
truth which is generally received. Again, 
from the nature of some kinds, and these 
the most important truths, the evidence in 
their behalf must be most imperfect. In 
religious truths we are as children learning 
the alphabet, and have not the ability to 
comprehend the tithe of the actual evidence 
direct and circumstantial which is placed 
within our reach. Glimpses of it and of 
the extent to which God has actually given 
it are vouchsafed us, but the spiritual mind 
alone can enter into its meaning. With 
these facts before us, we can see why men 
so often reject some truths which are most 
vital, and substitute for them fair-seeing 
provisions, and why, with the plain, full 
statements of the Gospel before them, many 
men reject the Truth, more half ac¬ 
cept it, and reject what they do not cafe to 
examine, and but few accept the whole 
truth. It is therefore true that because 
they will not choose to hear it the whole 
Truth is a sealed book to multitudes. For all 
men have not the Faith,— i.e., that belief in 
God which enables them to willingly accept 
it and follow it to its true consequences. 
And many shrink from their own convic¬ 
tions of what the truth really is. Let us 
leave mere secular truth out of the discus¬ 
sion and only treat of Divine truth, and so 
apply the principles laid down. Holding, 
then, as we must, that nothing can endure 
for a day that has not some truth in it, and 
that the more of truth a person or a body 
of men can accept the longer they can en¬ 
dure, but that the falsehood (as does a disease 
in the body) will finally prove fatal if there 
be not enough of truth held to overcome it, 
and lastly, that the full truth is held only in 
the Holy Church Catholic, we can readily 
see the relations which men hold to the 
truth. Truth requires sacrifice of all pre- 
judgments, of all preconceptions, of all 
wishes. Truth, as it is revealed in the Son 
of God, requires an obedience and an ac¬ 
ceptance of the appointed Teachers. These 
are: 

I. The Holy Ghost, who shall lead the 
willing mind into all truth. II. The Apos¬ 
tolic teachers, whom alone our Lord sent to 




TRUTH 


753 


TYPE 


teach the world, and by believing their word 
shall we share in our Lord’s earnest Prayer : 

“ Sanctify them through Thy truth : Thy 
word is truth. As Thou hast sent me into 
the world, even so have I also sent them into 
the world. And for their sakes I sanctify my¬ 
self, that they also may be sanctified through 
the truth. Neither pray I for these alone, 
hut for them also which shall believe on Me 
through their word; that they all may be one; 
as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, 
that they may be one in us: that the world 
may believe that Thou hast sent Me” (St. 
John xvii. 17-21). This, then, is the crown 
of our acceptance of the Truth, to receive it 
in and by the Apostolic office which our 
Lord has blest, which alone is commissioned 
to deliver the Truth to the whole world. 
But as the Truth is more or less completely 
received by those within the Apostolic 
Unity, so it produces more or less fully those 
fruits which it should. What wonder, then, 
that it should not exhibit all its true power 
equally upon all men? But again, the full 
Truth of the Gospel, owing to the defects in 
men’s capacity to grasp the interrelation of 
Truths and their proper subordination the 
one to the other, cannot be held in its en¬ 
tireness. Taking the statements of thd 
Apostles’ Creed, it is safe to assert that 
though gladly received with an honest in¬ 
tention by the Christian, yet few do really 
understand their sequence and yet their 
separate importance. Therefore one portion 
of the Truth is exaggerated and taken out of 
its proper place, and so dislocated as it were. 
And it may be perfectly true that this grasp 
of the helm is not an exaggeration of it in 
its separate value, but it results in a depres¬ 
sion of other interrelated Truths. 7\nd as 
the heat of a fever is the result and reac¬ 
tion from some unhealthy depression of the 
system, so some truths too greatly de¬ 
pressed have received a reaction as much too 
great in their favor, and this has resulted in 
heresy, or at least in schism. The balance 
of Truth committed to us has been disturbed, 
and a breaking of Unity is the consequence. 
Nearly every schism or heresy has come 
from an imperfect or heedless holding of 
the Truth by those who have had its keep¬ 
ing. And at the rate in which those who 
created the schism, upon a distorted idea of 
the value of the particular Truth they de¬ 
fend, have retained a measure of the other 
interrelated Truths, so far will they have the 
power to continue. It is a fact that we to 
whom so much has been committed have to 
at once rejoice in and to deplore. Assuredly 
St. Paul did not rejoice that Christ was 
preached, of contention by some, to add to 
his bonds, but he did rejoice that Christ 
was preached and prayed that they who be¬ 
lieved might come to the fullness of the 
Truth. There is yet another point to which 
the thoughtful mind should be directed, and 
this i3, that as the Truths of Nature are so 
much nearer our powers than spiritual Truths, 
which can be only held as such by spiritual 

48 


men, it is easier for men to say that they 
will believe only what they can test, and 
then add that they conscientiously reject 
Christianity because they cannot test it. If 
they applied as searching and patient ex¬ 
amination into the Truths of Christianity 
they might have some show of pleading a 
conscientiousness, which is but another name 
for a prejudgment. It is forgotten that God 
has proclaimed Himself as He that hideth 
Himself, and that His Truth must be hum¬ 
bly searched for ; and, too, that our Lord re¬ 
joiced that these things which so many de¬ 
sire to see have been hidden from the wise 
and prudent and have been revealed to the 
lowly hearts. The Laws of Nature cannot 
be applied to solving the Laws of Spiritual 
Truth, but the common sense which bids the 
student in the one to study the conditions 
of his experiments should bid him study 
the true conditions of the Laws of God’s 
Truth. 

Tunicle, among Ecclesiastical garments, 
is the outer vestment worn by the Epistoler at 
the Holy Eucharist, also called, as worn by 
the Deacon or Gospeller, Dalmatic (Sro^opiov, 
in the Greek Church, of the Deacon). It is a 
kind of loose coat or garment, reaching below 
the knees, partially open at the sides ; it has 
full but not large sleeves; in material and 
color it should correspond to the chasuble. 
The Deacon’s dalmatic was usually some¬ 
what more ornamented than the Tunicle 
worn by the Subdeacon or Epistoler. From 
Inventories made of church vestments in 
the sixteenth century, it appears that Dal¬ 
matics, or Tunicles, were made of rich ma¬ 
terials, silk, satin, or velvet, and of every 
variety of color. That a desire has long ex¬ 
isted and increases to adopt a greater vari¬ 
ety of color in the ornaments and vestments 
of the Church, and especially in the cover¬ 
ings of the Altar, is plain from what has 
already been accomplished ; the object as¬ 
signed for this variety is the useful one of 
distinguishing, and so teaching by outward 
tokens, the changes of Church seasons and 
the occurrence of Ecclesiastical Holidays. 

Type. The image or the likeness of 
something substantial but not present, and 
having to be represented for certain sufficient 
reasons, or to attain certain ends. The Type 
was not only a memorial of what was yet 
to be revealed, but in some one or more 
ways was a precise prefigurement of the 
actual thing or person so foreshadowed. 
Tvpes may be grouped (a) as in Rite or 
Ceremonial, ( b ) as in some historical fact, 
(c) in the lives of some persons whose whole 
career or whose culminating acts were typi¬ 
cal of what was yet to be. So, in Rite, the 
sacrifices prefigured the sacrifice of Christ 
centrally and collectively in the shedding 
of blood; severally as He is the sin-offer¬ 
ing, or our Peace-offering. As we sever¬ 
ally plead His atonement for ourselves, or 
as He offers the Atonement as the whole 
burnt-offering He made for the sins of 
the whole world. So the Paschal Lamb was 





TYPE 


754 


UNCTION 


a type of the Lamb of God slain from the 
foundation of the world. So the heave- 
offering was a type of His Ascension. The 
Tabernacle, and still more the Temple, 
planned by divine inspiration were the types 
of the perfect Heavenly Temple and the 
glorious worship of the redeemed and of the 
heavenly Hosts. In these things the history 
of the ritual of Israel is the record of the 
types of the worship before Jehovah. ( d ) 
In history we find the Ark the type of the 
Church and of baptism ; the passage of the 
Red Sea also a type of baptism ; the wander¬ 
ing in the wilderness a type of the discipline 
of the Christian life ; the descending of the 
glory upon the Temple at its dedication the 
type of the gift of the Holy Ghost making 
men living Temples, (e) The life of men 
and their actions, whether continuously in 
their career here, or in some single or crown¬ 
ing act of their life. So Abraham by his 
Faith and by the solitariness of his religious 
life was the type of Christ. Melchisedec 
was the type of our Lord’s eternal Priest¬ 
hood, as Aaron was the impersonation of 
his Priestly acts and typified His one great 
sacrifice. Joseph in his humiliation and ex¬ 
altation was a type of our Lord. Moses, as 
Lawgiver, was the greatest of the prophets ; 
as having the greatest self-denial, the greatest 
forbearance, he was an eminent type of our 
Lord. So Samson, as Nazarite, Judge, and 
Deliverer, foreshadowed His mighty acts of 
redemption. David, Elijah, Jonah, St. John 
the Baptist, all were in their lives, in some 
great striking fact, or in their careers to 
typify Him. 

The study of these types is important, for 
they show Him as the Second Adam, as 


touching ourselves at every point wherein 
God chooses to reach, teach, and sanctify 
our lives by His interference. Again, these 
types are of the very texture of the Sacred 
history, they cannot be denied in the Mosaic 
ritual, yet they spoke of the Messiah ; this 
was their prophetic use. The facts of history 
cannot be destroyed, but they taught of His 
deliverance which was yet to be. The 
biographies of the saints cannot be dis¬ 
proved, yet these men by their Faith and 
Works spake more emphatically than by 
words of Him who was to justify us by 
Faith and to make us a people zealous of 
good works. In the attacks upon Holy 
Scripture so common now, prophecy may 
be torn out of its historic place, and with a 
short-lived triumph be held up as a forgery, 
an interpolation, a record of an eager wish 
that anticipated a fortunate reality. Proph¬ 
ecy can defend itself in the end. But the 
types cannot be so treated; they are historic, 
they take their places in the proper sequences 
of the world’s records, they are woven into 
the texture of the religion of the people of 
God. To deny them is to brand as fable 
the whole history of the past, and to preclude 
every way of accounting for the present of 
either civilization or of religion. The type 
in Holy Scripture is of the very fullness of 
proof, which He has multiplied on every 
side, in disproof of the complaint that He 
desires Faith and gives insufficient grounds. 
In type, in Prophecy, in History, in men’s 
lives, He has carved a record of His truths 
far more conspicuous to the world than if they 
were carved in marble and placed in every 
market-place, for we bear about in our lives 
the consequences of such records. 






U. 


Unction. Anointing persons and places 
by pouring oil upon them is frequently 
mentioned in Holy Scripture. Jacob, after 
his wondrous vision of the heavenly ladder, 
poured oil on the stone which had been his 
pillow, and named the place Bethel (Gen. 
xxviii. 18, 19; cf. xxxi. 13). In setting 
one apart to an office, anointing was used to 
signify the endowment of the “gifts and 
graces of the Holy Spirit.” In Rev. iii. 18, 
the term refers to spiritual blindness, which 
is to be removed by the “ ointment of 
Christ.” (Compare St. John ix. 6, 11, as to 
the blind man’s healing.) Our Blessed Lord, 
as Prophet, Priest, and King, and as being 
filled with the Holy Spirit beyond measure 
(St. John iii. 34), was styled the Anointed or 
Messiah, which has the same meaning (Ps. 
ii. 2, and xlv. 7; Acts iv. 27). “ The anointed 


of the Lord” (Sam. iv. 20) is the King. The 
olive oil poured upon the head of a person 
represented the gift of the Holy Ghost. 
The Jews were accustomed to the practice 
of anointing their bodies (Deut. xxviii. 40, 
and Micah vi. 15). To abstain from anoint¬ 
ing was a sign of mourning (2 Sam. xiv. 2 ; 
Dan. x. 3; St. Matt. vi. 17). Anointing signi¬ 
fies joy (Ps. xcii. 10; Eccl. ix. 8). "Some¬ 
times a host seems to have anointed the 
head of his guest with oil or ointment, in 
token of respect. Our Lord says to Simon, 
“My head with oil thou didst not anoint” 
(Luke vii. 46). As to unction for special 
offices, Elijah is commanded by God tc 
anoint Jehu as king and Elisha as prophet 
(1 Kings xix. 16). At the institution of 
the Levitical priesthood, priests were all 
anointed, “ the sons of Aaron as well as 






UNCTION 


755 


UNIFORMITY 


Aaron himself” (Ex. xl. 15; Num. iii. 3). 
Afterwards anointing seems to have been 
reserved especially for the high-priest (Ex. 
xxix. 29; Lev. xvi. 32). The idea of 
anointing a king is found in Jotham’s par¬ 
able (Judges ix. 8, 15) before the Jewish 
monarchy was established. The ceremony 
was the “ principal and divinely-appointed 
one” in the inauguration of the Jewish 
kings. Samuel anoints Saul (1 Sam. ix. 16, 
and x. 1), Zadok anoints Solomon (1 Kings 
i. 34, 39). The Lord’s anointed was a 
common appellation for a theocratic king (1 
Sam. xii. 3, 5; 2 Sam. i. 14, 16). David 
was anointed king three times, privately by 
Samuel (1 Sam. xvi. 1, 13). In this case 
it is added, “the Spirit of the Lord came 
upon David from that day forward” (v. 
13). He is again anointed over Judah at 
Hebron (2 Sam. ii. 3, 4), and lastly he is 
anointed king over all the nation (2 Sam. 
v. 3). When two kingdoms arose, the 
kings both of Judah and Israel seem still 
to have been anointed (2 Kings ix. 3; xi. 
12). In addition to the anointing of king, 
prophet, and priest, we find that the taber¬ 
nacle itself, with all its furniture, was 
anointed (Ex. xxx. 26-28). 

With respect to anointing persons, Jesijs 
Christ, as the Prophet, Priest, and King, 
is especially the Anointed, or the Messiah 
(Ps. ii. 2 ; Dan. ix. 25, 26). He is anointed 
with “The Spirit of the Lord God” (Isa. 
lxi. 1), and Himself refers to this prophecy 
in St. Luke’s Gospel (ch. iv. 18). As oil made 
the “face to shine” (Ps. civ. 15), spiritual 
unction was the “ oil of gladness” (Ps. xlv. 
7; Heb. i. 9). Jesus of Nazareth is declared 
to be the Messiah, or Christ, or Anointed 
in the New Testament (St. John i. 41 ; Acts 
ix. 22; xvii. 2, 3; and xviii. 5, 28). The 
fact of Christ’s anointing is narrated in the 
descent of the Spirit (St. John i. 32, 33 ; cf. 
Acts iv. 27; x. 38). Spiritual unction with 
the Holy Ghost is conferred also upon 
Christians by God (2 Cor. i. 21), and they 
are described as having “ an unction from 
the Holy One,” by which they “know all 
things” (1 John ii. 20, 27). The word 
unction has a special sense thus defined by 
Johnson: “That fervor and tenderness of 
address which excites piety and devotion.” 

Anointing, or unction, was used in ancient 
times before baptism, but this is not men¬ 
tioned by Justin Martyr or Tertullian. 
While. Tertullian speaks of unction, it was 
that which followed baptism in confirmation, 
accompanied with the laying on of hands. 
Therefore Daille and Bingham think this 
custom arose after the time of Tertullian. 
In after-ages there was an unction before 
baptism called “ the unction of the mystical 
oil,” and another after baptism called “ the 
unction of chrism.” These unctions were 
consecrated by the Bishop. The author of 
the Apostolical Constitutions gives a form 
of consecration for the sanctifying oil used 
before baptism. The same author calls this 
‘ mystical oil,” and that used before confir¬ 


mation “ mystical chrism,” and gives a dis¬ 
tinct form for the consecration of each. The 
first was administered before the person went 
into the water, the other after he came out. 
Cyril of Jerusalem speaks of the first unc¬ 
tion as making men “ partakers of the true 
olive-tree, Jesus Christ.” “St. Ambrose 
compares it to the anointing of wrestlers be¬ 
fore they enter their combat.” The unction 
was a ceremony not essential to baptism, and, 
if oil was wanting, it could be omitted ; but 
in all these ceremonies may we not see a 
craving after spiritual help? 

Extreme Unction is the anointing the sick 
with oil as practiced by the Church of Rome. 
A foundation for this custom is claimed in St. 
James (v. 11,15), but that anointing was for 
healing, and it is said, “ the Lord shall raise 
him up” (v. 15), while Romanists use it as the 
last sacred act before death. It is an abuse of 
the text. When the Apostles were sent out 
by Christ they “anointed with oil many 
that were sick, and healed them” (St. Mark 
vi. 13). The passage in St. James appears to 
refer to such miraculous acts as were vouch¬ 
safed in the beginning of the Christian 
Church. As extreme unction is claimed as 
one of the seven Sacraments, the XXY. 
Article denies the claim, and the English 
and American Churches do not deem it an 
ordinance, much less a Sacrament. In ex¬ 
treme unction the oil having been blessed 
is applied “to the five senses of the dying 
man.” “ It is administered when all hope 
of recovery is gone, and generally no food 
is permitted to be taken after it.” Roman 
Catholic writers cannot trace their present 
custom to an earlier date than the fifth cen¬ 
tury, and even then it seems to have been a 
matter of question. Extreme unction is 
supposed by Romanists to give “the final 
pardon,” “in the last agony,” as Bishop 
Burnet says, and he adds, “ Here is, then, an 
institution that, if warranted, is matter of 
great comfort; and if not warranted, is 
matter of as great presumption.” 

Authorities: T. T. Perowne in William 
Smith’s Diet, of the Bible, Bingham’s 
Antiq., Buck’s Theologl. Diet., Staunton’s 
Eccles. Diet., Browne on the XXXIX. Ar¬ 
ticles, Burnet on the XXXIX. Articles. 

Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Uniformity. Refers specially to the Act of 
Uniformity prefixed to the English Prayer- 
Book. It was intended to produce a uniform 
use throughout the English Church. In 
the time previous to the Reformation there 
were a variety of uses in the celebration of 
the Services of the Church. There had been 
originally the custom of each Bishop ar¬ 
ranging the Services and the Rubrics as he 
chose. The jarring that this produced and 
the violent changes that were made were so 
great, that about the fifth century it was 
arranged that each Province should have 
but one use. This to a great extent unified 
the services, but it did not change minor 
customs. In England, apparently the vari¬ 
ous uses belonged not to the Provinces, but to 







UNION, HYPOSTATICAL 


756 


UNITY 


separate Sees, and point to the continuance 
of the earlier Episcopal privilege. This was 
broken up by the introduction of the Prayer- 
Book of Edward VI., 1549 a.d., and sub¬ 
sequently, as there was yet much diversity 
of minor usages, Elizabeth repealed Mary 
Tudor’s acts and restored those of Edward 
VI. A statute of Uniformity of Common 
Prayer was enacted (1 Eliz., c. 2), and again 
a statute for Uniformity of Public Prayer 
(14 Charles II.). Upon these two rest the 
binding observance of the Prayer-Book and 
the general Uniformity of Ritual. The 
variations which have occurred in rubrical 
observance and usages recently in England 
do not affect the actual obedience which all 
render to use the service, the controversies 
turn upon the meaning of various rubrics 
within the use of the Prayer-Book. Mere 
Uniformity is in itself a very great gain, 
but when at the expense of adaptability and 
of gainingsouls to the Church it is a loss. The 
ordination vow, and the pledge to conform 
to the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church, 
binds every conscientious clergyman to 
scrupulously carry out all the service. Still, 
in missionary work it has often occurred 
that, under sanction of the Bishop, the ser¬ 
vice has often to be much modified as cir¬ 
cumstances direct. No mere fancy or covert 
of this sort can be admitted when the Church 
services can be carried out. And no layman 
living in a secluded or place remote from 
the Church but can aid, if he heartily tries, 
in having the services celebrated in a proper 
and seemly way. They exhibit the Beauty 
of Holiness so well, that an explanation of 
them given forth with a kindly spirit would 
gain from almost all such congregations a 
co-operation which (as a result of their use) 
will make a deep and devout impression 
upon them. Uniformity is God’s Law, but 
this uniformity must be deeper than out¬ 
ward conformity. 

Union, Hypostatical. The complete 
union in one Person of the two Natures 
of Christ. Hooker has nobly translated 
two passages, one from Hilary upon the 
Holy Trinity (lix. $ 3): “He which in 
Himself was appointed a Mediator to save 
His Church, and for performance of that 
mystery of mediation between God and 
man, is become God and man, doth now, 
being but one, consist of both those natures 
united ; neither hath he through the union 
of both incurred the damage or loss of 
either, lest by being born a man we should 
think He hath given over to be God, or that 
because He continueth God therefore He 
cannot be called man ; also, whereas the true 
belief which maketh a man happy pro¬ 
claimed jointly God and man, confessed 
the Word and flesh together.” “Cyril 
more plainly, ‘ His two natures have knit 
themselves the one to the other, and are in 
that nearness as uncapable of confusion as 
of distraction. Their coherence hath not 
taken away the difference between them. 
Flesh is not become God, but doth continue 


flesh, although it be now the flesh of God.’ 

‘ Yea,’ saith Leo, 1 the properties are all pre¬ 
served and kept safe.’ ” (Hooker, v. liii. | 2.) 
And this interposition without confusion, 
this union which is a glorifying of our Flesh, 
is so complete that our Lord may be said 
to have enrobed Himself with our assumed 
nature so that it cleaved to His Divinity 
indissolubly by His resurrection ; so that St. 
Paul did truly say (because of the co-opera¬ 
tion of His two natures in His one work 
of Redemption) that the Church was pur¬ 
chased by the blood of God ("Acts xx. 28). 
And then our union in Him Dy Baptism is 
so close that as by descent we are sons of the 
first Adam, from whom is our living souls, 
so from the second Adam by the new Birth 
we become quickened spirits. So that joined 
to Him, of His flesh and of His bones (Eph. 
v. 30), we become partakers of the divine 
nature. Therefore, though we cannot by 
the absolute nature of the conditions be 
joined to Him, as He, being the Word, has 
joined our nature to Himself, yet by this 
His very Hypostatical Union of the two 
natures in the one person, He has placed us 
within the shadow of His own eternal na¬ 
ture. As He hath said, “ To him that 
overcometh will I grant to sit with Me in 
My throne, even as I also overcame, and am 
set down with My Father in His Throne” 
(Rev. iii. 21). 

Unity. Oneness. This Law of unity in 
complexity has been brought out very 
clearly by modern speculative and natural 
philosophy. Its results illustrate the divine 
Law of unity, yet complexity in the spirit¬ 
ual things. But there is only one side of 
the topic which can be dwelt upon here,— 
the Unity of the Church. 

The Unity of the Church must follow be¬ 
cause that the nature to be saved by 
Christ being one, and the means He uses 
but' one, there cannot be many churches, 
but one Church. Then, too, the Lord ac¬ 
complishing one Act of Redemption, and 
not several for several races, has unified all 
races into one. This is His purpose. It 
was the One Fold, One Shepherd, One Net, 
One House, One Vine, One Vineyard, One 
City, One King, One Redeemer. His prayer 
was : “ Neither pray I for these alone, but 
for them also which shall believe on their 
word ; that they all may be one ; as Thou, 
Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they 
also may be one in us: that the world may 
believe that Thou hast sent Me. And the 
glory which Thou gavest Me have I given 
them ; that they may be one, even as we 
are one : I in them, and Thou in Me, that 
they may be made perfect in one; and that 
the world may know that Thou hast sent 
Me, and hast loved them, as Thou hast 
loved Me” (St. John xvii. 20-23). Unity 
involves glory, perfectness, and love from 
the Father through the Son. This Unity 
is a real Unity, or else there is no truth in 
the words of our Lord. It is this Unity, 
by the means He has given us, which is made 






UNITY 


757 


UNITY 


as real as the kinship in a family. But this 
unity grapples us as with hooks of steel to 
the unity of Christ. 

To effect this lie chose twelve Apostles, for 
His Church was to be of living men gath¬ 
ered into it by living men, not merely the 
assent of a faith that comes from study. It 
is evident that working under His One Su¬ 
preme command, the Churches they estab¬ 
lished were equal in rank and in a common 
unity with the Head. However wide apart 
these mightbe established they were co-equal, 
and united to Christ by the same bonds. 
And it is also evident that time cannot 
weaken the fact that they are on the same 
foundation. So that though a Church in 
Spain might be unknown to a Church in 
Abyssinia, yet it would be in the unity of 
the Church, being of Apostolic foundation; 
and, as our Lord prayed for all those who 
should believe through the Apostolic preach¬ 
ing, the missionary expansion of each Apos¬ 
tolic Church would give the same unity to 
the daughter Churches. But they must con¬ 
tinue in that unity. But Apostolic founda¬ 
tion is not all that is needed. Our Lord 
gave as means of union with Him also the 
necessity of believing in Him. That is much 
more than believing about Him, but so be¬ 
lieving in Him that we put our whole trust 
in Him and follow His commands, and so 
trust in Him that whatever He may direct 
will be our law, and we gladly abide His 
time and His will, and confess His doctrine 
and live the life of self-denial He demands 
of us. And this belief, and the basis of it in 
the facts of His life, is given to us in the 
Aposiles’ Creed. It was not written by the 
Apostles, but it was the sum of their teach¬ 
ings, ami it was everywhere received by the 
Churches of Apostolic foundation, and so is 
historically a proof of the unity of their 
teaching, and of the oneness of the Faith 
everywhere received. And it is a recital 
of facts and not of theories. It is a com¬ 
pressed statement of foundations for and of 
the acts themselves of our redemption. 
Therefore the Creed is a part of the means 
of unity, for we in it and by it profess the 
same thing. 

But Apostolic foundation and Apostolic 
teaching are not by any means all that our 
Lord gave as bonds of unity with Him. 
He gave, as it were, instruments whereby to 
bind men to Himself. He gave the Sacra¬ 
ment of Baptism, which He ordained to be 
a new Birth into Him, whereby he that is 
baptized becomes a member of Christ 
united to Him, having put Him on, trans¬ 
lated from the darkness of sin into the 
Kingdom of Christ, of Light, of Heaven. 
And then this birth implying life and this 
life requiring nourishment, He has given 
a second Sacrament, the Holy Communion, 
which He has ordained for the food of the 
soul (St. John vi. 47-58). By these two, 
while we receive them by the Apostles, i.e., 
Messengers He has sent us, and so from 
those who have authority, we are in direct, 


continually received unity with Him, and 
continue in that outward, visible unity, 
which must be from the fact of there being 
a visible outward formal organization. 

But besides these two standing intermedi¬ 
ate and, as it were, the link for them, stood a 
third ordinance, that of Confirmation. It 
is not a Sacrament, yet something of Sac¬ 
ramental in its nature. As in Baptism we 
put on Christ, so He gives His Holy 
Spirit, whereby we receive the sanctifica¬ 
tion and renewing. It was to send us this 
Holy Ghost, the anointing which is of God, 
that He ascended up on high and sends us the 
Strengthener, Consoler, Comforter, 
the Sanctifier of our lives and of our hearts. 
It is the gift of the Spirit, whereby we 
become something more than we were be¬ 
fore. Members of Christ by Baptism, by 
Confirmation we become Temples of the 
Holy Ghost, and receive of Him the power 
to be renewed, the gift of a true, constant, 
repentant state, whereby we grow in grace. 
These are the bonds that tie us to Christ in 
our lives. But there is another part of the 
unity which remains to be considered. Sum¬ 
ming up what has just been stated, that by 
Apostolic men, by the Apostolic creed, with 
Sacraments given to us by which to receive 
life, union', and grace in our Lord, we are 
brought into a Body of Men having the 
like organization, governed by these Com¬ 
missioned Officers, and being at Unity of 
intercommunion. The Unity of the Church 
resides in the Sacraments delivered us by 
those having authority to do so. And this 
government must be Episcopal the world 
over, otherwise it is not in the Historical 
Body of Christ. Now we see this visible 
unity of intercommunion broken at the 
moment. It has been severed for a thou¬ 
sand years. This has been permitted in 
God’s providence because of the transgres¬ 
sion of this law of Apostolic equality in 
two directions ; the first was a usurpation to 
itself (from a false notion of unity) by one 
Apostolic See of the liberties and authority 
which were the rights of the Bishops in 
common. This usurpation of rights, break¬ 
ing the unity in complexity, brought on the 
reacting transgression of the law by a 
denial that the Apostolic office was a neces¬ 
sity for unity at all. On the one side is the 
Papacy, with its autocratic theories and its 
practice destructive of Unity by a cast-iron 
uniformity, and on the other extreme are 
the many bodies of co-religionists who claim 
a freedom to determine their own govern¬ 
ment, and to create for themselves the right 
to administer at will those bonds of unity 
with Christ for the giving of which He 
created and commissioned a special body. 
Between these two the ancient Apostolic 
Bodies of the East and of the English and 
American Churches, though formally apart, 
acknowledging each other in the unity of 
the one body, hold to the proper liberty and 
authority of all Bishops in the Apostolic 
Commission. This unity of outward visible 






UNIVERSAL REDEMPTION 758 UNIVERSAL REDEMPTION 


communion is daily acknowledged more and 
more by all earnest Christian men of all 
bodies to be a necessity to the Conversion of 
the world, the special mission of God’s 
Church. And till this unity be effected the 
work is either stopped or held in abeyance. 
This desire for unity which is daily grow¬ 
ing is of God, who can heal all our dissen¬ 
sion, in answer to our prayers for the one¬ 
ness of His Holy Church. It is of His 
wisdom that the evils of Separation and 
Schism and Heresy are permitted to infest 
the Visible Body of our Lord. But as He 
has so permitted them, we can have but one 
duty for ourselves and one towards those 
without this unity. The one for ourselves 
is to be assured, as indeed we are, of our 
holding on fast to the Head, Jesus Christ. 
“For we are partakers of Christ if we 
hold the beginning of our confidence stead¬ 
fast to the end.” The doctrine of unity is 
a settled and fundamental one, closed, and 
on which we build. The second duty is 
earnest prayer. 

We are in Christian love towards others, 
to pray more especially for Christ’s Holy 
Church Universal “ that it may be so guided 
and governed by His good Spirit that all 
who profess and call themselves Christians 
may be led into the way of truth, and hold 
the faith in unity of spirit, in the bond of 
peace, and in righteousness of life.” Nor 
has the Church forgotten to teach us this in 
her prayers. It is one of the intercessions 
of the Litany. It is in her daily prayers ; 
in the Institution of her Priests in their 
parishes; it is in the supplications for Good- 
Friday. As the Apostles’ Creed is the Con¬ 
fession of a one Faith, so this unity must 
come upon the reception of the Nicene Creed 
by all Christians alike,—“I believe in one, 
Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.” 

This unity of the Church should be dear 
to us all, as touching the honor and glory 
of our Lord’s visible Body, and as setting 
forward the work which His blessed Passion 
and Death and glorious Resurrection began. 
That it will be in vain of course is impos¬ 
sible, but we may not by our carelessness 
share that blessedness of helping to heal 
the divisions, dissensions, schisms, and per¬ 
versions that now hinder the conversion 
of the world. (Vide Church, Catholic, 
Apostolic Succession.) 

Universal Redemption. One of the clear¬ 
est of all the statements in the Holy Scrip¬ 
tures, repeated continually in some shape or 
other, is the truth that redemption is fully, 
freely offered to all men ; that God desireth 
not the death of a sinner; that He willeth 
that all men should repent and be saved ; 
that as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall 
all be made alive. These and such like 
statements pervade Holy Scripture, often in 
the Old Testament, but, as is natural, more 
frequently in the New Testament. It was, 
it is, the Gospel of Christ which was made 
from the first. This is a faithful saying, 
and worthy of all acceptance, that “ Christ 


Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” 
God “ hath given to us the ministry of 
reconciliation,—to wit, that God was in 
Christ reconciling the world unto Him¬ 
self, not imputing their trespasses unto them, 
and hath committed unto us the word of rec¬ 
onciliation.” That this redemption had a 
retroactive force is shown by that our Lord 
preached to the souls in prison who had 
sinned before the flood. It was offered 
through the Sacrifices of the Law by antici¬ 
pation. It was, it is offered constantly. 
Therefore St. John in his Vision saw the 
Lamb of God as it had been slain before the 
foundation of the world. But as it is full 
and free and complete, and as it had a power 
over the past as well as over the future, so 
we are plainly taught that it is offered upon 
condition, for (a) a man is not saved against 
his will, and ( b) the conditions, Faith and 
Repentance, upon which it is offered are 
such only as fit the man for the reception of 
the salvation, since it would be absurd and 
impossible for a man who disbelieved to re¬ 
ceive the salvation he would not admit ex¬ 
isted, and it would be equally shocking for 
a man who did not sorrow over and forsake 
his sins to receive the purity of Christ 
when be would defile it deliberately and con¬ 
sciously by his own wickedness. There¬ 
fore Redemption, though universally offered 
and efficacious for all souls that ever have 
or will come into this world, must still, from 
the A T ery nature of the case, be offered upon 
conditions not burdensome, but in them¬ 
selves cleansing and healing,—nay, com¬ 
mending themselves to the common sense 
of men. Then the restrictions placed upon 
the power and efficacy of this redemption 
over men are because of their sinfulness or 
blindness. The word of God is not bound. 
But we bind it. 

God is not willing that any should perish, 
but that all men should come to repentance 
(2 Pet. iii. 9). “ God our Saviour, who will 

have all men to be saved and come to a 
knowledge of the truth.” That all men 
have not faith, that many refuse to repent, 
that some will be lost, are sad facts indeed, 
but they belong to the complex problems of 
man’s sinfulness and willfulness, and not to 
the truth of the fact, or of its power, that 
Christ died for the whole world. The 
limits upon His redemption are those inter¬ 
ferences from a sinful use of the freedom of 
our wills. And the study of this fact will 
help us to feel how fully our Lord has made 
this atonement, and how lovingly He has 
provided for its proclamation throughout 
the world by the machinery and agencies of 
His Church. It is not possible to point out 
all the limitations upon the universality of 
its acceptance, but (a) We may consider 
how the willfulness of men rejects it either 
by a direct refusal, or by substituting some 
other plan of their own in place of an humble 
reception of His terms. ( b) We can see how 
education will lead a man to make a final 
rejection of this redemption, (c) How other 





USE 


759 


UTAH AND IDAHO 


influences (which perhaps is after all a form 
of education) may, too, lead a man to act 
upon his prejudices and not upon his knowl¬ 
edge of the truth. ( d ) Indulgence in sin 
and evil habit may so become part of char¬ 
acter that they prevent the actings of faith, 
which would be but a mere belief such as 
the devils have, and repentance be but un¬ 
availing remorse. These are practical every¬ 
day facts which can be traced in the lives 
of those around us who reject the offers of 
salvation. 

The ancient Church taught the full effi¬ 
cacy of our Lord’s death. So Ignatius, 
“ Let no one be deceived. Heavenly beings, 
and the glory of the angels, and the powers 
visible and invisible all believe in the blood 
of Christ.” Justin Martyr, “ Cleansing 
through His blood those who believe on 
Him.” So Irenaeus, “ The Lord washed us 
in His blood, gave His life for our life, and 
His flesh for our flesh.” And so many 
other quotations might be added. So the 
closing sentence of the XVIII. Article, 
“For Holy Scripture doth set out unto us 
only the name of Jesus Christ, whereby 
men must be saved.” In Article XXXI., 
“ The offering of Christ once made is that 
perfect redemption, propitiation, and satis¬ 
faction for all the sins of the whole world, 
both original and actual; and there is none 
other satisfaction for sin but that alone.” 
So, too, in the Catechism we are taught to be¬ 
lieve in Jesus Christ, “ who redeemed me 
and all mankind.” And in the Communion 
Office this freedom and fullness of redemp¬ 
tion is assumed. So in the Collects for Ash- 
Wednesday and in the General thanksgiving. 
In all of these places the Church not merely 
recognizes the fact, but founds her interces¬ 
sions, her prayers, her thanksgiving upon 
it. 

Use. The different nations had differ¬ 
ently arranged Liturgies, following always 
the same great outlines, but varied to suit 
the temperament or the customs of the peo¬ 
ple among whom each was in Use. In the 
article on Uniformity was shown that the 
Bishops had originally the power to refash¬ 
ion each the Liturgy of his Diocese. But 
that they generally followed the precedents 
set them, and that after some time the Prov¬ 
inces had each one use throughout their sev¬ 
eral jurisdictions. But while we have many 
indications of this, yet we find that Litur¬ 
gies can be classified into families, and that 
these obtained currency in quite large areas, 
the Ephesine in parts of Asia Minor, the 
Petrine in Southern Italy, Ambrosian at 
Milan, Mozarabic in Spain, the Liturgy of 
St. Mark in Egypt, of St. James in Pales¬ 
tine, till at length the Liturgy of St. Chrys¬ 
ostom is now in general use in the East, 
with an exceptional use of the Liturgy of 
St. Basil upon certain days, and that of St. 
James on his feast-day, in the Churches of 
Jerusalem and Cyprus. The Roman Missal 
has expelled the Ambrosian, Gallican, and 
Mozarabic uses. And the English Prayer- 


Book has supplanted the man}'- uses of the 
English Church before the Reformation, as 
those of Sarum, Hertford, Bangor, Lincoln, 
York, and Durham. Use, then, has a tech¬ 
nical sense, meaning the liturgy in use in 
some particular Church. It is therefore a 
proper term to use for our own Book of 
Common Prayer, whose title runs further, 
thus: “and administration of the Sacra¬ 
ments and other Rites and Ceremonies of 
the Church according to the use of the Prot¬ 
estant Episcopal Church in the UnitedStates 
of America.” Here we note the proper 
technical employment of this term use. 

Utah and Idaho, the Missionary Juris¬ 
diction of. The present Missionary Juris¬ 
diction of Utah and Idaho originally be¬ 
longed to the Jurisdiction of the North west, 
the field assigned by the Church to the Rt. 
Rev. Joseph C. Talbot, D.D., in the year 
1860 a.d. Bishop Talbot never performed 
any official duty in Utah or Idaho, though 
he passed through this region on his way to 
Nevada. In 1865 a.d. he was translated to 
the Diocese of Indiana, and it was in a great 
measure owing to his reports and represen¬ 
tations of the wants and character of the 
field that, upon his resignation, the juris¬ 
diction of the “Northwest” was divided 
into three : Nebraska with Dakota was as¬ 
signed to the Rt. Rev. R. H. Clarkson, D.D.; 
Colorado with “ parts adjacent,” understood 
to include New Mexico, Wyoming, and 
Idaho, which then included Montana, was 
assigned to the Rt. Rev. G. M. Randall, D.D.; 
the third, Nevada with Arizona, having 
been declined by the Bishop-elect; a special 
meeting of the House of Bishops was called 
October 9, 1856 a.d., and the Missionary Ju¬ 
risdiction of Montana with Idaho and Utah 
was erected, and the Rev. D. S. Tuttle elected 
Missionary Bishop. In 1880 a.d. this jur¬ 
isdiction was divided, Montana set apart, 
and Bishop Tuttle became Missionary 
Bishop of Utah and Idaho. 

The Rev. D. S. Tuttle was rector of Zion 
Church, Morris, N. Y., at the time of his 
election. He was consecrated Bishop at 
Trinity Chapel, New York, on the Feast of 
SS. Philip and James, May 1, 1867 a.d. 
The consecrators were Bishops Hopkins, 
Presiding Bishop, H. Potter, Odenheimer, 
Randall, Kerfoot, and Neely. The Bishop- 
elect was presented to the Presiding Bishop 
by the Bishops of New York and Pittsburg. 
The testimonials were read by the Rev. J. 
H. Hobart, D.D., and the attending Pres¬ 
byters were the Rev. S. R. Johnson, D.D., 
and the Rev. Morgan Dix, D.D. The 
Bishop of Colorado preached the sermon 
from the words, “ Make full proof of thy 
ministry.” In his personal address to the 
Bishop-elect allusion was made to the fact 
that he was probably the youngest Bishop 
in the Catholic Church. 

Very soon after the consecration, on May 
22, Bishop Tuttle, accompanied by the 
Rev. E. N. Goddard and the Rev. G. D. B. 
Miller, started for their field of work. They 






UTAH AND IDAHO 


760 


UTAH AND IDAHO 


had been preceded on the 5th of April by 
the Rev. Geo. W. Foote and the Rev. Thos. 
W. Haskins. This was in the days before 
the transcontinental railway, and the stage- 
journey was tedious and dangerous by reason 
of Indian troubles and swollen streams. 
The Bishop’s party did not reach Salt Lake 
City until July 2, having been forty-one 
days on the journey. Rev. Messrs. Foote 
and Haskins had already established regular 
church services, and opened a day school in 
Independence Hall. The Rev. Mr. Miller 
was stationed at Boise City, Idaho, and the 
Rev. Mr. Goddard accompanied the Bishop 
on his first visitation of Montana. The 
Bishop and his helpers found absolutely vir¬ 
gin soil as far as Church work is concerned, 
with the exception of a short visitation 
of Idaho in 1864 a.d. by Bishop Scott, of 
Oregon. A small wooden church had been 
built at Boise City under the supervision 
of the Rev. S. Michael Fackler, who labored 
in that vicinity a little more than a year. 
The population of Idaho in 1867 a.d. was 
estimated at about twenty thousand, almost 
exclusively engaged in mining. They gave 
the Church and its ministers a cordial wel¬ 
come. Of Utah, the estimated population 
was one hundred thousand, all Mormons, 
with the exception of a small body of mer¬ 
chants, tradesmen, and employes of Wells, 
Fargo & Co., in Salt Lake City. There 
were also some apostate Mormons of Eng¬ 
lish descent ready to welcome the Church. 
From the Bishop’s first annual report, Au¬ 
gust 31, 1867 a.d. , it is found that the num¬ 
ber of communicants in Utah and Idaho 
was thirty-three, and one hundred and 
twenty children had been gathered into 
Sunday-schools. At the end of the first de¬ 
cade, 1877 a.d., there are reported 7 clergy¬ 
men, 4 church buildings, 400 communicants, 
624 Sunday-school pupils, 756 day-school pu¬ 
pils, and church property valued at $124,700. 
The first confirmation in the jurisdiction 
was at Salt Lake City, July 14, 1867 a.d.; 
eleven persons were confirmed. The first 
ordination occurred September 19,1869 a.d , 
at Salt Lake City. The Rev. Thos. W. 
Haskins was ordained priest. The next 
week, September 26, the Rev. Henry L. 
Foote was advanced to the priesthood at 
Boise City. 

In 1870 a.d. the Rev. J. L. Gillogly be¬ 
gan work at Ogden, Utah. The Memorial 
Church of the Good Shepherd was built in 
1874 a.d., at a cost of above $7000, and a 
substantial building of stone was erected in' 
1878 a.d. , costing $4300, for the School of 
the Good Shepherd. In the same year a 
school-house was built at Plain City, an out¬ 
lying mission of Ogden. Mr. Gillogly did 
faithful and efficient work until his sudden 
death in 1881 a.d. All his enterprises had 
a steady growth from the first. He was 
succeeded by the Rev. S. Unsworth, who 
was brought up from a child in Utah, and 
received his preparatory education at St. 
Mark’s School. 


St. Mark’s Cathedral, Salt Lake City, 
was completed in 1871 a.d. It is built of 
red sandstone from plans by Upjohn, and 
cost fifty thousand dollars. The Bishop is 
rector, and the Rev. R. M. Kirby became 
assistant minister in 1871 a.d. He resigned 
in 1882 a.d., and was succeeded by the Rev. 
N. F. Putnam. Under Mr. Kirby’s super¬ 
vision St. Mark’s Hospital was opened April 
30, 1872 a.d. , with thirteen patients. It is 
mainly supported by the monthly dues of 
miners in the surrounding region, who are 
entitled to the benefits of the Hospital if 
disabled by sickness. The buildings cost 
$10,000, and the yearly number of patients 
treated is five hundred and thirty-five, at a 
current expense of $11,359. 

Church work was begun at Logan, Utah, 
in 1873 a.d., by the Rev. W. H. Stoy, and 
St. John’s School established. The popula¬ 
tion being almost wholly Mormon, the 
progress of the work has been slow, but the 
Church and school are steadily gaining 
ground, and exerting a beneficial influence 
upon the community. 

In the summer of 1878 a.d. funds were 
placed at the disposal of the Bishop for a 
Memorial Church. He decided to place it 
in Salt Lake City; and St. Paul’s Chapel 
was opened for service in October, 1880 a.d. 
It is a well-built stone structure, with a 
seating capacity of three hundred. The 
chapel is under the administration of the 
rector and vestry of St. Mark’s Cathedral, 
and is served by one of the assistant minis¬ 
ters. 

Parish Schools have been among the most 
important agencies of Church work in the 
jurisdiction. St. Mark’s School, Salt Lake 
City, was opened July 2,1867 a.d., with six¬ 
teen pupils, and grew so rapidly that imme¬ 
diate measures had to be taken for the erec¬ 
tion of a suitable building. This was com¬ 
pleted in 1872 a.d. , at a cost of $22,000, and 
opened with two hundred and fifteen pupils. 
The number soon rose to nearly four hundred, 
and the school has had between four and five 
hundred in constant attendance up till the 
present. Fully four-fifths of the pupils have 
been of Mormon antecedents. Rowland 
Hall, a boarding-school for girls, was opened 
in 1881 a.d., and has seventeen boarders 
and sixty day pupils. St. Michael’s School, 
Boise City, Idaho, was opened in 1867 a.d., 
and was well sustained until the community 
became more settled, and the character of 
the public schools superseded the necessity 
of its longer continuance. The School of 
the Good Shepherd, Ogden, with one hun¬ 
dred and twenty pupils, has steadily grown 
in reputation and numbers, under the man¬ 
agement of the Rev. Chas. G. Davis. About 
one hundred children of Mormon parentage 
come under the instruction of the Church 
yearly in St. Paul’s School, Plain City, and 
St. John’s School, Logan. 

At the first Convocation of the jurisdic¬ 
tion, then including Montana, there were 
seven clergy and eight parishes and organ- 





UTAH AND IDAHO 


761 


VERGER 


ized mission stations on the roll. At the last 
Convocation, 1883 a.d., of Utah and Idaho, 
there were eleven clergy and seventeen 
parishes and organized mission stations. 
The seventeenth annual report of the Bishop, 
1883 a.d., gives the present condition of the 
field: 11 clergy, 5 church buildings, 728 
communicants, 930 Sunday-school pupils, 
794 day-school pupils, and church property 
of the value of $195,150. Idaho now has a 
population of 38,000, and Utah 147,000. 

The Bishop has made an official visitation 
throughout the jurisdiction every year, reach¬ 
ing as far as possible every town, mining 
settlement, and hamlet. In Idaho, it is only 
a question of aggregation of population 
whether they will have a settled clergyman 
and the regular ministration of the Church. 
Any town of a thousand people will take 
care of itself; but the bulk of the population 
is in small settlements, and scattered through 
the valleys on ranches or farms. These can 
be served only by itinerant missionaries. 
The parish at Boise City is self-supporting, 


but all the rest of Idaho is purely missionary 
ground, and the amount of work accom¬ 
plished depends upon the men and means at 
the disposal of the ecclesiastical authority. 
The state of affairs is quite different in Utah. 
Outside of Salt Lake City and Ogden, little, 
if any, help or encouragement is given, and 
the field must be worked on the same prin¬ 
ciples and by the same methods as the mis¬ 
sionary work in foreign lands. While no 
overt acts of hostility are manifested, the 
Mormon faith presents a steady, unbroken 
front of moral opposition to all forms and 
enterprises of Christian endeavor. Seldom, 
if ever, is there an instance of an adult Mor¬ 
mon coming directly from Mormonism into 
the Church. Most of the aggressive work, 
above unperceived mural influences, has 
been accomplished through the education of 
the young, though there has been considera¬ 
ble accession to the Church from apostate 
Mormons, originally brought up in the 
Church of England. 

Rev. G. D. B. Miller. 


4 ♦ 


V. 


Veils. I. In England and in some parishes 
in this country it is customary that the 
women and girls who are presented for con¬ 
firmation wear a light veil. II.. Usually 
the term Veil is given to the covers of very 
thin light linen fabric which should be 
provided to protect the bread and the wine 
from insects before and during consecra¬ 
tion, after the 11 fair white linen cloth” is 
removed. Thej T should be not more than 
eight or nine inches square and decently 
wrought, but as light as possible. 

Veni Creator Spiritus. A Hymn used 
in the Office of Ordination of Priests and 
Consecration of Bishops. It was attributed 
to St. Ambrose (380 a.d.), but it is not found 
anywhere earlier than the ninth century, 
when it was put into the Ordinal of the 
Consecration of a Bishop. It is a beautiful 
hymn addressed to the Holy Ghost, by 
whose gift it is that all Apostolic offices are 
wielded. The translation of the Hymn in the 
Prayer-Book was made, it is said, by Cran- 
mer. 

Venial Sin. Sins may be divided gener¬ 
ally into two great divisions, Mortal and 
Venial. Venial sin is as much a sin as a 
Mortal sin, but not as heinous in degree, as 
larceny is as much a transgression of the 
Law as burglary, yet the latter is a felony 
and the other is a misdemeanor. “ There 
is a sin unto death. All unrighteousness is 
sin: and there is a sin not unto death” (1 
John v. 16, 17). Both Mortal and Venial 


sins bring penalties, and Venial sin becomes 
fatal to the soul when its frets and tempta¬ 
tions eat away the soul by piece-meal. It 
is despising small things to our great loss to 
overlook and neglect the little sins of which 
we all are guilty. It is a dangerous habit 
to excuse them. To master these by daily 
watchfulness is really as great a work as to 
resist some great temptation. It is a train¬ 
ing of the Christian character, and produces 
that beauty of soul which makes it so lovely. 
The constant use of self-examination and of 
the Holy Communion is necessary, that we 
may be rid of them as noxious weeds that 
choke the good seed. 

Venite. The portions of the xcv. and 
xcvi. Psalms which are joined into a single 
anthem, in place of the English use of 
the single xcv. Psalm. It is an invitatory 
Psalm, and its choice for this place is pecu¬ 
liarly felicitous. It was used by the Jews 
in their Synagogue worship, in the earli¬ 
est Eastern daily service, and in the West¬ 
ern Churches. Its use was either com¬ 
plete, as in the English Service, or partial, 
as in the Eastern, and with verses from 
other Psalms, as in our own use. Its respon¬ 
sive (musical) use dates from a very early 
time, and its hortatory composition makes 
it specially fit for its present place in public 
worship. In fact, its use should be, whether 
musically rendered or not, fully and wholly 
congregational. 

Verger. The name of the officer who 







VERMONT 


762 


VERMONT 


carries a “ mace before the dean or canons in 
a Cathedral or Collegiate Church. In some 
Cathedrals the dean goes before any mem¬ 
ber of the Church, whether Capitular or 
not, unless he leaves his place to perform 
any part of the service. An officer of a sim¬ 
ilar title precedes the vice-chancellor in the 
English universities.” (Hook’s Church 
Diet.). 

Vermont, Diocese of. The organization 
of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Ver¬ 
mont was extremely defective until the year 
1811 a.d , and not complete till 1832 a.d. 
But prior to the former date there was an 
Annual Convention of its Clergy and lay rep¬ 
resentatives, beginning in the year 1790 

A.D. 

Before the Revolution the present territory 
of this State was a part of the Province of New 
Hampshire. And Governor Wentworth, of 
that Province, had granted 138 townships 
within the present limits of Vermont, re¬ 
serving in each of them a lot of land for the 
English “ Society for the Propagation of the 
Gospel in Foreign Parts,” and a glebe for 
“ the Church of England as by law estab¬ 
lished,” and another share for “ the first 
settled minister” of whatever name. These 
grants doubtless excited a hope in the minds 
of Churchmen in Massachusetts and Con¬ 
necticut of ultimately bettering their relig¬ 
ious privileges here, and induced some to 
settle here. But there seems to have been 
no concert having this end in view among 
the settlers as to their location, excepting 
perhaps in the town of Arlington. Thus in 
most of the townships the Church settlers 
were too few and poor to think of immedi¬ 
ate organization, or of obtaining regular 
ministrations of the Gospel according to 
their faith. In a very few places the Lit¬ 
urgy was said by laymen, and rare occa¬ 
sional visits of clergymen from New Hamp¬ 
shire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut af¬ 
forded the only opportunities for receiving 
the Sacraments of the Church. 

Before 1790 a.d. only four Church clergy¬ 
men are known to have rendered any regular 
service here, and two of these resided with¬ 
out the State, and their service was limited 
and transient. The other two were resi¬ 
dents, who were admitted to holy orders by 
Bishop Seabury in 1787 a.d. Bethuel Chit¬ 
tenden was the first, and deserves an ever- 
grateful remembrance. He was a brother 
of Governor Thos. Chittenden ; was an early 
settler in Tinmouth ; had cleared his farm 
and done other business there ; and, at forty- 
nine years of age, with only the preparation 
of a clear mind and a very common educa¬ 
tion, gave himself to the ministry, and spent 
the remaining twenty-two years of his life 
largely in visiting the little clusters of 
Churchmen in the State, and doing what he 
could to hold them together until a better 
day. The other was Reuben Garlick, M.D., 
of Alburg, who received only Deacon’s Or¬ 
ders, and combined with his sacred ministra¬ 
tions the practice of medicine and school¬ 


teaching. He was respectable and very use¬ 
ful among the rude settlers in thus caring 
for their threefold nature, but naturally 
found himself in the background when soci¬ 
ety was able to employ men that gave them¬ 
selves to the “one thing,” and at length re¬ 
moved to Canada, and died there. 

There met at the first Convention (1790 
a.d.) two clergymen and eighteen laymen, 
representing eight so-called parishes. The 
organization of this Convention was has¬ 
tened by a well-grounded fear lest they 
should lose their chartered inheritance if 
they did not take active measures to keep 
it. And the same motive urged them to 
take measures in advance of their ability to 
complete their organization by obtaining a 
Bishop. 

At the Annual Convention in 1793 a.d., 
the Rev. Edward Bass, D.D., of Newbury- 
port, Mass., was regularly chosen Bishop 
of Vermont. This position he finally con¬ 
sented to accept, on the condition that he 
should not be required to change his resi¬ 
dence until the income of the lands should 
suffice for his support, which was probably 
as favorable an answer as the Convention 
had anticipated. But there was no further 
action upon it. In February of the follow¬ 
ing year a specious project was devised by 
men not properly Churchmen, which occa¬ 
sioned a hasty and imperfect call of a Spe¬ 
cial Convention. At this the engineers of 
the movement were well represented, and 
the Church proper but poorly ; and then the 
Rev. Samuel Peters, D.D., formerly of Con¬ 
necticut, then of London, England, was 
nominated for Bishop, and at once elected, 
not without opposition. Several 3 r ears passed 
in vain efforts to secure his consecration in 
England, and, that failing, in the United 
States. 

In the mean time (1794 a.d.) the General 
Assembly of the State sequestered the lands, 
both the glebes and those granted to the 
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, 
and applied the avails of them to the sup¬ 
port of common schools. On the other 
hand, late in 1802 a.d., there was a valuable 
accession to the Clergy, in the person of the 
Rev. Abraham Bronson, from Rhode Island, 
who settled in Manchester, officiating also 
in Arlington, in one or both of which par¬ 
ishes he labored with great usefulness to 
them and the Diocese for more than thirty 
years. To him perhaps more than to any 
other one the Church is indebted for the 
tenacity which finally recovered a part of 
her inheritance. .At the time of the forma¬ 
tion of the Eastern Diocese he was the onlv 
Church clergyman in the State. The means 
being so meagre, of course the Church as a 
whole, in this region, could not grow ; the 
wonder is that it was not crushed under the 
weight of prejudice and the oppressive ac¬ 
tion of the State. From the sequestration 
of the lands to 1811 a.d. the Annual Con¬ 
ventions comprised an average of less than 
two clergymen and eleven laymen from less 




VERMONT 


763 


VERMONT 


than six parishes. But there were among 
them men with a keen sense of right re¬ 
specting both their religious obligations and 
the Church’s claims, and who would neither 
abandon the one nor surrender the other. 

A brighter prospect at length appeared. 
A proposition of the Church in Massachu¬ 
setts to the Churches in the other New Eng¬ 
land States, excepting Connecticut, which 
had a Bishop of its own, and Maine, which 
was not yet developed to the desire of one, 
but which afterwards joined the rest, was 
adopted, namely, to confederate in the elec¬ 
tion and maintenance of a Bishop who 
should have jurisdiction over all; and in a 
joint Convention, in 1811 a.d., choice was 
happily made of the Rev. Alexander V. 
Griswold, D.D., of Rhode Island, for the 
Bishop. He was consecrated on the 24th of 
May in that year, and commenced his super¬ 
vision in the four, afterwards five, States. 
These had each its own Convention, and all 
together a Biennial Convention in common. 

The war of 1812 a.d. renewed old preju¬ 
dices, and in various ways hindered for a 
time the good fruits of this approach to an 
organization according to the principles of 
the Church. But the Bishop was so earnest, 
faithful, wise, and lowly, that in a few years 
his coming was a time of special interest to 
almost the whole community. An old Con- 
gregationalist expressed the feeling: “He 
is the best representative of an Apostle that 
I have ever seen, particularly because he 
does not know it.” The Church visibly in¬ 
creased from about 1816 a.d. 

In 1817 a.d. a Power of Attorney was re¬ 
ceived from the Society for the Propagation 
of the Gospel by certain persons who had 
been recommended to the Society for this 
end, empowering them to act as its agents 
to take care of its claims in Vermont; it 
being understood that the Society should be 
involved in no expense and that the Church 
here should have the avails of what should 
be recovered. 

After a thorough study of the case a suit 
was brought, which it was thought would 
decide alf the claims. A favorable decision 
was rendered, but was carried up to the Su¬ 
preme Court, and there finally confirmed in 
1823 a.d. But litigations continued for 
some years, the holders of the grants usually 
finding something peculiar, each in his own 
case. At length claims which could be 
clearly traced were recovered. But the 
glebes of the Church of England have never 
been recovered, there being here no Church 
of that name and by law established to 
make a claim which would be legally bind¬ 
ing ; though the Protestant Episcopal 
Church is known to be, to. all moral and re¬ 
ligious intents, a continuation of that Church 
in this country. 

The Bishop soon came to regard Vermont 
as the most fertile portion of his wide field, 
and as early as 1822 a.d. recommended the 
Diocese to have a Bishop of its own as soon 
as convenient. But ten more years of evi¬ 


dent prosperity elapsed before this was ac¬ 
complished. It became evident, however, 
that the unwieldy confederation must soon 
be dissolved. The Convention of Massa¬ 
chusetts expressed its desire to retain the 
Bishop. And in 1832 a.d. the Convention 
of the Church in Vermont, comprising 13 
clergymen, and 39 laymen from 19 par¬ 
ishes, having before it the advice of the 
Bishop, and the consent of the Eastern Dio¬ 
cese, and of its several Diocesan parts, 
erected itself into a separate jurisdiction. It 
prepared a most loving parting address to 
its late Dioce.san, and then proceeded to elect 
one for Vermont. 

The Rev. John Henry Hopkins, D.D., 
of Boston, formerly of Pittsburg, Pa., was 
its choice. Being consecrated with other 
Bishops-elect at the close of the General 
Convention in 1832 a.d., he came at once to 
Vermont, settling in Burlington. Here he 
took St. Paul’s Church as his parish, a 
Church recently gathered by the Rev. Geo. 
T. Chapman, and the consecration of its 
plain stone edifice was the first Episcopal 
act of the new Bishop. There were at that 
time in the Diocese but two other churches 
built of that material, one in Middlebury 
and one in Arlington, and they were of like 
plainness. 

The life of Bishop Hopkins is too well 
known to be dwelt upon here, except as 
involved in that of the Diocese. While his 
attainments were remarkably varied, and 
his personal power and energy great, his 
natural temperament and modes of action 
were almost the opposite of those of Bishop 
Griswold. Some friction inevitably re¬ 
sulted, but was overcome by the earnestness 
and weight of the Bishop. 

The great trial of his Episcopate resulted 
from his erecting with generous purposes 
for the Diocese, by his own means and 
credit, an Academical and Theological In¬ 
stitution, called the Vermont Episcopal In¬ 
stitute. On spacious grounds, admirably 
located, three noble buildings for the Episco¬ 
pal residence, the Academy, and the Theo¬ 
logical School were completed by 1838 a.d. 
The Academy had already for a time had a 
goodly number of boys, and the Theological 
department a few students. But the expense 
was too heavy for the Bishop, and he desired 
at this time to transfer it to the Diocese at 
cost. He was willing further to solicit aid 
in other Dioceses and in England for the 
object. He secured in England and Ireland 
about $5000, with 400 volumes for the Li¬ 
brary, and by this help offered the property 
to the Diocese for $30,000. 

But the Church had few members of 
wealth. Most of them were poor, and all 
unaccustomed to large offerings and rapid 
movements. A financial panic hastened the 
end. The Diocese did not respond ; the In¬ 
stitute was lost to the Church ; the Bishop’s 
own property was gone; and a heavy re¬ 
siduum of debt rested upon him. Such an 
issue of his plans and labors disheartened 





VERMONT 


764 


VERMONT 


even his resolute soul, but he accepted the 
stroke as from the Lord, and engaged him¬ 
self laboriously in his parochial and Epis¬ 
copal duties and in writing books. Assisted 
by his eldest son, a purchase was made of a 
romantic woodland farm on the shore of the 
lake and of Burlington Bay, named Rock 
Point, three miles from the city, where the 
family together built a plain house with the 
timber or its avails, where he resided until 
his death, and where his honored widow 
still abides. 

The growth of the Church was not rapid, 
but generally constant. The Bishop’s par¬ 
ish increased rapidly, and its church was 
enlarged and adorned under his supervision 
in 1852 a.d. The next year the Bishop 
reckoned that within the twenty years of 
his Episcopate the number of his Clergy 
and their relative proportion to the popula¬ 
tion was more than doubled, and that the 
old disputes of High- and Low-Churchmen 
had entirely ceased. 

In 1854 a.d., fourteen years after the 
wreck of the former Institute, he proposed 
another, the scheme comprehending the 
purchase of the Rock Point farm as the 
site, and also the removal of his old indebt¬ 
edness. The Convention approved, and an 
act of incorporation was obtained. For the 
better prosecution of the undertaking the 
Bishop resigned his parochial cure (Easter, 
1856 a.d. ), and in person solicited, collected, 
and expended the means, was architect and 
superintendent of the building, adorned the 
chapel largely with his own hand, and the 
result is the valuable Institute at Rock 
Point, admitted by all to have been eco¬ 
nomically and skillfully erected, and all free 
of debt. The Diocese contributed willingly, 
though not bountifully, the larger part of 
the cost being met by the generosity of 
brethren without. The chapel was conse¬ 
crated in 1860 a.d. 

Released from the incubus of debt, and 
assured of the atfection of his Diocese, the 
Bishop’s vast energy was conspicuous in this 
work and in all that followed. He now 
proposed the addition of a female depart¬ 
ment to the Institute, and collected several 
thousand dollars towards it, but the outburst 
of civil war deferred its accomplishment. 
The fund is considerably improved, but not 
yet applied to that object. 

During the war, the Bishop was politic¬ 
ally very unpopular in Vermont; but he so 
thoroughly restrained himself and his Dio¬ 
cese from the introduction of politics into 
the Sanctuary, that the time passed with¬ 
out a rupture. Three valuable churches of 
stone were consecrated during this period, 
two of them being affecting memorials of 
his varied activity and skill. 

By the decease of the late Presiding 
Bishop the functions of that officer fell to 
Bishop Hopkins, and added much to his 
labors. He seems to have been in just his 
proper element, with work enough, and that 
diverse, important, and appreciated. In 


1867 a.d., St. Paul’s, Burlington, became 
vacant, and he again acted as Rector, and 
the Church building was again greatly en¬ 
larged and beautified under his direction, 
and the Parish property in other respects 
greatly improved. He attended the Lam¬ 
beth Conference in that year, the means 
being readily provided. On his return in 
November, most of his clergy assembled to 
welcome him, and the warmth of their mu¬ 
tual affection was very conspicuous. Al¬ 
most immediately he entered upon the de¬ 
layed annual visitation of the Diocese. 
Twenty-one parishes and missions had been 
visited, but a service at Plattsburg, N. Y., 
rendered for the Bishop of that Diocese, in 
that inclement season with its exposures, 
brought on pneumonia so severe that his 
robust constitution could not withstand it. 
After a very short and painful sickness, 
heroically and sweetly borne, he entered 
into his rest January 9, 1868 a.d. A beau¬ 
tiful monument, devised by his eldest son, 
has been erected by the family and the Dio¬ 
cese to mark his grave at Rock Point. 

A special Convention was soon called, and 
assembled at Burlington on the 11th of 
March, for the election of his successor. 
There were present eighteen clergymen 
and fifty-six laymen from twenty-five par¬ 
ishes. The choice was made of the Rev. 
"William Henry Augustus Bissell, D.D., of 
Geneva, N. Y., but formerly of Vermont. 
He was consecrated on the 3d of June, at 
the Annual Convention, by five Bishops, 
in the new, beautiful, and costly Christ 
Church, Montpelier; that church itself 
having been consecrated the day before by 
Bishop Williams. 

Without presuming to characterize the 
living, this may be said, after he has gone 
in and out among the parishes, missions, 
and places where the Church was before 
unknown for fifteen and a half years: his 
loving heart, and easy accessibility, and 
faithful preaching, and judicious manage¬ 
ment have made him welcome and useful 
everywhere and with every class. And the 
statistics of the Diocese show a more rapid 
growth than at any former period, notwith¬ 
standing the severe depression in business 
during the larger part of the time. A fine 
stone church in East Berkshire, the richer 
and more beautiful church in Bellows Falls, 
and several handsome churches of other 
materials have been consecrated by him. 
Beautiful stone chapels have been erected 
in Burlington and Rutland. The Missions 
of the Diocese have been greatly enlarged. 
The northeastern counties of the State which 
had no church before have now several. 
The Diocesan branch of the Woman’s Aux¬ 
iliary to the Board of Missions has been in¬ 
augurated, and is doing a great work. The 
wealth of richer Churchmen flows more 
freely in sacred channels. A partial endow¬ 
ment ($25,000) of the Episcopate has been 
secured. An Episcopal residence within the 
city of Burlington has been presented to the 




VERNACULAR 


765 


VERNACULAR 


Diocese by a generous friend in New York. 
The permanent Missionary Fund has re¬ 
ceived a handsome endowment. 

To appreciate the following statistics the 
increasing drain of the native population 
of the State by emigration must be borne in 
mind. During Bishop Griswold’s Episco¬ 
pate the annual gain in population was 


per cent., and that mostly American; dur¬ 
ing that of Bishop Hopkins, § per cent., not 
more than the foreign immigration; during 
that of Bishop Bissell, less than ^ per cent., 
—a serious loss of population that is now 
accessible to the Church. 

This Statistical Table was prepared for a 
recent occasion, October 31, 1882 a.d. : 


Clergy. 

Active Parishes... 

Communicants. 

Ratio of Communicants to whole population, 


1811. 

1832. 

1868. 

1882. 

Ratio of the present 
to fifty years ago. 

2 

13 

26 

33 

2% tol 

7 

24 

40 

48 

2 to 1 

.Unknown. 

1169 

2381 

3488 

2 4-5 to 1 


1 to 247 

1 to 137% 

1 to 95 

2 3-5 to 1 


Average Annual Confirmations. 


By Bishop Griswold in five States, those in Vermont not generally distinguishable. 238 

By Bishop Hopkins in Vermont alone.*. 127 

By Bishop Bissell in Vermont alone... 247 


Number of Churches. 

Value of Churches. 

Number of Rectories. 

Value of Rectories. 

Missionary Contributions in the single year specified. 

Vernacular. ( Verna , Latin for slave. 
Originally indigenous, thence popular or 
common. Vernacular, a speech that may 
be understood by the poorest or most igno¬ 
rant.) It is used now especially of the trans¬ 
lations of Holy Scripture and the Liturgic 
worship in the language of the people. It 
seems very strange that there should be 
needed any argument in its behalf, yet it 
is gravely claimed that Latin should be used 
as the sacred language in which all services 
of religion must be recited. Even St. Paul 
assumes the absurdity of it in his expostula¬ 
tion : “ How shall he that occupieth the room 
of the unlearned say Amen at thy giving 
of thanks (Eucharist), seeing he understand- 
eth not what thou sayest? For thou verily 
giveth thanks well, but the other is not edi¬ 
fied” (1 Cor. xiv. 16, 17). In the case of the 
Scriptures we have the example of the Tar- 
gums, which were paraphrases from the 
Hebrew Scriptures into the Aramaic vernac¬ 
ular, and into the current Greek of the third 
century before Christ. These were in 
common use; and the Greek translation, 
with all its defects, some of which might 
have caused hot controversy, was used by 
the Evangelists and the Apostles. Nor was 
there any doubt about the propriety of the 
translation. The Peschito translation of 
the New Testament is the Syriac version. 
There was the old Italic version. Ulphilas, 
the Apostle to the Goths, translated portions 
of the New Testament into Maaso-Gothic. 
In fact, the evidence is overwhelming upon 
the use of the Vernacular. The only ob¬ 
jection, that in cases of controversy there 
mav be a wrong use made of an inaccurate 
phrase in a popular translation, is met by the 
constant use of the Greek translation of the 
Old Testament, which received the silent 
sanction of being quoted in the New Testa¬ 
ment by writers who were perfectly familiar 
with the Hebrew Scripture, and could and 


Ratio of the present 


1811. 

1832. 

1868. 

1882. 

to fifty years ago, 

0 

14 

31 

43 

3 to 1 

0 

$56,000 

$250,000 

$327,000 

Nearly 6 to 1 

0 

1 

12 

18 

18 to 1 

0 

$1,500 

$25,000 

$49,000 

Nearly 33 to 1 

0 

$125 

$1,791 

$4,780 

39 to 1 


Rev. A. H. Bailey, D.D. 


did make an independent translation where 
it suited their purpose. 

But if this be the case with the Sacred 
Canon of Holy Writ, how much more forci¬ 
ble are the arguments in favor of the use of 
the Services in the Vernacular. Here, too, 
the Primitive Church used them in the sev¬ 
eral dialects necessary. Greek, Latin, Syriac, 
Coptic, Georgian, Bulgarian Liturgies are 
preserved, and show fully that as each 
country was converted the Faithful used the 
Liturgy in their own tongue. It was in 
direct obedience to St. Paul’s rule, as quoted 
above. There were causes which led for 
a while to the universal use of the Latin 
throughout the West; but these could not 
endure, *tnd we have proof that the rule was 
broken through in the baptismal services, 
and probably in much else that yet has only 
been preserved in Latin. Surely the plain 
sermons of St. Boniface to his German con¬ 
verts could not have been of any use to them 
if they were delivered in the Latin in which 
we now have them. So, too, of other dis¬ 
courses. But after a while the bondage of 
the Latin Service in Teutonic countries be¬ 
came too heavy, and it was one of the first 
things to be removed when the Reformation 
began. ( Vide Primer.) So now wherever 
the Papal yoke is thrown off, thereupon the 
Liturgy is at once given to the people in the 
Vernacular. It is only common sense to do 
this. Scripture and Early Church History 
are full of suggestions which commend 
themselves to every mind that but considers 
the great importance that public prayer is to 
the people. All these facts readily prove 
the need that every Church should use only 
the plain, common speech of the people to 
which it ministers. To this end the Prayer- 
Book has been translated into French, Ger¬ 
man, and Swedish, for our own populations, 
and for the English subjects it has been 
translated into eight different languages. 


















VERSE 


766 


VERSIONS 


Verse. Verses are llie short subdivisions 
of a paragraph, including one or more sen¬ 
tences. The word also means a stanza of a 
Hymn. In its first meaning it refers to a 
short sentence in the Bible. The Bible was 
first reduced to chapters, it is said, by Car¬ 
dinal Hugo de Sancto Caro, about 1240 a.d. 
But the chapters were divided into verses 
for the Old Testament by Rabbi Nathan 
1440 a.d., and for the New Testament by 
Robert Stephens 1551 a.d. A verse is also 
a short passage of Scripture that is sung, 
or an anthem is often so called. 

Versicles. The short verse and its re¬ 
sponse are so called whether they be of 
Benediction, as, “ V. The Lord be with you. 
R. And with Thy Spirit,” or of praise, as, “V. 
Praise ye the Lord. R. The Lord’s name be 
praised,” or of precate intercession, as, V. 
O Lord open Thou our lips. R. And our 
mouth shall show forth Thy praise,” or of in¬ 
vocation, as,“0 Christ hear us.” In all these 
versicles and responses the people’s share is 
an important one, as it is an exercise of their 
priestly office of intercession. These versicles 
and responds are very old. The principle 
was taken from the Synagogue worship, and 
they were at first framed out of the Psalms, 
as they in fact still are. They were in use 
at least thirteen hundred years ago. 

Versions. The translation of the Old 
and New Testaments into the Vernacular 
of the several Countries into which Chris¬ 
tianity has gone. As for modern ver¬ 
sions, either of the whole or a part of the 
Holy Scriptures which are designed for mis¬ 
sion work, the number is upwards of one 
hundred and fifty and is yearly increasing, 
as missionaries in new stations find need 
and acquire facility in the language. 

The chief ancient Versions were: TheSep- 
tuagint ( q.v .). The old Latin, which may 
have been made for the North African 
Church, and a revision of which is called the 
Itala. The Vulgate of St. Jerome (380-400 
a.d.), supplanted the Itala translation, so 
that only a few fragments beside the Psalter 
remain. The Peschito of the Syriac Church 
was a very early translation, probably in 
the second century. It became gradually 
obsolete, and was corrected and revised and 
otherwise changed as time went on. Three 
Arabic Versions of the Old Testament. A 
Coptic Version in three forms, which may 
date from the rise of Monasticism (250 a.d.). 
An Ethiopic translation, which was made at 
an uncertain period, probably about the 
sixth century. 

The value of these translations of the New 
Testament is very great, for they not only 
throw light upon the meaning of obscure 
words, but they help to determine the true 
reading of disputed passages. The student 
of the New Testament has a task of no 
small magnitude before him to attempt to 
co-ordinate and reduce to order the value of 
the several translations which early Chris¬ 
tianity had to make, into the different lan¬ 
guages, to take into consideration the general 


skill of the translator, and to understand 
the conditions under which he labored. 
The work also helps to determine the value 
of some of the MSS. of the Greek text, 
which may represent in some distant land 
a very different reading from that in use in 
another country. The question is a very 
fascinating one. The history of our mod¬ 
ern Versions is much more important. The 
history of the Authorized Version is one of 
growth. Translations of parts of the New 
Testament were early made in the Saxon. 
The Psalms and parts of the three Gospels, 
and then that of St. John, by Bede,were made 
before 735 a.d. King Alfred (890 a.d.) re¬ 
translated the Psalms. In the next century 
Aelfric of York translated parts of the 
Old Testament, but these efforts went no 
further for the time. The Norman Con¬ 
quest disturbed the quiet needed for such 
work, and it was not till much later that 
any effort was made; though much Biblical 
knowledge was within reach (as is shown in 
the long Poem of Piers Plowman), and 
some paraphrases were made. Wyckliffe was 
the first to make a complete translation into 
English of the whole Bible, but it was taken 
from the Vulgate. He had two co-workers, 
Richard Purvey and Nicholas of Hereford ; 
the former of whom revised the work, 
finishing his revision after Wyckliffe’s death, 
1384 a.d. Through the studies for succes¬ 
sive translations, Wyckliffe’s terse English 
has entered largely into our Authorized 
Version. 

This translation exists in a good many 
MSS. in England, showing that it had be¬ 
come quite diffused. It contains many ob¬ 
solete words, and were the uncouth spelling 
modernized it would still be remarkably 
near the common language yet to be found 
in retired places in this country, spoken as 
it was brought over from England. Tyn- 
dale began to translate his Version of the 
New Testament from the Greek (1502 a.d.) 
at Oxford, but apparently did not do much 
till 1522 a.d. , when he went to London, but 
had to leave for the Continent because of 
his reforming sympathies. He began to 
print at Cologne, but was driven thence to 
Worms, where he finished the first edition 
and issued another, 1525 a.d. He resided 
probably at Wittenberg while translating 
parts of the Old Testament,—the books of 
Moses, and Jonah (1530-1531 a.d.). He was 
a fugitive during this and succeeding years, 
but was arrested in 1535 a.d., and martyred 
1536 a.d. He laid the foundation for a 
translation, using Luther, Wyckliffe, and 
the Vulgate, but working from his own 
clear judgment. Taking into consideration 
his difficulties, the translation is a remark¬ 
ably excellent one. Coverdale, (titular) 
Bishop of Chalcedon, made a translation of 
the Bible in 1535 a.d., using the German 
and the Vulgate. The next edition, for it 
really was such, of the English Bible (1537 
a.d.) was put forth by John Rogers (after¬ 
wards the Marian martyr), who placed the 





VERSIONS 


767 


VERSIONS 


name of Thomas Matthew on the title-page. 
It was a revision of Tyndale and Cover- 
dale, with notes and prefatory matter, which 
made his edition a valuable one to English 
readers, especially as it was strongly anti- 
papal. Tavener, a Greek scholar of the 
same time, also issued (1539 a.d.) an edition 
of the Bible. His revision of the New Tes¬ 
tament showed his knowledge of Greek, and 
some of his renderings were retained. But 
for the Old Testament he trusted to the 
Vulgate. These different editions were not 
entirely in accordance with the intention of 
those who were then using the efforts of 
Cranmer for reform for their own purposes, 
and the Lord Protector, Cromwell, ordered 
another revision, which was made by Cover- 
dale, who went to Paris to have the work 
printed. He used all the latest revisions 
and translations at hand, and at last (forced 
by the Inquisition to return to England 
when his work was finished) he produced 
what was known as the Great Bible (1539 
a.d.). It was from this Bible that the pas¬ 
sages of Scripture were taken for the Prayer- 
Book, some of which, as the Command¬ 
ments and the Comfortable Words, still re¬ 
main, though the other portions were made 
to conform to the King James translation. 
These different editions had the sanction, 
more or less fully, of Henry VIII., under 
the advice of Cromwell or of Cranmer, 
who of course would willingly go further. 
The succeeding editions (1540-1541 a.d.) 
of the Great Bible had prefixed to them a 
short preface by Cranmer and his coadjutors, 
Tonstal and Heath. The next revision, for 
it became a revision now, was made by the 
Marian Exiles (1555-1560 a.d.) at Geneva, 
principally by William Whittingham, as¬ 
sisted by Thomas Sampson, Anthony Gilby, 
and others. They used Tyndale and the 
Great Bible, and Beza’s Latin Version, with 
much independent work of their own. Its 
strong antiprelatical leaning, the attempt 
to introduce the Hebrew and Greek names 
unchanged, and sometimes a harshness of 
rendering are the notable points in it. It is 
also known as the Breeches Bible from the 
translation of Gen. iii. 7, “ And they sewed 
fig-leaves together and made themselves 
breeches.” It was published in 1560 a.d., 
at Geneva. It was so much better than the 
previous translations that Archbishop Parker 
determined to have the Cranmer Bible re¬ 
vised accordingly. He selected a company 
of learned men, who made a more preten¬ 
tious than successful revision. 

The Books were rearranged, according to 
subjects. The chapters to be omitted in 
public reading were marked. There was 
some additional matter—as Genealogical 
tables—added. There were two editions 
(1568-1572 a.d.). In the mean time the 
Romanists found it best to prepare an Eng¬ 
lish version also, and after some delay (in 
1582 a.d.) they issued at Rheims a transla¬ 
tion of the New Testament, which had been 
prepared by Martin, Allen, and Bristowe. 


The Old Testament was published at Douay 
in 1609 a.d. It was as strongly marked 
with polemics as the Genevan Version was. 
Its language was as uncouth and its trans¬ 
lations of words as nearly a transference of 
the original words as possible. These sev¬ 
eral efforts, over so long a space, 1480-1600 
a.d., had leavened the English people with 
a knowledge and love for their English 
Bibles, but something yet was wanting in 
all of these several translations, revisions, 
and re-editings. After much controversy, 
a feeling that these should be in some way 
superseded was very prominent. The Puri¬ 
tans at the Hampton Court Conference (1604 
a.d.) wished to have a new translation under¬ 
taken. King James was caught with the 
idea that it would be the glory of his reign 
to have it effected. He took up the work 
and had the instructions prepared, which 
were given to the translators. Fifty-four 
men eminent for learning and ability were 
chosen, and the work distributed among 
them. Three companies were formed, under 
the direction of six persons,—the two Hebrew 
and two Greek Regius Professors at Oxford 
and Cambridge, and Andrews, Dean of 
Westminster, and Barlow, Dean of Chester. 
Suggestions were invited from every quar¬ 
ter. The work was begun in 1606 a.d., and 
was conducted by the separate companies 
till the work drew near completion. The 
heads of the companies then were selected 
for final revision and arrangements for 
printing, and after much labor and devout 
toil a task which had no moneyed consider¬ 
ations involved in it was brought to a close 
in 1611 a.d. Bilson, Bishop of Winches¬ 
ter, wrote the “arguments” prefixed to the 
several books, and Dr. Miles Smith the 
dedication and the Preface, which, most un¬ 
fortunately, has been left out of nearly every 
edition of the Bible. It should be replaced 
to the great gain of every careful reader, 
who would know upon what principles the 
translation and revision were made. They 
consulted every accessible version in French, 
German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and 
spared no labor to give, as nearly as the state 
of learning then permitted, the most 
thorough translation yet produced. And 
they succeeded. The Version had to work 
its way into public favor. From the first it 
was quietly but really accepted, displacing 
slowly but surely all previous Versions. 
It was freely criticised, and was objected to 
at first, but the approval of those who, like 
Bishop Walton, the Editor of the London 
Polyglott, knew its value, was much in its 
favor. It was the work of men who were 
masters of a noble English style, quite the 
contemporaries of Shakespeare, Raleigh, 
Spenser, and of Hooker. No better time 
could have been chosen, when the English 
was at a robust strength that could not exist 
at any other stage. The previous transla¬ 
tions were freely used, and the broidery of 
phrases that can be traced to Wyckliffe, 
Tyndale, Coverdale, Rogers, Tavener, the 





VERSIONS 


768 


VESTMENTS 


Geneva, the Douay, shows how diligently 
they compared, corrected, and incorporated 
all that they found of worth. There is 
hardly a passage which has not a rhythmic 
flow which is inimitable. The errors in it 
of translation are notably few when the 
state of Hebrew and Greek learning is con¬ 
sidered, advanced as it was then. The chro¬ 
nological indices and the dates on the mar¬ 
gin were placed there by Bishop Lloyd. 
The marginal readings are often to be pre¬ 
ferred to the reading of the Text. 

But the Version which has grown so dear 
to all Englishmen was charged with having 
too many obsolete words, mostly mistakes 
in the transference of proper names, chiefly 
in geography, and errors in grammar and in 
archaic expressions. Efforts were made for 
some years by such able men as Archbishop 
Trench and Bishop Ellicot and Bishop 
Lightfoot to get a revision undertaken. In 
1870 a.d., in the Convocation of Canterbury, 
the first steps were taken. Fifty-two men 
were selected to do the work, and were di¬ 
vided into two companies,—twenty-seven 
for the Old Testament and twenty-five for 
the New Testament. Two years later a com¬ 
pany of twenty-seven was formed in Amer¬ 
ica,—fourteen for the Old Testament and 
thirteen for the New Testament. These 
worked in close correspondence, and com¬ 
pared results constantly with the English 
Revisers. The New Testament companies 
were able to issue their Revision in May, 
1881 a.d. It has revised the Greek text in 
some places; has left out one text of more than 
doubtful genuineness, the seventh verse of the 
fifth chapter of St. John’s first Epistle ; the 
word He is substituted for the word “God” 
in 1 Timothy iii. 16. Many marginal notes 
exhibit the result of a comparison of many 
texts and MSS. The poetical quotations 
from the Old Testament are printed exhib¬ 
iting the ancient Hebrew parallelism. The 
most important doctrinal gain, however, is 
the substitution of Hades for Hell wherever 
the place of departed spirits is meant, while 
Hell is reserved for those passages where 
everlasting punishment is taught. The Re¬ 
vision has undoubtedly done very great ser¬ 
vice both in correcting some errors and, much 
more, in giving a vast impulse to the study 
of the New Testament among ordinary 
English readers. But it has not the delicate 
cadences of the old Version, and it has rudely 
shocked some prepossessions, while the prac¬ 
tical gain on the whole is less than could 
have been looked for from the amount of 
toil expended. It will probably not be¬ 
come popular, but will always be a most use¬ 
ful and necessary adjunct to any study of 
the English Versions. The principles which 
guided the Revisers are stated very forcibly 
in the preface to the work. 

There have been several French transla¬ 
tions, which can only be mentioned here very 
hastily. The first Protestant Version of the 
Bible in French was made in 1530 a.d., by 
Lefevre d’Etaples. This formed the basis for 


another translation, by Pierre Robart Olive- 
tan, a kinsman of Calvin, who corrected his 
work and expressed a great wish to see a 
new edition put forth. The French Genevan 
Pastors issued another revised translation 
under the care of Beza, 1588 a.d. It was a 
great improvement, but the need of correct¬ 
ing it was felt as Biblical science progressed, 
but no effort was successful till recently, 
when, in 1874 a.d., Dr. L. Segond, of Gen¬ 
eva, published a new translation, which 
was afterwards republished by the Univer¬ 
sity Press of Oxford. In Holland, Van Lees- 
veldt published a complete Dutch transla¬ 
tion in 1526 a.d. After the publication of 
a second edition he was arrested and be¬ 
headed for so doing. His edition was after¬ 
wards replaced by Van Utenhove's, 1556 
a.d. , which is still held in esteem. As in so 
many Versions, as above recited, there was 
comparatively little original work. Luther’s 
original translation was fully used so far as 
it had appeared, and was supplemented 
from other sources. This Version opened 
the way for another, perhaps the most per¬ 
fect that has yet been made. This last was 
a direct translation from the original 
tongues, but was affected by the leading 
Versions of other countries. But from the 
conception of this work by the Pastor, St. 
Aldegonde (1593 a.d.), besides much previ¬ 
ous private preparation, on to the final pub¬ 
lication in 1637 a.d. , lay an interval of forty 
years. In it were many political changes 
and fresh theological disputes, as that be¬ 
tween Gomar and Arminius upon Predes¬ 
tination and Free-will, the holding of the 
Synod of Dort, and the distractions of a part 
of the Thirty Years’ War. The work was 
done at public expense, and hence the Bible 
has been called the States’ Bible. A recent 
effort (1854-1867 a.d.) for revision has 
failed to commend itself to public approval. 

The translations in the Italian and Span¬ 
ish that have been made are all defective 
in some one point or other. Diodate’s trans¬ 
lation (1607 a.d.) was the leading Italian 
translation, and is yet circulated. But Arch¬ 
bishop Martini’s Version (1776 a.d.) is said 
to be more perfect, and is published by the 
British and Foreign Bible Society. In 
Spain, the several translations made from 
1543 a.d. on to 1794 a.d. have not circulated 
freely. The translation of Miguel, a Span¬ 
ish Ecclesiastic, was made in the latter year. 
This is the best received, and is in circula¬ 
tion through the British and Foreign Bible 
Society. The Portuguese have two Ver¬ 
sions, one made in Amsterdam (1712-1719 
a.d.), and a second in Lisbon (1784 a.d.). 

The circulation of these Versions varies 
very much, according to the race. Most 
freely in the Teutonic, less so in the Celtic, 
and least in the purely Latin nations. 

Vestments. Some have supposed that 
the Christian vestments were copied from 
those used by the Jews, but it seems much 
more probable that they are adaptations of 
the ordinary dress of well-to-do persons dur- 




VESTMENTS 


769 


VESTMENTS 


ing the time of the Empire. It is impossible 
to fix the times when the present names and 
shapes were definitely given to the various 
vestments, but from an early date we find 
notices, lists, and canons which refer to one 
and another of them, and in ancient mosaics 
Bishops and Priests are pictured as wearing 
a regular ecclesiastical dress. 

Different colors were probably not assigned 
to different seasons until rather a late date, 
the first definite mention of them being about 
the year 1200 a.d. ; in early days White was 
the general color of all vestments, and was 
taken to signify the bright light of truth 
and spotless purity. Bed, when adopted, 
typified ardent love; Green, the color of 
thriving vegetation, typified life; and Violet, 
compounded of red and black, the union of 
love and pain in hopeful repentance. 

The different Eucharistic vestments are as 
follows : 

The Amice .—This is a broad and oblong 
piece of linen with two strings to fasten it, 
and with an ornamented or embroidered strip 
on the middle of the outer edge. It is the 
first vestment assumed in preparing for a 
Celebration, and is placed on the head like a 
hood, and fastened by passing the strings 
under tne arms and then round the back 
until they meet on the chest, where they are 
tied. After the Alb is put on, the Amice is 
pushed back from the head on to the shoul¬ 
ders, where it has the appearance of a loose 
ornamental collar. 

The meaning of the various vestments is 
well shown by the prayers appointed by an 
old Western Liturgy to be said while assum¬ 
ing them ; that used at the putting on of the 
Amice is, “ Place upon my head, 0 Lord, 
the helmet of salvation, to drive away all 
the assaults of the devil.” 

The A Lb .—This is a loose and long gar¬ 
ment of white linen coming down to the feet, 
and having close-fitting sleeves reaching to 
the hands. It is slipped over the head after 
the putting on of the Amice, and is fastened 
by the Girdle, so that it hangs an inch or two 
from the floor. Prayer: “Cleanse (dealba) 
me, O Lord, and purify my heart, that 
cleansed (dealbatus) in the bloodof the Lamb, 
I may attain everlasting joys.” 

The Girdle .—This needs no detailed de¬ 
scription, and its use is given in the preceding 
paragraph. Prayer: “Gird me, O Lord, 
with the girdle of purity, and extinguish in 
my loins the fire of concupiscence, that the 
grace of temperance and chastity may abide 
in me.” 

The Maniple .—This was originally a nar¬ 
row strip of linen about two and a half feet 
long, employed to wipe the sacred vessels, or 
the"hands of the Celebrant. Subsequently 
it became a mere ornament, and as such it is 
now hung on the left arm of the Priest, and 
fastened with a loop to the wrist. Prayer: 
“ Grant me, O Lord, to bear the light bur¬ 
den (manipulum) of grief and sorrow, that 
I may with gladness receive the reward of 
labor.” 


The Stole .—This is a strip of silk about 
three inches wide and eight and a half feet 
long; it may be either plain or richly or¬ 
namented. It is hung around the neck of a 
Priest, and when celebrating should be 
crossed on the breast and passed under the 
girdle. The Deacon should wear it sus- 
ended over the left shoulder, crossing the 
ack and breast and fastened on the right 
hip. Prayer: “Give me again, O Lord, 
the robe (stolam) of immortality which I 
lost by the sin of my first parent; and al¬ 
though I unworthily approach Thy Holy 
Mystery, yet may I attain everlasting joy.” 

The Chasuble .—This vestment is worn 
over the Alb. Originally it was nearly cir¬ 
cular in shape, having an opening in the 
centre, through which the head of the wearer 
passed ; at a later period the portions on the 
arms were reduced, and the general shape 
became more elliptical, and the extremities 
more pointed. The English Chasuble re¬ 
sembles the pre-Reformation vestment, while 
in the modern Roman Chasuble the sleeve 
portion has been entirely cut away, leaving 
the arms free, but showing to the eye the 
unpleasing “fiddle-shaped” stiff back and 
front, instead of the graceful folds of the 
older pattern. The back of the Chasuble 
is frequently ornamented with a Latin cross, 
but more usually with what is called the 
Y Orphrey. Prayer: “O Lord, who hast 
said, My yoke is easy and my burden is 
light, make me to have strength so to bear 
it that I may attain Thy grace. Amen.” 

The other vestments may be more briefly 
described. The common Surplice and the 
Bishop’s sleeveless linen Rochet are modifica¬ 
tions of the Alb. The Tunicle and Dalmatic 
are different names given to the similar 
robes of the Epistler and Gospeler. They 
should resemble the Chasuble of the Cele¬ 
brant in material and color; in form they 
are a kind of loose frock or coat reach¬ 
ing below the knees, open partially at the 
lower part of the sides, with full though not 
large sleeves. The Cope is a long, full 
cloak of semicircular shape, reaching to the 
heels, and open in front. From the top 
downwards it has a richly-ornamented hood, 
and is fastened at the throat by a large clasp 
called the Morse. The Cope is used at lita¬ 
nies and choir services, and, according to 
the Prayer-Book of 1549 a.d. and the Can¬ 
ons of 1603 a.d., may be worn at Celebra¬ 
tions instead of the Chasuble. 

By the first Prayer-Book of Edward YI. 
the Bishop was to wear at Celebrations be¬ 
side his Rochet, an Alb or Surplice, and a 
Cope or Chasuble, and to have in his hand 
or that of his chaplain a Pastoral Staff. A 
brass of the date of 1631 a.d. represents a 
Bishop in Cope, Rochet, and Mitre, with a 
Pastoral Staff; and the Mitres of Laud, 
Trelawny, and others are still preserved in 
England, while that of our own Bishop Sea- 
bury can be seen in the Library of Trinity 
College, Hartford. In the reigns of Henry 
VIII. and Edward YI. the Bishops often 


49 





VESTRY 


770 


VESTRY 


wore their Doctor of Divinity scarlet habits 
with the Rochet, and in the latter part of 
the reign of Elizabeth black satin was sub¬ 
stituted for the brighter color. The present 
dress, therefore, consists of the sleeveless 
Rochet and the Doctor’s gown, or black 
satin Chimere, with lawn sleeves, which 
properly belong to the Rochet attached 
to it. 

It would occupy too much space to dis¬ 
cuss the question of the legality of the dif¬ 
ferent vestments in the United States. 
Briefly, however, they depend, in the ab¬ 
sence of any definite legislation by the Gen¬ 
eral Convention, on the connection of the 
daughter with the Mother-Church, and the 
statement in the Preface to our Prayer- 
Book, that “this Church is far from intend¬ 
ing to depart from the Church of England 
in any essential point of doctrine, discipline, 
or worship.” We are therefore thrown 
back on the Ornaments Rubric of the Eng¬ 
lish Prayer-Book, which directs “that such 
Ornaments of the Church and of the Min¬ 
isters thereof shall be retained and be in 
use as were in this Church of England, by 
the authority of Parliament, in the. second 
year of the reign of King Edward the 
Sixth.” For the fuller discussion of this 
whole subject, the reader is referred to the 
Introduction and Appendices of Blunt’s 
Annotated Book of Common Prayer. 

Rev. E. M. Parker. 

Vestry. The Vestry ( Vestiarium , Ward¬ 
robe) was either an apartment, or a distinct 
building of the Church, in which the vest¬ 
ments, and sometimes also sacred vessels and 
treasures, of the Church were kept. It was 
also used as a place of meeting and gave its 
name to the assembly held therein, hence 
is derived our use of the words Vestry 
Room and Vestry. 

In the Primitive Church nothing is found 
corresponding to the modern Vestry; cir¬ 
cumstances then existing did not demand 
nor even permit such a lay adjunct. Later, 
when fuller organization became practicable, 
the sacerdotal power absorbed all ecclesias¬ 
tical control, the lay element was ignored, 
the entire management of the Church was 
in the hands of the various ecclesiastical or¬ 
ders. The office of Church-warden may be 
traced to the later part of the Middle Ages, 
when the duty of keeping the nave in re¬ 
pair and of providing utensils for the Di¬ 
vine Service was laid upon the laity. To the 
vestrymen corresponded in some features 
the ancient Sidesmen (Synodsmen), who at 
synods reported under oath to the Bishop 
the moral condition of the Diocese. -In the 
Church of England, parish churches gener¬ 
ally have wardens and vestrymen whose 
functions are regulated by custom and by 
legislation ; on account of the connection of 
the Church with the State their duties are 
partly civil and partly ecclesiastical, so that 
they furnish no precedent nor guide for us, 
though we inherit from that Church this 
feature of the parish, and find in their 


“ Select Vestry” that which corresponds to 
our own. 

The relations, rights, and duties of Vestry¬ 
men are not defined and determined by 
generally acknowledged authority, they 
vary with the canons of the different Dio¬ 
ceses, and with the charters and by-laws of 
different parishes ; this diversity has resulted 
in much confusion and occasionally in con¬ 
flicting claims between Bishops, Rectors, and 
Vestries. Recognizing this defect, and in 
order to remedy it, the General Convention 
of 1877 a.d. appointed a Joint Committee 
of both houses “ to consider and report to 
the next General Convention what are the 
several functions of Rectors, Wardens, and 
Vestrymen in the control and administration 
of the Parishes, ascertaining the right and 
authority of each in the premises, according 
to the principles and laws of the Church.” 
By this committee a valuable report was 
presented to the General Convention of 1880 
a.d., and printed in the Journal. The com¬ 
mittee again reported in 1883 a.d., when at 
their own request the committee was en¬ 
larged and continued ; accordingly they still 
have the subject under consideration. In 
their last report they state that they “have 
found themselves unable as yet to agree 
upon any substantive measures which would 
be practically available in meeting the diffi¬ 
culties and settling the important questions 
involved in the subject. It is, however, one 
of growing importance, especially in view 
of the difficulty of avoiding bringing the 
law of the Church in conflict with the laws 
of the several States regulating the organi¬ 
zation of Church corporations, and the 
powers and functions of their office. The 
proper adjustment of these relations will re¬ 
quire patient investigation and conference.” 
In the present state of the inquiry this 
article must be content to accept and to de¬ 
fine existing conditions, to deal with gen¬ 
eral principles. Handbooks and guides have 
been published which cite and codify such 
laws as are in force in certain dioceses and 
parishes, to these reference maybe made for 
details to which no room here can be given. 
Diocesan canons are passed and Parochial 
organizations formed for the express pur¬ 
pose of carrying on the avowed mission and 
legitimate work of the Church, therefore 
if they conflict with the general principles 
and laws of the Church they violate the es¬ 
sential principle for which they were created, 
they are therefore bound to consult and to 
conform to the will of the Church in so far 
as it has been expressed. To ascertain this 
expressed will we must refer to the utter¬ 
ances of the Church, given in the Book of 
Common Prayer, and made from time to 
time by legislative bodies. 

The time and manner of electing Vestry¬ 
men, the number to be elected, and qualifi¬ 
cations for the office vary in different Dio¬ 
ceses. Efforts have been made repeatedly 
to bring the General Convention to require 
in Vestrymen some guarantee of conformity 




VESTRY 


771 


VESTRY 


and loyalty to the Church with the interests 
of which they are intrusted. In attempt¬ 
ing to make such a general law difficulties 
have been encountered of embarrassing fee¬ 
ble parishes, and of coming into conflict 
with existing terms of incorporation. The 
House of Deputies in 1883 a.d., by resolu¬ 
tion, “ earnestly commends to the Diocesan 
Conventions the importance of requiring 
that none but communicants shall be Church¬ 
wardens, and of requiring some proper re¬ 
gulations as to the conformity of Vestrymen 
with the worship and discipline of the 
Church.” 

I. To the Bishop the Vestry is related as to 
the head of the Diocese, its chief ecclesiastical 
authority, in whom is vested primarily the 
spiritual care and jurisdiction over all its 
Rectors and parishes. Accordingly, when 
a parish becomes vacant it is the duty of the 
Vestry immediately to give notice thereof to 
the Bishop. It is the common practice for 
the Vestry through its Wardens to provide 
ministerial services for a parish during its 
vacancy, but some Dioceses provide that this 
be done by the Bishop, recognizing that to 
him reverts the spiritual management of a 
parish while it is without a Rector; this ac¬ 
cords with the established polity and avowed 
principles of the Church. “ On the election 
of a minister into any church or parish, the 
Vestry shall deliver or cause to be delivered 
to the Bishop, or where there is no Bishop 
to the Standing Committee of the Diocese, 
notice of the same according to the form 
prescribed” (Title i., Can. xiv., Sect. 1). Not 
unless the Bishop, or the Standing Com¬ 
mittee, which in certain cases represents and 
acts for a Bishop, is satisfied that the Rec¬ 
tor-elect is a qualified minister of the Church 
and in good standing, is the Rector recog¬ 
nized as such and placed upon the record 
and list of the clergy which is kept by the 
Secretary of the Convention. The relations 
here indicated are still further expressed by 
the “Office of Institution,” which, whether 
used or not, utters and helps to interpret the 
law of the Church. In this office the ac¬ 
tion of the Vestry receives the Bishop’s sanc¬ 
tion and seal, by him the newly-elected 
minister is authorized to claim and enjoy 
all the accustomed temporalities appertain¬ 
ing to the cure; and in any difference be¬ 
tween him and his congregation as to a 
separation, the Bishop is declared to be “ the 
ultimate arbiter and judge.” 

The canons and the Office of Institution 
agree in recognizing that the Bishop is the 
source of ecclesiastical jurisdiction in his 
Diocese, and that by his permission and 
under his authority Ministers act as such 
within his Diocese. Evidently it is the 
will of the Church and for its peaceful and 
best administration that the Bishop should 
have a voice in both the appointment and 
the removal of Rectors within his Diocese, 
should counsel and influence, though not 
control, the Vestries in their choice of 
those who are to administer the parishes 


which are under the Bishop’s supervision, 
and for which he ultimately is responsible. 
The relations of the Vestry to their Diocesan 
are still further indicated by the canonical 
requirement that the Wardens and Vestry 
shall give to the Bishop, at his annual visi¬ 
tation, such information of the state of the 
Congregation as he may require of them 
(Title i., Can. xiv., Sect. 5). 

II. To the Rector the relations of a 
Vestry begin with his call to the parish. 
The practice of requiring or expecting a 
clergyman to preach on trial as a candidate 
for the position to be filled has been, and 
deserves to be, severely censured by repre¬ 
sentative men of the Church, both clerical 
and lay. It reverses the original and true 
relations of minister and people, degrades 
his office, disturbs the parish, and embar¬ 
rasses the Vestry, inviting general discussion 
and expression of opinion, and furnishes no 
reliable test of his abilities and adaptation 
to the parish. Full inquiries should be 
made covering the question of his ability 
and faithfulness at his last post, he should 
be seen and heard in his parish, if practi¬ 
cable, his visit to the parish to be filled 
should follow, not precede a call; then, if on 
an interview with the parish electing him he 
should appear to be not adapted to the posi¬ 
tion, he could decline it, and on learning 
that this is the desire of the Vestry, he 
would do so, if worthy to be thought of at 
all for the position. The call should be 
made in writing, and should distinctly state 
the provisions made for the minister’s sup¬ 
port. The extending and accepting of the 
call form a legal contract unlimited in con¬ 
tinuance, unless limitations be expressly 
stated. The salary offered is a legal debt 
recoverable by law, and cannot be either 
withheld or reduced, except by consent of 
him to whom it is due. Should the min¬ 
ister neglect or fail to perform his duties, it 
would be the duty of the Wardens and 
Vestry to make complaint to the Ecclesias¬ 
tical Authority of the Diocese. Should 
serious disagreement arise between the 
Rector and his Vestry, and a dissolution of 
the pastoral connection become desirable, re¬ 
lief may be had according to the laws and by 
methods duly provided (Title i., Can. xiv., 
Sect 6, and Title ii., Can. iv.). A Rector 
cannot resign his parish without consent of 
his Vestry, nor can the Rector be removed 
against his will except for the causes named 
and in the manner prescribed in the canons. 
The Church has carefully provided that 
the Rector’s tenure of his position should 
be undisputed, undisturbed, and perma¬ 
nent, that the pastoral relation should not 
be dissolved except for “ urgent reason,” 
that the incumbent should be independent 
of the unstable opinion and preferences of 
those whom he is to exhort and rebuke, as 
occasion may require. For his own offenses 
he is amenable to his ecclesiastical Superior 
and to the Chief Shepherd and Bishop of 
souls. His authority as a Minister of 





VESTRY 


772 


VESTRY 


Christ is not derived from nor dependent 
upon the Vestry who call him to a parish, 
hut is conveyed to him in his ordination, as 
indicated in the words, “ Take thou author¬ 
ity to execute the office of a Priest in the 
Church of God, now committed unto thee 
by the imposition of our hands.” The 
Vestry, in calling him to a parish, recognize 
this authority, place the parish under his 
spiritual care and control, and pledge to 
him that of which they are legal custo¬ 
dians. 

The use of the “ Office of Institution,” if 
not made obligatory by Diocesan Canons, is 
left to the option of the Vestry. It confers 
no new rights or powers upon either Rector 
or Vestry, but by its strong expressions and 
significant acts it declares and helps to de¬ 
fine the mutual relations into which they 
have entered, and of which the call made 
and accepted is sufficient evidence. In con¬ 
veying to the Rector the “ Temporalities” 
and the “ Keys of the Church,” the Vestry 
do not surrender their trust as custodians of 
the property of the parish and as managers 
of its revenue. The Rector cannot of his 
own motion alienate, or make any alteration 
in any of the property which belongs to the 
parish, nor can he incur any expense for the 
Vestry nor involve them in any obligation 
without their consent. The temporalities to 
which he is entitled are that portion of the 
revenue which the vestry has pledged for 
his support. The “ keys” placed in his 
hands indicate that to him is given the use 
and control of the church edifice for all 
purposes of worship and ordinary paro¬ 
chial work; he has the right to enter the 
church at all times, to open it when and as 
he may deem proper for worship, or instruc¬ 
tion, for all rites and offices of the Church. 
To him belongs the control and direction of 
all Sunday-schools, parish schools, asso¬ 
ciations, or meetings held within the parish 
for its work or welfare; ex officio he holds 
the first place in all spiritual interests and 
activities of the parish, in spiritual matters 
he has no co-ordinate authority in the par¬ 
ish ; in temporal affairs he is associated 
with his Vestry, with it he forms a part of 
the corporation. In theory the corporation 
represents three interests or estates, as in¬ 
dicated by the title “ Rector, Wardens, and 
Vestry.” In some Dioceses the State law 
requires that, in order to legally transact 
business, each of these three must be repre¬ 
sented. To mention and to regard the Ves¬ 
try apart from the Rector is an usage which 
has grown out of the power and privilege 
exercised by the Vestry during a vacancy 
of the Parish Rectorate, but the Rector is 
or ought to be an integral part of every 
parish, related to it as a Bishop is to his 
Diocese, sharing in the care of its tempo¬ 
rality, present at the meetings of the Vestry, 
presiding in them, and taking such part in 
the proceedings as the laws of the Diocese and 
the Parish prescribe or permit, acting by vir¬ 
tue of his office as head of the Vestry as well 


as of the parish. (Hoffman, Law of the 
Church, pp. 255-56 and 262—66.) The un¬ 
derstanding of thissubject, and the practical 
observance of the principles and distinctions 
here indicated, would promote the order and 
peace of parishes; would, on the one hand, 
deter vestrymen from transgressing the 
limits of their official duties in making 
themselves judges of spiritual matters and in 
attempting to control that which the Church 
has intentionally placed beyond their reach ; 
and, on the other hand, would withhold 
Rectors from extending their exclusive direc¬ 
tion of spiritual things over those matters 
which are intrusted to the Vestry, and 
which should be left to its management, or 
at least not be taken in hand except by its 
approval and consent. 

III. To the congregation the relations 
sustained by the Vestry have been implied 
in the statements already made. The Ves¬ 
trymen are elected by the congregation to 
represent it in law; to have charge and care 
of its property ; to look after its temporal in¬ 
terests ; to collect and disburse its revenue; 
to elect Delegates who may represent the 
congregation at Diocesan Conventions ; act¬ 
ing for the parishioners, and under the juris¬ 
diction of the Bishop, they choose and call a 
minister and make provision for his support; 
in the absence of a Rector they are bound 
to see that no person ministers to the con¬ 
gregation without sufficient evidence that 
he is duly qualified to do so. If the Rector 
prove unworthy, unfaithful, or incompetent, 
they in the interests of the parishioners make 
complaint to the Bishop. They provide 
that all things needful for worship and for 
the work of the Parish be furnished. Al¬ 
though they act officially as vestrymen only 
when in Vestry meetings, yet the relations 
which they hold and the interests with 
which they are intrusted, should prompt 
them to be foremost among parishioners in 
promoting the welfare and growth of the 
parish, stimulating others, sustaining and 
aiding the Rector, cheerfully undertaking 
and faithfully performing such duties as 
may be assigned to them, and such as the 
welfare of the Parish may require. 

Authorities : Dr. Wm. Smith’s Dictionary 
of Christian Antiquities, Bishop Wilber- 
force, History of the American Church, 
Hoffman, Law of the Church, Reports of 
the Joint Committee of the General Con¬ 
vention, Journals of 1880 and 1883 a.d. 
Papers prepared by Rev. Dr. Dix and Mr. 
James Parker, read before and printed by 
request of the Joint Com. (Pamphlet, 1880 
a.d.) ; Paper by Bishop B. H. Paddock, pre¬ 
sented to the House of Bishops, Gen. Con¬ 
vention Journal, 1883 a.d., Appendix x.; 
Parish Duties, in a Pastoral Letter to the 
Laity, Bishop Wm. H. De Lancey ; Rev. Dr. 
Thomas Richey, The Churchman’s Hand- 
Book ; Rev. H. M. Baum, The Rights and 
Duties of Rectors, Church-Wardens, and 
Vestrymen in the American Church. 

Rev. J. De Wolfe Perry. 





VIA MEDIA 


773 


VICE 


Via Media. The position of the Church 
between the extremes of Papal usurpation 
and of Dissenting rejections has procured 
for her the name of the “ Via Media” ( Mid¬ 
dle Way). It describes her position with 
tolerable accuracy, but it implies that it is 
a deliberate compromise. But this is not 
so. The Truth winch lies between extremes 
of false statement is in itself no compromise. 
It is simply “ the Truth.” So the Church 
in all countries is not the result of compro¬ 
mises, but she is the visible Body to whom 
the proclamation of the facts of the Gospel 
and their consequent power over our lives 
is committed. That in some countries too 
great assumptions are made and the truth 
overlaid with false tradition, while by re¬ 
action others have torn off too much of the 
truth in ridding themselves of false tradi¬ 
tion, does not make the Church, which is af¬ 
fected by neither, a middle way. It is no 
half-way house between extremes. But 
there is yet another consideration. In hold¬ 
ing all truths the Church must hold them 
in their proper relative positions, and not 
exaggerate any one at the expense of 
others. It is the “proportion of the faith” 
which the Apostle shows we must set forth : 
“ Having then gifts differing according to 
the grace that is given to us, whether proph¬ 
ecy (i.e., preaching), let us prophesy accord¬ 
ing to the proportion of the faith” (Rom. 
xii. 6). Since the majority of men can only 
grasp a portion of the truth and hold that 
with enthusiasm, it requires some balance 
of mind to see that these may drag all other 
truths, whether as pendent or independent, 
out of their true relations, and so may dis¬ 
turb the due proportion of the Faith, i.e., 
the Articles of the Creed. Here again the 
“ Via Media” is only so because the Church 
can admit no disproportions in the use of 
Scripture, and allow no depression of one 
Article at the expense of the other. No 
Scripture can be alleged against another, no 
text interpreted at the expense of another, 
no meaning of Scripture either minimized 
or pushed to extreme consequences. For 
this reason the concurrent tradition (not 
oral, but recorded) of the Church upon Scrip¬ 
ture and upon practice and discipline de¬ 
termine her wise Politeia, her statesman¬ 
ship now under her divine Constitution. 
The Via Media is popularly and from one 
view correctly expressed in that name under 
which her chartered and corporate rights 
are secured to her by the Civil Law,—Prot¬ 
estant Episcopal. It may cover a higher, 
nobler right, but it cannot obscure it, and 
only forces us to bring out more strongly, 
her right as a part of the Church Catholic 
and Holy. But Protestant she is against 
the blunders and excesses or defects of 
those who heedlessly delight in or abuse 
the name and misuse its Christian meaning. 
Episcopal she must be by force of her di¬ 
vine Constitution. In these senses her 
name in Law is proper. It expresses that 
balance which is hers to uphold, and which 


in the end will draw all men to her who 
are not utterly blinded. The Via Media of 
her position is not the result of a pitiful 
shrinking, but the balanced and clear enun¬ 
ciation of the principles of the Faith onco 
committed to the Saints, and which she has 
to uphold. 

Viaticum. (Literally, the provisions for 
a journey.) It is usually used to mean the 
Holy Communion administered to a dying 
person. The spiritual food for the soul upon 
its last journey. It was a very ancient 
name for it. Clement of Alexandria (172- 
206 a.d.) so employs it,—“ the provision 
for the journey to the unseen life;” possi¬ 
bly, in this sense, also, Clement of Rome, 
a hundred years earlier. From the time of 
the Council of Nice (325 a.d.) the term 
was most usually employed to mean this ad¬ 
ministration of the Eucharist to the dying. 

Vicar. A term not occurring often in 
this country, since in our parish system a 
Vicar, a locum tenens , has no proper exist¬ 
ence. It is usually supposed to refer to the 
same person, who may be called a Rector or 
a Parson as well indifferently. It was the 
result of the complications of the English 
system of Patronage, by the gift of, and 
the holding of, a Benefice. The Vicar was, 
in the complex mode of arranging the in¬ 
comes of the parishes, the stipendiary Curate 
of the Parson in such cases where the Par¬ 
son, from some cause, gives the Parish into 
the Curate’s hands and has no cure of the 
souls in the Parish. “ A Vicar ( vicaj'ius ) is 
one that hath a spiritual promotion or living 
under the parson, and is so denominated as 
officiating (vice ejus ) in his place or stead, 
and such a promotion or living is called a 
vicarage, which is part or portion of the 
parsonage allotted to the Vicar for his main¬ 
tenance and support.” The causes which 
led to the formation of these Vicarages are 
rather intricate, and are not of value to us 
here, but can be found in Burn’s Eccl. Law 
and in Blackstone’s Commentaries. 

Vicarious Sacrifice. Vide Sacrifice. 

Vice. Vice is the habitual characteristic 
breaking of the moral Law. It is charac¬ 
teristic, and therefore it is one of the most 
fearful forms of sinfulness. It may be dis¬ 
played in only a single evil habit, or it may 
be shown in a thoroughly debased character. 
It is the fault or defect of the spiritual na¬ 
ture of the man, so that, prone by inherited 
aptitudes for some form of sinfulness, he 
does not care to free himself from its power, 
and so loses that power for a spiritual life 
which is the true health of the soul. For 
viciousness is very largely the result of evil 
education, of sinful thoughts falling on con¬ 
genial soil, of a blunted or a defective con¬ 
sciousness of sin and the loathsomeness of 
it, of habits it may be carelessly taken up, 
but certainly not striven against and not 
controlled. It was against the vicious of 
the age that our Lord uttered His severest 
denunciations, and there is no subtler vicious¬ 
ness than that which cloaks itself under 





YIGIL 


774 


VIRGINIA 


spiritual form. Throughout the Holy Scrip¬ 
tures the sinner from weakness or sudden 
temptation is tenderly dealt with, but the 
vicious character is held up to view in the 
most scathing terms. Our Lord’s denuncia¬ 
tions of the vices of His own day, the 
writings of St. Paul, St. Peter, and St. Jude 
against the sins of the heathen around them, 
the terrible passages in Hebrews against 
willful sin uuder whatever secondary guise 
it maybe shown, are all directed against the 
root form of viciousness of life. In pagan 
countries it was far more prominent and un¬ 
rebuked of course than it is now. And yet 
it is but too general, too easily found, here 
and now. The purlieus of our cities, the 
street corners and lounging-places where 
lewd fellows of the baser sort do congregate, 
are places that have a terrible attractiveness 
for young men who have been but irregu¬ 
larly controlled and are still more irregu¬ 
larly reached by holy influences. Since vice 
is for a proportion of our population largely 
the result of an education in it, to root out 
vice is one of the great ends of the Church’s 
influence, and the purpose of the educational 
and training agencies which are organized or 
should be organized in every parish. These 
are the chief causes for the existence of a 
parish. It is to supply a better, healthier 
education to the soul. It must create by its 
agencies an influence in the community 
which will raise the starveling soul fed on 
vice out of the mire of its groveling lusts. 
As an instrument of living power used by 
the Holy Ghost, it must exert itself for 
good. In co-operation with His ceaseless 
strivings and pleadings with the heart, the 
Church’s parochial and social influences 
must be exerted so that those classes may be 
reached who are now more or less under 
vicious living. It is, then, a very important 
responsibility that rests upon the men in 
the Church of to-day, in actively using those 
means and instrumentalities which are 
almost at hand, and can be organized in 
every parish, by Guilds, by Brotherhoods, by 
co-operative associations, which can readily 
be begun and with tact carried on with suc¬ 
cess. Were it but a Guild for intercessional 
prayer it would be an instrument of vast 
good. And it certainly is one of the sim¬ 
plest that can be instituted. But whatever 
means may be used in any case, the object 
must be still the same, to prevent the ac¬ 
cession to the ranks of the criminal classes, 
and to save from their souls’ peril, the large 
floating mass of our young who are by their 
impressibleness readily attracted in either 
direction, and whose dimmed sense of sin 
and of responsibility makes them peculiarly 
open to temptation. To do this successfully 
is a problem which needs the lay co-opera¬ 
tion in each parish to the utmost extent. . 

Vigil. The eve of a festival which is 
kept as a fast-day. An eve is unfasted. 
A Vigil is observed with a fast. The Eng¬ 
lish Reformers cut off a large number of 
Evens and Vigils in their rearrangement 


of the Calendar, but retained sixteen. 
These are Christmas-day, Purification, An¬ 
nunciation, Easter-day, Ascension-day, 
Whit-Sunday, St. Matthias, St. John Bap¬ 
tist, St. Peter, St. James, St. Bartholomew, 
St. Matthew, SS. Simon and Jude, St. An¬ 
drew, St. Thomas, and All-Saints. 

As the observance of a Festival begins at 
the evening service of the day before, and 
its Collect is properly read then, the fast is 
for the day till the Evening Prayer if the 
Feast have a vigil. But Evens are not 
fasted. We have retained but one of the 
Evens or Vigils, but we have kept in popu¬ 
lar phrase Christmas-Even. Easter-Eve is 
the only one we have retained in the Lit- 
urgy. 

Virginia. Rev. T. Grayson Dashiell, D.D., 
has done a good work for this Diocese in 
preparing a Digest of its Conventions and 
Councils. This sketch will be a synopsis 
of that volume. It is very desirable that 
every Diocese should have such a com- 
pend. 

The history of the Church in Virginia is 
a matter of especial interest to Churchmen, 
as in that State the first regular services of 
the Church were celebrated, and as that an¬ 
cient Diocese has been the mother of Bishops 
and clergy who have not only gone through¬ 
out this land, but also to heathen shores. 

In 1607 a.d. the Jamestown colony landed, 
with good Parson Hunt as their spiritual 
leader. He was a godly man, a peace-maker, 
and a cheerer of the colonists in their diffi¬ 
culties. In the reign of Charles II. a char¬ 
ter was drawn up for the erection of a Bish¬ 
opric in Virginia, making Jamestown a 
cathedral city. 

In beginning an account of Virginia Con¬ 
ventions, it must be noted that those gather¬ 
ings in old times were not merely business 
meetings, but they also had a social charac¬ 
ter. The hospitality of patriarchal and early 
Christian times was renewed, and the fer¬ 
vent religious services served to knit to¬ 
gether Christ’s people in love, as Bishop 
Meade expresses it. 

After the Revolution, the Church was 
greatly depressed, and was robbed of much 
of her property by wicked legislation, 
though the Church-people had done much 
to advance the war, and Washington him¬ 
self was a Churchman. 

The first Convention after the Revolution 
met in Richmond in 1785 a.d. ; Rev. Jas. 
Madison, D.D., was President, and 36 clergy 
and 71 laymen assembled. An address was 
prepared to stir up the wills of the faithful 
and call forth their aid. 

In 1786 a.d., Rev. David Griffith was 
elected Bishop. 

In 1787 a.d. the parishes were exhorted 
to provide for the expense of educating two 
youth from their early years for the minis¬ 
try. 

In 1789 a.d., Dr. Griffith relinquished his 
election to the Episcopate. The Church did 
not come forward to meet the expense inci- 






VIRGINIA 


775 


VIRGINIA 


dent to a voyage to England for consecra¬ 
tion, and domestic affliction also proved an 
obstacle. He was an excellent man, and 
worthy of the position offered him. 

In 1790 a.d., Rev. James Madison, D.D., 
was elected Bishop, and was consecrated the 
same year in Lambeth. He was President 
of "William and Mary College. Bishop 
Madison’s first address in 1791 a.d. was a for¬ 
cible exhortation to build up the kingdom of 
Christ. A resolution was adopted looking 
to the formation of a society for the relief of 
widows and orphans of clergymen, and the 
next year a plan presented by Rev. Samuel 
Shield was adopted. 

In 1792 a.d. upwards of 600 were con¬ 
firmed in 5 parishes. 

In 1805 a.d. the vexed question of the 
right to glebes was before the Convention, 
as it had been previously under considera¬ 
tion. The trouble continued for many years. 
Bishop Madison asked for an Assistant 
Bishop, but the nomination was deferred 
until the next Convention. Bishop Madison 
died in 1812 a.d. His addresses show an 
earnest spirit, but the obstacles before him 
were great. In the Convention this year a 
canon concerning itineracy was reaffirmed. 
Rev. John Bracken, D.D., was elected to fill 
the vacant Bishopric, but the next year de¬ 
clined the position. 

In 1814 a.d., Rev. Richard Channing 
Moore, D.D., rector of Monumental Church, 
Richmond, was chosen Bishop. The choice 
was a happy and blessed one. 

In 1815 a.d. a proposition was made by 
the President of William and Mary College 
concerning the support of a Theological Pro¬ 
fessor in that institution, and the Convention 
considered the object a desirable one. 

In 1815 a.d. , Bishop Moore made an en¬ 
couraging report to the Convention. 

In 1816 a.d. a Common Prayer-Book and 
Tract Society was formed. About 730 con¬ 
firmations were reported. 

Up to 1814 a.d. the Conventions met in 
the Capitol at Richmond, for two years after 
that date in Monumental Church, Richmond, 
the next year in the church at Fredericks¬ 
burg, and then rotation commenced through 
certain parishes which were selected as 
proper places of meeting. 

In order to supply clergy the ministers 
were recommended to receive young men 
into their families, and to make use of them 
as lay-readers during their preparatory 
studies. In 1819 a.d. the Convention rec¬ 
ommended the organization of a Missionary 
Society for the benefit of vacant parishes. 

In 1823 a.d. over $10,000 were reported 
as subscriptions to a proposed Theological 
School. The attempt to educate candidates at 
William and Mary College was not a success. 
In 1823 a.d. the funds for the Widows and 
Orphans of the clergy reported over $5000. 
Rev. Reuel Keith was appointed a Theologi¬ 
cal Professor, and the next year it was re¬ 
solved to locate the young Seminary in Al¬ 
exandria for the present. In 1825 a.d. there 


were 21 students and 2 Professors, Mr. Nor¬ 
ris being the second one. In 1829 a.d. a 
property for the Seminary was bought near 
Alexandria. 

In 1829 a.d., Rev. Wm. Meade, D.D., 
was elected Assistant Bishop. 

In 1830 a.d. the number of organized 
churches was about 100, the clergy being 
less than half that number. 

In 1835 a.d. we find, by Bishop Moore’s 
commendation of the Southern Churchman 
in his address, that the idea of the impor¬ 
tance of a Church newspaper was already 
felt. Rev. William F. Lee was the editor. 
The paper still does a good work. This 
year attention was reported to Sunday- 
schools and Bible-elasses, and to the spir¬ 
itual necessities of the colored people. 

In 1838 a.d., Bishop Meade speaks touch¬ 
ingly in his address of the old churches of 
Virginia. This is one of the most interest¬ 
ing subjects connected with the history of 
this State. It is very sad to read that some 
of these buildings had been lost to the 
Church. Sometimes the materials were 
ruthlessly taken away to construct other 
buildings. The grave-yard walls were fall¬ 
ing, and the beautiful locations became a 
grief to the passer-by, as presenting a scene 
of desolation. The churches in King Wil¬ 
liam County were named after the creeks, 
and it sounds strangely to hear of Mango- 
hick and Aquinton Churches. Some of the 
old churches were cruciform. Yeocomico 
Church was built in 1706 a.d., and it was 
believed at the time of the Bishop’s visita¬ 
tion this year that no new shingle was ever 
put upon its roof. That these churches 
were strongly built is shown by the fact 
that they so long endured the ravages of 
time when exposed to the weather within as 
well as without. Any one who has seen 
Christ Church, Alexandria, or St. Paul’s, 
Norfolk, may have a fair idea of their ap¬ 
pearance. The antiquarian may still find 
much to delight him in these old churches 
of Virginia, while the Churchman feels 
deeply moved to think of the alienation, 
spoliation, and destruction which has been 
the lot of many of them. 

Farnham Church, unused for worship for 
thirty or forty years, and abused by worldly 
and improper uses, was consecrated this year, 
having been refitted, it being believed that 
the old churches were never consecrated. 
The Wicomico Church was without doors 
and windows. Inside the church were the 
wagon, the plow, and barrels of lime and 
tar, and lumber. Cattle had free admission, 
and the slab of marble which covered the 
body of one of its latest ministers was cov¬ 
ered with dirt and rubbish. The old bell, 
which had called the faithful to worship 
God, lay in a pew near the falling pulpit. 
Steps had been taken towards repair, though 
the Bishop was doubtful of the result. A 
more cheerful view was presented at Christ 
Church, Lancaster County, which was a 
fine edifice, built at the expense of Mr. 






VIRGINIA 


776 


VIRGINIA 


Robin Carter. Bishop Meade passed the 
ruins of Pope’s Creek Church, in which 
Washington was baptized and attended ser¬ 
vice in early life. The Bishop loved to 
hold service in these deserted churches, even 
when they were in a ruinous condition. His 
descriptions of them are poetic, and he wails 
like an ancient prophet over the desolations 
of Zion. He was deeply moved at the deso¬ 
late appearance of Pohick Church, near 
Mount Vernon. Washington selected its 
location and worshiped in the venerable 
building. An effort to repair it has since 
been made. The visitor at Mount Vernon 
may readily prolong his drive to see this 
hallowed spot. 

In 1841 a.d. the eloquent and loving 
Bishop Moore died. He was a man with a 
great heart, loving all, and beloved by 
all. Bishop Meade speaks of him as being 
peculiarly amiable and interesting, and 
venerable in form and countenance and 
manner. 

In 1842 a.d., Rev. John Johns, D.D., was 
elected as Assistant Bishop. 

In 1843 a.d., Bishop Meade reported 31 
candidates for holy orders, and that more 
than 1000 persons had been confirmed by 
Bishop Johns and himself. The Virginia 
Conventions at times passed very strong 
resolutions with regard to Christian morals, 
protesting against gambling, dancing, thea¬ 
tre-going, intemperance, and the desecration 
of the Lord’s Day. Both Bishops and 
Conventions have also constantly protested 
against changes in the order of worship, 
and a great simplicity has been observed 
with regard to ornamentation of churches. 
The feeling of the Church, like that of the 
State, has been exceedingly conservative, 
and everything like novelty or change has 
been generally discouraged. A scattered 
country population is not easily moved, and 
walks readily in the ways of its fathers. 

In 1844 a.d. the Bishop gives a report of 
old churches “repaired and once more ren¬ 
dered vocal with the praises of God, after 
the silence and profanation of many years.’’ 
In reference to this matter it must be re¬ 
membered that after the Revolution the 
number of clergy was greatly lessened, and 
the Church was fearfully depressed. Even 
at Bishop Moore’s election Bishop Meade 
states that but seven clergy were present 
in Convention. When Bishop Meade was 
ordained Deacon by Bishop Madison, in 
Williamsburg, on a bright Sunday morning, 
only about fifteen gentlemen, young and old, 
and two ladies were present. On the other 
hand, in 1845 a.d., Bishop Meade, in the 
same address which records the weakness of 
the Church in Bishop Madison’s day, ex¬ 
claims, “ What hath God wrought!” as he 
notes the full employment of two Bishops 
in visiting nearly 200 churches and stations, 
while the Diocese contained 100 clergymen, 
and 50 persons studying for the ministry. 
While formerly English clergy served in 
Virginia, in later years she has sent Mission¬ 


aries to Europe, Asia, and Africa. Bishop 
Boone, of China, Bishops Payne and Penick, 
of Africa, and Bishop Williams, of Japan, 
were from her Theological Seminary. In 
addition to her diocesan work the Virginia 
Church was interested in the Bible and 
Colonization Societies. In 1860 a.d. the 
contributions, exclusive of current expenses, 
were $113,510.57, the largest sum reported 
up to this time. 

Bishop Meade died in 1862 a.d. He was 
a strong, earnest, godly man, to whom Vir¬ 
ginia is deeply indebted. He was uncom¬ 
promising as to what he considered to be 
the truth in Christ. As an evangelist he 
gladly endured hardness, and made his vis¬ 
itations faithfully throughout avast Diocese. 
In friendship he was kind and sympathetic. 
At the Convention preceding his death he 
gave a semi-centennial discourse, humbly 
giving his experience of a lifetime. Bishop 
Johns says of this address, “There was im¬ 
pressively evident ‘a ripeness and perfect¬ 
ness of age in Christ,’ which might have 
advised us that his maturity for Heaven was 
attained, and ‘ the time of his departure 
at hand.’ ” When we compare the dead¬ 
ness of the Church in Virginia in the begin¬ 
ning of Bishop Meade’s clerical work to the 
life shown in it at the end of his Episcopal 
work, we can but say that, under God, the 
blessed change was largely due to his un¬ 
tiring labors and constant faith. When 
even Chief-Justice Marshall, and the Gen¬ 
eral Convention itself, doubted concerning 
the future of the Virginia Church, Bishop 
Meade gave little heed to evil forebodings, 
but toiled on in storm as well as sunshine, 
and he was blessed in his deed. His re¬ 
mains lie in Hollywood Cemetery, Rich¬ 
mond, and a costly monument has been 
erected over them by a sorrowing people. 

The War separated Virginia from the 
General Convention for a short period. The 
Church then found work to do among the 
Confederate soldiers by means of her chap¬ 
lains. When peace was restored, Bishop 
Johns wisely advised the Council to resume 
its former relations with the North. In re¬ 
flecting on the terrible devastation suffered 
by Virginia during the war, he must bo 
blind indeed who cannot see the good hand 
of our God in this action. The address of 
Bishop Johns was full of love, and not bit¬ 
terness, and in due time the Church in Vir¬ 
ginia again sent her delegates to the General 
Convention. The return of the Southern 
Dioceses is one of the fairest pictures in the 
history of the Church of Christ. It is 
very easy to keep up divisions after they 
have taken place. If the whole religious 
world could imbibe the spirit which influ¬ 
enced the Southern Bishops at this juncture, 
the words sect and schism might be forgot¬ 
ten on earth. May this loving act be a pre¬ 
cursor of the time when all the people of 
God shall see eye to eye, and join hand 
with hand. In 1866 a.d., Cassius F. Lee 
offered a resolution in favor of resuming 





VIRGINIA 


777 


VIRGINIA 


connection with the General Convention, 
which was adopted. 

Frequent notices occur in the Conventions 
of interest in work among the colored peo¬ 
ple. In 1879 a.d., Bishop Whittle commends 
the noble work of Mrs. F. E. Buford, and 
calls attention to the movement guided by 
her mission in the Zion Union Apostolic 
Church. 

In 1867 a.d., Rev. F*ancis M. Whittle, 
rector of St. Paul’s Church, Louisville, 
Ky., was elected Assistant Bishop. 

In 1870 a.d. it is reported that an Epis¬ 
copal residence has been purchased in Rich¬ 
mond ; Bishop Johns resided near Alexan¬ 
dria. Bishop Johns died in 1876 a.d. Bishop 
Whittle speaks of his peaceful and trium¬ 
phant death, after a ministry lacking but 
one month of fifty-seven years, comprising 
abundant labors as Assistant Bishop, and 
Bishop for nearly thirty-three years. He 
was a Christian teacher, faithful and be¬ 
loved. The Council made an appropriation 
towards building a monument for him. 

In 1877 a.d. consent was given to the 
erection of a Diocese in West Virginia. 
After the loss of West Virginia, in. the 
Council of 1881 a.d. there were 12,778 
communicants reported. From 1865 a.d. 
to 1881 a.d., 119 were ordained as Priests 
and 136 as Deacons, and 16,174 confirmed. 
The contributions noted for that period for 
diocesan and external objects amounted to 
$2,500,000. The last report of communi¬ 
cants as given in the Church Almanac for 
1884 a.d. is 14,153. 

In 1883 a.d., Rev. Alfred Magill Ran¬ 
dolph, D.D., of Emmanuel Church, Balti¬ 
more, was consecrated Assistant Bishop. 
Being a Virginian by birth and a graduate of 
William and Mary College and the Theo¬ 
logical Seminary of Alexandria, he will 
minister among his own people. 

The educational institutions of Virginia 
are the Theological Seminary and the High 
School near Alexandria, the Virginia Fe¬ 
male Institute, Staunton, and the Episcopal 
Female Institute, Winchester. 

The history of the Church in Virginia 
would be incomplete without a sketch ot the 
Theological Seminary, which has been in a 
great measure the means of its revival and 
increase. Prof. Packard’s discourse at its 
Semi-Centennial gives the following facts: 
Rev. Dr. Reuel Keith and Rev. Dr. Wm. H. 
Wilmer were the first Professors; from a 
small beginning hundreds have now been 
educated.and over thirty have gone as Mis¬ 
sionaries to the heathen. Bishop Meade was 
interested in founding the Seminary before 
he was advanced to the Episcopate. Dr. 
Keith was a man of great fervor in devotion, 
and rendered the Liturgy most impressive 
bv his manner of reading it. Bishop Meade 
pronounced him the most eloquent preacher 
he had ever heard. Dr. Wilmer did more 
than any other man except Bishop Meade to 
revive the Church in Virginia. The Pro¬ 
fessors in this Seminary have been men of 


holy lives, and have done much to infuse a 
proper spirit into the minds of the students. 
Rev. Dr. Clemson, in his reminiscence of 
Seminary life, quoted in the Rev. Philip 
Slaughter’s address on this occasion, speaks 
of the Rev. Oliver Norris as “a lovely man 
of the sweetest piety,” and adds, “ he al¬ 
ways reminded me of the Apostle John.” 
Dr. Keith he describes as “a man of fine 
intellect and attainments. “ All respected 
and revered him. The Rev. Dr. Wilmer 
was a bland, cheerful, companionable man.” 
The amiable Mr. Lippitt and Charles Mann 
and Dr. Sparrow must not be forgotten as 
early workers in this field. The Rev. James 
May, D.D., by his devout life and faithful 
teaching left a strong impress on this school 
of the prophets. Over the grave of Bishop 
Meade is the inscription, “ The Founder of 
the Theological Seminary of Virginia,” and 
certainly the Seminary itself is a noble 
monument. The Apostolic Bishop Moore 
was interested in the institution and at¬ 
tended its annual examinations, with “ his 
massive and noble countenance, his long flow¬ 
ing locks, his sonorous voice.” A pleasant 
incident in the Seminary’s history is the 
erection of Aspinwall Hall by the Aspin- 
walls, at the suggestion of Bishop Bedell. 
Bohlen Hall was the work of the Bohlen 
family, and munificent gifts have been re¬ 
ceived from Anson G. P. Dodge and others. 
Bishop Griswold’s widow gave his library. 

Any one who has visited the Seminary 
must have been struck with its magnificent 
situation on a hill, which covers a view of 
great beauty, stretching many miles towards 
Washington and Georgetown. In such a 
place, and among such teachers, were do¬ 
mestic and foreign Missionaries trained, and 
a feeling of social and private piety engen¬ 
dered. From this spot Hanson, Hazlehurst, 
Hening, Syle, Nelson, Parker, Thompson, 
and Dr. Hill, with many others, went forth 
to work in foreign fields. In the grave¬ 
yard at Cape Palmas five alumni rest,— 
Minor, Holcomb, Messenger, Robert Smith, 
and Colden Hoffman. Let us hear the de¬ 
voted Hoffman from his African grave 
calling with his dying breath to the Ameri¬ 
can Church, “ Tell them by the Crucified 
One not to hold back their hands.” While 
this Seminary has been distinguished for its 
foreign missionary work, other Divinity 
Schools are now learning its lesson of devo¬ 
tion. The General Theological Seminary 
in New York is a little older than the Al¬ 
exandria Seminary, though the subject of 
Theological education was broached in the 
Virginia Convention some time before the 
Alexandria Seminary was founded. These 
two Divinity Schools are our oldest Theo¬ 
logical Institutions, and from them a great 
number of our Bishops and Clergy have 
graduated, though as the country advances 
in extent and population, it has been thought 
necessary to open other schools of this kind. 
May they long send their healing streams 
throughout this land and foreign lands, 






VIRGINITY 


778 VIRTUES, THEOLOGICAL 


“ that the comfortable Gospel of Christ 
may be truly preached, truly received, and 
truly followed, in all places, to the breaking 
down the kingdom of sin, Satan, and death.” 

Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Virginity. While the sanctity of mar¬ 
riage, its honor, and its holy estate are not 
by any means undervalued in Holy Scrip¬ 
ture, and it is commanded of all men to be 
had in reverence, still the state of virginity 
is highly commended in Scripture. One of 
the traditional sayings of our Lord is with 
reference to it. The Apostle St. Paul com¬ 
mends it. In the Revelation it is a mark 
of those who alone sing the song of the 
Lamb. The Virgins, as an order in the 
Church, probably existed from its first prac¬ 
tical organized work. St. Philip the Dea¬ 
con had four daughters who were Virgins. 
To merely say that they were unmarried 
does not convey the full force of the passage. 
And immediately after the Apostolic age we 
have constant references to virginity of both 
sexes. This was an almost inevitable state 
for those who would escape the fearful pol¬ 
lution of heathen society, and who would 
live in religious seclusion. It was to be a 
life-long vow. Those who broke it, either 
by sin or by marrying, were in many places 
marked persons, and were in some way 
made to feel that they had fallen in the 
Church’s estimation. It must have been so 
marked, since it was a natural and healthy 
movement vrithin the Church and among 
the Laity. It gave to the Church many 
earnest, unattached lay-workers, who could 
be employed by her in undertakings which 
would have been impossible to married per¬ 
sons. This otate of things continued for 
two hundred years, but the necessity for se¬ 
cluding them into communities led to the 
formation of religious associations of a more 
regular and positive rule, and from this 
grew up the institution of nuns. 

Virtues, Theological. Virtue, in the 
Christian sense, is moral goodness. It arises 
from love to God, and love to man (Phil. iv. 
8). “ Actions to which we are rightl}’ directed 
by our Reason are Duties. The Habits and 
Dispositions by which we perform our 
Duties are Virtues” (Whewell). “Truth,” 
says Warburton, “and Virtue are twin- 
born sisters, . . . Truth being speculative 
Virtue, and Virtue only practical Truth.” 
A truly virtuous man rises above popular 
opinion, and, as Bacon declares, would be 
virtuous in a desert. It was a pretty con¬ 
ceit of Plato that if virtue “ could be made 
the object of sight, it would excite in us a 
wonderful love of wisdom.” Hypocrisy is 
a compliment paid b} r the wicked to virtue, 
but it is easier to be virtuous than to feign 
the appearance of goodness. Swift shows 
that as health is one thing, but diseases are 
many, so we may reduce the virtues to a few 
heads, while vices are without number. The 
various Christian virtues combined in unity 
form a Christian life, though no man is 
perfectly innocent. The three virtues styled 


Theological are Faith, Hope, and Charity 
(1 Cor. xiii. 13). Faith is placed first, for 
it is the foundation-stone in the Christian 
edifice. “ Without faith it is impossible to 
please Him; for he that cometh to God 
must believe that He is, and that He is a re¬ 
warder of them that diligently seek Him” 
(Heb. xi. 6). By faith weak man lays hold 
on God, who is his “ refuge and strength.” 
The human garment of rags is replaced by 
the robe of Christ’s righteousness, and 
guilty man stands acquitted because his 
Saviour has borne the penalty of his sin. 
Hence, when in Holy Baptism the person is 
introduced into Christ’s Church, the ques¬ 
tion is properly asked as to his belief in the 
Creed, which is the sum of Christianity. In 
the first prayer in that service the Theologi¬ 
cal Virtues are welded together thus: 
“ steadfast in faith, joyful through hope, and 
rooted in charity.” Wiih such faith the 
believer passes safely “the waves of this 
troublesome world,” and comes to Christ’s 
Heavenly Kingdom. The question of our 
Lord to the man whose blindness He had 
removed was, “ Dost thou believe on the 
Son of God?” And he said, “ Lord, I be¬ 
lieve. And he worshiped Him” (St. John 
ix. 35, 38). Such faith accompanied with 
Christian acts brings salvation. 

“ If Faith begins the Christian life, Hope 
continues and supports it. Even the heathen 
in the myth about Hope remaining in the 
bottom of the box of Pandora, when a mul¬ 
titude of evils had flown from it, saw its 
wonderful power. Hope bends over the 
infant’s cradle, and relieves the watcher by 
the sick-bed. It nerves the laborer’s arm, 
and gives the patriot assistance in oppression. 
In religion St. Paul tells us that “ we are 
saved by hope” (Rom. viii. 24). Such hope 
breeds patience (v. 25). It is the “ anchor 
of the soul” “ which entereth into that 
within the veil” (Heb. vi. 19). The hope 
of an open heaven and a waiting Christ, 
as seen by St. Stephen, brightens the lot of 
God’s children, and in the midst of toil 
holds out the promise of blessed rest (Heb. 
iv. 9). 

And now follows the crowning grace of 
Charity. The word comes to us from the 
Greek, and means love, though in common 
speech it is often restricted to alms-giving. 
“ God is love” (1 John iv. 8). The suffer¬ 
ing of Christ for man (vs. 9, 10) is the 
highest manifestation of God’s love. St. 
John brings the duty into practice in say¬ 
ing, “ Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought 
also to love one another” (v. 11). Hence the 
long-suffering, modesty, and endurance of 
love, as described in 1 Cor. xiii., show how 
this virtue is the mother of many virtues, 
and is needed to complete faith and hope. 
“ Love is the fulfilling of the law” (Rom. 
xiii. 10). On love to God and love to man 
“ hang all the law and the prophets” (St. 
Matt. xxii. 40). A man who loves his 
neighbor will not rob his goods, or seek his 
life, or injure his good name, and man’s whole 





VIRTUES, THEOLOGICAL 779 


VISITATION, EPISCOPAL 


duty may be comprehended in this thought 
of love, or charity. “ And now abideth 
faith, hope, charity, these three; but the 
greatest of these is charity” (1 Cor. xiii. 
13). 

The four Cardinal Virtues are Justice, 
Prudence, Temperance, and Fortitude. Jus¬ 
tice is one of God’s perfections. He is just 
in His nature and in His acts. “Justice and 
judgment are the habitation of Thy throne: 
mercy and truth shall go before Thy face” 
(Ps. lxxxix. 14). The ruler is to display 
justice as the agent of God. Job says, “ My 
judgment was as a robe and diadem” (Job 
xxix. 14). See, concerning Abraham, Gen. 
xviii. 19. Pilate’s wife well styles our Lord 
“ that just man” (St. Matt, xxvii. 19), and St. 
Peter charges on the Jews that they “ de¬ 
nied the Holy One and the Just” (Acts iii. 
14. See also vii. 52, and xxii. 14, with 
regard to this term). The true idea of Jus¬ 
tice is that of giving each man his own due 
share in property, position, and in all things. 
The Golden Rule, given by “the Just One,” 
covers our whole duty in this regard: “As 
ye would that men should do to you, do ye 
also to them likewise” (St. Luke vi. 31). 

The second Cardinal Virtue is Prudence. 
It was one of the gifts of Solomon (2 Chron. 
ii. 12), and he declares that wisdom dwells 
with prudence (Prov. viii. 12), and that 
“the prudent man looketh well to his go¬ 
ing” (vs. 14, 15). This virtue is seen in Our 
Lord’s life constantly. It is especially to 
be noted in the case of the tribute money, 
and in His walking “ no more openly among 
the Jews” (St. John xi. 54) when they plotted 
His death. St. Joseph’s life is held up by 
F. W. Faber as a model of prudence, as in 
doubts, and dreams, and perplexities he was 
quiet and docile, doing all for God, leading 
an interior life, never looking before light 
and grace were given, but childlike and 
prompt the moment the divine command 
came. Bishop Butler, in his “ Dissertation 
of the Nature of Virtue,” shows that a due 
concern of our interest or happiness and a 
reasonable effort to secure it is praiseworthy. 
Raise this thought to heavenly things, and 
reflect on Christ’s promises of endless joy, 
and prudence and religion meet, and the 
foolish man is seen to be the wicked one. 

The next Cardinal Virtue is Temperance. 
This word of late years in this country has 
been used to signify abstinence from intoxi¬ 
cating drinks. St. Paul uses the word in a 
much wider sense (Gal. v. 23). It signifies 
a proper and decent moderation in all things, 
bodily and mental. True temperance cannot 
be restricted to the idea of refraining from 
one particular sin. The temperate man 
bridles his animal nature, and keeps his 
body in “subjection” as if it were a well- 
tamed horse or an adversary whom he was 
overcoming (1 Cor. ix. 27). Still, he knows 
that the mind rules the body, and therefore 
he strives to think temperately, as well as to 
act temperately. To such a man anger, 
hatred, and envy are unpleasant, as indica¬ 


tions of a lack of that self-restraint imposed 
by Christianity upon him. 

The last of the Cardinal Virtues is Forti¬ 
tude. As the word virtue is derived from 
the Latin vir , “man,” and means manli¬ 
ness, so Fortitude comes to us from the same 
language, in which fortis signifies strong. 
This is the virtue which helps men to “ suffer 
and to be strong.” Locke calls it “the 
guard and support of the other virtues.” 
Fortitude animated the thousands of martyrs 
in the early Church who died for Christ. 
St. Ignatius writes in an Epistle to St. Poly- 
carp, “Stand firm and immovable as an 
anvil when it is beaten upon.” Adversity 
only helps to bring out fortitude. Misery 
has been called “virtue’s whetstone.” The 
highest instance of fortitude is that of our 
Blessed Lord, in His great agony, crying, 
as He looked forward to a painful and shame¬ 
ful death, “ O my Father, if it be possible, 
let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not 
as I will, but as Thou wilt” (St. Matt. xxvi. 
39V. 

These various virtues combine to form a 
Christian and Christlike character. Virtue, 
knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, 
brotherly kindness, and charity are enumer¬ 
ated by St. Peter as Christian virtues, and 
he adds to his enumeration these words of 
application : “ For if these things be in you, 
and abound, they make you that ye shall 
neither be barren nor unfruitful in the 
knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 
Pet. i. 5-8). By the life he describes men 
may receive the benefit of the “ exceeding 
great and precious promises,” and become 
“ partakers of the divine nature, having es¬ 
caped the corruption that is in the world 
through lust” (v. 4). Such a life in Christ 
promises a happy immortality. 

“Only a sweet and virtuous soul, 

Like seasoned timber, never gives; 

But, though the whole world turn to coal, 

Then, chiefly lives.” 

Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Visitation, Episcopal. The visitation of 
the Bishop is looked forward to in every 
Parish with a very varying appreciation of 
its purpose, its blessing, and the power 
which is implied in the Bishop’s right to 
visit. It is not merely the visit of the 
Chief Pastor of the Diocese for the purpose 
of preaching, confirming, and blessing; 
these are essential parts of his duty. An¬ 
ciently he was the only one properly in¬ 
trusted with the power to preach. It is his 
office to declare and pronounce to the people 
the forgiveness of sins as well as to bless 
them. It is a great privilege to receive 
from his hands the food for the Resurrec¬ 
tion (St. John vi. 54) the Lord hath left 
us. For the Bishop is the representative 
and living holder qf the one sole order of 
the ministry our Lord commissioned after 
His resurrection. The Covenant made and 
executed in the visible Church is through 
him, though the Priest or Deacon may be 
the administrator of the action. So in the 




VOCATION 


780 


VULGATE 


rite of Confirmation there is a Confession 
made before him of the binding force of our 
baptismal vows, and we upon this public 
acknowledgment receive the grace of the 
Holy Ghost. 

But the powers implied in a visitation 
reach further. Whether they are used at all, 
or in part, or in full would depend upon the 
need, fitness, or expediency the Bishop may 
wisely see should be used. But he has 
certain powers further which have been used, 
and these rights as being disciplinary area 
part of his office. He has the right to in¬ 
quire into and ascertain the true condition 
of each Parish in his Diocese. It is a part 
of his office formerly exercised in person, 
but in after-times delegated to the Arch¬ 
deacon whose office was created for this use. 
He may question either Hector or Vestry, 
or both, as to the strength, resources, and 
spiritual condition of the parish ; may inquire 
into the frequency of the services and the 
zeal of the people in attending upon them ; 
into the proper furniture of, and reverent 
care for, the Church ; into the sympathy and 
moral support the people give their rector; 
indeed, into all those things which enter 
into the proper welfare of the Parish as a 
living part of the Church of God, so that 
he may be enabled to give right counsel, 
and to correct faults or remedy defects, and, 
too, that he may be enabled to obtain from 
the Parish such aid as may materially for¬ 
ward his work in the Diocese. 

Whether in all cases it is well to carry 
out this authority depends upon many local 
and temporary causes, but it is a right that 
inheres in the office of a Bishop by virtue 
of the commission from our Lord. That 
a right so to visit is a part of the office is 
seen both by the visitation St. Paul threat¬ 
ened to hold at Corinth (1 Cor. iv. 21; 2 
Cor. xiii. 10), and by the directions he gave 
both SS. Timothy and Titus as to their 
duties. 

Vocation. A calling, or “inward mo¬ 
tion by the Holy Ghost” (Jer. xxiii. 21; 
Heb. v. 4; Bom. x. 15) to the ecclesiastical 
state, is marked by right motives in seeking 
it,—that is, without desire of the glory of 
this world, or of income, or a pleasant, easy 
life, but by readiness in enduring pain and 
labor, and by desire to promote the glory of 
God and the edifying and salvation of man. 
Bishop Andrews explains to Peter du Mou¬ 
lin, that the words “pastor” and “voca¬ 
tion,” in the sense placed upon them by 
Protestants, that is, with the meaning of 
ordination and ministers, were innovations 
of the sixteenth century; as the pastorate of 
Scripture (1 Pet. ii. 25) and of ecclesiastical 
writers designates the office of Bishops, and 
“vocation” has its special meaning. The 
XXIII. Article is distinct upon this 
point: “It is not lawful for any man to 
take upon him the office of public preach¬ 
ing, or ministering the Sacraments in the 
Congregation (“ Ecclesia,*' Lat. vers.) before 
he be lawfully called, and sent to execute 


the same. And those we ought to judge 
lawfully called and sent, which be chosen 
and called to this work by men who have 
public authority given unto them in the 
Congregation, to call and send Ministers into 
the Cord’s vineyard.” 

“ Our Apostles,” says St. Clement, “ knew, 
through our Lord Jesus Christ, that there 
should arise contention touching the name 
of the Episcopate, and for this cause, being 
endowed with a perfect prescience, they con¬ 
stituted the aforesaid (Bishops and Deacons), 
and thenceforward laid down a succession, 
that when they were fallen asleep, then 
other men approved (of the Holy Spirit) 
might receive their office.and ministry.” (Ad 
Corinth, c. xliv.). The XXXVI. Article 
further and explicitly asserts that “We de¬ 
cree all such to be rightly, orderly, and law¬ 
fully consecrated or ordered” according to 
the rites of the Ordinal; and in the Preface 
to the latter it is said, “ No man might pre¬ 
sume to execute any of them” (the orders 
of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons), “except 
he were first called, tried, and examined, and 
known to have such qualities as are requisite 
for the same; and also by Public Prayer, 
with Imposition of Hands, were approved 
and admitted thereunto by lawful Author¬ 
ity;” that is, “hath Episcopal consecration 
or ordination.” The candidate is therefore 
required to state that he “thinks he is truly 
called , according to the will of our Lord 
Jesus Christ and the due order of this 
realm (Ordering of Deacons, “this United 
Church of England and Ireland ;” Order¬ 
ing of Priests and Consecration of Bishops) 
to the ministry of the Church.” (Blunt’s 
Diet, of Doct. and Hist. Theol.) 

Vulgate. The famous translation of the 
Bible which St. Jerome madeof the Hebrew 
into Latin and the Greek. It is called Vul¬ 
gate as being in common use, but the term 
belonged also to the Septuagint and to the 
Italic Version upon which St. Jerome 
worked. The New Testament was first trans¬ 
lated. He revised the Psalter twice. The 
first revision was used in Italy, the second 
revision was accepted in Europe generally, 
and was the one from which our Version of 
the Psalms in the Prayer-Book was made. 
St. Jerome first translated Samuel and Kings, 
and after that he worked with zeal and ra¬ 
pidity, but seems to have withheld his trans¬ 
lations, except from intimate friends, till he 
could revise them ; still, though he labored 
sixteen years at the translation, to the last 
there was something to revise. It had to 
work its way against the old Latin transla¬ 
tion made before 177 a.d., and against the 
Itala which was a revision of this latter 
work made through the Greek text, and 
which was held to be a very close and faith¬ 
ful rendering. 

It mastered all opposition at last by its 
great superiority, but itself fell into gross 
inaccuracies from transcribers, so that a re¬ 
vision and correction was called for, and 
partly effected by Alcuin (800 a.d.), but was 





WAFER 


*781 WASHINGTON TERRITORY 


not fully done till the art of printing was 
discovered and successive editions passed 
through editorial scrutiny. Still, it has not 
been completely effected even yet. When 
Sextus V. (1582 a.d.) put forth his edition, he 
so changed it that “ he brought peril on the 
Church.” The Yulgate was, however, again 


revised after many delays, and the last text 
which was authoritative was issued 1598 a.d. 
There is still great room for revision and 
correction. There is large work yet to be 
done by a competent scholar in the collation 
of materials for a proper edition of the Yul¬ 
gate. 




W. 


Wafer. The unleavened bread used in 
tbe Holy Communion in the Roman Church. 
Bread, t.e., leavened, was the unchanged 
practice of the Eastern Church, but unleav¬ 
ened bread was the use of the West generally. 
It was left as an indifferent matter in the 
last revision of the Prayer-Book in 1662 a.d. 
In fact, the leaning in England being gener¬ 
ally towards wafer bread, instances of its 
continued use down to the beginning of the 
last century can readily be adduced, and its 
use is partly revived in many English 
Churches. But the remark of Scudamore 
upon this is well worthy of careful heed, 
at least in our own American Church: “ Le¬ 
gally we are in the same position as our 
forefathers ; but, looking at the long and 
general disuse of the wafer bread, we are 
morally bound, in deciding which kind we 
ourselves will use, to give unusual weight 
to every alleged consideration of expediency 
and charity.” For ourselves no legal , but 
all ordinary, moral considerations would 
prevent our using aught but the finest and 
best wheaten bread. 

Warden. Vide Yestry. 

Washington Territory. (Vide Oregon.) 
The history of the Church on the North¬ 
western coast is to be gathered from pam¬ 
phlets containing the proceedings of the 
Convocation of Oregon and Washington, 
which formed one jurisdiction, having been 
organized in 1854 a.d. The records of the 
first meeting were not published in the form 
of a pamphlet, and those of the ninth session 
only appeared in brief in the first number 
of the Oregon Churchman. For a list of 
these rare pamphlets, see Bishop Perry’s 
Churchman’s Year-Book, 1870 and 1871 
a.d. , under “Oregon and Washington Ter¬ 
ritory.” Since Bishop Morris took charge 
of the jurisdiction, the clergy of Washing¬ 
ton Territory have organized a Convoca¬ 
tion. St. Helen’s Hall and the Bishop Scott 
School have done good work in educating 
the children of Washington, as well as 
Oregon. They have proved a great bless¬ 
ing. Washington was under the charge of 
Bishop Scott, of Oregon, and afterwards 
fell under the care of Bishop Morris. He 
reported to the General Convention of 1874 


a.d. that there was an Episcopal Seminary 
for girls, at Walla Walla, in Washington 
Territory, with 13 teachers and 120 male 
and 140 female pupils, having an endow¬ 
ment of $9000. In 1880 a.d. the Rev. T. A. 
Paddock, D. D., the busy rector of the active 
St. Peter’s Church, Brooklyn, was conse¬ 
crated as the Bishop of Washington, as 
Bishop Morris found that his extensive 
field needed division. In 1882 a.d. the Living 
Church Annual reports a second school, at 
Spokane Falls, named the Rodney-Morris 
School. The school was under the charge 
of the Rev. Dr. Nevins. The population 
of this Territory in 1880 a.d. was 75,120, 
and it contains 69,994 square miles. There 
is a Diocesan Board of Missions, and Epis¬ 
copal and Disabled Clergy Funds are on the 
report. 

St. Paul’s School for Girls, Walla Walla, 
is now in charge of Rev. H. D. Lathrop, 
D.D. The Fannie C. Paddock Memorial 
Hospital at Tacoma is a monument to the 
Bishop’s devoted wife, who died while on 
the journey to the scene of her husband’s 
labor. Rev. D. H. Lovejoy, M D., formerly 
at the Episcopal Hospital, Philadelphia, is 
chaplain and superintendent. Statistics for 
year ending June 27, 1883 a.d.: Clergy, 
11; confirmed, 22; communicants, 406; 
scholars in Sunday-schools, 464; contribu¬ 
tions, $12,406.47. Bishop Paddock has re¬ 
ceived some aid from the East in his en¬ 
deavor to establish Church Schools, and 
needs and earnestly solicits much more to en¬ 
able him to lay foundations deep and strong 
in that new land. Bishop paddock was 
born in Norwich, Conn , January 19, 1825. 
He is the son of an Episcopal clergyman, 
and his brother is Bishop of Massachusetts. 
He graduated at Trinity College, Hartford, 
in 1845 a.d. , and from the General Theolog¬ 
ical Seminary in 1849 a.d. Ordered Dea¬ 
con July 22, 1849 a.d. Ordained Priest 
April 30, 1850 a.d. Was Rector of Christ 
Church, Stratford, Conn., for five years, and 
of St. Peter’s, Brooklyn, L.I., from 1855 a.d., 
to his elevation to the Episcopate. Conse¬ 
crated Missionary Bishop of Washington 
Territory in St. Peter’s Church, Brooklyn, 
on December 15, 1880 a.d., by the Rt. Rev. 







WASHINGTON TERRITORY 782 


WAYE-OFEERING 


Benjamin B. Smith, D.D., the Rt. Rev. 
Alfred Lee, D.D., the Rt. Rev. Benjamin 
Paddock, D.D., the Rt. Rev. Daniel S. 
Tuttle, D.D., the Rt. Rev. Horatio Potter, 
D.D., and the Rt. Rev. George F. Seymour, 
D.D. 

In Bishop Paddock’s Report for 1888 a.d. 
he states that he has baptized three children 
and eleven adults, and confirmed thirty in 
the Territory, and one in Idaho at the re¬ 
quest of Bishop Tuttle. He had visited the 
Indian station at Aloh Bay, and baptized 
five adults of the Makah tribe, instructed by 
Mr. J. H. Y. Bell, teacher of the Govern¬ 
ment School, and candidate for holy or¬ 
ders. About sixty are here under instruc¬ 
tion. The Bishop writes that as far as he 
“ can learn, these are the first Indian adults 
who have been baptized by a clergyman of 
our Church in this northwestern region. 
We labor and pray that they may be fol¬ 
lowed by many who shall help to make up 
the ‘great numbers’ to be gathered out of 
‘ every kindred, and tongue, and people, and 
nation.’ ” At St. Luke’s, Vancouver, a 
sweet-toned bell has been placed in the 
church tower by an association of young 
persons belonging to the parish. At Fort 
Townsend the church had been removedand 
repaired. St. Peter’s Church at Pomeroy 
had been consecrated, and services were 
conducted there by Rev. Wm. A. Fair. St. 
Luke’s Memorial Church, New Tacoma, 
had been consecrated. This is the finest 
church building on the Pacific coast north 
of San Francisco. Bishop Morris was pres¬ 
ent at the consecration of this church, and 
preached the following day at the ordination 
of Rev. H. S. Bonnell to the Priesthood. 
The Memorial Hospital at Tacoma has done 
a good work “for the healing of the body 
and the saving of the soul.” The Bishop is 
naturally deeply interested in Christian ed¬ 
ucation, and quotes the report of the Com¬ 
mittee on that subject at the General Con¬ 
vention of 1880 a.d. thus: “There is no 
subject more vital, more closely connected 
with the well-being, nay, the very life of 
the Church, than this subject. The whole 
growth of Christianity and the - stability 
of society depend upon the kind of edu¬ 
cation which our children are securing.” 
That Convention requested Bishops and 
clergy to “ remind the people of their duty 
to support and build up our schools and col¬ 
leges, and to make education, under the 
auspices of the Church, superior in all re¬ 
spects to that afforded in the institutions.” 
The Church School for Girls at Walla 
Walla, in the southeastern part of Wash¬ 
ington, has done a good work for ten years 
past. A new building is required. For 
this the citizens pledged $5000 “ if the 
Bishop would aid.” Valuable offers of “ land 
and money” have been made “for a like 
school at New Tacoma, in the northwest¬ 
ern part of the Territory.” The Bishop 
has received from the Atlantic States $8000 
for a chapel at Walla Walla, “and about 


$25,000 for the school for girls at New Ta¬ 
coma.” The corner-stone of this school was 
laid August 22,1883 a.d. This the Bishop 
is very anxious to secure. “ If,” he says, 
“ by the expenditure of any time and toil on 
my part it shall be my privilege to see these 
institutions for the promotion of sound 
learning and Christian education established 
on good foundation, I shall be very thank¬ 
ful, believing that a work will be done that 
will not only be a blessing to the young 
now growing up, but for the temporal and 
eternal good of multitudes in age after age, 
and for generation after generation.” The 
Bishop closes thus: “Grateful to God and 
to Christian friends for that which has been 
done, I humbly supplicate His aid and 
earnestly ask the co-operation of His ser¬ 
vants for the accomplishment of that which 
we are called to do for the good of souls and 
the glory of His Holy Name.” 

Rev. S. F. Hotchktn. 

Wave-Offering. The wave-offering, to¬ 
gether with the heave-offering, was a rite 
peculiar to the peace-offering. The right 
shoulder was holy to the Lord, and so was 
“ heaved” and belonged to the priest; the 
breast was waved before the Lord. Their 
significance was connected with our Lord’s 
Ascension and presentation of Himself as 
the heave-offering and wave-offering of the 
one sacrifice, holy and perfect, that should 
belong to the High-Priest by an ordinance 
of the Lord from the Children of Israel. 
But another wave-offering, that of the sheaf 
of the first-fruits, was still more significant. 
“The type in respect of the day was the 
waved sheaf in the feast of the first-fruits, 
concerning which this was the law of God 
by Moses : ‘ When ye be come into the land 
which I give unto you, and shall reap the 
harvest thereof, ye then shall bring a sheaf 
of the first-fruits of your harvest unto the 
priest: and he shall wave the sheaf before 
the Lord, to be accepted for you: on the 
morrow after the Sabbath the priest shall 
wave it. And ye shall offer that day when 
ye wave the sheaf, an he-lamb without 
blemish of the first year for a burnt-offering 
unto the Lord’ (Lev. xxiii. 10-12). For 
under the Levitical Law all the fruits of 
the earth in the land of Canaan were pro¬ 
fane ; none might eat of them till they were 
consecrated, and that they were in the feasts 
of the first-fruits. One sheaf was taken out 
of the field and brought to the priest, who 
lifted it up as it were in the name of all the 
rest, waving it before the Lord, and it was 
accepted for them, so that all the sheaves in 
the field were holy, ‘the lump also is holy’ 
(Rom. xi. 16). And this was always done 
the day after the Sabbath, that is, the 
paschal solemnity, after which the fullness 
of the harvest followed ; by which this 
much was foretold and represented, that as 
the sheaf was lifted up and waved, and the 
lamb was offered on that day by the priest 
to God, so the promised Mkssias, that 
immaculate Lamb which was to die, that 




WEDNESDAY 


783 


WEST VIRGINIA 


priest which dying was to offer up Himself 
to God, was upon this day to be lifted up, 
raised from the dead, or rather to shake and 
lift up and present Himself to God, and so 
to he accepted for us all, that so our dust 
might he sanctified, our corruption hallowed, 
our mortality consecrated to eternity. Thus 
was the resurrection of the Messias after 
death typically represented both in the dis- 
tanceandthe day.” (Pearson on the Creed, 
p. 391.) 

Wednesday. It was observed as a fast, 
together with Friday, as early as 150 a.d. ; 
it being one of the days for the Christians 
to gather in their week-day assemblies. The 
Litany is to be recited on that day as well 
as on Friday, marking it in our use as a 
day if not of abstinence, yet a day of peni¬ 
tence. Wednesday in Holy Week in the 
older pre-reformation oflices was marked 
with solemn recitation of the Tenebras, an 
office which was as old as the eighth cen¬ 
tury, in which the fifteen candles burning 
at the beginning of the Vesper Service were 
extinguished one by one, as the choir chanted 
the fifty-first Psalm, till the church was 
in utter darkness. This Tenebrse Service 
was repeated for three days in succes¬ 
sion in Holy Week. 

Week. However much we may be per¬ 
suaded that the earliest observance of the 
week was one of the very earliest ordinances 
given to man,—as we find a notice of the 
week in Noah’s waiting seven days before 
the dove was sent forth, and in Laban’s 
bidding Jacob to fulfill Leah’s week, and 
then to marry Rachel,—yet on purely his¬ 
toric grounds, as a sacredly-appointed meas¬ 
ure of time, it belongs to the Mosaic Law. 
Seven was a main factor in the ritually 
and nationally recurring feasts. It was a 
very remarkable measure of time, and one 
which furnishes such a common measure of 
longer periods at only long-recurring inter¬ 
vals, that its observance must have rested 
on only divine ordinance. Seven is not the 
measure of the three hundred and sixty-five 
days of the year, and by'the use of it forces 
the Sabbath-day or Sunday upon every day 
of the year in the course of a cycle of nine¬ 
teen years. It forms, very singularly, the 
just division of labor and of rest. Other 
periods have been tried, but they have 
proved unsatisfactory, as, e.g., the Decade of 
the French Revolution. After a trial of 
some years the French were compelled to 
return to the six days of work and the 
seventh of rest. 

West Virginia, Diocese of. A brief 
outline showing the creation of the new 
Diocese of West Virginia. 

Political division of the State of Vir¬ 
ginia .—The question of a division of the 
State of Virginia had long been agitated. 
As early as 1829 a.d., after the call of a 
Convention to alter and amend the old 
Constitution which had been the funda¬ 
mental law for more than forty years, a 
body of distinguished citizens of the State 


assembled in the city of Richmond. This 
Convention, composed as it was of eminent 
Divines, Jurists, and Statesmen from every 
section of the State, north and south, east 
and west, than whom none more distin¬ 
guished had met in America since the 
celebrated Convention which framed the 
Constitution of the United States, the char¬ 
ter of our liberties, now within five years of 
a century old, that governs us to-day. 

At this Convention the rights of the 
western portion of the State were asserted, 
and a Constitution framed, which was sub¬ 
mitted to the popular vote and ratified. 
Twenty years more elapsed, when another 
Convention was called, and met in Rich¬ 
mond, in 1850-51 a.d., and the Constitution 
again amended and by a vote of the people 
adopted. In these Conventions of 1829-30 
and 1850-51 a.d., the relative condition of 
the two sections was ably and fully discussed ; 
concessions were made by the east which in 
a measure pacified and satisfied the claims 
of the west. The question uppermost in the 
minds of the people, for a division, was again 
deferred. 

Ten years later, 1860-61 a.d., the late war 
between the North and the South precipi¬ 
tated events, and the State was divided, or 
at least so much of the territory of Western 
Virginia as was occupied by the Federal 
forces (dividing the State by an unnatural 
line), was formed into a separate State,— 
whether wisely or not is not a question for 
discussion here. Such is the political feature 
of the division. 

Ecclesiastical .—The division of the State 
has certainly been of very great benefit to 
the Church. A division of the Diocese of 
Virginia was first agitated as early as 1821 
a.d., over sixty years ago, when we had but 
15 Dioceses. 

Western Virginia, that portion of the 
State lying west of the Blue Ridge, was 
sparsely populated, and at that early period 
there were not more than three or four self- 
supporting parishes west of the Alleghany 
Mountains. The Episcopal Church was 
scarcely known, and to-day there are large 
counties where perhaps a minister of the 
Church has never been seen ; at the sight of 
one clothed in his surplice, or a Bishop in 
his robes, the people would flee to the woods. 
But by the blessing of the great head of the 
Church, our faithful clergy, and able, ener¬ 
getic, efficient Bishop, this state of things 
will not long continue. We have no rec¬ 
ords, nor are there any persons living, from 
which or from whom we can learn what 
steps were taken in the direction of securing 
such division. The venerable Bishop Meade 
was consecrated as Assistant Bishop of Vir¬ 
ginia in 1829 a.d. ; in the latter part of the 
summer of that year he first visited Western 
Virginia, and in his intercourse with the few 
prominent Episcopalians the subject of a di¬ 
vision may have been talked of. And it is un¬ 
derstood that he always opposed the measure 
on the ground of inexpediency, and the im- 






WEST VIRGINIA 


784 


WEST VIRGINIA 


possibility of an adequate support of the Epis¬ 
copate in a country so destitute of friends 
and members of the Church as ours was. 

The first decided practical move made in 
the matter was in 1851 A d., at a Convoca¬ 
tion of the clergy in Western Virginia, some 
seven in all, held in Charleston, County of 
Kanawha. A memorial which had been 
prepared by the late Rev. James D. Mc¬ 
Cabe, D.D., at Wheeling, setting forth the 
wants and the claims of the western portion 
of the Diocese, and looking to a division, 
was presented. Bishop Meade was present. 
The paper was read. The Bishop reiterat¬ 
ing his sentiments as often previously ex¬ 
pressed, as to our inability to maintain a 
separate organization, and objecting to the 
petition going to the Diocesan Convention 
to assemble the following year, and any 
further action upon the subject, the paper 
was withdrawn. 

It was doubtless true that the Church 
west of the mountains was too weak at that 
day to support an independent Diocese, and 
we must conclude the Bishop was right. 

The Church was very much weakened 
and its growth retarded in Western Virginia 
by the war, many parishes were without 
ministers, and no services at all for four 
years. Upon the reorganization of St. 
John’s in Charleston, under the Rectorship 
of the late Rev. W. F. M. Jacobs, at the 
close of the war this energetic minister re¬ 
vived the question of a division here, while 
some steps were in progress at Wheeling 
and at Parkersburg, under the leadership of 
Rev. W. L. Hyland, now of the Diocese of 
Maryland. Mr. Jacobs had corresponded 
with the Clergy and some prominent Lay¬ 
men of those sections of the State, and a 
time and place had been agreed upon for a 
conference with the late Bishop Johns upon 
the subject. This meeting took place at 
Clarksburg, in Harrison County, the 24th 
August, 1865 a.d. It led to no favorable 
result for the new Diocese, as the Bishop 
met with no encouragement from the Clergy 
and Laymen present that an Episcopate 
could be supported, and he advised the meet¬ 
ing to make no application to a Diocesan 
Council for a separate organization until 
they could go up with a guarantee that such 
support would be given. Thus this effort 
ended. 

By some it was proposed to place West 
Virginia under a Missionai-y jurisdiction. 
This measure was not favored by the wise 
Bishop, and he would never give his con¬ 
sent. It must be an independent Diocese, 
on an equal footing with the others, or none 
at all. 

The result has proved the wisdom and 
foresight of this distinguished and eminent 
Prelate, and it is a matter of regret that he 
was not spared to see how signally his views 
have been verified. IJe knew the west was 
not yet ripe for a separation. 

During the period that elapsed after the 
failure in 1865 a.d. to accomplish anything 


towards effecting a second Diocese, the sub¬ 
ject was constantly brought before the peo¬ 
ple ; but no definite action was taken by 
Clergy or Laymen, vestries or congregations, 
until seven years later. 

At a Convocation held at Charleston the 
15th of November, 1872 a.d., for the district 
south of the South Kanawha River, com¬ 
posed of Clergy and Laymen, the subject of 
creating a Diocese of the State of West Vir¬ 
ginia was introduced. A. T. Laidley, a lay 
delegate from St. John’s Church, Charles¬ 
ton, presented a paper asking the co-opera¬ 
tion of the Convocation in measures looking 
to such organization. Much discussion was 
elicited. Action was finally taken, and Mr. 
Laidley was appointed a committee to open a 
correspondence with vestries upon the sub¬ 
ject, and to report to a Convention to be 
held at Volcano, in the county of Wood, on 
the 23d day of April, 1873 a.d. 

Such correspondence was had, the Con¬ 
vention held, and the response laid before 
it; but these were so meagre and incom¬ 
plete, that there was but little for the Con¬ 
vention to act upon. There was opposition 
to the measure, and but little acquiescence, 
and nothing was done favorable to the move. 

Again, at a meeting of the vestry of St. 
John’s Church, Charleston, held January 
19, 1874 a.d., A. T. Laidley made another 
effort to get a full expression of the people 
in behalf of the new Diocese. A call was 
issued for a Convention to be held in the 
April following. The day was fixed, Clergy 
and Laymen invited, and vestries urged to 
send delegates. This met with little favor, 
—especially was there opposition in the 
counties in the eastern part of the State. 
Thus failed again the measure. 

Bishop Johns visited the Churches west 
of the mountains in the autumn of 1875 a.d. 
(his last visitation). While in Charleston 
in October of that year, he was approached 
upon the subject. He told the writer, with 
great emphasis, that he was in favor of the 
new Diocese, and that if our people of West 
Virginia would gO earnestly to work, and 
present to the next Council, to be held in 
Alexandria in May, 1876 a.d., an assured 
guaranty that the Episcopate would be sup¬ 
ported, he would earnestly recommend the 
measure, and would give his consent to the 
division. 

This was encouraging to the friends of a 
new Diocese, and we improved the oppor¬ 
tunity thus given us. The important turn 
in events was imparted to friends of the 
measure throughout the State; and as the 
next Convocation was to be held in Wells- 
burg, in the April following, steps were 
taken looking to a final effort to be made at 
the Council in Alexandria. To our great 
grief and lamentation our venerable Bishop 
and friend had been called to his reward. 
With sorrowing hearts in our loss, we went 
before the Council; and though still meet¬ 
ing with some opposition from brethren in 
the eastern counties, such action was taken 


9 




WEST VIRGINIA 


785 


WESTERN MIGHIGAN 


as to assure us that we would succeed at the 
Council to be held in Staunton the next 
year. 

We had the misfortune to lose an able 
and efficient advocate in our cause in the 
death of General J. J. Jackson, a Layman 
from the Church in Parkersburg, occurring 
a few months previous to the assembling 
of the Diocesan Council in May, 1877 a.d. 

To this body we repaired with a formidable 
force of the Clergy and Lay delegates, and 
presented our claims in a petition. The 
subject was referred to a Special Committee. 
The Committee made a favorable report to 
our claims, and on the 18th of May, 1877 
a.d. , by an almost unanimous vote of the 
Council, the report was adopted by which 
the new Diocese of West Virginia was cre¬ 
ated, and to embrace within its limits the 
territory within the boundaries of the State. 
The lit. Rev. Bishop of the Diocese gave his 
consent in the paper following: 

“Staunton, Va., 18th May, 1877 a.d. 

“ I hereby signify my consent to the action 
of the Council of the Diocese of Virginia in 
cutting off that part of the Diocese included 
within the State of West Virginia, and 
erecting it into a separate Diocese. 

“ Francis M. Whittle, 

Bishop of the Diocese of Virginia .” 

It now remained for the General Conven¬ 
tion, which met in Boston in October fol¬ 
lowing, to ratify it. On the 8th of that 
month the House of Clerical and Lay Depu¬ 
ties passed a resolution adopting the report 
of the Committee favorable to the creation 
of the new Diocese, and on the 13th the House 
of Bishops ratified the act, and thus was the 
Diocese of Virginia divided and a new one 
created. The next step was to organize 
the new Diocese by the election of a Chief 
Shepherd. Bishop Whittle issued a call 
dated at Boston, October, 1877 a.d., appoint¬ 
ing the 5th day of December, 1877 a.d., as 
the time, and Charleston as the place, for 
holding this Convention. This body, com¬ 
posed of the Clergy and Laymen within the 
Diocesan limits, met and elected the Rev. 
J. H. Eccleston, D.D., of the Diocese of 
New Jersey, as Bishop. Dr. Eccleston de¬ 
clined to accept. A second Convention was 
called to meet at Charleston, in Jefferson 
County, the 27th February, 1878 a.d. At 
this Convention Rev. George W. Peterkin, 
of Baltimore, was elected. This young and 
eminent divine accepted, and on the 30th of 
May, 1878 a.d., was consecrated in St. Mat¬ 
thew’s Church, Wheeling. He entered upon 
the discharge of his duties at once. The 
machinery of a new organization thus com¬ 
pleted has worked admirably the past six 
years, and with the blessings of God, to 
whom we ascribe all the glory, we hope soon 
to take rank with many of the older and 
more favored of the great galaxy of the 
States’ vineyards of the Lord. We were 
once feeble. Within the recollection of a few 
living witnesses to-day there are parishes 

50 


where there were but one, two, or three com¬ 
municants ; now they number their hundreds. 
To show the increase of the Church in the 
past few years, an abstract of the Bishop’s 
annual address to the Council in June, 1883 
a.d. , may appropriately be given: “I may 
properly call attention to the encouraging 
fact that our little band of communicants 
has grown from about 1200 to upwards of 
2000, the number of confirmations in the 
five years amounting to 909, our Clergy 
have increased from 14 to 23, our churches 
and chapels from 22 to 37, with the prospect 
of 12 more to be added from one to two years 
hence, and 10 parsonages have increased to 
15, and another in progress ; and upon this 
work our people have expended $100,000. 
Our Sunday-schools have increased from 878 
to about 2000.” 

I feel that I ought not to omit from this 
paper a tribute to the memory of those faith¬ 
ful ministers and laymen who so ably and 
zealously aided in this work of securing to 
us this Diocese. In this connection I may 
name the Rev. Wm. Armstrong, so long the 
Rector of St. Matthew’s, and the Rev. Doc¬ 
tor McCabe, then Rector of St. John’s, 
Wheeling, the Rev. W. F. M. Jacobs, Rev. 
C. M. Calloway, and Rev. Andrew Fisher, 
of the Clergy, and General Jackson, of Park¬ 
ersburg. Those have long since passed away, 
and gone to their reward in Heaven. 

Of the living Clergy and Laymen who 
actively and energetically participated in 
efforts to get the measure through, the Rev. 
Dr. Hyland, Rev. S. D. Tompkins, and Dr. 
Armstrong, now of the Diocese of Virginia, 
and Rev. R. A. Cobbs, of Charleston, Hon. 
Judge Thompson, of Wheeling, and Drs. 
Patrick and Cotton, and Col. T. B. Swan, 
of Kanawha. Alex. T. Laidley. 

Western Michigan. The first motion 
looking to a division of the Diocese was 
made in Detroit, in 1871 A.D., at the Con¬ 
vention held there, by Mr. P. It. I. Peirce, 
of Grand Rapids. It was referred to a Com¬ 
mittee to report to the next Convention, but 
they took no action, as Bishop McCoskry 
proposed to speak of it in his annual address 
(1872 a.d.). This he did, and, in conse¬ 
quence of his promise to further whatever 
decision might be reached, after a thorough 
investigation it was decided not to proceed 
further at that Convention, but to issue a 
circular of information to the several Par¬ 
ishes to enable them to form an intelligent 
judgment in the matter. The result of this 
deliberate conduct of the matter, that in the 
Convention (1873 a.d.) the vote of the 55 
Clergy present out of 79 belonging to the 
whole Diocese was 39 for and 16 against the 
division. Of those voting aye, 24 were from 
the proposed new Diocese, while 8 from the 
same section voted nay. And of the 53 
Laity who voted aye, 24 were from this por¬ 
tion, while of those who voted nay, only 7 
were from it. The decision of the boundary¬ 
line was referred to the next Convention. 
There the line was established as follows: 







WESTERN MICHIGAN 


786 


WESTERN NEW YORK 


“ Resolved , That the Counties of Branch, 
St. Joseph, Cass, Berrien, Van Buren, Kala¬ 
mazoo, Calhoun, Eaton, Barry, Allegan, 
Ottawa, Kent, Ionia, Montcalm, Muskegon, 
Oceana, Newaygo, Mecosta, Isabella, Clare, 
Osceola, Lake, Mason, Manistee, Wexford, 
Missaukee, Kalkaska, Grand Traverse, Ben¬ 
zie, Leelenaw, Antrim, Charlevoix, and Em¬ 
met be, and the same are, set apart and erected 
into a new Diocese (the assent of the Bishop 
and General Convention being given), under 
the name of . And the remainder of 

the Counties in the Lower Peninsula not 
above designated, with the Island of Macki¬ 
nac and the Upper Peninsula, shall consti¬ 
tute the present Diocese of Michigan. And 
that the General Convention be respectfully 
requested to grant the request of this Con¬ 
vention for such division, when the Consti¬ 
tution and Canons relative to such cases are 
complied with.” 

The Bishop gave bis Canonical consent, 
and the Committee who were intrusted with 
the details of the necessary papers and the 
arrangements preliminary to presenting 
their application to the General Convention 
were able to secure $34,545 for the endow¬ 
ment. Michigan retained 52 Clergy and 58 
Parishes, while the new Diocese received 29 
Clergy and 32 Parishes. The House of 
Bishops decided favorably, while at the 
same time the applications of Southern 
Ohio* and Wisconsin were denied, on the 
ground that they had not made the suitable 
provision required by the Canon. The new 
Diocese retained three of the oldest Parishes, 
—Trinity Church, Niles, 1834 a d., St. 
Mark’s, Grand Rapids, and Trinity, Mar¬ 
shall, 1838 a.d. 

At the Primary Convention (December 2, 

1874 a.d.) at St. Mark’s, Grand Rapids, 21 
Clergy and 49 Lay delegates took their 
seats. After the necessary rules of proce¬ 
dure were ordered, the name of Western 
Michigan was, after some discussion, decided 
upon, and Bishop McCoskry formally chose 
to remain in the old Diocese of Michigan. 
The new Diocese was placed temporarily 
under his charge. The Convention pro¬ 
ceeded to elect a Bishop, and upon the 
seventh ballot Rev. George De Normandie 
Gillespie was elected. His consecration took 
place on St. Matthias’ Day (February 24, 

1875 a.d. ), in St. Mark’s Church, Grand 
Rapids. Bishop McCoskry was the conse- 
crator. Bishop Littlejohn preached the 
sermon. Bishops Talbot and Paddock were 
the presenters, and Bishops Bissell, Robert¬ 
son, and Welles assisted. In the new Dio¬ 
cese 18 Clergy were canonically resident, 
but 29 were within its limits; there were 
32 Parishes and 12 Mission Stations and 
Chapels. There were 2588 Communicants. 
The increase has been slow. The popula¬ 
tion is one that is found so generally in 
mining and lumber regions. Church work 

* Proper provision for support of a Bishop was pro¬ 
vided before the General (’onvontion adjourned, and the 
division was granted in the case of Southern Ohio. 


among them does not make the striking 
exhibition which can be shown in other and 
more favored places. Nor can a rich har¬ 
vest be gathered till the ground has been 
well prepared. The number of Clergy 
reported in 1880 a.d. were 29, the Parishes 
28, the Mission Stations 30, the Communi¬ 
cants 3068. But in 1883 a.d. the Clergy 
reported were 23, the Parishes were 28, 
Missions 21, the Communicants 3111. The 
shifting population and the changes which 
occur naturally may account for the appar¬ 
ent loss, but a real gain is proven by the 
fact that the number of church edifices was 
increased to 43, and the contributions, 
which three years before were $143,817.50, 
were in 1883 a.d. reported as $193,476. 
These statistics show that this apparent 
lowering in numbers was due to the exigen¬ 
cies of the times and work. The cords 
may be shortened, but the stakes are 
strengthened. 

In the General Convention of 1883 a.d., 
the county of Manitou, in the Diocese of 
Michigan, was transferred to the Diocese of 
Western Michigan. 

Western New York, Diocese of. I. 

Colonial History .—The earliest Christian 
worship in Western New York was by the 
French Franciscans Le Caron, Viel, Lagard, 
and La Roche Dallion, about 1625 a.d., on 
the southwest shore of Lake Erie and the 
Niagara River ; then in Jesuit missions at 
Onondaga, Cayuga Lake, and Avon or Gene- 
seo, 1642-69 a.d ; then at Fort Niagara by 
the French chaplain, Pere Millet, 1686 a.d., 
and later; then b} r the Moravians under 
Zeisberger, at Onondaga, 1750-76 a.d., and 
by the Rev. Samuel Kirkland, Congrega¬ 
tional missionary to the Oneidas many years, 
from 1765 a.d. No permanent fruits re¬ 
sulted from any of these missions. Church 
of England services began in 1759 a.d. with 
the occupation of Fort Niagara, whose 
chapel, and Brant’s Indian church at Lew¬ 
iston, 1776 a.d., were her only places of 
worship before 1797 a.d. A chapel for the 
Onondagas at Oswego was projected, but not 
built, and altar-plate sent out, but not used, 
under Queen Anne ; and the early Society 
for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign 
Parts’ missionaries went no farther west than 
Schenectady and Fort Hunter (near Johns¬ 
town). 

II. Diocese of New York .—The State of 
New York became a Diocese June 22, 1785 
a.d. One-half of it, from Fort Schuyler, 
or Utica, west, formed in 1788 a.d. the town 
of Whitestown, with a white population of 
about 200. The “ Committee for Propagat¬ 
ing the Gospel in the State of New York,” 
constituted in 1796 a.d., appointed in 1797 
a.d. the Rev. Robert G. Wetmore their first 
missionary. He traveled within a few 
months through Western New York, 2386 
miles, on foot and on horseback, baptized 47 
adults and 365 children, and preached 107 
times. St. Paul’s Church, Paris Hill, the first 
in Western New York, was organized Feb- 





WESTERN NEW YORK 


787 


WESTERN NEW YORK 


ruary, 1797 a.d., the next year the Rev. 
Philander (afterwards Bishop) Chase visited 
many places, organized several churches 
(only one of which, however, was kept up, 
St. Luke, Harpersville, 1799 a.d.), baptized 
14 adults and 319 infants, preached 213 
times, and traveled some 4000 miles. In 
1802 a.d. the Rev. Davenport Phelps began 
a vigorous and successful missionary work 
throughout Western New York, mostly at 
Geneva and farther west, ending only with 
his early death in 1813 a.d. He founded a 
number of permanent parishes, and made 
Geneva from 1806 a.d. an important cen¬ 
tre of Church work. The Rev. Jonathan 
Judd and the Rev. Gamaliel Thatcher were 
missionaries farther east in 1804 a.d., and 
the Rev. Amos G. Baldwin at Utica, 1806 
a.d. , when Bishop Moore consecrated Trin¬ 
ity, Utica, the first Episcopal act in West¬ 
ern New York. Most of the early parishes 
were many years without church buildings 
or clergymen, and were kept up and nursed 
into strength by regular lay-reading. The 
consecration of Bishop Hobart, 1811 a.d., 
gave a great impetus to Church work in 
Western New York. In the nineteen years 
of his Episcopate he made twelve visita¬ 
tions to this distant region (as it was then), 
promoted the founding of 54 parishes, con¬ 
secrated 34 churches, added 46 clergymen 
to the 4 he found in 1811 a.d., confirmed 
nearly 2000 (among these 200 Indians at 
the Oneida Mission, afterwards removed 
to Green Bay), and established Geneva, 
now Hobart, College, the Christian Knowl¬ 
edge Society of Western New York, the 
Gospel Messenger (which continued for 
forty-five j'ears as the Church paper of 
the Diocese), and other instrumentalities 
of growth. The population of Western 
New York had increased in that time from 
275,168 to 875,016, and the communicants 
from 240 to 2331, nearly tenfold. Early 
missionaries of special note were Wm. A. 
and Orin Clark (brothers), Wm. B. Lacey, 
Russell Wheeler, Alanson W. Welton, Dan¬ 
iel McDonald, E. G. Gear, Henry U. Onder- 
donk, Joshua M. Rogers, and Geo. H. Nor¬ 
ton. Their stipends, at first $150, were fixed 
in 1824 a.d. at $125, and so remained forty 
years. Under Bishop Onderdonk (Bishop 
Hobart’s successor in indefatigable labor, 
though not in force of intellect) the parishes 
increased (1830-38 a.d.) to 96, and clergy to 
74. The erection of a new See in the now 
overgrown Diocese was suggested as early 
as 1830 a d., recommended by the Bishop 
in 1834 a.d. (after four years of annual 
visitations and rapid growth), and com¬ 
pleted by the action of the General and Dio¬ 
cesan Conventions, November 1, 1838 a.d. 

III. Diocese of Western Neio York to 1868 
a.d. —The history of the original Diocese of 
Western New York is that of the Episco¬ 
pate of William Heathcote De Lancev, 
consecrated May 9, 1839 a.d., died April 
5, 1865. He found in the new Diocese, 
with its 75 clergy and 96 congregations 


(68 of the latter being missionary sta¬ 
tions), an Episcopate fund of $35,000, and 
permanent Missionary fund of $10,000; 
a college, small, feeble, and without endow¬ 
ments ; and the days of rapid growth over. 
Diocesan missions, no longer sustained by 
the wealth of New York, became his first 
and greatest care. The Diocese never asked 
or received anything from the Church at 
large. Monthly offerings required by its 
own canons, for missions both diocesan and 
general, the distribution of Bibles, Prayer- 
Books, and Tracts, and Disabled and Infirm 
Clergy, have met all the demands of its work 
to this time ; though as late as 1865 a.d. there 
were still 100 missionary parishes out of 160, 
while communicants and families had in¬ 
creased fourfold, and offerings sixfold. Dur¬ 
ing Bishop De Lancey’s Episcopate these 
offerings were $186,000 for diocesan, and 
$100,000 for general objects, besides special 
contributions doubling the original Episco¬ 
pate Fund, $25,000 for the Diocesan Train¬ 
ing School, $8000 for the Permanent Mis¬ 
sionary Fund, and some $400,000, including 
bequests, to Hobart and De Veaux Colleges, 
in all not less than $750,000. 

The Diocese had in its early years the 
services of clergymen of great ability at im¬ 
portant points,—Drs. Proal, Leeds, Matson, 
and Brandegee in Utica; Whipple (now 
Bishop) at Rome; Gregory and Ashley at 
Syracuse; Hale, Bissell (now Bishop), 
Wilson, and Metcalf at Geneva; White- 
house and Lee (afterwards Bishops), and 
Van Ingen at Rochester ; Bolles at Batavia ; 
Shelton, Hawks (afterwards Bishop), In- 
gersoll, and Schuyler at Buffalo,—mostly 
those who, like their Bishop, had been 
pupils of Hobart. Under such leadership 
it maintained a high standard both in Church 
principles and practical work, and became 
known as “ the Model Diocese.” The Bishop, 
a man pf extraordinary energy and system, 
impressed these characters on all features of 
his diocesan work. He had the most entire 
confidence of both clergy and laity, and re¬ 
tained it through all the controversies and 
agitations in ecclesiastical affairs which 
marked the early years of his Episcopate, 
without giving way in the least to the claims 
of partisans on either .side. 

Hobart College, without endowments, and 
sustained up to 1847 a.d. partly by a State 
grant, had for several years from that time a 
hard struggle for existence. A considerable 
endowment, secured in 1860 a.d. mainly by 
Bishop De Lancey’s earnest efforts and since 
increased to $300,000, has placed it on a 
firm basis, while from first to last its stand¬ 
ard of scholarship, in classics and mathe¬ 
matics especially, has been of the highest. 
De Veaux College for Orphan and Destitute 
Children, founded in 1852 a.d. by a bequest 
of $300,000 from Judge Samuel De Veaux, 
of Niagara Falls, and the Diocesan Train¬ 
ing School, now De Lance}' Divinity School, 
founded in 1861 a.d. by Bishop De Lancey’s 
personal efforts, are the chief, and indeed 





WESTERN NEW YORK 


788 


WESTERN TEXAS 


the only permanent additional educational 
foundations thus far. 

The Bishop’s health giving way in 1864 
a.d., the Rev. Arthur Cleveland Coxe was 
chosen Assistant Bishop ; consecrated Janu¬ 
ary 4, 1865 a.d., and on the death of Bishop 
De Lancey succeeded as second Bishop of 
Western New York, April 5, 1865 a.d. In 
the following year he recommended the erec¬ 
tion of a new See ; and in 1867 a.d. the Dio¬ 
cese was divided into two, the western half 
retaining the former name, and the Bishop 
remaining in charge. 

IY. Diocese of Western New York , 1868- 
84 a.d.— The Diocese as thus reduced con¬ 
tained 15 counties, 11,345 square miles, 
774,762 inhabitants, 78 parishes (of which 37 
only were “self-supporting”), 76 churches, 
43 rectories, 82 clergymen, and 8636 com¬ 
municants, an average of 1 to 90 of the 
population. Its offerings for 1868 a.d. 
were, parochial $180,440, diocesan $12,760, 
general $7801, in all $201,001; and its 
church property (parochial only), $1,057,643. 
The Journal of 1883 a.d. reports 90 parishes 
(“ self-supporting” parishes not shown), and 
9 missions, 100 churches, 104 clergymen, 
and 11,142 communicants (1 to 84 of pop¬ 
ulation) ; offerings, parochial $187,903, dio¬ 
cesan $25,243, general $13,977, in all 
$227,124; church property, parochial $1,- 
702,509. The fund for the support of the 
Episcopate is $41,717,* permanent fund for 
Missions, $28,579 ; for Disabled Clergymen, 
and Widows and Orphans of Clergymen, 
$16,338 ; for the De Lancey Divinity School, 
$47,200; other diocesan funds (not includ¬ 
ing Hobart and De Yeaux College prop¬ 
erty), about $10,000. Church Homes have 
been founded in Buffalo, Rochester, and 
Geneva; the two former with substantial 
buildings and considerable endowments. 
Eorty churches have been consecrated by 
the present Bishop. Trustees have been 
incorporated for a future cathedral in Buf¬ 
falo, and in Rochester a costly and beauti¬ 
ful church, endowed, is held, through indi¬ 
vidual munificence, for a similar use when 
needed. The missionary work of the Dio¬ 
cese is directed by the Convocations of the 
four Deaneries of Buffalo, Batavia, Roches¬ 
ter, and Geneva, each holding quarterly 
meetings of clergy and lay representatives 
of parishes ; the missionary stipends for 1883 
a.d. were $5470. A very important revision 
of the diocesan constitution and canons is 
still in progress; and the Episcopate of 
Bishop Coxe has witnessed an immense im¬ 
provement in the building, care, and decora¬ 
tion of churches, and the frequency and 
conduct of Divine Service, in all which the 
Bishop himself has been the leader of his 
Diocese. Rev. C. W. Hayes. 

Western Texas, the Missionary Dis¬ 


* Besides the “ See House” in Buffalo, the residence of 
the Bishop, yalued at §22,000, held by the Cathedral 
Corporation, and containing the large and valuable 
Episcopal or “ Cathedral Library,” the munificent gift 
of the Bishop to the Diocese. 


trict of. The Missionary District of West¬ 
ern Texas is a vast territory of about one 
hundred and ten square miles, and includes, 
with the exception of a few counties on and 
along the Colorado River, all that portion 
of the State of Texas lying between the said 
river and the Rio Grande, the Gulf of Mex¬ 
ico, and the thirty-second parallel of north¬ 
ern latitude. 

Its surface is varied, low and flat for 
about fifty miles or more from the coast, 
where a gradual rise begins, which, with 
variations of hill and dale, level plains and 
rolling table-lands, reaches, in the mountain 
region west and northwest of San Antonio, 
an elevation of between two and three 
thousand feet above the gulf, while that at 
Fort Davis, Presidio County, is four thou¬ 
sand seven hundred feet, and the moun¬ 
tains in its neighborhood and farther west 
are still higher. 

Though the sea-board towns sometimes 
suffer from yellow fever, which is always 
imported, the climate on the whole is ex¬ 
ceedingly salubrious, that of the table-lands 
and mountain region west and northwest 
of San Antonio being specially suited to 
persons suffering from pulmonary diseases. 
The atmosphere of these portions of Western 
Texas is pure, dry, tonic, and so transparent 
that strangers are constantly deceived as 
to the magnitude and distance of objects. 

It has large quantities of coal in its west¬ 
ern portions, and also iron and other min¬ 
erals, while its beautiful but unnavigable 
streams and rivers would furnish abundant 
water-power for manufacturing ^purposes. 
Though it has a fertile soil, the uncertainty 
of the rain-fall has confined agriculture 
chiefly to its eastern counties; but the 
motto of the rain-belt seems to be West¬ 
ward Ho ! and with its extension goes the 
farmer, who, should he fail to make a crop 
one year, is almost sure to make enough the 
next to compensate him for the labor of 
both. But, notwithstanding its ever-in¬ 
creasing number of farms, nearly the whole 
vast region west, southwest, and northwest 
of San Antonio is still the land and the 
home of the stockman. Here are those 
large sheep and cattle ranches of which 
almost every one has heard, though the small 
ones far outnumber the large, and men of 
small means, if honest and industrious , have 
as good a chance to make a comfortable liv¬ 
ing at the business as men of large capital 
to make fortunes. 

Its facilities of travel have greatly in¬ 
creased within the last five or" six years. 
There are over fifteen hundred miles of rail¬ 
road in it to-day, the chief roads being the 
Great Northern and International, and the 
Galveston, Houston, and San Antonio; and 
other roads and branches of these roads are 
projected, which, if built, will make travel 
as easj^ and expeditious in Western Texas 
as in any other part of the State. Even 
now nearly all its important interior towns 
can be reached by rail, and even some of 






WESTERN TEXAS 


789 


WESTERN TEXAS 


those on the coast, as Corpus Christi and 
Indianola. 

The population of the District of Western 
Texas to-day is fully three hundred thou¬ 
sand. In it nearly all nationalities are re¬ 
presented. But, though the German ele¬ 
ment is very large in some communities, 
and also the Mexican along the Rio Grande 
frontier, the American predominates in the 
District as a whole, and is gradually in¬ 
creasing by immigration from the Northern 
and older Southern States. As in nearly all 
new countries, there is a lawless element in 
its society, but not as large as is often sup¬ 
posed, nor is it found to any extent in our 
older settled communities. Though its 
cow-boys may be wild, and the free use of 
the whisky-bottle may sometimes make 
them disorderly and dangerous, since the 
advent of the railroads and the presence of 
the State rangers acts of highway robbery 
and murder have become things of rare oc¬ 
currence, and property and life are as safe 
here as they are in any part of the country. 
The vast majority of its people are law- 
abiding, peaceable, well-behaved, industri¬ 
ous, hospitable, courteous, and by no people 
are they surpassed in common sense and 
natural intelligence. Nor is everything 
among them of a rough kind or order. In 
many portions, especially in those that have 
been longest settled, are pretty towns and 
villages, beautiful homes, and refined and 
cultivated people, while even in its more 
western wilds are to be found, under a rough 
exterior, men of polished manners, of edu¬ 
cation, and culture, graduates perhaps of 
the universities of old England, or of our 
Northern and Southern colleges. No people 
set a higher value on education, and their 
first care is to provide good schools and 
teachers for their children. 

In religious matters as in all others, there 
has been progress. The various denomina¬ 
tions which divide older communities are all 
represented, and, with few exceptions, have 
their ministers, churches, and Sunday- 
schools, except in some of the more western 
portions, where, in consequence of the sparse 
population, it is difficult to gather congre¬ 
gations, and to build churches and support 
them. This is all still purely missionary 
ground, and the religious wants of the peo¬ 
ple, if supplied at all, must be supplied to 
a very large extent by the itinerant.. But 
while there are encouraging features in the 
religious condition of Western Texas, there 
are also some that are very discouraging. 
If the people in certain portions still retain 
the religious habits which they themselves 
or their forefathers brought with them, it 
cannot be denied that in other portions, es¬ 
pecially in the cities and larger towns, those 
habits have been seriously affected by those 
of the foreign element with which they have 
socially mingled. Till a few years ago the 
Rio Grande frontier had been left almost 
entirely to the missionary of Rome, and we 
need not wonder that under the influence of 


a Church which calls her people to mass on 
Sunday morning, but tolerates the bull- or 
the cock-fight Sunday afternoon, together 
with the love of gain which hesitates not, 
unless restrained, to turn the holy day into a 
day of worldly traffic, many even of Amer¬ 
ican birth and training and education should 
have lost all sense of the sacredness of the 
Sabbath. But a change for the better is al¬ 
ready taking place among these people, and 
no religious body has done more to bring 
about this change than our own Church, 
who, in many places at least, has been the 
pioneer on the Rio Grande. 

With this sketch of the Missionary Dis¬ 
trict of Western Texas, we now proceed to 
the history of the Church in it. There were 
no doubt among the first settlers in Western 
Texas a few Episcopalians, but it was not 
till some time after the independence of 
Texas had been achieved, and its annexa¬ 
tion to the United States, that their number 
was sufficiently large at any point for mission 
or parochial organization. As a part of the 
State of Texas it formed a part of the Mis¬ 
sionary District of the Southwest, which 
was first under the charge of the Rt. Rev. 
Leonidas Polk, D.D., and then under that 
of the Rt. Rev. George Washington Free¬ 
man, D.D. Bishop Polk visited Texas sev¬ 
eral times, but it does not appear whether 
he extended his visits to any points in 
Western Texas. Bishop Freeman’s first 
visit to Texas was in March, 1845 a.d. If 
not in this year, he subsequently visited San 
Antonio, Seguin, and other points in West¬ 
ern Texas where his Episcopal ministra¬ 
tions were needed. 

The Diocese of Texas was organized at 
Matagorda, January 1, 1849 A.D., and by 
resolution of the Convention was put under 
the charge of Bishop Freeman as Provisional 
Bishop. In May, 1852 a.d., Bishop Free¬ 
man was elected Bishop of the Diocese, but 
declined in May, 1854 a.d., preferring to 
act as Provisional Bishop till other arrange¬ 
ments could be made. 

The first parishes in Western Texas that 
were admitted to the Convention were 
Trinity, San Antonio (May, 1850 a.d.) ; Ad¬ 
vent, Brownsville (May, 1851 a.d.) ; Em¬ 
manuel, Lockhart, and the Redeemer, Se¬ 
guin (May, 1854 a.d. s ). The parish of the 
Redeemer, Seguin, was organized by the 
Rev. J. W. Dunn, now deceased, but its 
name was subsequently, by resolution of the 
Convention, changed to thatof St. Andrew’s; 
while Trinity Parish, San Antonio, which 
had been organized by the Rev. J. T. Fish, 
U.S.A., was at length reorganized under the 
name of St. Mark’s, and as such admitted to 
the Convention in 1858 a.d. 

Others of the pioneer clergy of Western 
Texas were Rev. W. Passmore, who went 
to Brownsville in August, 1851 a.d. ; Rev. 
C. S. Hedges, who went to Indianola and 
Lavaca in 1853 a.d. ; and Rev. L. H. Jones, 
who was first in charge at Seguin, and then 
at San Antonio, where, in December, 1859 




WESTERN TEXAS 


790 


WESTERN TEXAS 


a.d., lie laid the corner-stone of the church 
now known as St. Mark's Cathedral. Mr. 
Hedges still survives, and is now a Presbyter 
of the Diocese of Louisiana. 

After the death of Bishop Freeman sev¬ 
eral elections to the Bishopric of Texas were 
made, but declined; but on May 6, 1859 
a.d. , the Rev. Alexander Gregg, D.D., then 
a Presbyter of the Diocese of South Caro¬ 
lina, was elected by the Convention, then in 
session at Galveston, who, having signified 
his acceptance, was consecrated at Rich¬ 
mond, Va., during the session of the Gen¬ 
eral Convention there, October 13, 1859 a.d. 
Under this good and godly man, of apostolic 
zeal and courage, the Church in Texas 
grew and prospered, Western Texas receiv¬ 
ing its full share of the benefit of his labors. 
But the herculean task of attending to the 
wants of a Diocese larger in territory than 
most of the empires of Europe, in which 
new communities were constantly forming 
and growing up, with Church people in 
them asking for his ministrations, was too 
great for even his indomitable energy and 
perseverance; so that, after deferring the 
matter again and again, he was at last, in 
October, 1874 a.d., compelled to ask relief 
of the General Convention, then in session 
in the city of New York. In response, the 
General Convention set off from the old 
Diocese of Texas the two Missionary Juris¬ 
dictions “ ecclesiastically known as Northern 
and Western Texas." 

By the same General Convention the 
Rev. Robert W. B. Elliott was elected the 
first Bishop of Western Texas, who, on No¬ 
vember 15 of the same year, was consecrated 
in St. Philip’s, Atlanta, Ga., of which par¬ 
ish he had been rector for the last three 
years preceding. 

The new Bishop lost no time in visiting 
his large and distant jurisdiction, to make 
himself acquainted with its condition and 
needs, and to minister at the points where 
his presence was most needed. His first 
service was at Ruling, December 20, 1874 
a.d., where he officiated in a passenger-car, 
which was kindly loaned for the occasion, 
and which was well calculated to suggest to 
him, at the outset of his Episcopal career, 
new ideas, if he did not have them before , of 
the nature of the work to which he had now 
devoted himself. 

Our young Bishop, young in appearance 
as well as in years, by his lovable qualities 
soon endeared himself to the hearts of both 
clergy and laity, while his ability in the 
pulpit, his wisdom in council, his resolution, 
energy, hopefulness, and courage, speedily 
convinced us that the General Convention 
had made no mistake in appointing him as 
our chief standard-bearer in this new, and 
at that time still, to a vllst extent, untried 
region of country. With his advent began 
a new era of growth and progress for the 
Church in W'estern Texas, the signs and 
proofs of which, after the lapse of nine 
years, are seen in almost every part of his 


vast jurisdiction. New parishes have been 
organized, new churches built, to a number 
of which parsonages have been attached, 
schools and institutions of learning founded 
and put in successful operation, new mis¬ 
sions organized, and new and distant points 
visited, the Bishop himself being often the 
pioneer. 

At a Missionary meeting held in Christ 
Church, Hartford, Conn., November 13, 
Bishop Elliott said, “Since the last Gen¬ 
eral Convention (Convention of 1880 a.d.) 
one building has been put up for every four 
months that have passed, and, leaving out 
Williams’ Hall, three-fourths of the money 
has been given in Western Texas." This 
progress still continues, and goes on to-day 
as vigorously as ever. New churches are 
being built at points where, but a year ago, 
there was no Protestant worship at all, and 
new ones will be built at other points where 
they are as badly needed, as soon as the 
necessary funds are secured. One of the 
greatest services which Bishop Elliott has 
rendered Western Texas has been in finding 
and raising up for it generous friends abroad, 
but for whose assistance, not to speak of 
other things, he could never have kept in 
the field the staff of clergy by whom, under 
him, so much of this work has been done. 

The Bishop’s residence is in San Antonio, 
the chief city of the District, and the com¬ 
mercial capital of Western Texas. Always 
an important frontier town, with a large 
military post attached, since the advent of 
the railroads it has nearly doubled in size, 
and now contains a population of about 
thirty-five thousand. While the stranger 
may find in the somewhat foreign aspect of 
the city, its narrow streets, its tortuous river, 
and the manners and customs of its almost 
cosmopolitan people, much to excite his 
curiosity, he will also find there congenial 
society and many of the material comforts 
and conveniences which belong to an older 
civilization. But San Antonio, sunny and 
warm, and strange and picturesque, and, in 
some places, beautiful, is the stronghold of 
Romanism, and also of its twin-sister, Agnos¬ 
ticism ; the first affecting a very large por¬ 
tion of its humble and more ignorant people, 
the other tinging the thought and influen¬ 
cing the lives of a large number of its edu¬ 
cated citizens, especially those of foreign 
birth. As against both of these systems 
and their influences the Church of God must 
wage unceasing warfare; in no city of our 
land is aggressive work more urgently 
needed. The Bishop, with his small band 
of clergy there, two besides himself, is doing 
what can be done, with the means in hand, 
to stem the double current. In the city 
there are two parishes, St. Mark’s and St. 
Paul’s, and two Missions, St. Luke’s and 
St. John’s, and one school for girls and 
young ladies, called St. Mary’s Hall. St. 
Mary’s is doing a needed and noble work in 
keeping our girls from the convent by fur¬ 
nishing an education as good or superior to 




WESTERN TEXAS 


791 


WIDOW 


that which may be had there, and its useful¬ 
ness could be largely increased by the addi¬ 
tion of new buildings for the accommoda¬ 
tion of boarders. St. Paul’s Parish is with¬ 
out a church, but one is soon to be erected. 
The church of the parish of St. Mark’s is 
also the Bishop’s Cathedral. It has a history 
of its own. Its corner-stone was laid, as we 
have seen, by a former rector, Rev. L. H. 
Jones, December, 1859 a.d., but work was 
suspended on it during the war, and not re¬ 
sumed till July, 1873 a.d. It is perhaps, 
with its beautiful and imposing interior, the 
best specimen of church architecture in 
Texas, and is an enduring monument to the 
faith, skill, patience, and perseverance of its 
present dean, the Rev. W. R. Richardson, and 
the earnestness and liberality of his people. 

The other important towns and villages 
in the District, where we have churches, are 
Victoria, Cuero, Goliad, Hallettsville, Gon¬ 
zales, Seguin, Lockhart, San Marcos, Barne, 
El Paso, ITvalde, Del Rio, Laredo, Browns¬ 
ville, Corpus Christi, and Rockport. 

At Seguin are Montgomery Institute, and, 
attached to it, Williams’ Hall, for girls and 
young ladies. The first bears the name of 
the late Dr. Montgomery, of New York, an 
old friend of the Bishop, by one of whose 
generous people, Mrs. S. J. Zabriskie, $500 
were given towards its erection ; the other, 
the honored name of the present Bishop of 
Connecticut, by whose liberal and large- 
hearted people the funds to build it were 
entirely contributed. At Seguin is also St. 
Andrew’s Academy, for boys, which, though 
small, sufficiently answers the purpose in¬ 
tended. 

The following is a statistical comparison 
between 1875 and 1883 a.d., which, though 
imperfect, is correct as far as it goes: 

1875 a.d. 1883 a.d. 


Clergy, including Bishops. 10 14 

Parishes and Mission Stations. 9 30 

Church buildings. 4 20 

Parsonages. 1 6 

Schools. 3 

Sunday-School Teachers. 38 122 

Sunday-School Pupils. 283 888 

Communicants. 370 1153 


The Church in Western Texas is no 
longer an experiment. All that is needed 
now, with the blessing of God, are more 
men to do the work, and more means to sus¬ 
tain them. There is scarcely a clergyman 
laboring in Western Texas to-day who is 
not doing the work of two men, and some 
are doing more. Who will come “ to the 
help of the Lord against the mighty”? 
Young men who are honestly striving to 
answer such a question for themselves need 
have no fear of burying themselves alive by 
coming to this District. If they have any¬ 
thing in them, this is the land and the people 
to bring it out. Men of thorough education, 
strong intelligence, and good sense, as well 
as of earnest piety, are needed, and by no 
people on the face of the earth will they be 
better appreciated. And if there are those 
who would secure and preserve health, and 


at the same time be useful in the Master’s 
vineyard, we say the pure, dry, tonic climate 
of our mountain region will exactly suit. A 
better climate for the consumptive, if he 
will come in time, does not exist in the 
United States. Rev. J. T. Hutchison. 

Whit-Sunday (Pentecost, Ger. Pingsten, 
Old Ger. Whingsten, Old Eng. Whit-Sun). 
The fiftieth day from Easter,—the Sunday 
on which the Church celebrates the out¬ 
pouring of the Holy Ghost upon the Apos¬ 
tles, and through them upon His Church, 
to abide with it forever. It was commem¬ 
orated in the Primitive Church with fes¬ 
tival services. The whole period of fifty 
days was kept with a festal tone, which was 
crowned with the Whit-Sun celebrations. 
It was the completion of the work our Lord 
came to do. “It is expedient for you that 
I go away: for if I go not away, the Com¬ 
forter will not come unto you” (St. John 
xvi. 7). Therefore this day was always ob¬ 
served with holy solemnities. The Acts 
were read throughout this season in the 
East and in the North African Church, as 
we do now. In our own Service, the Col¬ 
lect is the ancient one, being traced to 
Gregory’s Sacramentary. Our Epistle agrees 
with the Eastern Epistle (Acts ii. 1-11), 
and our Gospel is the same as in the Latin 
use, being the old Sarum use (St. John xiv. 
15-31). The Proper Preface is the composi¬ 
tion of the framers of the first Prayer-Book 
of Edward VI., but is singularly like a fine 
Gallican Preface. Edward’s Prayer-Book 
of 1549 a.d. was appointed to be used for 
the first time on Whit-Sunday. The ac¬ 
count in the Act of its Compilation is very 
reverent,—“ His Highness . . . hath ap¬ 
pointed the Archbishop of Canterbury and 
certain of the most learned and discreet 
Bishops and other learned men of this 
Realm” who “should draw and make one 
convenient and meet Order, Rite, and 
Fashion of common and open Prayer and 
Administration of the Sacraments, . . . the 
which at this Time, by the aid of the Holy 
Ghost, with one uniform agreement, is of 
them concluded, set forth, and delivered. 

. . . And that all and singular ministers 
in any Cathedral or Parish in this Realm 
. . . shall, from and after the Feast of 
Pentecost next coming, be bounden to say 
and use the Mattens, Even-Song, Celebra¬ 
tion of the Lord’s Supper, commonly called 
the Mass, and administration of each of the 
Sacraments, and all their common and open 
prayer, in such Order and Form as is men¬ 
tioned in this same Book, and none other or 
otherwise.” From that time forth, by the 
grace of the Holy Spirit, the English- 
speaking people have had one of the noblest 
Liturgies any part of the Church Catholic 
hath ever possessed given to it. 

Widow. In the Mosaic dispensation, 
widows who were friendless were to be aided 
by the triennial third tithe (Deut. xiv. 29; 
xxvi. 12). The forgotten sheaf in the har¬ 
vest-field was to be left “ for the stranger, 














WISCONSIN 


792 


WISCONSIN 


for the fatherless, and for the widow." The 
remaining olives and grapes were to be 
granted to the same needy persons, that 
God’s blessing might rest upon the work of 
His benevolent people (Deut. xxiv. 19-21). 
The widow was to be remembered in relig¬ 
ious feasts (Deut. xvi. 11, 14). Her raiment 
was not to be taken “ to pledge" (Deut. 
xxiv. 17). It is the wicked who take the 
“widow’s ox for a pledge" (Job xxiv. 3). 
The command was, “ Ye shall not afflict any 
widow" (Ex. xxii. 22). “Plead for the 
widow" (Isa. i. 17). Our Lord accuses 
the Scribes and Pharisees of devouring 
“ widows’ houses" (St. Matt, xxiii. 14). In 
the Apostolic Church provision was made 
for widows by a “ daily ministration" to their 
needs (Acts vi. 1-6). St. Paul directs who 
are to oe rightly admitted into this class (1 
Tim. v. 3-16). The aged widow Anna, 
who gives thanks for t^ie infant Christ, is 
a good representative of the class of holy 
women who were given to the service of 
God (St. Luke ii. 36-38). The touching peti¬ 
tion in the Litany for “ fatherless children 
and widows" may have been prompted by 
the fact that long after Apostolic times the 
widow, was in a specially weak condition, 
when women were allowed so little opportu¬ 
nity to gain a subsistence, and the prayer is 
needful to-day. The widows in the early 
Church lived under certain rules and per¬ 
formed certain “ charitable offices connected 
with the Church." In Tertullian’s day the 
Deaconesses “ were commonly chosen out of 
the widows of the Church." The Council 
of Laodicea calls them elderly widows, as 
the Deaconesses were generally somewhat 
advanced in years. A canon of the first 
Council of Orange speaks of a “ widow’s 
garment," so that these Church widows had 
a special dress. It was the duty of the 
Deaconesses “ to be a decent help to the 
female sex in the time of their Baptism, 
sickness, affliction, or the like," as Epipha- 
nius states. Virgins and widows, according 
to a statement of St. Ambrose, had a 
special place assigned to them in the church 
building. 

Authorities : William Latham Bevan in 
William Smith’s Diet, of the Bible, Bing¬ 
ham’s Antiq. of the Christian Ch., C. S. 
Henry’s Christian Antiq. 

Rev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Wisconsin. On the Feast of St. John 
the Baptist, 1847 a.d., the Clergy in Wis¬ 
consin Territory met, with Lay delegates, in 
St. Paul’s, Milwaukee, a call having been 
issued for the meeting by the Missionary 
Bishop of the Northwest. The Bishop pre¬ 
sided. The Bishop, in his address, noted 
the ordination of seven Deacons, while five 
candidates for holy orders were pursuing 
their studies. He expressed his satisfaction 
at the presence of Norwegians and Oneidas 
among the delegates. Rules of Order and 
“ a Constitution for the Diocese, and one for 
Parishes, were adopted. The Rt. Rev. Jack- 
son Kemper, D.D., LL.D., was unanimously 


elected Diocesan. Choice was also made 
of Diocesan officers, and a deputation to the 
General Convention. It was resolved that 
there should be Quarterly Collections for 
Diocesan Missions. Four Oneida Indians 
being present as Delegates from Hobart 
Church, Duck Creek, a congratulatory reso¬ 
lution was adopted on this circumstance. 
The principal Chief of the Nation, Tay-ka- 
wia-ti-on, through his interpreter, Nisaty- 
erha, replied. A committee was appointed 
to apply to the Legislature for the incorpo¬ 
ration of the Trustees of the Episcopal 
Fund. The second Annual Convention was 
in Trinity Church, Janesville, in June, 
1848 a.d. Bishop Kemper presided. The 
church where the Convention met was con¬ 
secrated. The Convention sermon was 
preached by Rev. Frederick W. Hatch. The 
Bishop spoke of the admission of Wisconsin 
• into union with the General Convention," 
and reported four ordinations to the Priest¬ 
hood, three consecrations of churches, one 
laying of a corner-stone, and seven candi¬ 
dates for holy orders, eight names being 
added before the Convention adjourned. 
Bishop Kemper “declined the Diocesan 
Episcopate, and was requested to take charge 
of the Diocese as its Provisional Bishop 
until the Diocese shall be in a condition to 
support a Diocesan. The act incorporating 
the Trustees of Church Property was ac¬ 
cepted and members of the Board elected." 
Two Deacons were ordained Priests at the 
close of the session. The third Convention 
met in the same church, in June, 1849 a.d. 
Bishop Kemper reported three ordinations 
of Deacons, one for the Diocese of Indiana, 
and one ordinati'on to the Priesthood, and 
eleven candidates for Holy Orders. He 
urged on the parishes the duty of becoming 
self-supporting. “ A committee was ap¬ 
pointed to confer with the Trustees of Na- 
shotah, ‘ touching the expediency of placing 
said school under the supervision and con¬ 
trol of the Diocese of Wisconsin.’ ’’ The 
fourth Convention met in St. Matthew’s 
Church, Kenosha, in June, 1850 a.d. The 
Bishop made report of three ordinations to 
the Diaconate and two to the Priesthood, 
thirteen candidates for Holy Orders, and 
two consecrations of churches. A renewed 
effort for the increase of the Episcopal Fund 
was commended. The Missionary Com¬ 
mittee urged the importance of “procuring 
glebes and building sites in all parts of the 
country." The Trustees of Church Property 
were instructed to loan the Episcopal Fund 
only upon unencumbered real estate. 

The fifth Annual Convention was in St. 
Paul’s, Milwaukee, in June, 1851 a.d. The 
Bishop reported the ordination of three 
Deacons and one Priest, twelve candidates 
for orders, and commended the Nashotah 
School. An effort to establish a Female 
Seminary was indorsed. The Bishop was 
requested to divide the Diocese into Convo- 
cational districts. The sixth Convention 
met in the same church in June, 1852 a.d. 




WISCONSIN 


793 


WISCONSIN 


The Bishops of Indiana and Pennsylvania 
were present with the Missionary Bishop. 
The Bishop had ordained seven Deacons 
and one Priest. Pour candidates were 
studying at Nashotah. Two corner-stones 
had been laid, and one burying-ground con¬ 
secrated. One church had been consecrated. 
Racine College had been established. One 
church was admitted into union. The seventh 
Convention, in 1853 a.d., met in the same 
church. St. Ann’s Hall, Milwaukee, Ra¬ 
cine College, and Nashotah were com¬ 
mended. The eighth Convention met in the 
same church, Rev. W. W. Arnett, D.D., 
preaching the sermon. “ Another Female 
Seminary, St. Mary’s Hall, at Janesville, 
had been established.” Bishop Kemper 
was a second time elected Diocesan, and ac¬ 
cepted. A committee for securing glebe 
land and lots for churches was appointed. 
At the ninth Convention, in Mineral Point, 
the Bishop reported the death of Rev. 
George Thompson, and resolutions were 
adopted respecting it. Trinity Church, 
where the Convention was sitting, was con¬ 
secrated, and there was an ordination to the 
Priesthood. The tenth Convention met in 
St. Paul’s, Milwaukee, the Rev. Geo. B. 
Eastman preaching the Convention sermon. 
A communication was received from the 
parish in Watertown announcing that it was 
self-supporting. A resolution strongly urg¬ 
ing the support of Church Schools and Col¬ 
leges was unanimously adopted. “ The 
Board of Missions was requested to raise 
$12,000 for Diocesan Missions the ensuing 
year.” Bishop Kemper, who is shown in 
this record as the beloved Bishop of Wis¬ 
consin, was born in Dutchess County, N. Y., 
in 1789 a.d. He graduated from Columbia 
College, N. Y.; was ordained Deacon in 
1811 a.d., and Priest in 1812 a.d., and was 
for years at Christ Church, Philadelphia, 
and afterwards in Connecticut. He was 
consecrated as the first Missionary Bishop 
of Missouri and Indiana in St. Peter’s 
Church, Philadelphia, September 25, 1835 
a.d. He was the first Missionary Bishop 
in the American Church. Missouri, Indi¬ 
ana, Iowa, and Minnesota were all within 
his original jurisdiction. He was revered 
throughout his wide field, and as he brought 
in one Diocese after another to the General 
Convention, his spiritual children, who 
were called on thus to part with him, 
blessed the good providence of God, which 
had given them such a founder. The writer 
of this sketch once asked him, on one of his 
many journeys, “ Do you ever get tired ?” 
He gave one of his earnest looks, and re¬ 
plied, “ Do you get tired of doing your 
daily duty, sir?” And so the tireless man 
worked on, exchanging Eastern comforts 
for his simple Western home, near his much¬ 
loved Nashotah, until God called him to 
rest. 

In 1866 a.d., Rev. W. E. Armitage be¬ 
came Assistant Bishop. He was born in 
Brooklyn, educated at Columbia College and 


the General Theological Seminary, and was 
Rector of St. John’s, Detroit, when elected 
to the Episcopate. After the faithful work 
of a few years, he died in 1873 a.d. In 

1869 a.d. , Bishops Kemper and Armitage 
were present at the Convention. There 
were 13 candidates for orders, 618 had 
been confirmed, 307 of whom had come 
in from various denominations, 10 having 
been Roman Catholics. Both Bishops re¬ 
ferred to the death of Rev. W. M. Hickox. 
Associate missions were approved. A plan 
was reported of raising up an order of self- 
denying, self-supporting missionaries as 
“teaching Deacons.” At the Council of 

1870 a.d. , Bishop Kemper’s death was offi¬ 
cially announced by the Standing Com¬ 
mittee: “ He fell asleep in Jesus, . . . and 
now rests in hope on the soil which, for a 
third of a century, has been consecrated by 
his prayer and love.” “With you who 
knew him, loved him, and honored him, 
there needs no prompter of his praise.” An 
appeal was made by Bishop Armitage for 
the purchase of a girls’ school, called Kem¬ 
per Hall, as a monument to the late Bishop. 
It was resolved that an early division of 
the Diocese was desirable, and a committee 
was appointed on the subject. The Mission 
Farm at Green Bay was put in charge of 
Christ Church Parish in that place. Bishop 
Welles was consecrated in 1874 a.d., in St. 
Thomas’ Church, New York. He is a native 
of Waterloo, N. Y., and a graduate of Ho¬ 
bart College. He was Rector of Christ 
Church, Red Wing, Minn., at the time of 
his election to the Episcopate. 

In 1875 a.d. the Diocese of Fond du Lac 
was set off from Wisconsin. ( Vide Fond du 
Lac.) Nashotah has been the great feeder of 
the ranks of Wisconsin clergy. Dr. Cole says, 
“When towards the close of the day, in the 
autumn of 1842 a.d., the first occupants of 
the Mission knelt upon a spot covered prob¬ 
ably by this chapel (St. Sylvan us’, Nasho¬ 
tah), and prayed for a blessing on their 
endeavors, they had nothing in hand for the 
morrow. It was venture of faith. . . . The 
Lord in whom they trusted opened the 
hearts and hands of His people. He that 
fed Elijah by the brook Cherith, that gave 
manna to Israel in the wilderness, brought 
help to His servants in the daily mail.” 
Kemper Hall, Kenosha, is under the charge 
of the Sisters of St. Mary. There is a Day 
School at the Cathedral in Milwaukee; St. 
John’s Home, Milwaukee, under the chap¬ 
laincy of Rev. H. B. St. George, Sr., St. 
Luke’s Hospital, Racine, under the chap¬ 
laincy of Rev. Dr. Conover, and St. Luke’s 
Hospital, Chippewa Falls, of which Rev. S. 
J, Yundt is chaplain, are worthy of mention. 

Statistics. —Clergy, 75 ; Parishes and Mis¬ 
sions, 108; Baptisms, 376; Confirmed, 329 ; 
Communicants, 4800; Sunday-School Teach¬ 
ers, 264; Scholars, 2189; Contributions, 
$91,401.46. 

Authorities : The Churchman’s Calendar, 
1868 a.d. The Churchman’s Year Book, 




WITANAGEMOT 


794 


WOMAN 


1870 and 1871 a.d., and the Living Church 
Annual, 1884 a.d., for Statistics, etc. 

Bev. S. F. Hotchkin. 

Witanagemot. Witanagemot— i.e., meet¬ 
ing of the wise men—was an assembly among 
the Anglo-Saxons, summoned by the King 
(probably at stated times) for council in all 
the main acts of government. It consisted 
of the principal men of the nation,—the 
aldermen oftheshires, thecbief ecclesiastics, 
such as Bishops and Abbots, and perhaps 
other, both lay and clerical. It lay within 
its province to settle the laws, to elect, or 
at least confirm the King, and to choose 
Bishops. Each kingdom of the Heptarchy 
had its own Witanagemot; but on the con¬ 
quest of England by William the whole 
system was swept away. Some of its fea¬ 
tures, however, survive in Parliament, such 
as the Bishops sitting in the House of Lords ; 
yet it cannot be said that the latter assembly 
is modeled upon the former. 

Authorities: Hallam’s Middle Ages, 
Chambers’s Cyclopaedia, Blunt’s Early Eng¬ 
lish Church. 

Woman. The position and obligations 
of woman in the Church are determined, 
like her place and duties in society, by the 
object of her creation, which was to be “an 
helpmeet for man.’’ Simple as this ought 
to be from the teaching of nature as well as 
from the statements of Revelation, it has yet 
always been difficult for man to understand 
it, and the mistakes of the highest civiliza¬ 
tion upon this point are quite as great as 
those of the rudest savagery. There are two 
distinct and apparently contradictory ac¬ 
counts of her origin in Genesis, which are 
yet perfectly reconcilable if read aright. In 
Gen. i. 27, we are told that “ God created 
man in His own image ; in the image of God 
created He him , male and female created He 
them.” This is a plain, intelligible state¬ 
ment, involving co-equality of man and 
woman in their relative positions and giving 
to neither priority of origin. Its textual 
connection and its assertion first clearly es¬ 
tablish it as the purposed revelation of a 
fact. Man, therefore, is male and female, 
either part being incomplete without the 
other. Not man generically, but the man 
needed an helpmeet for him to fulfill the 
objects of his being, and only in woman 
could such help be found. Nature teaches 
the same truth, woman being in every aspect, 
physical, mental, and even moral, the com¬ 
plement of man. Without woman man, 
therefore, cannot rightly and fully accom¬ 
plish his work in the Church any more than 
in the world. But the converse of this is 
equally true, and it follows necessarily that 
there is much to be done in the work of the 
Church which it is not woman's place to do. 
We can find no better guide to determine 
the particulars in this respect than the Scrip¬ 
tures of the New Testament. There we al¬ 
ways find woman a co-worker with man, 
active and zealous, not in an inferior posi¬ 
tion, but in a distinctive line of duty. Only 


when seeking to go beyond her sphere, as 
was evidently the case among the Greek 
converts, do we find her reminded of her sub¬ 
jection—not inferiority—to the stronger sex 
(1 Cor. ii. 8, 9; 1 Tim. ii. 11, 12). St. Paul 
distinctly and very emphatically forbids a 
woman to teach, and we find no instance of 
any female in holy orders, or intrusted with 
the public ministrations or administration 
of the Church. It is, of course, evident that 
St. Paul’s language is not to be accepted lit¬ 
erally, at least in any general application, 
for we should then be deprived of the ser¬ 
vices of woman as a teacher in schools or 
mission-fields to her own sex, and as a mat¬ 
ter of fact the Apostle speaks approvingly 
of the instruction received by Timothy him¬ 
self, to whom he is writing, from his mother 
Eunice and his grandmother Lois,—for such 
is the fair interpretation of his language. 
But enough is clear to condemn as altogether 
unscriptural the assumption by woman of 
the office of public preaching or exhorting. 
Neither is there any scriptural authority for 
the ordination of women as “ Deaconesses,” 
the term applied to Phoebe (Rom. xvi. 1) 
meaning simply “ a servant,” as translated 
in the King James’ Version. It may be ac¬ 
cepted as a principle, therefore, that woman 
is debarred by her sex from all strictly mas¬ 
culine employment in the Church, and re¬ 
stricted to work in subjection to and by direc¬ 
tion of a higher authority. Her proper sphere 
is in all those private ministrations which 
demand especially the gentleness, patience, 
and watchfulness of her nature, and in the 
care and oversight of those matters, neces¬ 
sary and abundant,in the working economy of 
the Church which are analogous to the house¬ 
hold duties of domestic life. First among 
these is the religious instruction of young 
children. Remembering that the child can¬ 
not be taught too early the knowledge of 
God and His Church, and that to woman 
peculiarly belongs the care of his earliest 
years, it becomes evident that he must learn 
this from her or lose>the golden opportunity. 
To teach her children the Holy Scriptures, 
the Catechism of the Church, and the high 
value of their birthright therein is a solemn 
duty and a blessed privilege which no mother 
may delegate to others. Where this duty 
is properly realized and performed its in¬ 
fluence is marked on the character of the 
community no less than of the individual. 
The Sunday-school assumes its proper place 
as a missionary work and a means of bring¬ 
ing the Rector into close acquaintance with 
the children of his charge, and in it the 
younger women and those who have no chil¬ 
dren of their own find a field to minister in¬ 
struction to those little ones who are de¬ 
prived of a mother’s training. 

Another most useful department of woman’s 
work, in which a field is open to every one 
who is willing to do personal service, is 
found in ministering to the physical comfort 
and spiritual needs of the poor and igno¬ 
rant. In every neighborhood some object 




WOMAN 


795 


WOMAN 


for such ministrations may be found. A 
visit of inquiry with a few words of kindly 
sympathy, or a small contribution to the 
comfort of some poor sister, personally of¬ 
fered is a good work for Christ’s sake, 
which will bring more happiness and bless¬ 
ing than it bestows. A half-hour spent in 
reading the Bible and Prayer-Book to some 
sick or aged person who cannot read them 
for herself is one of the best ways in which 
a Sunday afternoon can be occupied, and 
hundreds of women might thus utilize the 
leisure which hangs heavily upon their 
bands. There should be in every Parish 
some organized association for woman’s 
work by means of which the peculiar quali¬ 
fications and leisure hours, few or many, of 
all may be turned to account. The regular 
t{ Sisterhoods’’^.^.), of which there are at 
least thirteen in operation in the various 
Dioceses, are adapted to those only whom 
circumstances permit to give their entire 
time to charitable and religious employ¬ 
ment. But Parish Guilds may accomplish 
a great deal without so Complete a self- 
devotion, and indeed without any serious 
inconvenience to those, even, whose time is 
largely occupied by the demands of other 
duties. The Rector will know what are his 
needs in this direction. Let him organize 
an association comprising all the active 
women of his Parish. Visiting Committees 
of two should be appointed in monthly 
turns, whose duty should be to inquire for 
and call upon the poor, the needy sick, or 
strangers, inviting the latter to church and 
calling for them on Sunday, and reporting 
all cases of necessity, illness, or ignorance to 
the Rector ; if need require, nursing for the 
sick is to be supplied either from the mem¬ 
bership or by competent nurses hired and 
supervised by the association. A very 
small contribution from each, paid monthly, 
will, if the membership be general, furnish 
an ample treasury for all ordinary require¬ 
ments. As a rule the whole Parish will 
readily join the list of contributors, and 
there should be two members appointed 
monthly to make the collections. Another 
most admirable form of organization, 
perfectly practicable in every Parish, is the 
“ Ladies’ Church Aid Society.” Twelve 
managers, or fewer, if the Parish be 
small,—a President, Vice-President, Secre¬ 
tary, and Treasurer form the association. 
Subscribers for small amounts monthly— 
five or ten cents—are obtained among the 
congregation, larger amounts, or semi¬ 
annual subscriptions, being accepted. Per¬ 
manent committees of two, as in the former 
case, collect these sums monthly, and exer¬ 
cise an active rivalry in gaining new sub¬ 
scribers. The ofiicers never collect. It is 
wonderful how much is accomplished by 
this simple machinery, assisted, when some 
extensive work has been undertaken, by a 
supplementary Offertory in the church. 
No Rector who has once experienced the 
aid and comfort of such an organization 


will ever willingly be without one in his 
Parish. The chief aim of the society should 
be to accomplish each year some important 
and permanent work in the adornment 
and furnishing of the church edifice or 
some similar enterprise, or in giving a 
tangible shape and practicability to some 
plan which has seemed beyond the means 
of the congregation. No church, however 
poor the people, will remain dingy and 
shabby or ill equipped in proper appoint¬ 
ments for public worship with such an or¬ 
ganization at work. Even the building and 
furnishing of a rectory is not too great a 
task for it to undertake and push to comple¬ 
tion by stirring up the zeal of the congre¬ 
gation to help carry out a determined pur¬ 
pose. The Rector should guide and advise, 
but leave the managers abundant liberty 
of choice and action. A definite system 
should be maintained in the direction of 
the work, always doing something which no 
one else is likely to undertake, and avoid¬ 
ing those matters which must be done. 

In addition to these objects, the society 
should take charge of the surplices and 
altar-linen, the chancel and its furniture, 
the Christmas and Easter decorations, and 
all similar matters, assigning each to a spe¬ 
cial committee of two, and holding the treas¬ 
ury responsible for such slight expenses as 
their duties involve. An extremely valu¬ 
able and practical work may be done by 
such a society in bringing together the 
members of the congregation who would be 
otherwise unknown to each other, and thus 
fostering mutual acquaintance, if not socia¬ 
bility. This may be accomplished in various 
ways, as circumstances may suggest. The 
“ Parish Sociable” is an excellent method, 
the members in turn keeping open house 
for one evening in each month, and per¬ 
sonally inviting all to be present, the duty 
thus falling on each less frequently than 
once a year. Where this is not practicable, 
the “ Garden Party” once or twice a year 
in summer is an admirable substitute. A 
suitable place and evening are selected, 
and the grounds made attractive with 
torches, Chinese lanterns, and similar de¬ 
vices. Cakes, ices, and lemonade are served 
from rustic tables, the privilege of purchas¬ 
ing these refreshments relieving constraint 
and inducing the attendance of many who 
would otherwise hesitate to come. The boys 
of the congregation gladly act as waiters 
under the direction of the committee, while 
the managers mingle among the guests, in¬ 
troducing and entertaining them. The re¬ 
sult is always happy, and the influence for 
good in thus bringing people together lin¬ 
gers long after the occasion has passed by. 

These are a few of the ways in which 
woman may find an active field for useful¬ 
ness in the Church without in any way inter¬ 
fering with her domestic and social obliga¬ 
tions. The practice of these will itself be 
suggestive of many others. 

Rev. R. Wilson, D.D. 




WORD OF GOD 


796 


WORK, CHURCH 


Word of God. The title Word of God 
as applied to the second Person of the Holy- 
Trinity, is derived from the Old Testament 
to us. That the Jews understood the theo¬ 
logical import of the term Word as the Chris¬ 
tian understands it is not likely ; but that the 
Apostle took it from any other source than 
Holy Scripture is not possible. The term 
was found in the writings of Philo Judzeus, a 
wealthy, influential, and learned Jew of 
Alexandria in our Lord’s time, and a little 
later, and his works gave the term Logos 
(Word), by which he meant a divine influ¬ 
ence, an exhibition of the divine mind, but 
not a Person in the Unity of the Divine 
Nature. The Messiah was indeed in the 
Targums set forth as the Son of God, and 
so the two parallel teachings prepared the 
minds of the thoughtful for the reception of 
the divine revelation that the Messiah was 
the Word of God, and in a far deeper sense 
than the uninspired paruphrasts and record¬ 
ers of Jewish interpretation and the specu¬ 
lative platonizing Jew of Alexandria could 
have fathomed. They cleared the way by 
using terms in a lower sense than the full 
truth demanded. But it was given to the 
disciple whom Jesus loved to declare this 
full truth. The second Person of the Holy 
Trinity of the very substance of the Father 
was by the Psalmist declared to be the 
Word of God, by whom the heavens were 
made, and so, though not knowing its full¬ 
ness, anticipating the doctrine of St. Paul 
and the declaration of St. John, that not 
only the “Word was with God and the 
Word was God,” but that by Him were all 
things made, “ and without Him was not 
anything made that was made.” St. John’s 
full enunciation was reserved as the last and 
crowning declaration of our Lord’s Divine 
Nature, the setting forth of the secret inti¬ 
mate union of His Person with the Person 
of the Father, like as, by a most distant 
analogy, the Word is most intimately bound 
up in the power of expressing Himself each 
Person possesses. That it is a mystery not 
to be known here is most true, and it is to 
be devoutly and faithfully accepted. But 
with this confession we yet may be allowed’ 
to speak of this form of His Personality. 
“ For ever, 0 Lord, Thy Word is settled in 
Heaven” (Ps. cxix. 89), carries us back to 
the eternal nature of the Word, and sets 
forth the worker before the works. The 
Word of God came to the Prophets, and 
they spake the mind of Christ ; the mys¬ 
terious secret one who in man’s appearance, 
with man’s voice, sent the Angel Gabriel to 
strengthen the fainting prophet (Dan. viii. 
15, 16). Already St. Paul had used this 
term as a title of our Lord, commending 
the Ephesians to God and to the Word of 
His grace (Acts xx. 32), and alluding to this 
commendation in his Epistle to them, in 
their trust when they heard the Word of 
Truth (Eph. i. 13); warning the Hebrew 
Christians that the Word of God is quick 
and powerful, and sharper than any two- 


edged sword (Heb. iv. 12), and saluting Ti¬ 
tus with a reminder that God had mani¬ 
fested His Word through preaching. St. 
John had already in his Epistles called 
his Master the Word of Life. And in 
the vision of the Rider going forth in His 
righteousness, whose name is called the 
Word of God (Rev. xix. 13 ; comp. Ps. xlv. 
3, 4). So far had the title been applied to 
our Lord in even deeper appreciation of its 
truth, till the Church was prepared to have 
the full deposit made with her in the sublime 
words, “In the beginning was the Word, 
and the Word was with God, and the Word 
was God.” Now that this is declared, other 
terms and titles of our Lord, other descrip¬ 
tions of Himself and His work, gain im¬ 
measurable importance, — the Wonderful, 
the One whose name is secret, the numbefer 
of secrets, He that hath a name that no man 
knoweth. The mystery is not removed, but 
the Word of God must be a Person if these 
are His titles and are descriptions of Him 
and His Nature; and again, without this 
last title we might hold Him to be a Mighty 
Being, only now we know Him to be inti¬ 
mately God of God of the One Substance of 
the Father. 

Word of God is generally the name given 
to the Holy Scripture; but while it is per¬ 
fectly correct for us to use it so now, we 
must remember that wherever this phrase 
occurs in Holy Scripture itself, it is to be 
usually understood of our Lord, since the 
usual name in the New Testament for the 
Old Testament Books was the Scripture or 
Holy Scripture, but not the Word of God. 

Work, Church, for the Future. When the 
thoughtful and observant eye looks back over 
the past century, there is nothing more as¬ 
tonishing than the influence exerted by the 
Church upon every other variety of Relig¬ 
ion in this land. Just after the Revolution¬ 
ary war, nearly dead,—supposed to be past 
the possibility of a revival,—despaired of 
even by some Churchmen, and that for a 
whole generation after the Episcopate was 
obtained, who could have expected such a 
result as we see to-day ? Moreover, her 
claims were, of course, rejected by Rome, 
and her “ Apostolic Succession” and her 
“prayer by a book” were the scorn of the 
rest, while her “ exclusiveness” made her 
beyond measure odious to all the Protestant 
denominations. But now all this is changed, 
and is still changing. These denomina¬ 
tions have all been moving from the ground 
they occupied half a century ago, and the 
steady drift of their changes brings them 
daily nearer to the Church. The uncom¬ 
promising aspirates of their original secta¬ 
rian shibboleths are softening down or dis¬ 
appearing. The architecture, the music, 
the decorations, the liturgical devotions, the 
reverence for houses used for public wor¬ 
ship, the organs, the stained glass, the 
memorial windows, the use of chanting, 
the public recital of the Creed, the Lord’s 
Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, and 





WORK, CHURCH 


797 


WORK, CHURCH 


many other things first known in this 
country only through the Church, have 
been creeping into more and general use 
among all the Evangelical Denominations, 
and even among some who are not Evan¬ 
gelical. Christmas and Easter are already 
well observed ; the New York Stock Board 
adjourns over every Good-Friday on the 
motion of a Jew ; and seventy non-Episco- 
pal ministers of Brooklyn have agreed 
together this year to keep a part of the 
season of Lent. The Church element is so 
strong in all our great cities that the whole 
social current is largely regulated by the 
Feasts and Fasts of the Church. The 
Church of Rome, the hardest to move, is 
nevertheless moving also. By the operation 
of the free atmosphere of this country, by 
the common-school system, and specially 
by the anxiety of the priests to conciliate 
Protestants as much as possible by not 
making prominent those things which they 
know to be most repugnant to the Protest¬ 
ant mind,—by all these things, the quality 
of Romanism itself is perceptibly changing. 
Every such change dilutes the intensity of 
Ultramontanism, gives more and more of 
an American tone, and thus brings the 
masses of Romanists gently but inevitably 
nearer to us. Now, if all this has been 
accomplished in one century (and nearly 
all only in the latter half of it), what 
reasonable man can refrain from looking 
ahead and anticipating what will be the 
result of the same changes going on for a 
hundred years to come? We Churchmen 
should have coolness and clear-headedness 
enough to measure the vastness of the 
responsibility which Providence has placed 
upon us, and see what practical changes we 
need to make in our own working system in 
order to accomplish our task. 

We inherited, by tradition from our Mother- 
Church of England, a cast-iron system, with 
close union of Church and State (meaning, 
too often, the undue dominance of the 
State), a body of Canons largely obsolete, 
and a Church legislature (the Convocations 
of Canterbury and York) unable to act at 
all. The spiritual tone of that Church was 
at the lowest point it had ever known. We 
received it in that its lowest, poorest, and 
coldest shape. Our task has been to accom¬ 
modate a Church and State system to a 
country where there could be no union be¬ 
tween Church and State; to take a cast-iron 
system and melt it over, and make it more 
like spring steel; to work out a body of 
Canons suitable to our own condition, and 
by a Church legislature deriving no author¬ 
ity from the Civil Power; and to put 
warmth and heartiness into a worship which 
was cold and almost dead. This we have 
done: but much more yet remains. We 
need to get rid entirely of the pew system, 
so that no one can secure, by a money pay¬ 
ment, a right to a seat in the House of God. 
In a country where all are equal in the eye 
of the law, it will never answer that there 


should be more of fraternity in the lav) than 
in the Gospel. The social element—which 
is so strong a binding power among the De¬ 
nominations—cannot be used with us as with 
them, for we must include all grades of so¬ 
ciety. But the missing link may here be 
supplied by the formation of Guilds, Broth¬ 
erhoods, Sisterhoods, and all manner of or¬ 
ganizations for mutual help, grouping them 
all around the Church as their real Mother. 
The Sisterhoods devote themselves to hos¬ 
pitals, to out-door nursing of the sick, to 
teaching, to church embroidery and decora¬ 
tion, etc. ; and the Brotherhoods are mainly 
priests trained for the holding of parochial 
Missions, although lay Brotherhoods also 
have accomplished much good. There is a 
vast field here which has only just begun to 
be worked, and in which social fellowship, 
in good works and material help of all sorts, 
will give the needed practical activity to 
our parishes and Dioceses. These organiza¬ 
tions may be made to supply precisely that 
want which leads so many into the ranks 
of the Freemasons, Odd-Fellows, and other 
Orders of like character. 

Among other wants, a Financial System 
which will have more distributive equality 
and more spiritual efficacy than our usual 
corporation of “ Rector, Church-wardens, 
and Vestrymen” supplies, is a need felt 
more and more deeply by very many among 
us. 

The old rigidity of public worship has 
already been wonderfully changed for the 
better. Hardly any two parishes can now 
be found whose order and manner of wor¬ 
ship is exactly the same. And this is like 
the living variety of Nature, where no two 
leaves can be found exactly alike on the 
same tree: while bullets run in the same 
mould by machinery can be made exactly 
alike, because they are things without life. 
Even the immovable Prayer-Book has felt 
the new spirit, and a nearly unanimous vote 
of General Convention has'declared that it 
must acquire both enrichment and flexi¬ 
bility. In music—especially in the estab¬ 
lishment of Surpliced Choirs—much has 
been done, and improvement is going on 
rapidly. The quartette music of modern 
shallowness is steadily retreating before a 
style of more Churchly simplicity, strength, 
solemnity, and grandeur. Orchestral ac¬ 
companiments, on great festivals, add still 
further to the effect. And the variety and 
freedom of additional services brings with 
it a freshness and earnestness which are con¬ 
tinually deepening and increasing the spir¬ 
itual magnetism and attractiveness of the 
Church. 

The perfecting of our own traditional or¬ 
ganization is one of our most imperative 
wants. The true theory of Episcopacy does 
not require that a vast territory should be 
put under one man, which no one man can 
possibly attend to efficiently. Where popu¬ 
lation is reasonably dense, a Diocese ought 
not to be more than from twenty to fifty 






WORK, CHURCH 


798 


WORK, CHURCH 


miles square. Every one of our present States 
and Territories (except, perhaps, Rhode Isl¬ 
and and Delaware) will eventually become 
a Province containing three or more Dio¬ 
ceses, and some of them are now large 
enough for six or eight Dioceses, or even 
more. Not until this subdivision is carried 
out will it be possible to carry ecclesiastical 
tilth to the proper point of personal and 
proper care. Then, also, our Judicial sys¬ 
tem is wretchedly defective. Each Province 
should furnish a ready Court of Appeal, 
where every complaint or grievance could be 
heard, and nothing that is wrong be left 
without a possible and practicable remedy. 
The sooner this part of our machinery is put 
into good repair, the better it will be for 
every other branch of the operations of the 
Church. 

The School question is, in this country, 
one of vast importance and almost insoluble 
difficulty. The endowment of education by 
State Governments, the General Govern¬ 
ment, and private bequests or gifts, is so 
vast, that in less than a century from now 
this interest will be the richest that the 
world has ever seen. Against this over¬ 
whelming preponderance of wealth it were 
vain to expect that Church-people alone 
should, by voluntary gifts, set up another 
educational system able to compete with 
that of the public. The Roman Church is 
trying to do this, and its efforts have been 
heroic. But the Roman system enables 
them really to levy large sums from the 
pockets of Protestants: and a very small 
proportion of the public school taxes is paid 
by their people. In both respects we stand 
on very different ground from them. And 
yet with both these advantages, their success 
is very incomplete. As all the Evangelical 
denominations, together with the Roman 
Church and our own, are agreed in profess¬ 
ing to accept the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s 
Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, it is 
theoretically possible that they should all 
combine to have that much, at least, of re¬ 
ligious teaching in the public schools. But 
though theoretically possible, it is not now 
within reach practically. It may become so 
by and by, however, as sectarian bitterness 
and suspiciousness decrease. The most that 
can be done is to establish Church schools 
of high grade, for boys and for girls, the 
advantages of which shall be within the 
reach of those who are of moderate means. 
It will be found that, by placing these under 
the charge of members of some Religious 
organization, the best organization and the 
highest kind of influence will be secured, 
with the greatest steadiness of administra¬ 
tion, and at the least possible expense. As 
to Church colleges, those we have are in 
great need of further endowment, yet with¬ 
out much chance of getting it. Owing to 
the wide comprehensiveness of the Church, 
no two Church colleges have exactly the 
same ecclesiastical tone. Each can appeal, 
therefore, only to the sympathies of a por¬ 


tion of Churchmen: and no one of them is 
likely to get anything from outside. In all 
the older denomination colleges, the denom¬ 
inational spirit has become so unpopular, 
that all organic guarantees of denomina¬ 
tional supremacy have been voluntarily re¬ 
moved. Their growing unsectarianism has 
drawn rich additional gifts and endowments. 
The better Church policy will be to es¬ 
tablish Halls or Houses for Church under¬ 
graduates in connection with every such 
college. Thus organizing our Church 
strength will make it far more effective as a 
leaven for the whole lump. And we can do 
it the more safely, as there is not another 
religious body in the country that is likely 
to make any effort in that direction. This 
would render all the older and wealthier 
colleges even more useful to the Church than 
if they were her own: for few will come 
to a Church college except youths of Church 
families ; while, on the other plan, a definite 
Church influence will constantly be brought 
to bear on the larger number of undergrad¬ 
uates who are not Churchmen. 

There are special fields of Church work, 
each of which has its own special claims. 
First in magnitude should be mentioned the 
colored population, mainly—though not ex¬ 
clusively—to be found in the Southern 
States. Wherever—as in the larger cities 
—any appreciable portion of that popula¬ 
tion lias risen to a certain grade of cultiva¬ 
tion and comfort, there we always find 
some congregations of them in the Church. 
But these are miserably few in proportion 
to the vast numbers of that race. The 
Church has shown such phenomenal slow¬ 
ness and want of success in getting hold of 
this element, that we need to- look facts 
squarely in the face and find out the rea¬ 
sons. The race difficulty is the first to meet 
us. That all men are equal in God’s House 
is a principle that cannot be abandoned. 
There is neither Jew nor Greek, male or 
female, Barbarian or Scythian, bond or free ; 
but all are one in Christ Jesus. Yet gen¬ 
erally, in the earliest ages, Jewish congre¬ 
gations had usages of their own, and were 
separate organizations (or parishes) from the 
Gentile Christians. This distinction was 
carried up to the highest point—the Apos- 
tolate—when St. Peter was specially com¬ 
missioned as the Apostle of the Circum¬ 
cision, and St. Paul as the “ Apostle of the 
Gentiles.” Taking human nature as it is, 
the most of our congregations of white peo¬ 
ple would not permit any large number of 
colored people to come in and help run a 
parish on the same footing as themselves. 
And the great majority of colored people, 
who are sufficiently elevated to appreciate 
the Church and her worship, do not enjoy 
trying to be members where they feel 
(whether justly or unjustly) that they are 
looked on by some as intruders; and they 
are not really comfortable until they have a 
church of their own. This does not imply 
a colored minister ; but they like to feel that 





WORK, CHURCH 


799 


WORK, CHURCH 


the place where they meet, the organization 
to which they belong, is their own. Now 
here is a practical contradiction. The pride 
of equality with the whites theoretically de¬ 
mands one thing: the actual comfort of a 
practical working system demands the other. 
In the supply of the Ministry the same 
thing is true. The vast majority of the col¬ 
ored race being yet ignorant, it is vain to 
hope for a competent supply of ministers of 
their own color, if the high literary require¬ 
ments of our present Canons are insisted on. 
Practical common sense would therefore be 
willing to lower them. But when this was 
proposed to the last General Convention, a 
Convention of Colored Clergy and Laity of 
the Church protested loudly against the in¬ 
dignity of any such color line, and insisted 
that only those colored men should be or¬ 
dained priests in the Church who could 
sustain the full examinations required of the 
whites. Moreover, the middle and lower 
classes of colored people are exceedingly 
clannish, and must be dealt with rather in 
masses than as individuals. They are bound 
together by a subtle sympathy, which makes 
them act together. 

In any plans for their improvement this 
peculiarity must never be lost sight of. The 
work cannot be thoroughly done among 
them unless by a Ministry largely, if not 
wholly, of their own race. Moreover, our 
liturgical and disciplinary system needs to 
be seriously modified before it will be able 
to meet the requirements of the work. With 
millions, so large a proportion of whom can¬ 
not read, it is nonsense to try to teach them 
to respond all through our regular service, 
Psalter and all. We must find some mode 
of worship which will give them quite as 
much to do, if not more: and yet give it in 
such a shape as to make it easy for them to 
do it. This lies ready to our hand in the 
old original Antiphon system, by which one 
verse —as characteristic of the day as possible 
—was selected, and taught to the people as a 
burden or chorus, and they introduced it 
after each verse of Canticle or Psalm. This 
frequent repetition is what the colored peo¬ 
ple—who are all singers—greatly delight in. 
The one hundred and thirty-sixth Psalm, with 
the burden, to every verse,—“ for His mercy 
endureth forever,”—is an exact mode of what 
we mean. The Benedicite is another speci¬ 
men. It would require one who has an in¬ 
tuitive perception of the simple, the sym¬ 
pathetic, and the striking, together with 
great natural musical taste and feeling, to 
revive this feature of ancient Church wor¬ 
ship. It was originally invented in order 
to interest congregations of unlearned peo¬ 
ple, who had no printed Prayer-Books in 
their hands: and it would succeed as well 
now as then. The entire service should be 
made as musical as possible. Much may 
also be done in the way of vestments, lights, 
and other decorations to interest a race 
whose temperament is decidedly more sen¬ 
suous than our own. That sensuousness 


now shows itself in their protracted nocturnal 
orgies, where shouting, clapping, jumping, 
dancing, and similar “ exercises” are kept 
up until a physical excitement is produced 
of a kind weilnigb destructive of true Re¬ 
ligion. The orderly and regulated attrac¬ 
tiveness of a musical service, with colored 
vestments, light, and incense, would give ele¬ 
vation and dignity, while yet free from the 
evils of the other plan. Nature has clothed 
our dusky brother in mourning anyhow, all 
over. When only white is combined with 
black, it is merely another variety of mourn¬ 
ing. In nothing does he delight more than 
in bright and positive colors ; and why not 
let him have them in his Religious services ? 
He is very fond of lights also, and why not 
let him have them ? And of the propriety 
of incense, few, who have had experience, 
would doubt. When race peculiarities are 
in question, things of slightest importance 
in themselves may be the key to success ; and 
the neglect of them, and attending only to 
great matters, may insure total failure. The 
lubricating oil is a very slight item in the 
outfit of a railway train : but if it be omitted, 
all the rest will soon come to a stand-still. 
In ascertaining, by practical experiment, 
what will be likely to succeed, there must 
be reasonable freedom from Canonical and 
rubrical fetters. It is a work for individuals 
of peculiar gifts and qualifications ; and in 
which legislative bodies, deciding in advance 
of experience, can only show their impotence 
for any good. 

Of the two very different efforts now at¬ 
tracting great attention in the colored 
field,—that of St. Mary’s Church, Balti¬ 
more, and that of Mrs. Buford at Laurence- 
ville, in Virginia,—the former comes the 
nearest to the suggestions made above. The 
services are largely choral, and highly “rit¬ 
ualistic and the ten-years-old experiment, 
beginning with nothing, now shows a fine 
stone church seating over 800 people, with 
3 clergy, and a body of Sisters at work. 
They have an Orphanage with 20 boys, 188 
children in the Parish School, and 250 in the 
Sunday-school. The offerings of the con¬ 
gregation for the last year were $1343.14. 
Mrs. Buford’s work is purely rural, and the 
peculiar and unaccountable obstacles placed 
in her way have prevented the development 
of any settled plan of ownership as yet. But 
her care for the sick and suffering and igno¬ 
rant has already made her a power in that 
part of the country. She has a daily school 
of 260, a hospital with 18 beds, a night- 
school of 56, and a Home prepared for Sisters 
to reside in and take charge of part of the 
work. She has herself stood as sponsor or 
witness for 425 persons at their Baptism. 
The remarkable work of the Rev. A. Toomer 
Porter, D.D., in Charleston, the Rev. G. B. 
Cooke in Petersburg, the Rev. Dr. J. L. 
Tucker in Mississippi, and others, as well 
as the excellent service rendered by St. Au¬ 
gustine’s Normal School, Raleigh, N. C., 
ought not to pass without mention. In 






WORK, CHURCH 


WORK, CHURCH 800 


coping with the difficulties of the work, it 
will probably be found that the peculiarities 
of primitive practice may give still further 
points worthy of revival; for instance, it is 
well known how strong an impression is 
made upon the imagination of the colored 
people by being put under the water by the 
Baptists. 

A similar effect, in a different and more 
desirable way, might be produced by reviv¬ 
ing the ancient chrisom robe, and clothing 
every person, as soon as he is baptized, and 
as a part of the service, with a white gar¬ 
ment. It would bo a most impressive way 
of teaching the baptized person that Christ 
had given him forgiveness of all his sins: 
and that he must take care to keep this 
purity unspotted by fresh sins in future. 
For open and scandalous sins, committed 
after Baptism, it would also be well to re¬ 
vive the public penance of the Primitive 
days. The childlike immaturity of mind 
and character, the absence of the personal 
sensitiveness and high-strung self-respect of 
the whites, and the intense clannishness of 
the colored people, all combine to point out 
this as one of the most indispensable means 
towards the moral elevation of the Race. 
But it is a very large problem. And its 
solution will probably be very slow, espe¬ 
cially since there is no general agreement as 
to the direction in which that solution should 
be sought. 

There are other Race problems,—the In¬ 
dians and the Chinese, for instance. As to 
the former, much has been done; and no 
Missions among them have been more suc¬ 
cessful than those carried on by the Church. 
The effort has been to advance the whole 
man, so that the Indian shall become a civ¬ 
ilized Christian instead of a savage Pagan. 
The services of Dr. James Lloyd Breck and 
of Bishop Whipple in this field have made 
for both of them national reputations. These 
efforts cannot fully succeed, however, until 
the Indian is recognized as a citizen, and is 
clothed with the legal rights of citizenship. 
Work has already been begun among the 
Chinese; but with the rooted antipathy to 
further immigration, and the legal barriers 
erected to prevent it, the extension of this 
work is not a matter of immediate and grow¬ 
ing pressure. 

A much more important subject is the 
question of foreign nationalities subsisting 
here in their distinctness of language and 
religion for several generations, and in large 
numbers. In Colonial times, the Swedish 
Churches in and near Philadelphia remained 
distinct for a long while, with pastors from 
Sweden, and services in the Swedish lan¬ 
guage. Eventually, all these were absorbed 
into our Church, and still remain among our 
parishes, with no distinction as to services or 
anything else. The Huguenot settlements 
in and around New York and in the Caro- 
linas, as well as in some other places, have 
also been largely absorbed into the Church. 
In the case of the Eglise du S. Esprit in 


New York, the service is still in French,— 
a French translation of our Prayer-Book, 
—in other cases there is now no differ¬ 
ence between these and other parishes. 
The German settlers of Pennsylvania, Geor¬ 
gia, and elsewhere have been more tena¬ 
cious, keeping up their own services in their 
own language, and with Lutheran or other 
religious organizations to preserve and per¬ 
petuate their distinctness. From these have 
arisen the various Lutheran and German 
Reformed sects, some of whom are the most 
Churchly in doctrine and worship of all the 
Evangelical denominations. Among the 
very large immigrations of Swedes and 
Norwegians in late years not much has 
been done, as yet, to draw them Church¬ 
wards ; but there is a strong probability 
that the earlier history will repeat itself as 
soon as the barrier of the foreign language 
begins to disappear. The true policy, in all 
these cases, is to relax our rubrical and 
canonical rigidity somewhat, so that con¬ 
gregations of all these foreign nationalities 
may be brought into a vital connection with 
the Church, through an Apostolic ministry, 
while yet retaining the worship to which 
they jire accustomed, in their own language, 
and as nearly as possible in the very words 
which they have always used. Their cus¬ 
toms as to parochial organizations should 
also be followed as closely as may be. All 
subordinate details should be left unchanged, 
in order to secure the one point of union in 
a regular ministry and valid sacraments, 
the Catholic Creeds being the only tests of 
faith required. 

The same principle, expanded, would 
easily permit of the union of the greater 
body of English-speaking denominations in 
this country on the foundation of our Apos¬ 
tolic Church. We began by speaking of 
the general movement of all these great de¬ 
nominations towards the Church. What 
will be the natural result of this but actual 
union ? The dropping our sectarian name 
“ Protestant Episcopal,” and calling our¬ 
selves simply “ The Church in the United 
States,” would greatly facilitate such a union. 
And we ought to make this actual union as 
easy as possible, provided no fundamental 
principle be violated. It would be enough to 
require that every such congregation uniting 
with us should, 1st. Accept the definitions 
of the Faith as set forth by the undis¬ 
puted General Councils ; 2d. Have a min¬ 
istry of Apostolic succession, given hypothe¬ 
tically if not absolutely ; 3d. Should receive 
Confirmation at the hands of a Bishop; 
and, 4th. Should pledge themselves to the 
use of only valid forms in the administra¬ 
tion of the two great Sacraments of Baptism 
and the Holy Eucharist. Outside of these 
essentials, everything should be left free. 
On the other side,—that towards Rome,—it 
must be remembered that, although the 
Pope excommunicates Anglicans, the Angli¬ 
can Church has never excommunicated the 
Pope or any other branch of the One Apos- 





. WORK, CHURCH 


801 


WORKINGMEN’S CLUBS 


tolic Church. The XXXIX. Articles, in 
which some Romish opinions and practices 
are condemned, are not a Creed, and are not 
required of the Laity in any wise. All 
that is required of the Laity is the Baptismal 
vow, ratified in Confirmation ; and every 
baptized and confirmed Romanist has com¬ 
plied with those conditions as completely as 
any of our own people. On our own prin¬ 
ciples, therefore, we cannot but be ready to 
admit all Romanists to our communion now. 
The obstacle is on their side,—they are not 
willing to come. But as they .draw nearer 
and nearer, the time may arrive when they 
will be willing. We should then remember 
that—whatever may be their errors—their 
Liturgy contains no heresy that has been 
condemned as such by the whole Catholic 
Church. We should, therefore, admit them 
to union without demanding any change in 
the form of worship to which they are ac¬ 
customed, and with no change in Discipline 
further than is inseparable from the act of 
union itself. The same principle would 
apply to congregations of Oriental Chris¬ 
tians, or any other branch of the Apostolic 
Church, should such be found in our 
country. 

And this brings us to the last and greatest 
of the works which the providence of God 
seems to be laying at our doors, although 
we are the youngest and the weakest of all 
the Apostolic Churches. The principles 
which necessarily underlie the attempt to 
bring together, into one body, all the varie¬ 
ties of Christianity found in this “ Home 
of all Nations” are precisely the same prin¬ 
ciples which, if carried out, would reunite 
the sundered communions of Christians 
everywhere. Historically, those melancholy 
separations were due more to the unions of 
Church and State, and complications of 
worldly politics and national jealousies, than 
to the odium theologicum alone. The Papacy 
itself—the fons et origo malorum —is in its 
essence a wrong polity; and if that wrong 
polity were reformed, all other evils would 
soon reform themselves. If the Absolute 
Despotism of the Papacy were to yield to the 
ancient Catholic polity of Liberty regulated 
by Law,—the free Spirit speaking through 
the organs of the Body,—what more could 
be asked? Now, owing to the fact of our 
entire freedom from entanglements with the 
State, our action cannot be liable to any 
suspicion of covering up apolitical purpose. 
We can, therefore, take the initiative, in a 
way that is possible to no other branch of 
the Church in Christendom. The tendency 
towards reunion with the Eastern Church 
was begun by us more than half a century 
ago, when the Rev. Messrs. Hill and Robert¬ 
son were sent as missionaries to Greece, with 
instructions which breathed a purely broth¬ 
erly spirit towards the Greek Church ; and 
that mission has been maintained on the 
same principle ever since. In 1862 a.d. the 
appointment of a Russo-Greek Committee 
by our General Convention marked a new 

51 


era in the good work, which soon caused 
the appointment of a similar committee by 
the Convocation of Canterbury. The im¬ 
pulse thus given went on until it culminated 
in the Bonn Conference of 1874 a.d., where 
a formula of agreement was adopted which, 
logically, ends a controversy that has raged 
between the East and the West for a thou¬ 
sand years concerning the Procession of the 
Holy Ghost. Formal intercommunion 
has already taken place between the Ori¬ 
entals and the Old Catholics and between 
the Old Catholics and ourselves. The 
Lambeth Conference,—the first suggestion 
of which was made by an American, the 
first Bishop of Vermont,—at the opening 
meeting in 1867 a.d., carried its doctrinal 
requirements for a reunited Christendom 
no further than the acceptance of the defi¬ 
nitions concerning the Faith set forth by 
the undisputed General Councils. 

The position of the Eastern question is 
giving more and more influence to Russia 
and England; and neither France nor 
Austria are as zealous for Papal propagand- 
ism in the East as they once were. It looks 
as if, before many years, all branches of the 
Anglican and Oriental Churches, together 
with the Old Catholics, will be in full com¬ 
munion with one another ; and that way lies 
the best hope of the peace of Christendom. 

In the Roman Communion itself there are 
numberless brave souls groaning under the 
evils of their false system, and turning to 
us with eyes of faith and hope. Campello 
and Savarese—coming to us from St. Peter’s 
in Rome, and from the immediate service 
of the Pope in the Vatican—are only sam¬ 
ples of thousands of others. As the visible 
unity consolidates around us, the signs of 
change for the better will grow stronger 
even in Rome itself, and thus at last all may 
be One. . 

Let no narrowness, or coldness, or blind¬ 
ness, or prejudice on our part hinder this 
greatest of all the works which the wonderful 
providence of God ha3 given us to do. 

Rev. T. H. Hopkins, D.D. 

Workingmen’s Clubs and Institutes. 
The origin of tlie associations now known 
under the general designation of Working¬ 
men’s Clubs and Institutes is said to have 
been the agitation in 1825-30 a.d. in Eng¬ 
land in favor of Mechanics’ Institutes 11 origi¬ 
nated by that true friend of the working 
classes, Dr. Birkbeck. Then came various 
unconnected intermittent attempts to pro¬ 
vide what were called 4 Reading-rooms’ for 
working men, in which the chief element 
was the supplying a place where time might 
be innocently passed, but where neither 
education, social intercourse, nor recreation 
was offered, except so far as reading a news¬ 
paper or book in the same room with other 
people might be supposed to afford all or 
either. Next came the formation of Mutual 
Improvement-Societies, which met chiefly 
in school-rooms, and aimed at classes, dis¬ 
cussions, and especially at the preparation 






WORKINGMEN’S CLUBS 


802 


WORKINGMEN’S CLUBS 


of short papers on interesting and improving 
topics. There was often a good deal of the 
sociable spirit in these little organizations, 
hut they were seldom long-lived.”* 

Several somewhat similar organizations 
were started at about the same time; hut the 
most important was the Brighton Working¬ 
men’s Institute, founded by the Rev. F. W. 
Robertson in 1849 a.d. Then followed in 
other places the formation of night-schools 
and societies for promoting adult education. 
In 1852 a.d. was opened in the Colonnade 
Clare-market “ The Colonnade Working- 
men’s Club,” which undertook to provide 
amusement and refreshment for the mem¬ 
bers as well as newspapers and books; and 
shortly after village clubs were established 
in many places throughout the United 
Kingdom. In 1854 a.d. the Rev. F. D. 
Maurice and his colleagues established the 
“ London Workingmen’s College,” which 
has been said to be “ one of the greatest, if 
not the greatest impulse yet given in this 
country [England] to the movement for ele¬ 
vating workingmen in the social scale.”f 
In this “ College” were combined both 
amusement and instruction, and its success 
was so marked that a general interest was 
excited, culminating eventually in 1862 a.d. 
in the formation of “The Workingmen’s 
Club and Institute Union,”—an organiza¬ 
tion whose object, as stated in a prospectus 
issued at the time, is that “of helping 
Workingmen to establish Clubs or Insti¬ 
tutes where they can meet for conversation, 
business, and mental improvement, with the 
means of recreation and refreshment, free 
from intoxicating drinks; these clubs at the 
same time constituting societies for mutual 
helpfulness in various ways.” 

From that time to the present (1884 a.d.) 
the formation of clubs having these objects 
in view in England has gone on in an increas¬ 
ing ratio, until at present there are at least 
one thousand such clubs scattered through¬ 
out the United Kingdom. In the United 
States, the initiative in the movement was 
taken by a number of gentlemen connected 
with St. Mark’s Church, Philadelphia, Pa., 
in 1871 a.d., and after a few years other 
clubs, chiefly founded in connection with 
parish work, were organized in Philadelphia 
and elsewhere. At present there are, how¬ 
ever, in the United States, so far as known 
to the writer, not more than twenty-five or 
thirty organizations which strictly come 
within the designation of “Workingmen’s 
Clubs.” In 1883 a.d. there was formed a 
union called “The Congress of Working¬ 
men’s Clubs,” whose object is to promote 
the formation of clubs and to give advice 
and encouragement whenever practicable. 
A Workingmen’s Club, as now understood 
in England and in the United States, is 
an association formed for the purpose of 
affording to workingmen the means of 

* Workingmen's Social Clubs and Educational Insti¬ 
tutes. Henry Solly, London, 1867 a.d. 

t Henry Solly. 


healthful and innocent amusement and rec¬ 
reation, an opportunity for intellectual cul¬ 
tivation, and the promotion of habits of 
economy and thrift. It may be connected 
with other work, as are those clubs formed 
and managed under the auspices of a par¬ 
ticular parish or union of parishes, or it 
may have no connection of any kind with 
any other organization, but be wholly au¬ 
tonomous. If founded in connection with 
parish work, the usual form of government 
is by a Board of Trustees or Managers, from 
twelve to twenty-five in number, appointed 
by the rector of the parish, or if several 
parishes are united in the undertaking, each 
rector appoints an equal number. If the 
club has no necessary connection with 
church or parish work, it may be governed 
by a self-constituted Board, which itself 
fills its own vacancies, or it may be wholly 
democratic, and the Board of Directors may 
be annually elected by the members of the 
club. Sometimes both features are adopted, 
and one-half of the board is appointed and 
the other half elected. A workingmen’s 
club is never intended or expected to be a 
purely charitable undertaking, and in many 
cases the clubs are wholly self-supporting. 
The funds are partially contributed, in the 
case of parish clubs, by the church or churches 
with which the club is connected, or by any 
benevolent person who may be interested 
in the work; but there is generally an 
initiation fee, and always a monthly pay¬ 
ment made by the members. The initiation 
fee is never in excess of $1, and the monthly 
payment about Is. in England, or 25 cents in 
America. In the English clubs, though not, 
so far as known to the writer, in any Ameri¬ 
can club, a restaurant connected with the 
club is often a source of revenue. There 
are, of course, in addition, various enter¬ 
tainments given by the clubs, which fre¬ 
quently prove very lucrative. In the an¬ 
nual report of the Workingmen’s Club and 
Institute Union, in England, for 1882-83 
a.d. , it was stated that the answers received 
to inquiries in regard to*club statistics 
showed that upwards of 73 per cent, of the 
clubs were reported to be entirely “ self- 
supporting, and without any pecuniary aid 
from outside friends.” This could not be 
said, however, of the clubs in America, 
where the proportion of self-supporting 
clubs is very small, if it really exists at all. 

In all clubs there are the two departments of 
education and amusement, and there is some¬ 
times a third relating to economy. The 
educational department is of course always 
represented by a circulating library and 
reading-room, and no feature of the club 
work is better calculated to be of service 
than this. In the reading-room should be 
at least two or three daily and weekly papers 
for the current news of the day, and so many 
magazines and periodicals as the finances of 
the club will permit, care being taken to 
select them with reference to the tastes and 
appreciation of the members. It is usual 





WORKINGMEN’S CLUBS 


803 


WORKINGMEN’S CLUBS 


also to have at stated intervals, once or twice 
a month, lectures or “ friendly talks” upon 
subjects of interest, supplemented at times 
perhaps by occasional readings: to these 
th$ members are frequently allowed to bring 
their friends. In England the local clubs 
derive much valuable assistance in this re¬ 
spect from the Union, which has for many 
years circulated books among the smaller 
clubs, and in some instances even made 
grants of books which have been presented 
to it for this purpose It has also for many 
years obtained the services of lecturers, but 
at present this particular branch of its work 
has been undertaken by “ the Social Educa¬ 
tional League,” formed for this purpose. 
There are established in connection with 
many clubs classes for instruction in the 
elementary branches of learning if the mem¬ 
bers are of a very humble and uneducated 
class, or if they are mechanics, and belong 
to the better educated classes, there are 
classes in History, Philosophy, or other 
similar branches of learning. In England 
the Union fosters this work by offering 
prizes for papers sent in on various subjects, 
as well in History as in Poetry, Industrial 
and Social questions. Not the least useful 
of all of the educational features of the club 
is the debating society, which meets once or 
twice a month, or perhaps weekly, where the 
members learn not only to think of subjects, 
which, but for its suggestion they would pass 
quite unnoticed, but also to think upon their 
feet and express themselves, so that others 
may understand them. For debates also the 
English Union offers annual prizes', and the 
debates are held in a hall convenient to the 
purpose, at which the competing clubs at¬ 
tend. 

The amusement department of a club de¬ 
pends in large measure upon the local circum¬ 
stances. If situated in a village or country 
town, it may have an athletic club, or cricket, 
foot-ball, or base-ball club, indeed, any out¬ 
door sport that is popular in the neighbor¬ 
hood and feasible for the members. For 
winter evenings there should always be, 
however, a game-room for chess, checkers, 
backgammon, or any other games, if nothing 
in the nature of gambling is permitted, and 
where it*can be afforded, pool or billiard- 
tables, or both. The two latter are frequently 
made a source of revenue by charging a 
moderate fee for each game. There are 
also social gatherings of various kinds, con¬ 
certs and recitations, either by friends or 
by the members, if they develop any taste 
or capacity for such work. There is *in 
many clubs a glee-club or singing-class, 
and perhaps, although not so frequently, an 
orchestra. If really successful in their ef¬ 
forts, the vocal and instrumental societies 
by their concerts are sometimes enabled not 
only to pay their own expenses, but to con¬ 
tribute handsomely to the treasury of the 
club itself. In all of the club-houses there 
is a room or hall adapted to lectures and 
social gatherings, and where the club-house 


has been built for the purpose, this hall is 
large enough to accommodate a fair audi¬ 
ence, and is usually supplied with a stage, 
and perhaps with the ordinary curtain and 
stage scenery, if anything like dramatic per¬ 
formances take place. In the economical 
department of the club work may be in¬ 
cluded Beneficial Societies, of which there 
are two kinds, perpetual and annual; in the 
former the members continue to pay annu¬ 
ally, and so long as they are in good stand¬ 
ing are entitled to the benefits of the so¬ 
ciety ; in the latter the society dissolves each 
year, and whatever balance may be in the 
treasury is divided pro rata among the mem¬ 
bers, and a new society is then formed, from 
which are eliminated all those who would 
be deemed undesirable members if making 
an original application. The Annual so¬ 
cieties seem to be preferred. In some of 
the Philadelphia clubs there are building- 
associations, societies until recently peculiar 
to that city, by which, through a system of 
contributions and loans, the members are 
enabled to buy or build their own houses at 
a great saving of expense and by easy pay¬ 
ments. There have also been tried, and with 
some success, savings-banks or societies, for 
the purpose of saving pure and simple. Co¬ 
operative societies have been established, but 
so far as known with no great success. 

It remains to point out some of the ele¬ 
ments of success and failure in the clubs. 

The most vital element of success is the 
co-operation in every club of a minority of 
well-educated and intelligent men, with a 
majority whose opportunities have been 
fewer. The key-note of the whole move¬ 
ment is the brotherhood of all men, and the 
desire on the part of those who have been 
highly favored and whose advantages, both 
in respect to education and amusement, are 
great, to enable their less-favored neighbors 
to share in a measure in these blessings. To 
this end the two classes must mingle in a 
fraternal spirit, with no patronage on the 
one hand, or cringing acceptance of favors 
on the other. The presence of the higher 
class is essential in directing the various 
enterprises connected with the club, and in 
pointing out new fields of interest and profit 
to their humbler companions, whose expe¬ 
rience w 7 ould quite fail them in this direc¬ 
tion ; for this reason it is highly important 
that at least the preponderating influence in 
every Board of Management should be com¬ 
posed of members of what are called the 
upper class. In England, at one time, in 
some clubs two governing bodies were made 
use of, the one composed of “gentlemen,” 
with whom lay the ultimate control and 
disposition of everything, while under them 
was a committee of the club-members proper, 
but the plan w r as a signal failure. Not only 
is it necessary that the Board of Manage¬ 
ment should be so largely represented by 
the more educated class, it is equally impor¬ 
tant that they should be in constant and 
friendly intercourse with the members, and 






WORKINGMEN’S CLUBS 


804 


WORKS 


to this end, as well as for the general pur¬ 
pose of preserving order and giving neces¬ 
sary information, it is customary for the 
members of a board of management to have 
one of their number present at the club¬ 
house every evening, the members serving 
in rotation for this purpose. By this means 
the use of *the library may frequently be 
most usefully directed, and important in¬ 
fluences for good in other ways be brought 
to bear. It is equally important that the 
members themselves, of whatever class they 
may be, should feel the responsibilities as 
well as share the privileges of membership. 
To this end there should be a representation 
of the workingmen’s element, as distin¬ 
guished from the gentlemen on the govern¬ 
ing board, whatever may be the form of 
government. Judging from the experience 
of the clubs, it should be the aim of the 
managers to provide such influences as will 
enable the members to feel that they have 
something to gain by continuing their mem¬ 
bership besides the mere social pleasure 
which it affords. Experience has also de¬ 
monstrated that no one under twenty-one 
years of age should be admitted as a mem¬ 
ber. The men who seek the club for study 
or quiet recreation, which they frequently 
are unable to obtain in their own homes 
amid a family of children, do not find them¬ 
selves benefited in the society of boisterous 
boys, and many clubs have either actually 
perished, or nearly done so because of their 
membership dropping off in consequence of 
this evil. Another most important rule to 
be observed is the exclusion from public 
discussion of religious and even political 
questions, two topics which unfortunately 
are very apt to excite ill feeling. 

The conditions under which clubs may be 
successfully carried on in America are not es¬ 
sentially different from those in England, ex¬ 
cept that perhaps, as the American laboring 
classes are generally more comfortably housed 
and fed, the need of the creature comforts of 
a club may appeal less powerfully to them. 
But the best of the laboring classes will 
usually find enough advantages in a well- 
managed club to more than repay the trifling 
expense attending membership. On the 
other hand, republican manners and habits 
render the intercourse between the various 
classes much more easy and friendly, and, 
if approached in the right spirit, to ’that 
extent more effective in imparting and re¬ 
ceiving information and instruction. For a 
detailed history of the movement in Eng¬ 
land, the reader is referred to “Working¬ 
men’s Clubs and Educational Institutes/’ 
by the Rev. Henry Solly, London, 1867 a.d., 
published by the Workingmen’s Club and 
Institute Union, and to the occasional papers 
published by that association, and the Club 
and Institute Journal , published fortnightly 
by the Union at its office, No. 31 South¬ 
ampton Street, Strand, London, W.C. The 
present Secretary is Mr. J. J. Dent, and his 
address the office of the Union. The Work¬ 


ingmen’s Club Congress in America are also 
prepared to furnish information and sugges¬ 
tions on application to the Corresponding 
Secretary, John B. Pine, Esq., 41 Pine 
Street, New York City. 

N. Dubois Miller. 

Works. Every being must act in some 
way. It is a condition of life. Every intelli¬ 
gent human being by the powers given him 
gives some one of these three characters to 
each act. It is either an act indifferent, or 
involving moral principles, or involving 
spiritual principles. It most frequently has 
two of these characters ; it is seldom, when 
rightly viewed, without some moral force, 
and often has spiritual power, and always 
has spiritual consequences. If the sor¬ 
rowful taint and weakness of sin be in the 
actor, then all of his acts will be affected 
by this weakness, will have this taint. And 
it will make no difference in the act viewed 
alone whether this weakness was inherited 
or not. It does make a great difference in 
the responsibility of the actor, hut not in the 
act. It is a distinction to be kept in mind 
when we consider the consequences of the 
act to the actor before a just judge. But, 
since actions are the inevitable concomit¬ 
ants of life, and our life is a complex one, 
and our acts have a like complex character, 
it follows that with the best intentions on 
the part of the doer, yet everything done 
cannot be perfect, even though the limits 
placed upon a finite being be not con¬ 
sidered. Works, then, done by every child 
of Adam, no matter how well-intentioned, 
must be affected by the taint of original sin. 
So the XIII. Article puts it, “ Works 
done before the grace of Christ, and the In¬ 
spiration of His Spirit, are not pleasant to 
God, forasmuch as they spring not of faith 
in Jesus Christ ; neither do they make men 
meet to receive grace, or (as the School- 
authors say) deserve grace of congruity: 
yea rather, for that they are not done as God 
hath willed and commanded them to be 
done, we doubt not but they have the nature 
of sin.” But baptism is our adoption into 
His household as sons, and the gift of all 
things necessary for a true and filial obedi¬ 
ence, for the forgiveness of the guilt of origi¬ 
nal sin, and for a discipline that shall remove 
the taint and heal the weakness of the child 
of God, and shall fit him for the higher and 
better estate of which he is the heritor. 

In God’s saints the sense of weakness and 
the strength of a dependence upon Him and 
upon the inspiration of the Holy Ghost is 
eveY clearer as they grow in grace, and the 
imperfection of their works, nay, their use¬ 
lessness without Christ, is much more 
humbly felt. 

So, on the other hand, the rejecting, the 
unregenerate man can do nothing which 
can be received, because he refuses this obe¬ 
dience, which must be a condition precedent 
to redemption. It may be even that the act 
of the indifferent and disobedient man may 
be externally better than the obedience of 




WORKS 


805 


WRATH OF GOD 


the earnest child of God. But the differ¬ 
ence is clear when we consider that the kind 
act of a stranger cannot have the characteris¬ 
tic notes of the filial act of a son. It is this 
obedience of a son that makes the works 
done in faith acceptable to God, and makes 
the doer of them righteous through Christ. 
It is the indifference with which these acts are 
done by one who rejects the loving call of 
his Lord, and willfully does or does not 
what may be in itself right, together with 
the weakness proper to the act itself which 
leads to their rejection. All things not done 
either directly for His sake and in His name, 
or by one who is habitually a lover of holi¬ 
ness, are said in Holy Scripture to be done 
in unrighteousness. A statement relating, 
indeed, to one extreme form of heathen and 
Jewish hardness of heart, but to be received in 
principle as applicable to works, is to be found 
in the second chapter of 2 Thess. It is the 
love of the truth that is rejected, and so the 
truth cannot be believed, and pleasure in un¬ 
righteousness follows. As a general prop¬ 
osition (which must be essentially modified 
we must admit both by the love and mercy 
in the Redemption, by the changed relation 
of the person to God through Christ by his 
adoption, and by the fact that it is all by 
gift by grace, as to sons, and not by wages, 
as to servants), the relation of either party 
—those who reject the Gospel and those who 
accept it—to God is something of the rela¬ 
tion of those who accept employment to 
the employer. What is the attitude of the 
employer to those who accept his terms and 
those who reject them, and yet expect to re¬ 
ceive some* wages ? The answer is ready at 
once. Put, then, the employed into the re¬ 
lation of a son lovingly received and cared 
for, yet upon probation and under a disci¬ 
plinary education, and treated by a wise and 
loving father according to a plan of train¬ 
ing that relates to a higher and more blessed 
relation, and which the son is directed to obey 
without hesitation, that he may prove his 
fitness for a truer companionship with his 
everlasting Father. “ Come ye blessed of 
my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared 
for you from the foundation of the world,” 
is spoken to sons find is founded on works 
done in love for Christ’s sake. Placing the 
righteousness which is by faith as precedent 
and essential, the righteousness which is by 
works upon that faith is equally essential. 
It is, then, upon this foundation that the 
XI. and XII. Articles proceed. 

“ We are accounted righteous before God, 
only for the merit of our Lord and Sav¬ 
iour Jesus Christ by Faith, and not for our 
own works or deservings.” “Albeit that 
Good Works, which are the fruits of Faith, 
and follow after Justification, cannot put 
away our sins, and endure the severity of 
God’s judgment; yet are they pleasing and 
acceptable to God in Christ, and do spring 
out necessarily of a true and lively Faith ; 
insomuch that by them a lively Faith may 
be as evidently known as a tree discerned 


by the fruit.” There are many side issues 
and discussions which spring out of these 
statements, but they do not seriously affect 
our own duty, and not at all the funda¬ 
mental truth of the statement. The condi¬ 
tion of the heathen who have not known 
God, the condition of those who, even in a 
Christian land, have never been reached by 
the Gospel by counteracting causes, the re¬ 
lation of intention to the value of the deed, 
are all questions which may puzzle us, but 
which can be of no use. The plain, straight¬ 
forward duty of doing all we can obediently, 
with the grace of the Holy Ghost guiding 
us, and the certainty that our Lord will as 
lovingly accept our bounden duty and service 
as it is lovingly done,—this is all we need. 
If we grasp these facts, we have enough to 
guide us in the justification by works. 

Wrath of God. A declaration often oc¬ 
curring in Holy Scripture. His anger is 
not as our anger, as His thoughts are not as 
our thoughts, or His ways as our ways. His 
wrath is indeed most fearful, but it is so in its 
calmness, its terrible serenity, if we may be 
permitted so to word it, in its freedom from 
menace in any human sense, for He does 
not threaten as one who hath to take trouble 
or great exertion to execute, but as one 
whose threatenings are only the declaration 
of results which are inevitable fron^ such 
evil course of conduct. His is a wrath that, 
since His nature is love, is only the expres¬ 
sion of His absolute Justice, and therefore 
constantly in Holy Scripture He declares 
His readiness to put it away, to forgive, to 
‘restore, to bless a thousandfold. His mer¬ 
cies are ever new; His compassions fail not. 
His continual warning to the chosen people 
of His wrath and yet of His purpose to for¬ 
give and to restore are prophecies of His 
wrath towards our sins, and of His forgive¬ 
ness through His Son and His restoration 
of men upon their repentance. God was in 
Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. 
It is this that gives the Incarnation of the 
Son of God such glorious yet terrible sig¬ 
nificance. For our sakes He trod the wine¬ 
press of the wrath of God alone. For our 
sakes, in our Flesh, as true Son of Man, He 
made an atonement for our sins. For our 
sakes, though sinless and pure, He, putting 
Himself in our place, endured the hiding 
of His Father’s face, and made His soul 
an offering for sin, and could cry out in 
agony, Eli, Eli, lama sabacthani. His love 
and the utter unreserved putting of Him¬ 
self into our place, not merely to be touched 
with a feeling for our infirmities, but to be 
stricken and smitten of God and afflicted 
for our transgressions, to be bruised for our 
iniquities, to make our peace by taking our 
chastisement, to heal us by His stripes,—all 
these show us the terribleness of the wrath 
of God. How it is to be displayed here¬ 
after, how sinners who disdain His mercy 
are to suffer, and what the punishments will 
be that are to be apportioned, are recorded 
for us, but in words that by their very 





YEAR 


806 


YEAR 


weakness reveal the terror and awfulness of 
the wrath. There are two other points to 
be noted. This wrath and vengeance is not 
as human wrath or vengeance; so the 
Father in mercy hath given judgment to 
the Son, who gives us the revelation of His 
Father’s pity and of His own love, and 
who is yet to be the upright Judge, and is 
to impartially award love to them that love 


Him, and indignation and wrath, tribula¬ 
tion and anguish, upon every soul of man 
that doeth evil. And the execution of the 
sentence is committed to the Angels of 
Judgment, who are appointed for that pur¬ 
pose to gather all from the four corners of 
the earth and to lead them away to suffer 
their sentence. 

Wyoming. Vide Colorado. 




Y. 


Year. Not the secular, but the ecclesias¬ 
tical year is dwelt on here. The Church 
year is the consecration to God of a natural 
cycle of time in a holy round of services, 
each separate one offering to Him praise and 
worship for His own great glory and for the 
noble and wonderful acts of creation, pres¬ 
ervation, and, above all, redemption, with 
earnest thanksgivings and commemorations 
of tlih several acts of Redemption, from the 
Incarnation to the Gift of the Holy Ghost, 
and remembrances thankfully made for the 
good examples of those who have become 
His Saints. There is here subject-matter 
enough for the whole year. If we add to 
these the penitential acts with which w<5 
must constantly discipline? ourselves, we 
will feel that He has given us so much to 
dwell upon and to study over of His love, 
mercy, superintending care, and forbear¬ 
ance, that the wonder is why so many should 
think so little about it, and why others 
should need to seek for fresh subjects of 
devotion. 

With such abundant cause for rejoicing 
and for humility before God, with the great 
central acts of our Redemption demanding 
from the Christian fervent adoration for the 
mercies in them, it was impossible to avoid 
making a division of the lifty-two days 
sacred unto God into a full, orderly, and con¬ 
nected cycle of services. The Feasts of 
Christmas, of Easter, and of Whit-Sunday 
marked the broader outlines of this holy 
year, and indeed Easter and Whit-Sunday 
fell upon times already sanctified unto God 
by His appointment under the Mosaic Law. 
The Jew, because of his national feasts-, 
could readily accept the Christian Year. 
The Gentile was trained in religious feasts 
occurring at stated periods, and found 
everything to satisfy him. In fact, these 
probably were larger and more frequent in 
the earlier history of Christianity than it 
is usual to suppose. It would readily result 
from this that the Christian Year, having 
certain fixed festivals which were univer¬ 
sally observed in all national Churches 


throughout the world, there would be most 
naturally developed the intermediate festi¬ 
vals and fasts, each according to the needs 
of the Church locally, and the bent or char¬ 
acteristic temper of the people to which the 
Church had to minister. 

In this way, without interference and 
clash, there would be the widest room for 
those services, and those lessons in them, 
which the Church could select, both for 
Worship and Adoration from the people to 
God, and of instruction into all Faith and 
Practice of holy living. These two, Faith 
and Practice, must be ever brought promi¬ 
nently forward ; so we find in the many 
links of the Liturgic service of the succes¬ 
sive Sundays a principle that infterweaves a 
confession of Faith with the substance of the 
Worship, which serves also as an instruction 
in the truths, and seizes upon certain sec¬ 
ondary facts and acts of our Lord’s Life, and 
upon the examples of His Apostles, and 
holds these up for imitation and practice in 
the holy conduct of life. 

The Calendar of our own Prayer-Book 
exhibits this. The year is divided into two 
grand divisions: the first, of the Sundays 
that extend from the first Sunday in Ad¬ 
vent to Trinity-Sunday, and the second, 
from Trinity-Sunday oif through the half- 
year to Advent-Sunday again. The first 
part is used to teach doctrine, the second, 
given up to practical instruction, not so 
exclusively, however, that there is not a 
free interchange. But from Advent to 
Christmas the historical facts of the prep¬ 
aration for Christ’s Coming and His 
Advent, and His Second Coming and our 
preparation therefor, are dwelt upon. And, 
following an ancient custom, Isaiah is 
the Prophet chosen for this part of the 
year. From Christmas through Epiphany, 
with its Sunday, the Lord Jesus is shown 
by His miracles to be Lord over all 
nature. Diseases yield, demons are quelled, 
the storms are laid at His word. Then 
come the three Sundays of solemn prepara¬ 
tion for Lent, when our duty of self-control 








YEAR 


807 


ZACHARIAS 


and of self-renunciation are brought forward, 
and so we enter into the remembrance and 
the sad faltering, distant, imitation of our 
Lord’s great Fast and of His resistance to 
temptation. 

It calls up to our remembrance the rea¬ 
sons why our Lord suffered, it reminds 
us that for our sins He endured, and so step 
by step it prepares us for the solemn Fast¬ 
ing Services of the Holy Week, which ter¬ 
minate at last in the great Fast of Good Fri¬ 
day, which is followed by the glories of the 
Easter-Feast. The Sunday on which the doc¬ 
trine of the Resurrection is proclaimed, is 
made the centre around which all the preced¬ 
ing and succeeding Sundays throughout the 
universal Church arrange themselves. All 
refer to this as the crowning act of that In¬ 
carnation which the whole Church com¬ 
memorates at Christmas. The period of 
forty days from Easter to the Ascension, 
and of ten days from the Ascension on 
to Whit-Sunday, are taken up with set¬ 
ting forth the doctrine of the Church, 
and are always counted as a continuous 
Feast. The doctrines of the Resurrection, 
of His sitting as Intercessor and Mediator 
at the Right Hand of His Father, and 
the Descent of the Holy Ghost to abide 
forever with the Church, are all Festal 
facts for our humanity. Trinity-Sunday is 
peculiar to the Anglo-Saxon race and to 
those countries of Northern Europe influ¬ 
enced by Anglo-Saxon missionaries. But 
for the succeeding Sundays the subjects of 
teaching change. The Historic pivotal facts 
are not now dwelt upon, but the practical 
lessons which yet involve doctrine are taken 
up one by one, and something of the facts 
of the unseen world about us is taught. 
What with the unvarying parts of the Lit¬ 
urgy and with the broidery of Scripture 
and the key-note struck by the Gospel and 
Epistles, a rich variety, and yet a continual 
adherence to a fixed system, is the result. 
In the mediaeval Church the several Sun¬ 
days had their significant names, which 
served to keep these several lessons in mind. 
The Eastern Church following the same 
plan for the first half of the year, varies the 
latter part of it by having a different series 


of Epistles and Gospels and formal names 
for the several Sundays of the year. 

But with this variable system the Church 
has interwoven a series of holy-days upon 
fixed dates. These are for our Lord’s Life; 
the Christmas Feast (December 25), Circum¬ 
cision (January 1), Epiphany (January 6), 
the Presentation of Christ in the Temple 
(February 2), Annunciation to the Blessed 
Virgin Mary (March 25), and the Trans¬ 
figuration (August 6). The Nativity of St. 
John the Baptist, the commemorations of 
our Lord’s Apostles, and of the Holy Inno¬ 
cents, and of St. Stephen the First Martyr, 
and All Saints, and St. Michael and All 
Angels, form special holy-days. In other 
portions of the Church Catholic a larger 
calendar of saints has been in use, but the 
American Church has wisely kept to the 
commemoration of those Saints and blessed 
ones whose names are written not merely in 
the yet sealed book of life but in God’s book 
here, and has recognized these only as being 
worthy to publicly thank God for, as gifts to 
His people. And she returns thanks “ for all 
His servants departed this life in His Faith 
and Fear, beseeching Him to give us grace so 
to follow their good examples that with them 
we may be partakers of His heavenly King¬ 
dom” at every celebration of the commu¬ 
nion. A study of the wise and compre¬ 
hensive plan upon which the Church year is 
arranged does bring out the truths of the 
Christian Faith, and enforces them upon the 
attention in a way that no other that can be 
devised can do. Its flexibility, its unity of 
purpose, its various teachings, its insistance 
Sunday by Sunday of the same essential veri¬ 
ties, all these make it as nearly an inspiration 
as an institution which is the outgrowth from 
the Christian longings and worship can be. 

Our Feasts and our Fasts are influencing 
those devout Christian bodies around us, 
who draw near our Common Lord in His 
Spirit. Imitation and concurrent observ¬ 
ances are becoming more and more usual, 
year by year attesting to the vital power 
over the Christian life, in a Christian com¬ 
munity, which a Christian year devoutly 
planned and consecrated by ages of holy use 
must wield. 




z. 


Zacharias. The Father of St. John the 
Baptist, who was an aged Priest of the order 
of Abijah, the eighth in the course of the 
twenty-four appointed by King David. A 
righteous man looking for the promise to 
Israel, blameless of life. It was his by lot 
to burn incense at the inner altar of incense 


at the season of the Atonement. While per¬ 
forming his office there was fulfilled to him 
the promise made when the altar of incense 
was commanded : “ And thou slialt put it be¬ 
fore the veil that is by the ark of the Testi¬ 
mony, before the mercy-seat that is over the 
testimony, where I will meet with thee.” 







ZEALOTS 


808 


ZECHARIAH 


With reverent bowing towards the veil, alone 
in the sanctuary, he put upon the. altar the 
incense, and there met him an angel, with 
the message that he was to be the father of 
the stern Herald of Christ. His incredulity 
so natural, yet strange in one so full of faith 
as he was, was given a sign which was at 
once a judgment and a sure token- of the 
fulfillment of the vision. He was stricken 
dumb, so that he could not put the blessing 
upon the people when he came forth from 
the sanctuary. It continued till after the 
birth of his son, and then the dumbness was 
removed when he was required to name his 
son, and he “ wrote saying, His name is 
John.” His hymn of praise is a noble 
prophecy, with the first verses of which we 
are thoroughly familiar. It is worthy of 
note that Zacharias speaks first and most 
fully of the Messiah, and only the latter 
third of his prophecy dwells upon the mis¬ 
sion of his son, the greatest born of women, 
the .mightiest of the messengers of God. 
Beyond what is told us in Holy Writ, we 
know nothing of this blameless Priest. 

Zealots. A fanatic sect of the Jews who 
were in great vogue in the time of our Lord. 
They claimed to hold in great honor the 
commandments, but the spirit in which they 
interpreted 'these was a distortion of the 
zeal of Phinehas the High-Priest who slew 
the sinning Prince of the tribe of Simeon 
(Numb. xxv.). They w r ere numerous, dar¬ 
ing, and resisting not only the civil power, 
but their spiritual rulers as well. Annas the 
High-Priest tried to curb them. Of their 
number at one time was Simon the Apostle. 
In the last terrible days of the siege of 
Jerusalem the Zealots were one cause of the 
miseries suffered, and of the final fall of the 
Holy City. 

Zechariah. Zechariah, the eleventh of 
the Minor Prophets, calls himself (Zech. i. 
1) the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo the 
priest; but in the book of Ezra he is called 
the son of Iddo (Ezra v. 1). This seeming 
discrepancy may be explained by the East¬ 
ern use of the word son to mean any de¬ 
scendant; or by the suggestion that Bere¬ 
chiah, the father, died about the time of the 
birth of his son, and that Iddo discharged 
a father’s duty by his grandson. This Iddo 
is thought by many to be “ Iddo the priest” 
mentioned in Nell. xii. 4, whose son Zech¬ 
ariah (v. 16), doubtless the prophet him¬ 
self, was a priest contemporary with Joia- 
kim, the son of Joshua the High-Priest of the 
return from captivity (Neh. xii.). It is not 
known where Zechariah was born, nor at 
what age he began to prophesy; but as he 
was with his grandfather, among the first 
of those who returned to Jerusalem, he 
must have been born in captivity, and have 
been about thirty years old when called to the 
office of prophet; and he is related to have 
lived to a great age, and to have been buried 
beside Haggai at Jerusalem. Zechariah the 
prophet has been identified, or rather con¬ 
founded, with others of the same na'me, es¬ 


pecially with Zechariah the son of Jebere- 
chiah (Isa. viii. 2), and with Zechariah the 
priest, son of Jehoiada, murdered by Joash (2 
Chron. xxiv. 20), owing probably to the text 
of St. Matt, xxiii. 35. But the date at which 
Zechariah the prophet lived and prophesied 
is sufficient to show the impossibility of these 
suppositions. For it was in the eighth month 
of the second year of Darius (520 b.c.) that 
he was called to the office of a prophet; just 
two months later than Haggai, with whom 
he was constantly associated in exhorting 
the Jews to energy in the work of rebuild¬ 
ing the Temple. In the Septuagint titles 
of the Psalms the following are attributed 
to Haggai and Zechariah together : cxxxvii., 
cxiv., cxlvi., cxlvii., cxlviii. The Peschito 
Version adds cxxxv., cxxxvi. 

In making an analysis of the prophecy of 
Zechariah it is found convenient to divide 
it into two parts (chap. i. to viii. and ix. 
to xiv.), and to consider these separately. 
In the first part, which is admitted by all to 
be the genuine work of Zechariah the son 
of Iddo, three sections are distinguished. 
The first (chap. i. 1-6), which is introduc¬ 
tory, consists of an appeal to the people, 
founded on experience of the truth of God, 
to repent and be energetic in the work on 
the Temple. The second section (chap. i. 
7 to vi. 15) is made up of a series of vis¬ 
ions, all seen in one night, “ descriptive of 
all those hopes and anticipations of which 
the building of the Temple was the pledge 
and sure foundation.” The third section 
(chap. vii. and viii.), communicated two 
years later, is an answer to certain questions 
addressed to the priests and prophets, fol¬ 
lowed by a prophecy of the glory of Zion, 
when the Lord shall return to her, and 
dwell in the midst of Jerusalem. The second 
part of Zechariah is the subject of much 
dispute ; some denying that it is indeed by 
Zechariah the son of Iddo, others maintain¬ 
ing that it is his work ; so that critics are 
nearly equally divided in opinion ; and still 
further, there is much dispute over the au¬ 
thorship of the two sections into which the 
second part is to be divided, viz.: 1 (chap, 
ix -xi.), a prophecy against Damascus and 
Tyre, with promises of protection to Jeru¬ 
salem; and, 2 (chap, xii.-xiv.), “The bur¬ 
den of the word of the Lord for Israel,” 
— i.e., for the whole nation of the Jews. It 
is impossible to enter into these questions in 
so limited a space as a short article, and the 
reader who desires to pursue them further 
must be referred to fuller works. (Art. 
Zechariah in Smith’s Dictionary of the 
Bible.) Whatever view he may adopt con¬ 
cerning their authorship, the moral lesson 
to be gathered from these chapters is the 
same, “ in either case they satisfy the condi¬ 
tion, ‘To Him give all the prophets wit¬ 
ness;’ in either case they are God’s words 
addressed to the hearts and consciences of 
mankind.” (Bible Commentary, Introd. to 
Zech.) Zechariah concludes his prophecy 
with a grand picture of all nations coming 





ZEPHANIAH 


809 


ZEPHANIAH 


up to Jerusalem to worship, in that day when 
the kingdoms of this world shall become 
the kingdoms of our Lord and of His 
Christ, and everything shall be sanctified 
to His Service; the trappings of worldly 
pomp and pride, “ the bells of the horses;" 
the meanest utensils, “ every pot in Jerusa¬ 
lem" shall be inscribed “ Holiness unto the 
Lord." Zechariah is frequently quoted in the 
New Testament; the prophecy of the progress 
of the Saviour into Jerusalem riding upon 
the foal of an ass, and that of the purchase 
of the potter’s field with the thirty pieces 
of silver, being from his book. The name 
Zechariah means “ whom the Lord remem¬ 
bers." 

Authorities : Smith’s Diet, of Bible, Bible 
Commentary, Gray’s Introduction. 

Zephaniah. Zephaniah, the ninth of the 
Minor Prophets, announces himself to be the 
son of Cushi, the son of Gedaliah, the son of 
Amariah, the son of Hizkiah (Zeph. i. 1). 
As this name is the same as that of the King 
Hezekiah, it is thought that the prophet was 
of the royal house of Judah. But, as the in¬ 
terval between the time of the King and the 
date of the prophet is rather short to admit 
of three intermediate generations, others 
adopt the tradition that Zephaniah was of the 
tribe of Simeon. His prophecy was delivered 
in the days of Josiah, King of Judah ; proba¬ 
bly in the early part of it; as the denuncia¬ 
tions, warnings, and promises of Zephaniah 
would have been a great assistance to the 
religious reformation effected by Josiah in 
the eighteenth year of his reign. Some, in¬ 
deed, find reason for thinking that Zepha¬ 
niah preceded Jeremiah, who prophesied in 
the thirteenth year of Josiah’s reign, be¬ 
cause the latter seems to speak of certain 
abuses as corrected against which Zephaniah 
had prophesied (compare Zeph. i. 4, 5, 9, 


with Jer. ii.). Hence the date of this prophet 
would be from 642 to 629 b.c. 

The book of Zephaniah, which is addressed 
to Judah and Jerusalem, is short, its chief 
characteristics “ are the unity and harmony 
of the composition, the grace, energy, and 
dignity of its style, and the rapid and ef¬ 
fective alternations of threats and promises. 
Its prophetical import is chiefly shown in 
the accurate predictions of the desolation 
which has fallen upon each of the nations 
denounced for their crimes ; Ethiopia, which 
is menaced with a terrible-invasion, being 
alone exempted from the doom of perpetual 
ruin. The general tone of the last portion 
is Messianic, but without any specific refer¬ 
ence to the person of our Lord.” (Art. Zeph¬ 
aniah in Smith’s Diet, of the Bible.) The 
following analysis of the prophecy is given : 
“ In chap. i. the utter desolation of Judah 
is predicted as a judgment for idolatry and 
neglect of the Lord, the luxury of the 
princes, and the violence and deceit of their 
dependents (3-9). The prosperity, security, 
and insolence of the people is contrasted 
with the horrors of the day of wrath (10-18). 
Chap. ii. contains a call to repentance (1-3), 
with a prediction of the ruin of the cities of 
the Philistines and the restoration of the 
House of Judah after the visitation (4-7). 
Other enemies of Judah, Moab, and Ammon 
are threatened with perpetual destruction 
(8-15). In chap. iii. the prophet addresses 
Jerusalem, which he reproves sharply for 
vice and disobedience (1-7). He then con¬ 
cludes with a series of promises (8-20)." 
(Student’s O. T. History, App. i.) The 
name Zephaniah means “Watcher of the 
Lord," or as some will have it, “ One whom 
Jehovah guards." 

Same authorities as for other Minor 
Prophets. 





L’ENVOI. 




This Church Cyclopaedia, which is offered to the Laity of the American Church, is 
intended to convey to the Churchman all necessary instruction upon the History, Doctrine, 
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the religious problems of the day. 

How far the Cyclopaedia has fulfilled this conception others must decide; but the 
very valuable papers contributed bj 1- writers authorized to speak on their several topics 
will go far to substantiate the claim. All the articles have been written anew for the 
Cyclopaedia. The Dictionaries of Broughton, Hook, Blunt, and Smith have been freely 
used. The editor is responsible for all unsigned articles except those upon the Councils 
and the Minor Prophets, which are from the pen of the Rev. R. A. Benton, of St. 
Paul’s School, and the article upon the Atonement, which is contributed by one recently 
called to. the highest office in the Church. To the Rev. S. F. Hotchkin the editor’s 
hearty thanks are due for valuable aid in procuring'Diocesan Histories. 

Two contributors have been called to their rest. The grief of the whole Church has 
burst forth at the loss of one of her foremost Bishops, the Rt. Rev. Robert H. Clarkson, 
of Nebraska. The like shadow of grief fell no less deeply upon the little circle of those 
who were bereaved of a beloved mother, summoned most suddenly into the Presence of 
the Lord. 

May He bless the work to which His sainted servants have contributed. 

A. A. BENTON. 


Delaware College, 

Newark, Delaware. 


errata. 


Page 128, col. 1, JJne 27, read “unready” for “ ready.” 

Page 143, col. 1, line 61, read “upper robe” for “under robe.” 

Page 446, col. 2, line 20, read “This first” for “ The second.” 

In the article on the Ter Sanctus, after the word “saying” insert, and the choir and people take 
up the Hymn, “Holy,” etc. 


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